Category: Uncategorized Page 11 of 106

by Tony Wikrent

Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself

Nikita Mazurov, Matt Sledge, March 29, 2025 [The Intercept]

Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.

Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers

March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]

Rep. Jaimie Raskin’s request for you to file FOIA with DOGE

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

The Biggest Scandal of the Second Trump Term Isn’t “Signalgate”

Alex Shephard, March 28, 2025 [The New Republic]

The national security chat debacle certainly merits attention. But the Trump administration is now blatantly disappearing students and others who are in the country legally…. Masked agents snatching legal residents off the streets and disappearing them—not so long ago, this would be unthinkable in the United States. Now it is not only a regular occurrence but something that the Trump administration boasts about….

By removing the authors of innocuous op-eds, Rubio seems to believe that he can surgically smother the opinions they were expressing. At the same time, this purge allows the administration to systematically attack higher education. Already, the administration has used student protests to attack a number of colleges and universities and to withhold hundreds of millions in federal funding from several. Allegations of antisemitism—and a list of demands that are more or less impossible to fully meet—are being used as a Trojan horse to withhold funding and to attack other sources of revenue. Many schools rely heavily on foreign students, who often pay full tuition. The Trump administration’s crackdown, even if it were to somehow stop today, has already seriously jeopardized that. Who would send their child to study in America in such a climate? Especially knowing their child could be swept off the street and flown to a detention facility?

What Will It Take?

Joyce Vance, March 26, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…)

The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong.

As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

The Next American Constitution

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by Tony Wikrent

Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers 

March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Iran-Contra Paved the Way for Trump to Defy Democratic Norms

Sam Lebovic, March 7, 2025 [Bloomberg]

… In The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy (The University of North Carolina Press, March 4), Alan McPherson argues convincingly that Iran-Contra should be plotted not as a minor sideshow in the Cold War’s final act, nor as a case study in flawed national-security policymaking, but as a key moment in the collapse of democratic norms.

McPherson was inspired to return to the improvised, personalized diplomacy of the affair while watching the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019. But his argument has become even more compelling in the first weeks of Trump 2.0. In McPherson’s telling, Iran-Contra was an assault on democratic governance by an extremist executive branch. The results — corruption, deception, willful illegality, lack of accountability — are starting to look familiar….

Defying Congress and the law required operating in secrecy, which also meant sidelining the federal bureaucracy. Policy was conducted instead by a small cluster of officials close to the White House, who delegated key tasks to a coterie of allies who weren’t elected, some of whom weren’t even really part of the government. McPherson is particularly good at highlighting the corruption that flourished in such a freewheeling environment. Weapons sales to Iran were managed by a small firm known, appropriately, as “The Enterprise” — operating for profit, its owners marked up the price of the missiles and decided to pay themselves millions of dollars in commission….

This was all part of a radical revision of the role of the presidency. Lawyers in the Reagan administration embraced what is known as the Unitary Executive Theory — a reading of the Constitution in which the president has sole and complete authority over the executive branch. That meant sidelining Congress and ending the independence of the bureaucracy. Edwin Meese, Reagan’s second attorney general — who would resign in 1988 amid corruption allegations — believed “the entire system of independent agencies may be unconstitutional.” Iran-Contra was a perfect illustration of the theory in practice: Congress could be ignored, and policy would run through the White House….

…In a 1992 article in The Nation, playwright Steve Tesich saw Iran-Contra as a prime instance of what he dubbed a newly emerging “post-truth” society: “President Reagan perceived correctly that the public really didn’t want to know the truth. So he lied to us, but he didn’t have to work hard at it.” The title of the piece was “A Government of Lies.”….

But McPherson is right to suggest that Iran-Contra is prologue to our present. The scandals presented an opportunity to send a clear signal that democracy had no tolerance for this kind of politics. The opposite happened. In 1992 Ted Draper, author of one of the first comprehensive histories of the scandals, concluded that “if ever the constitutional democracy of the United States is overthrown, we now have a better idea of how this is likely to be done.” Indeed, Iran-Contra taught politicians lessons — that one could find much room for maneuvers in the inner workings of the government, that the law was flexible, that there would be no consequences if you pushed the envelope or lied about what you were doing.

During the first Trump administration, when Stephen Miller’s immigration policy proposals hit obstacles in federal court, rumors would circulate about his plans to dust off arcane presidential powers. Government lawyers were wary of overreach; officials in the West Wing and at the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes snicker….

Miller’s approach is different this time. He has unleashed an everything-at-once policy storm modeled after the MAGA guru Stephen K. Bannon’s “flood the zone” formula. Drawing on policy ideas worked up in conservative think tanks during the four years between Trump’s terms, Miller’s plan has been to fire off so many different proposals that some inevitably find a friendly court ruling, three administration officials told us….

