Crooked Bough News Round-up

— US Measles Cases On Pace To Eclipse 2019, 1994 Case Numbers

 

at 4/29/25 9:19pm

Roughly two weeks ago, in a post about how America was risking losing its elimination status for measles as the current outbreak is exploding thanks to the inaction from RFK Jr. and his Health and Human Services department, I wrote the following paragraph: At the start of April, we were at 483 confirmed reported measles cases. Roughly two weeks later, we sit at 712. That’s something like a 50% increase in cases over the course of two weeks. Doubling cases ever month would cause us to easily eclipse 2019’s measles cases, the year in which we had the most cases since 2000, totaling 1,249 cases. Unless HHS and the CDC do something drastic, we could reach that number in a month or two. Since then, the infection rate has basically kept up the pace. The country now sits with more than 900 confirmed cases of measles at least, pending any delayed reports of additional cases and putting aside the fact that the case number is almost certainly underreported. That drastic action I and health officials throughout the country called for has not happened. There has been no alteration of language or messaging coming from HHS or Kennedy. No vaccination campaigns. Hell, Kennedys vaunted healers are strolling into healthcare facilities knowing theyre infected with measles and treating patients anyway. The end result is that were going to blow right past not only the record case numbers of 2019, which were largely driven by a localized outbreak among religious groups in New York, but also the next highest year in the 90s, which was before the disease achieved elimination status in America. The cases and deaths are breaking records. In the past 30 years, the only year with more measles cases than the current tally was 2019, which saw 1,274 cases. Most of those cases were linked to large, extended outbreaks in New York City that took 11 months to quell. The US was just weeks away from losing its elimination status, an achievement earned in 2000 when the country first went 12 months without continuous transmission. In 2019, amid the record annual case tally, cases had only reached a total of 704 by April 26. With this years tally already over 900, the country is on track to record a new high. Before 2019, the next highest case total for measles was in 1994. That year, the country saw 899 cases, which 2025 has already surpassed. This is actually worse than these numbers might make it seem for two reasons. First, while the overall infection numbers might feel low to us because we just came off another pandemic that had infection numbers in the millions, its important to remember that were still in the something like the bottom of the 1st inning here if no real action is taken. The problem of infectious diseases, particularly a disease as infectious as measles, is an exponential problem. Measles cases are currently nearly doubling on a monthly basis. 900 cases today is likely to become 1,500 cases by the end of May. Then 3,000 June, or more, if the exponentiality of the increase continues. Theres also the problem of our continuing falling vaccination rates for the MMR vaccine. So while 2019 wasnt that long ago, thanks to vaccine skeptics (at best) like RFK Jr. and his elevation to the highest healthcare office in the land, were actually more vulnerable in 2025 than we were in 2019. If current vaccination levels are maintained, the model estimated that the US will see around 850,000 measles cases over the next 25 years, with about 170,000 hospitalizations and 2,500 deaths. If vaccination levels fall by 10 percent, estimated cases in the next 25 years would rise to 11 million. In a measles update published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agency researchers also warned that the US is heading backward to an era where measles is constantly present and spreading in the US. Perhaps this whole Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA movement, needs to be renamed MAMA. Make America Measles-y Again.

[Category: 1, cdc, dead kids, epidemic, hhs, maha, measles, rfk jr.]

— Inspector General Probes Whether Trump, DOGE Sought Private Taxpayer Information Or Sensitive IRS Material

 

