Thought Control? 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Just Another Day? Yesterday, Judge Ellen Hollander of the US District Court of Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking Musk and his team of Doge-bags from accessing sensitive data and systems at the Social Security Administration.  The Dogies were also barred from holding on to sensitive data they had already taken.  Essentially the judge said that people have a reasonable expectation that their personal information including their Social Security Numbers, medical information, and financial information be kept private and that in addition to Musk and the Dogies not needing to know individuals’ information, they’re not exactly among the trustworthy few who should be allowed into the data trove.  Ironically, Judge Hollander issued her order on the same day that it was revealed that the JFK assassination material that Trump rushed out earlier this week, one of those shiny objects deployed to distract from the awful things he’s been doing, included almost nothing new about the assassination but did include the Social Security Numbers of 400 people who had worked on the investigations.  Many of those people are still alive and as one of them, 80-year-old Joe diGenova, whose name may sound familiar because he served as one of Trump’s impeachment lawyers, noted their release exposes them to identity theft and threats because “there are dangerous nuts out there.” Given his most prominent client diGenova knows a lot about dangerous nuts.  The people whose information was “inadvertently” released in the rush to satisfy Trump’s whim are now being offered free credit monitoring services and may also receive new SSNs, a pain for anyone, but particularly challenging for the elderly to deal with under any circumstances but particularly when Social Security offices are being closed down.  Last night, the NY Times revealed that Musk, who shouldn’t be trusted with our Social Security data, is scheduled to sit down today with officials at the Pentagon to be briefed on the US’s military plans for any possible future war with China. Musk who is an admitted ketamine user, something that would ordinarily limit his access to super top-secret information, also has more conflicts than you can shake a stick at, or launch a rocket against, given his business with Chinese entities, including the Chinese government, is being given access to secret war plans, #WTF.  Naturally, Musk’s response to the story, which has been confirmed by other media sources, was to scream about all those traitorous leakers at the Pentagon.  A Pentagon spokesman is now asserting that the meeting with Musk which is being held in a super secure room will only involve public information.  Really? Anyway, maybe Musk’s screaming reaction to the China story was because he had a rough day yesterday since nearly all of Tesla’s Cybertrucks were recalled, something to do with the inadequacy of the glue used to affix cosmetic appliques. Apparently when the glue fails, parts of the cars fall off causing “road hazards,” what the rest of us call crashes. So, the guy whose ugly trucks are put together with faulty glue, whose Doge-bag team has been mucking around in our SSNs, and who has been responsible for the cutting of a slew of important government services, is now also going to be privy to secret war plans.  Everything will not be okay.  

Other Illegalities:  Judge Boasberg, the federal district judge who is not happy about being given a runaround by Trump administration officials and the INS about those flights that transported around 200 or so Venezuelan migrants to the squalid, dangerous prison in El Salvador appears to be losing his patience. He’s called the information, or really the lack of information, provided by the government woefully inadequate.  Moreover, he’s not buying the excuse that because his initial order to turnaround the migrant planes was oral rather than written it wasn’t binding at the time it was issued. It’s also becoming increasingly obvious that some of the alleged gang members included on the flights were not actually gang members but were asylum seekers with scheduled court dates.  One of them was a Venezuelan soccer player, whose “implicating” tattoo didn’t signify membership in the Tren de Aragua gang but was instead an emblem indicative of his affinity for the Real Madrid soccer team. Soccer fans, maybe it’s time to cover your arms, especially if you have foreign accents. In any case, if you are here on a legal visa, and want to stay, it’s probably not a good time to go on any overseas trips because more and more stories keep emerging about those being held in INS facilities and/or deported for having compromising information on their phones, not just texts and photos that show affinity for terrorist groups but snide comments about the Orange King.   By the way, whether the transporting of migrants to El Salvador is legal or not, it’s worth noting that the Trump administration is paying the El Salvadoran government to hold the prisoners for a year or longer.  Would it be surprising if it turns out that the invocation of the Alien Act, something that in and of itself is sketchy and possibly illegal, the expensive flights and the “jail rent” are expensive solutions to the migrant problem?  On the subject of expensive and possibly depressing solutions, it appears that the Paul Weiss law firm has resolved its problem with Trump.  According to the White House Paul Weiss has agreed to “take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society”. The firm reportedly agreed to disavow the use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in its hiring and promotion decisions and to dedicate the equivalent of $40m in free legal services to support Trump administration policies on issues including assistance for veterans and countering antisemitism.  It’s not entirely clear what that means, particularly the part about supporting Trump policies,  but it’s depressing that Trump appears to be wielding such power over prominent legal professionals.  

We Don’t Need No Education:  Republicans have long hated the Department of Education.  Project 2025 called for it to be eliminated, and though one-time Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry suffered brain fog when he infamously couldn’t remember his target list, the Education Department was one of those on his delete list.  For those reasons it’s not surprising that Trump announced his anticipated plan to shutter Education.  Since the department was created by Congress, he can’t get rid of it on his own, but he can cut lots of its functions and shift others elsewhere and that’s apparently his plan. It’s more than fair to assume that important functions, like programs for the disabled and disadvantaged and student loans will suffer both because of his plan and because of all the staff being cut but that’s the objective. Since one of those functions expected to fall by the wayside, is the measuring of educational outcomes, we won’t be able to document just how much the elimination of most of the department’s functions end up impacting students.  Similarly, Trump is waging battles against universities, stripping them of research funding to get them to stop being “woke,” so now it’s not just Columbia University that’s been targeted but also the University of Pennsylvania.  To be fair, as pointed out in a disturbing article in March 17’s Atlantic, Columbia, like Trump, has long had an anti-Semitism problem, at one point in the past when university officials grew concerned about having “too many” Jewish students, they actually opened a “special” campus for Jews in Brooklyn, but putting medical and scientific research at risk hardly seems like a solution, especially because of a transgender athlete, the stated reason that got U of Penn dinged.  

Economic Indicators:  Though he tried to say it gently so as not to enrage Trump or further spook the markets, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell mentioned “mounting growth concerns and the price hits” that could be on the way from Trump's aggressive trade war.  Get used to hearing about fears of stagflation, the scary thing that happens when the economy gets caught up in a pattern of low growth combined with inflation. That remarkable economy that Biden left Trump; it’s struggling.            

#BringThemAllHomeNow