Three months after leaving the White House, in April 2021, Miller co-founded a Trump-aligned think tank, the America First Legal Foundation, that he fashioned as a right-wing counter to the American Civil Liberties Union. The group’s lawyers filed scores of lawsuits against the Biden administration and U.S. companies. They also provided legal firepower to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other Republican officials launching state-level immigration crackdowns….

President Donald Trump continued his retaliatory spree against major law firms on Friday, signing an executive order targeting New York firm Paul, Weiss days after a judge ruled that major parts of a similar order were unconstitutional.

Trump’s new order seeks to suspend the security clearances of attorneys with the firm and limit their access to government buildings, ability to get federal jobs and receive money from federal contracts….

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By Tony Wikrent

Jaime Raskin Asks Us To Help Make A FOIA Tsunami

Beryl Stone, March 11, 2025 [DailyKos]

From Raskin:

Today I filed a formal demand for access to my personal data obtained by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk. I encourage all U.S. citizens to join me in doing the same.

Elon Musk should have been more careful in what he wished for, Carol. DOGE recently dodged lawsuits about its seizure of citizens’ personal data by telling courts that it is a legitimate government agency entitled to extract this information. What Elon Musk apparently did not realize is that this statement triggers DOGE’s obligation to comply with citizen demands to see and—if need be—correct their personal information under the Privacy Act. It also allows every citizen to find out what other agencies or outside parties have been made privy to our information.

Last night, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction commanding DOGE to comply with citizen requests under the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA encompasses the Federal Privacy Act of 1974, which entitles any citizen to access personal information held in any U.S. government records system.

By visiting the link on my website HERE, you can fill out the Privacy Act request form and mail it in directly to DOGE. This newly recognized federal agency, which has been systematically accessing government computer data systems, now has an obligation to respond to specific information demands from any of the 340 million U.S. citizens who exercise their legal right to defend their privacy and establish the security of their personal information.

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal: Report

Brett Wilkins, March 13, 2025 [CommonDreams]

U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for “reclaiming” the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama’s military and, absent that, possible war.

Legal Fight Underway as Trump Invokes Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for Deportations

Jessica Corbett, March 15, 2025 [CommonDreams]

DHS Official Explicitly Equates Protest to Terrorism in ‘Stunning’ Interview

Julia Conley, March 13, 2025 [CommonDreams]

Trump visits Justice Department for speech that breaks all norms

Perry Stein, Jeremy Roebuck, Derek Hawkins, March 14, 2025 [Washington Post, via msn.com]

DHS has begun performing polygraph tests on employees to find leakers 

[NBC News, via Naked Capitalism 03-10-2025]

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. No vax/anti-vax.

By Tony Wikrent

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie — We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people.

Greg Sargent, March 1, 2025 [The New Republic]

It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”

Now the Trump administration has officially terminated a number of current contracts struck by USAID for this lifesaving nutrition, contracts that had called for the paste to be delivered to hundreds of thousands of children, most in Africa, according to the Georgia-based nonprofit set to deliver them, Mana Nutrition….

The full extent of the damage from these cuts—originally set in motion by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—is not yet known. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives, has established, via communications with partners that work with USAID, a list of contracts that were terminated. Among them are programs that offer natal care for mothers and children, that provide netting and other equipment to prevent the spread of malaria, that work to thwart the spread of Ebola and bird flu in dozens of countries, and much more. The cancellations will nix programs that helped tens of millions of people, Gawande notes.

“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” Gawande told me in an interview. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times has developed a long list of other terminated contracts, which include programs preventing the spread of polio, treating HIV and tuberculosis, ensuring clean drinking water in war-torn regions, and buttressing public health in many other ways. Tens of milions of people benefited; now they will not.

Hegseth Clears the Way for More War Crimes 

[Daniel Larison, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

The Secretary of Defense admitted that the reason for removing the JAGs was so that they wouldn’t be “roadblocks to anything that happens.” If top military lawyers don’t serve as roadblocks more often than not, they aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted 

[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

White House point man at Homeland Security shared ‘martial law option’ post to keep Trump in office 

[CNN, via Naked

Capitalism Water Cooler 02-26-2025]

“The Trump administration’s new point man for dealings with the Department of Homeland Security is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for ‘martial law’ to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election. Paul Ingrassia and the Twitter account for a podcast he co-hosted posted the remark and similar sentiments on social media in December 2020 and January 2021, according to a CNN KFile review of deleted and still-active posts by Ingrassia himself and the account of the podcast. The 29-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer now serves as the second Trump administration’s White House liaison to the DHS, a key role that has historically involved managing the administration’s relationship with the department and overseeing the placement of political appointees.”

STATE OF NEW YORK, et al., v. DONALD J. TRUMP (PDF)

[United States District Court, Southern District of New York, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

Judge extends block on DOGE’s access to federal payment systems 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025] The opinion.

Trump and Elon’s ‘Pointless Bloodbath’ at the FAA Is Even Worse Than You Think 

[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but the latter role is important, too, given the nation’s ongoing pilot shortage.

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