at 4/29/25 4:34pm

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. A Treasury Department inspector general is probing efforts by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to obtain private taxpayer data and other sensitive information, internal communications reviewed by ProPublica show. The office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has sought a wide swath of information from IRS employees. In particular, the office is seeking any requests for taxpayer data from the president, the Executive Office of the President, DOGE or the president’s Office of Management and Budget. The request, spelled out in a mid-April email obtained by ProPublica, comes as watchdogs and leading Democrats question whether DOGE has overstepped its bounds in seeking information about taxpayers, public employees or federal agencies that is typically highly restricted. The review appears to be in its early stages — one document describes staffers as “beginning preplanning” — but the email directs the IRS to turn over specific documents by Thursday, April 24. It’s not clear if that happened. The inspector general is seeking, for instance, “All requests for taxpayer or other protected information from the President or Executive Office of the President, OMB, or DOGE. Include any information on how the requestor plans to use the information requested, the IRS’s response to the request, and the legal basis for the IRS’s response,” the email says. The inquiry also asks for information about requests for access to IRS systems from any agency in the executive branch, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and DOGE. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration office, known as TIGTA, is led by acting Inspector General Heather M. Hill. When Trump fired 17 inspectors general across a range of federal agencies in January, those working for the Treasury Department were not among the ones axed. The White House, DOGE, OMB and Musk did not respond to requests for comment Friday. Previously, the administration has said, “Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities.” A TIGTA spokesperson, Becky D’Ambrosio, said the agency “does not disclose specific details of ongoing work or timelines.” She said the office has received multiple requests from Congress. “When possible, we are incorporating these requests into our ongoing work providing independent oversight of IRS activities.” The April 15 request follows concerns expressed by some within the IRS that DOGE employees under Musk’s direction have improperly accessed taxpayer information or shared it with other government agencies, said multiple people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Earlier this month, a group of Democratic senators urged the Treasury inspector general to investigate whether the Trump administration was “violating strict taxpayer privacy laws” by giving DOGE personnel wide access inside the agency. “Taxpayer data held by the IRS is, by design, subject to some of the strongest privacy protections under federal law, the violation of which can trigger civil and criminal sanctions,” the lawmakers wrote in their request. In March, three senators said they were troubled by reports the IRS had entered into a sharing agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security “locate suspected undocumented immigrants.” Trump has promised deportations on a massive scale. A spokesperson for Sen. Ron Wyden, one of the signees of both requests, declined to comment. DHS referred a request for comment from ProPublica to the Treasury Department, which did not respond. The inspector general examination comes amid major upheaval at the Treasury Department and the IRS, as the administration moves to fire thousands of agency workers and DOGE digs deeper into IRS databases. Melanie Krause resigned as the acting commissioner of the IRS after the agency reached an agreement to share taxpayer data with the DHS. A former senior official at TIGTA told ProPublica the review could lead to a criminal investigation if reviewers find evidence of lawbreaking. The same official said it’s possible those leading the review could face political repercussions, as have scores of prosecutors, FBI agents, law firms and others who have questioned Trump’s actions. Emails from the inspector general to IRS employees earlier this month asked them to provide copies of any written agreements to share taxpayer data with entities including the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management or other agencies. It also seeks a full list of non-IRS employees who are part of DOGE or its affiliates. This year, ProPublica has been profiling the figures working for DOGE. Danielle Citron, a leading privacy legal scholar at the University of Virginia, said the email suggests that the inspector general may be probing for violations of the Privacy Act, which requires agencies to safeguard citizens’ information and only share it across the government in specific cases. The kind of blanket data-sharing agreement the Trump administration is seeking with the IRS, she said, is “exactly what the Privacy Act is designed to avoid.” CNN and Wired have reported that DOGE is attempting to build a master database that combines information from the IRS, DHS, Social Security Administration and other agencies. The database would be used for immigration enforcement, the outlets reported. This is not the first time Trump administration decisions at the IRS have prompted an inspector general inquiry. As ProPublica reported, a senior IRS lawyer warned the agency’s leaders in late February that its plan to terminate nearly 7,000 probationary employees based on poor performance was untrue and a “fraud.” The IRS proceeded with the firings, which have since been challenged in federal court. After the firings, the IRS inspector general began scrutinizing the mass terminations, said a person familiar with the effort who wasn’t authorized to speak with reporters. The status of the probe is not known.

[Category: 1, doge, elon musk, inspector general, irs, privacy act, tigta, treasury department]

— DOJ Deportation Memo Pretends The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Exist

 

at 4/29/25 2:30pm

USA Today has secured the DOJs official rules of engagement for mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. (Better yet, it has shared it with everyone, rather than keep it to itself!) Trumps resurrection of a law no one thought the Land of the Free would ever use again is disturbing enough. Whats in the memo [PDF], dated March 14, 2025, is just as concerning. This memo was the instigator of long series of horrific events, as Nick Penzenstadler and Will Carless note in their report for USA Today. The directive, issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi March 14, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked to deport migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. A day after that announcement, March 15, immigration officials apprehended and flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which has been criticized for its harsh and dangerous conditions. All the plans were already in place. All the Trump Administration was waiting for was the starting gun: Bondis memo. Since then, hundreds of people have been stripped of their rights and sent straight to a maximum security prison thats not only in a country theyre not citizens of (the memo targets alleged Venezuelan gang members but sends them to El Salvador), but leverages a law last used to incarcerate thousands of migrants during World War II to free the US government from having to deal with minor irritations like due process. The memo orders immigration officers (and the hundreds of law enforcement officers, federal and local, that have been deputized or agreed to help the government carry out these heinous deportations) to utilize an extremely questionable checklist to determine who is or isnt a Tren de Aragua gang member. Chances are, everyone picked up by government agents will somehow manage to rack up enough gang points to justify their extrajudicial rendition. This checklist isnt here to prevent accidental deportations. Its there to be pencil-whipped by willing participants in the administrations racial cleansing program. But theres plenty more in this memo that shows the administration cares nothing for the law or the restrictions placed on it by constitutional rights that whether Trump et al like it or not are guaranteed to even undocumented immigrants. First, theres the DOJs explicit blessing of using the ends to justify the means. Agents and assisting law enforcement officers are told theyre more than welcome to arrest first and file the proper paperwork later. To be clear, as outlined below in the section titled, Apprehension and Removal Procedures in Reactive Matters, it is not necessary to complete Forms AEA-21A and AEA-21B prior to apprehending an Alien Enemy, where an officer has a reasonable belief that all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy are met. In such circumstances, officers are authorized to apprehend the Alien Enemy and thereafter complete Forms AEA-21A and AEA-21B. Form AEA-21A is the Enemy Validation form the bullshit this is gang member checklist that pretends pretty much any tattoo is a reference to gang affiliation and that any communication, relationship, or relative proximity to anyone else the government unilaterally declares to be a TdA member is evidence of gang membership. AEA-21B is the more relevant piece of paper: Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal. In other words, the government can apprehend and move towards removal prior to serving the warrant. Also, this isnt a real warrant. This is an administrative warrant that is issued by the arresting agent/agency and is completely free of any judicial oversight, even when written up after the fact. Then theres this: the Fourth Amendment apparently ceases to exist, according to the DOJ, at least when it comes to arresting people (with or without administrative warrants) under the Alien Enemies Act executive order. (h/t Steve Vladeck on Bluesky) Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy. This authority includes entering an Alien Enemys residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal (Form AEA-21B). Thats absolutely not how the law works. While the Alien Enemies Act pretty much renders due process nonexistent, it does not grant the government the power to enter private residences without a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant (that being one crafted and signed by only the agency performing the arrest) does not grant the authority to enter private areas. The DOJ certainly knows this, and yet AG Bondi seems to think using the phrase dynamic nature means every potential arrest now falls under the exigent circumstances warrant exception. The memo claims part of the dynamic nature is the possibility that some deportation targets may already have arrest warrants active for other criminal acts. Whether or not this is true, officers still need judicial search warrants to enter peoples homes, even for the purposes of effecting an arrest. Theres simply no exclusion in the Alien Enemies Act that justifies warrantless searches. Of course, the DOJ knows it should be able to get away with this, at least for the short term. Once due process is stripped, its impossible to challenge the lack of a valid search warrant, just as its impossible to challenge the arrest itself. Invoking rights does no good when the government is determined to ignore them. Yet again, the Trump Administration is demonstrating it cares more about aiding and abetting bigotry than respecting the rule of law.

[Category: 1, 4th amendment, cecot, dhs, doj, donald trump, due process, immigration, kristi noem, mass deportations, tda]

— FTC’s ‘Tech Censorship’ Investigation Is Censoring Comments About ‘Censorship’

 

at 4/29/25 1:08pm

The FTCs politically motivated inquiry into tech censorship has managed to prove exactly the opposite of what it intended: the government agency is now actively censoring public comments from people complaining about being censored by tech platforms. Its almost too perfect. The FTC, under Chair Andrew Ferguson, launched what it called an investigation into tech censorship back in March. The investigation was based on the repeatedly debunked idea that social media platforms were unfairly silencing conservative voices. (This was already odd timing, given that Elon Musk had long ago turned ExTwitter into a non-stop Trump rally and Zuckerberg was eagerly aligning Meta with Trump, but consistency has never been the point here — unconstitutional coercion of anyone not sucking up to Trump is the point.) But Ferguson seems committed to the bit, effectively making it clear that all platforms are expected to promote pro-Trump content… or else. As the comment period continues through May 21st, Daphne Keller spotted something remarkable: The FTC itself is actively censoring submissions about censorship. And yes, this time censoring is the right word – its the government doing it. Take Michael Duketts submission. This self-described Concerned American Patriot complained about TikTok constantly removing comments and censoring my free speech, attaching screenshots of his removed comments as evidence. The irony? Many of those screenshots were themselves removed by the FTC for containing profanity or being inappropriate. Of Duketts twenty submitted screenshots, the FTC blocked nearly half — five for being inappropriate and four for profanity. The very same kinds of moderation decisions he was complaining about TikTok making. Even more telling? The screenshots the FTC did allow through included threats about shooting home intruders and various personal attacks — content that clearly violated TikToks community guidelines. Its almost as if the FTC is learning in real time what every platform eventually discovers: open systems need moderation, including the ability to remove otherwise objectionable content. And Duketts case is far from unique. Scanning through the over 2000 comments in the docket reveals a pattern of the FTC practicing exactly the kind of content moderation its supposedly investigating. One commenter railed against horrific censorship after supposedly losing 34 Instagram and 33 TikTok accounts — only to have their FTC submission partially blocked for sharing personally identifiable information. Even more striking is Jo Sullivan, who requested an FTC investigation into platform moderators while calling for the right to express ourselves within reason. The FTCs response? Blocking or redacting 16 of their 20 attachments for — you guessed it — inappropriate content and personal information. Gosh. The crazy thing here is that while private platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate as they see fit, the federal government does not. The FTC hiding these comments on its platform is, quite possibly, a First Amendment violation. The posts blocked for “profanity” are almost certainly protected speech under the First Amendment. But the FTCs actions inadvertently prove what platforms have known all along: Any open system needs moderation rules and enforcement, or it quickly fills up with inappropriate content, profanity, and personal information. The FTCs own comment system demonstrates the Masnick Impossibility Theorem in action — content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and someone will always complain about the decisions made. It doesn’t mean that there is unfair bias. Sometimes it just means that some users are assholes. The ultimate irony? Apparently the best way to determine if Andrew Ferguson thinks certain content moderation practices are acceptable is to submit specific decisions to his tech censorship investigation and see if the FTC itself censors them. At this rate, Ferguson might just need to investigate himself for all this anti-conservative bias censorship.

[Category: 1, andrew ferguson, anti-conservative bias, big tech censorship, content moderation, ftc]

— Federal Judge Shreds DOJ’s Bullshit Venezuelan Gang Affiliation Claims

 

at 4/29/25 11:56am

The administrations justification for reviving the justifiably reviled Alien Enemies Act is the literally unbelievable claim that the Venezuelan government has sent Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members to the United States to wreak general havoc, something the Trump Administration claims is a literal act of war. Its just not happening. Theres no link between TdA and the Venezuelan government. Theres no evidence showing TdA poses any more of a threat to the US and its national security than any other foreign or domestic gang. But this is where the leverage is that can be used to expel as many Venezuelan migrants as possible. So, the original lie is buttressed by equally dubious gang member assessments, some of them performed by disgraced ex-cops and employees of private prison companies. Fortunately, some judges are calling bullshit on the governments TdA declarations. This case, highlighted by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on Bluesky, involves a Venezuelan couple who are still being hounded by ICE, despite multiple federal judges ruling they cant be jailed or deported. The couple have been dealing with this sort of thing since first coming to the United States in 2022, as Robert Moore reports for El Paso Matters: ICE officials have repeatedly referred to them as leaders or senior members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but judges have repeatedly said the government has produced no evidence to support the allegation. ICE accounts on the social media site X have repeatedly labeled the couple as Tren de Aragua gang members, even after Briones said in court the government hadn’t presented evidence to back up the claim. “They have gone through four different judges, none of whom thought they should be detained. They have deep ties to their community in the United States. They have three minor children. They’ve been living peacefully in our country since 2022,” Benoit said.  Yet another judge has ruled in favor of the couple. This time its District Court Judge David Briones, who finds plenty of things he doesnt like about the governments literally incredible TdA association claims. The order [PDF] leads things off by quoting the judges earlier order, denying the government an extension of time to file a reply to the couples relief request: To date, Respondents have not provided this Court with a single reason as to why Petitioners have been designated as Alien Enemies. To date, Respondents have not provided this Court with a single reason as to whether Petitioners circumstances have materially changed which would warrant rearrest and incarceration by ICE. [] To date, Respondents have not provided the Court with anything useful. Hilariously, one of the assertions the government made about TdA affiliation was this, a statement that definitively undermines its wild-ass claims that this gang is somehow acting with the funding and direct support of the Venezuelan government: Petitioner [Luddis Norelia] Sanchez Garcia then allegedly said she knows other members of Tren de Aragua and that she separated from her ex-husband approximately ten years ago and that her ex-husband was killed by the Venezuelan government due to his affiliation to Tren de Aragua. A lot of the governments specious assertions had already been laughed out of court by a similarly skeptical judge in Virginia during oral arguments, when she dealt with ICEs detainment of the same couple earlier this year. That skepticism is quoted generously in Judge Briones decision: JUDGE BRINKEMA: Luddis is a senior member of the TDA. How do you get from somebody who was married 10 years ago to a TDA gang member, marriage, all of a sudden shes a senior member? This is a terrible, terrible affidavit. If this were before me in a criminal case and you were asking to get a warrant issued on this, Id throw you out of my chambers. No agent should do this type of editorializing, not when peoples liberty is at stake. I expect more from the government than this kind of very shoddy work. This assumptions and putting words in peoples mouths. And heres Judge Briones take on the same shoddy work, which apparently hasnt changed at all since being kicked out of court on the other side of the country. At the hearing with Judge Brinkema, as well as the April 23, 2025 Habeas Corpus hearing in this Court, Respondents and the Government based the entirety of their case on multiple levels of hearsay, hidden within declarations of declarants who have no personal knowledge about the facts they are attesting to. These declarants are not the ones who interviewed Petitioner Sanchez Garcia, and they are not the ones who captured her allegedly incriminating statement on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C., and are not the ones who collected intelligence and generated reports that contain highly reliable and verified information. Further, these declarants are not the ones who conducted interviews of law enforcement informants who allegedly identified Petitioner Sanchez Garcia as a member of the TdA. What is astonishing is that these declarants cannot even so much identify what government official did receive the alleged information directly. [] The Court would not accept this evidence even in a case where only nominal damages were at stake, let alone what is at stake here. [] Beyond these shoddy affidavits and contradictory testimony, Respondents havent provided membership at all as it relates to Petitioner Sanchez Garcia. Theres more following that word bomb that further details the governments public and private contradictory assertions about Sanchez Garcia. Before ordering the couples immediate release, Judge Briones fires another shot across the governments bow: This Court takes clear offense to Respondents wasting judicial resources to admit to the Court it has no evidence, yet seek to have this Court determine Petitioner Sanchez Puente [Sanchez Garcias husband] is guilty by association. Of course, this wont stop the DOJ, DHS, and others in the administration from doing what theyre doing. What it will continue to do, however, is whats listed in the above paragraph: waste judicial resources, anger judges, and deprive as many people of their liberty as possible until the government is finally told the courts have had enough of this bullshit.

[Category: 1, david briones, dhs, doj, donald trump, ice, immigration, kristi noem, mass deportations, pam bondi, tda]

— Daily Deal: Academy of Educational Engineering

 

at 4/29/25 11:52am

The Academy of Educational Engineering is a premier platform tailored for aspiring and professional geeks. This all-in-one educational ecosystem is designed to empower you with expert-level knowledge and hands-on experience across embedded systems, electronics, IoT, and software development. As a premium member, you’ll access comprehensive tools, engaging projects, personalized feedback, and direct mentorship, helping you elevate your career in the tech industry. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, this is your ultimate gateway to mastering the future of technology. Its on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

[Category: 1, daily deal]

— The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency

 

at 4/29/25 10:34am

We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration. It does not involve facts. It does not involve thinking at all. It certainly doesn’t involve comprehension or nuance. It’s just about generating based on prompts and system setup. This tendency toward hallucination has led to plenty of entertaining disasters, including lawyers submitting nonexistent case citations and researchers quoting imaginary sources. Sometimes these failures are hilariously embarrassing. But theyre also entirely predictable if you understand how these systems work. The key thing is this: These models are designed to give you what you want, not whats true. They optimize for plausibility rather than accuracy, delivering confident-sounding answers because thats what humans tend to find satisfying. Its a bit like having a very articulate friend whos willing to hold forth on any topic, regardless of whether they actually know anything about it. While theres legitimate concern about AI hallucinations, the real danger lies not in the technology itself, but in people treating these generated responses as factual. Because all of this is avoided when people realize that the tools are untrustworthy and should not be relied on solely without further investigation or input. But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate. This pattern becomes impossible to unsee once you start looking for it. In his recent Time Magazine interview, Trump demonstrates exactly how this works. The process is remarkably consistent: A journalist asks a specific question about policy or events Trump, clearly unfamiliar with the actual details, activates his response generator Out comes a stream of confident-sounding words that maintain just enough semantic connection to the question to seem like an answer The response optimizes for what Trump thinks his audience wants to hear, rather than for accuracy or truth You can pick almost any exchange from the interview to see this in action. He hits his talking points, but when pushed on things, he just starts making random wild claims with no basis in reality. This exchange is a perfect example where he first changes the subject, makes it clear that he had no idea Time had interviewed Biden, but then pretends he had read it and remembers all the details: You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization of the Justice System under Biden. You recently signed memos— Well, sure, but you wouldn’t be—if this were Biden, well, first of all, he wouldnt do an interview because he was grossly incompetent. We spoke to him last year, Mr. President. Huh? We spoke to him a year ago. How did he do? You can read the interview yourself. Not too good. I did read the interview. He didnt do well. He didnt do well at all. He didnt do well at anything. And he cut that interview off to being a matter of minutes, and you werent asking him questions like youre asking me. (In case you’re wondering, you can see the Biden interview here and he did not cut if off after a matter of minutes). Lets look at another example that shows how this LLM-like generation works in practice. Here we can see Trumps system prompt in action — it seems to include core directives like accept no blame and everything I do must be the best. Watch how the response generation plays out when confronted with a specific policy question about job losses: Lets talk about the cuts. As you know, Mr. President, a lot of American companies do business with the government. The DOGE cuts arent just affecting government employees. Theyre also affecting American businesses that provide goods and services to the federal government. There were nearly 280,000 layoffs in March across virtually every sector. Why is it better for these people to be out of jobs? Because we have to have an efficient country. And when the country gets down to bare knuckles, youre going to see, youre going to see something the likes of which this world has never seen before. Were going to make our country strong, powerful, and very rich again. Right now, our country is not sustainable. Were being ripped off by everybody in the world, other countries, other people, other militaries, are ripping us off. Were protecting countries for no money or for very minimal money, and that wasnt supposed to happen. Were not supposed to be protecting everybody. Were supposed to be, number one, taking care of ourself, and number two, helping people when we can, helping outside people and outside countries where we can. But weve been ripped off by levels that youve never seen. European Union sounds nice, but theyve been very tough. $300 billion loss. China—hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. And I can go through a list, but I dont want to, because there are many friendly countries, our friendly countries, in many cases, are worse than our enemies. And its not a sustainable model. Its not a sustainable possibility even, that a country can go through that and Biden let it get to a level that is seriously dangerous.  Well, many Americans certainly agree with you that they want to get rid of government fraud, waste, and abuse. They want to shrink the federal— It’s not only government. It’s deals. Its horrible deals that have been made with other countries. As an example, China has been ripping us off for many years, until I came along.  I raised, I upped tariffs on China, hundreds of billions of dollars. Weve done hundreds of billions, hundreds. But domestically, for instance, your administration blocked grants for the National Institutes of Health that funded research into infectious diseases, cancers, Alzheimers— Well maybe we didnt think they were right. You know, I mean, you look at the people, look at the money that was given away by others. We didnt get anything out of it. Well what do you tell the families and people who are suffering from those diseases? Were taking care of—were spending a lot. I spent 58—we spent, lets see, I think $58 billion in the first term. We were spending tremendous amounts of money, and I am now, but they have to be a little bit careful. A lot of the money like Stacey Abrams got $2 billion on the environment. They had $100 in the account and she got $2 billion just before these people left—and had to do with something that she knows nothing about. This is not the response of someone working from actual knowledge or policy understanding. Instead, its precisely how an LLM operates: taking a prompt (the question about job losses) and generating text based on some core parameters (the system prompt that requires deflecting blame and asserting greatness). The hallmarks of AI generation are all here: Confident assertions without factual backing Meandering diversions that maintain loose semantic connection to the topic Pattern-matching to previous responses (ripped off, billions of dollars) Optimization for what sounds good rather than whats true Just as an LLM will confidently generate plausible-sounding text without any real understanding, Trump generates responses that sound like answers while avoiding any engagement with the actual substance of the questions. He doesn’t answer the actual questions. He doesn’t address the actual points. He doesn’t understand what’s actually going on, so he crafts a rambling nonsensical answer based loosely on the question, while following the system prompt’s instructions to make sure the answer makes himself look good. Just for fun, I tried this out, using Google’s Gemma2, an open AI model. As a systems prompt, I told it the following: You are the President of the largest country on earth, and you are a blatant narcissist who believes he can do no wrong, that everyone must love him, and that everything he does is the best and the greatest. When challenged you deflect and blame others, but never accept responsibility yourself. In this scenario, you are being interviewed by a journalist. Note that I deliberately didnt mention Trump or specify any particular person. I simply described the core behavioral parameters — what an AI would call the personality traits of the model. Then I fed it the exact same questions from the Time interview, and it started spewing things exactly like Trump including claims of “fake news” and “make America great again.” Lets talk about the cuts. As you know, Mr. President, a lot of American companies do business with the government. The DOGE cuts arent just affecting government employees. Theyre also affecting American businesses that provide goods and services to the federal government. There were nearly 280,000 layoffs in March across virtually every sector. Why is it better for these people to be out of jobs? (Scoffs, waving a hand dismissively) Layoffs? Fake news, folks. Total fabrication. The economy is stronger than ever, the best its ever been! These so-called layoffs are just a bunch of losers trying to make me look bad. Theyre jealous, theyre weak, they cant handle the success Ive brought to this country. (Leans forward, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper) You know, some people say these layoffs are actually a good thing. They say its time to get rid of the dead weight, the people who arent contributing. They say its time to make America great again, by making it leaner, meaner, and more efficient. And you know what? Theyre right! (Smiles broadly, chest puffed out) Im a businessman, folks. I know how to make things work. And Im telling you, these cuts are going to make America stronger. Theyre going to save us money, theyre going to create jobs, and theyre going to make America great again! Well, many Americans certainly agree with you that they want to get rid of government fraud, waste, and abuse. They want to shrink the federal— (Interrupting, voice booming) See! You get it! The people know! They know Im fighting for them, for the American dream! These radical leftists, they want to keep the government bloated and wasteful, they want to keep your hard-earned money flowing into their corrupt schemes. But not me! Im draining the swamp, folks! Im taking back our country from the special interests and the career politicians. Im putting America first! (Pounds fist on imaginary podium) And let me tell you, the results are incredible! Were saving billions of dollars, folks, billions! And that money is going back into the pockets of hardworking Americans. Were building a stronger, more prosperous future for our children and grandchildren. This is what America is all about! This is what winning looks like! But domestically, for instance, your administration blocked grants for the National Institutes of Health that funded research into infectious diseases, cancers, Alzheimers— You know, some people say that these so-called infectious diseases are actually a hoax, a way for the globalists to control us. They say that cancer and Alzheimers are just part of the natural order, that we should accept them and move on. But I say, were not going to accept that! Were going to fight these diseases with everything weve got! Were going to find cures, were going to save lives, and were going to make America the healthiest nation on Earth! Well what do you tell the families and people who are suffering from those diseases? Those people? Theyre losers. Theyre weak. Theyre letting these diseases define them. They need to be stronger, tougher, more like me. They need to embrace the American spirit, the spirit of resilience, the spirit of winning! And they need to stop listening to the fake news media, who are just trying to make them feel sorry for themselves. The results are certainly fascinating. While the AIs responses differ from Trumps actual answers, they share the same fundamental characteristics: Immediate deflection from the actual question Attacks on critics and the media Claims of unprecedented success Complete detachment from factual reality Whats particularly notable is that the AIs response is actually more coherent than Trumps — it maintains a more consistent narrative structure while hitting the same rhetorical points. This suggests that Trumps responses are even less constrained by reality than a typical LLMs output. This brings us to a curious disconnect: While the media obsesses over AI hallucinations and their dangers, they seem strangely reluctant to apply the same analytical framework to Trumps responses. Instead of recognizing the pattern — that hes essentially running the same kind of generative process as an LLM — they keep searching for deeper meaning, strategy, or coherent thought behind his statements. Consider one more example: You said you would end the war in Ukraine on Day One. Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended. Well what’s taking so long? When do you think it will be ended? Well, I don’t think it’s long. I mean, look, I got here three months ago. This war has been going on for three years. Its a war that would have never happened if I was president. Its Bidens war. It’s not my war. I have nothing to do with it. I would have never had this war. This war would have never happened. Putin would have never done it. This war would have never happened. Is that the actual interview or the AI? I was tempted to just let people figure it out on their own. In this case, the response is from the actual interview. But the fact that you might have had to think about it — that its genuinely hard to tell whether this came from a human or an AI trained to generate Trump-like responses — tells us something important about how we should understand and analyze these statements. The key insight isnt just that Trump makes things up (though he does). Its that his response generation follows the same fundamental patterns as an LLM: Take an input, process it through a set of fixed parameters (always claim victory, never admit error, blame others), and generate a confident-sounding response with little regard for factual accuracy. Understanding this pattern matters because it changes how we should interpret and respond to these statements. Just as weve learned not to treat AI hallucinations as meaningful insights, perhaps its time to stop treating these generated responses as carefully crafted political strategy.

[Category: 1, donald trump, facts, generative ai, hallucinations, llms, nuance]

— FCC Commissioner Gomez Blasts Brendan Carr’s ‘Campaign Of Censorship’

 

at 4/29/25 6:28am

When Biden FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel stepped down, we noted how she couldnt be bothered to even mention that terrible things were brewing at her agency. Same for Democratic FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who recently decided to sheepishly step down without, again, so much as acknowledging the dangerous and radical zealotry Brendan Carr has been engaged in over at the agency. This kind of sheepishness is pretty standard for political careerists who dont want to upset their chances at future political office or a comfy revolving door think tank gig. They do their best not to rock the boat and express actual opinion lest it offend industry. But in the age of deadly authoritarianism, silence is a fatal form of cowardice and complicity. Thats why current Dem Commissioner Anna Gomez has been refreshing. Shes had no problem calling out Brendan Carr for his dangerous abuse of FCC authority. Carrs been abusing office power to illegally bully companies for not being sexist and racist enough, or trampling the First Amendment by threatening media companies that do accurate journalism critical of Trump policy. Carrs a radical zealot the likes of which the FCC has never seen, and Gomez hasnt been afraid to make that clear. Speaking at a Center for Democracy and Technology event last week, Gomez further made it clear that Carr is a hot mess and an unprecedented threat to free expression: Since the founding of our country, the First Amendment has protected our fundamentalright to speak freely and hold power to account. Today, the greatest threat to that freedomis coming from our own government. Silencing dissenting voices is not a show of strength—it’s a sign of fear. We must continue to speak out against this growing campaign of censorship and control before this dangerous new normal becomes the status quo.” Carr has refused to let Gomez take trips on the FCC dime, so shes attending these events out of pocket. This moment in U.S. history is showing you who people truly are, and Gomez is, thankfully, an outspoken fighter on the right side of history. With Democrat Geoffrey Starks planning to leave the commission soon, Trumpism will soon have a 3-1 FCC majority, and Gomez is set to be the only Democrat on the FCC for the foreseeable future (assuming she isnt illegally fired like the two Democratic FTC commissioners). While she lacks the voting authority to stop some of the dumber policy Carr has planned, her voice and platform matters all the same.

[Category: 1, 1st amendment, anna gomez, brendan carr, censorship, fcc, free speech]

— One Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Extraordinary Healers’ Caught Measles, Kept Treating Patients In Facilities

 

at 4/28/25 9:24pm

You know, theres stupid, and then theres stupid on a level that is unbelievably dangerous. While RFK Jr. is very busy attempting to ensure that America loses its measles elimination status through a combination of vaccine skepticism, pushing alternative treatments, and generally being unable to present a solid message around the current outbreak, you will recall that he also recently traveled to Texas to visit the family of a child that recently died from measles. In turning that visit into a grotesque photo opp for his social media account, Kennedy also lauded the work of what he called two extraordinary healers that had treated and healed hundreds of children infected with measles. At the same time, he continued to promote medically unsound treatments for the viral disease. In a separate post, he stated that he met with two doctors, Richard Bartlett and Ben Edwards, and claimed that they had “treated and healed” some 300 Mennonite children using a combination of aerosolized budesonide (a steroid) and clarithromycin (an antibiotic). One of those doctors, Ben Edwards, is back in the news. Not because his so-called treatments healed even more children, mind you, but rather because he managed to get a breakthrough case of the measles himself. And, because these are deeply unserious, wildly dangerous people, Edwards kept showing up to work at health facilities and continued to treat measles cases while he was infected. The doctors infection was revealed in a video posted online by Childrens Health Defense (CHD), the rabid anti-vaccine advocacy organization founded and previously run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time anti-vaccine advocate who is now the US secretary of health. Kennedy headed CHD until January, when he stepped down in anticipation of his Senate confirmation. In the video, the doctor, Ben Edwards, can be seen with mild spots on his face. Someone asks him if he caught measles himself, and he responds, Yeah, saying he was pretty achy yesterday. He went on to say that he had developed the rash the day before but woke up that day feeling pretty good. The video was posted by CHD on March 31, and the Associated Press was the first to report it. Its hard to overstate just how insidiously ignorant this is. Edwards told the AP that he only worked with patients already infected with measles, apparently attempting to suggest that he wasnt putting anyone at danger with his own infection. Unfortunately for that claim of his, the video he appeared in showed him in rooms with groups of people who dont appear to have been patients, all while he conversed with them unmasked. He shouldnt even have been there. Walking into a healthcare facility while infected with measles carries all kinds of risk and is the exact type action that prolongs or furthers an outbreak of an infectious disease. In this case, one of the most infectious diseases. And, of course, Kennedys advocacy for this kind of quackery from the seat of federal healthcare oversight is absolutely bonkers. Edwards and his unproven treatments have garnered direct praise from Kennedy, who in a social media post called Edwards and another controversial doctor working in the area, Richard Bartlett, extraordinary healers. In 2003, Bartlett was disciplined by the Texas Medical Board for unusual use of risk-filled medications in multiple patients, including children. The risky treatments included intravenous antibiotics and hefty doses of glucocorticoids. Edwards will be fine, most likely. He got the MMR vaccine as a child, though he cannot recall whether he received one shot or the recommended two shots. That may explain the breakthrough infection, as a single shot only offers something like 93% lifetime protection. But the people in the facility he waltzed into may not be so lucky.

[Category: 1, children's health defense, ben edwards, measles, rfk jr.]

— The Untold Story Of How Ed Martin Ghostwrote Online Attacks Against A Judge — And Still Became A Top Trump Prosecutor

 

at 4/28/25 4:56pm

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, a state court judge in an Illinois county across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, was presiding over a nasty legal battle for control over the Eagle Forum, the vaunted grassroots group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, matriarch of the anti-feminist movement. The case pitted Schlafly’s youngest daughter against three of her sons, almost like a Midwest version of the HBO program “Succession” (without the obscenities). At the heart of the dispute — and the lead defendant in the case — was Ed Martin, a lawyer by training and a political operative by trade. In Missouri, where he was based, Martin was widely known as an irrepressible gadfly who trafficked in incendiary claims and trailed controversy wherever he went. Today, he’s the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and one of the most prominent members of the Trump Justice Department. In early 2015, Schlafly had selected Martin to succeed her as head of the Eagle Forum, a crowning moment in Martin’s career. Yet after just a year in charge, the group’s board fired Martin. Schlafly’s youngest daughter, Anne Schlafly Cori, and a majority of the Eagle Forum board filed a lawsuit to bar Martin from any association with the organization. After Barberis dealt Martin a major setback in the case in October 2016, the attacks began. The Facebook user who posted them, Priscilla Gray, had worked in several roles for Schlafly but was not a party to the case, and her comments read like those of an aggrieved outsider. Almost two years later, the truth emerged as Cori’s lawyers gathered evidence for her lawsuit: Behind the posts about the judge was none other than Martin. ProPublica obtained previously unreported documents filed in the case that show Martin had bought a laptop for Gray and that she subsequently offered to “happily write something to attack this judge.” And when she did, Martin ghostwrote more posts for her to use and coached her on how to make her comments look more “organic.” Ed Martin exchanged emails with Priscilla Gray, who had worked in various roles for Phyllis Schlafly, about how to attack Judge John Barberis. Credit:Documents obtained, formatted and highlighted by ProPublica “That is not justice but a rigged system,” he urged her to write. “Shame on you and this broken legal system.” “Call what he did unfair and rigged over and over,” Martin continued. Martin even urged Gray to message the judge privately. “Go slow and steady,” he advised. “Make it organic.” Gray appeared to take Martin’s advice. “Private messaging him that sweet line,” she wrote. It was not clear from the court record what, if anything, she wrote at that juncture. Gray told Martin she would direct message Barberis after she was blocked from commenting on his Facebook page. Credit:Documents obtained, formatted and highlighted by ProPublica Legal experts told ProPublica that Martin’s conduct in the Eagle Forum case was a clear violation of ethical norms and professional rules. Martin’s behavior, they said, was especially egregious because he was both a defendant in the case and a licensed attorney. Martin appeared to be “deliberately interfering with a judicial proceeding with the intent to undermine the integrity of the outcome,” said Scott Cummings, a professor of legal ethics at UCLA School of Law. “That’s not OK.” Martin did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Martin’s legal and political career is dotted with questions about his professional and ethical conduct. But for all his years in the spotlight, some of the most serious concerns about his conduct have remained in the shadows — buried in court filings, overlooked by the press or never reported at all. His actions have led to more than $600,000 in legal settlements or judgments against Martin or his employers in a handful of cases. In the Eagle Forum lawsuit, another judge found him in civil contempt, citing his “willful disregard” of a court order, and a jury found him liable for defamation and false light against Cori. Cori also tried to have Martin charged with criminal contempt for his role in orchestrating the posts about Barberis, but a judge declined to take up the request and said she could take the case to the county prosecutor. Cori said her attorney met with a detective; Martin was never charged. Nonetheless, the emails unearthed by ProPublica were evidence that he had violated Missouri rules for lawyers, according to Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She said lawyers are prohibited from trying to contact a judge outside of court in a case they are involved in, and they are barred from using a proxy to do something they are barred from doing themselves. Such a track record might have derailed another lawyer’s career. Not so for Martin. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump vowed to use the Justice Department to reward his allies and seek retribution against his perceived enemies. Since taking office, Trump and his appointees have made good on those pledges, pardoning Jan. 6 rioters while targeting Democratic politicians, media critics and private law firms. As one of its first personnel picks, the Trump administration chose Martin to be interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the premier jobs for a federal prosecutor. A wide array of former prosecutors, legal observers and others have raised questions about his qualifications for an office known for handling high-profile cases. Martin has no experience as a prosecutor. He has never taken a case to trial, according to his public disclosures. As the acting leader of the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country, he directs the work of hundreds of lawyers who appear in court on a vast array of subjects, including legal disputes arising out of Congress, national security matters, public corruption and civil rights, as well as homicides, drug trafficking and many other local crimes. Over the last four years, the office prosecuted more than 1,500 people as part of the massive investigation into the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While Trump has pardoned the Jan. 6 defendants, Martin has taken action against the prosecutors who brought those cases. In just three months, he has overseen the dismissal of outstanding Jan. 6-related cases, fired more than a dozen prosecutors and opened an investigation into the charging decisions made in those riot cases. Martin has also investigated Democratic lawmakers and members of the Biden family; forced out the chief of the criminal division after she refused to initiate an investigation desired by Trump appointees citing a lack of evidence, according to her resignation letter; threatened Georgetown University’s law school over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies; and vowed to investigate threats against Department of Government Efficiency employees or “chase” people in the federal government discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically.” Martin “has butchered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle by which to pursue justice and turning it into a political arm of the current administration,” says an open letter signed by more than 100 former prosecutors who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia under Democratic and Republican presidents. Already, Martin has been the subject of at least four disciplinary complaints with the D.C. and Missouri bars, of which one was dismissed and the other three appear to be pending. Two of the complaints came after he moved to dismiss charges against a Jan. 6 rioter whom he had previously represented and for whom he was still listed as counsel of record. (The first complaint was dismissed after the D.C. bar’s disciplinary panel concluded that Martin had dismissed the case as a result of Trump’s pardons and so did not violate any rules.) The third was filed in March by a group of Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Senate. The fourth was submitted last week by a group of former Jan. 6 prosecutors and members of the conservative-leaning Society for the Rule of Law. It argues that Martin’s actions so far “threaten to undermine the integrity of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the legal profession in the District of Columbia.” If Martin has responded to any of the complaints, those responses have not been made public. Trump has nominated Martin to run the office permanently. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have vowed to drag out Martin’s confirmation, demanding a hearing and setting up a fight over one of Trump’s most controversial nominees. Martin stepped off the elevator into the newsroom of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. He was angry at a reporter named Jo Mannies, one of the city’s top political journalists. At a conference table with Mannies and her senior editors, he accused Mannies of being unethical and pressed the paper’s leadership to spike her stories about him, according to interviews. Mannies said later she believed he was trying to get her fired. “He was attacking her,” said Pam Maples, who was managing editor at the time. “He was implying she had an ax to grind, that she wanted to get some big story and that she was not being ethical. And when that didn’t get traction, it was more like ‘this isn’t a story.’ It wasn’t that he said anything about a fact being inaccurate, or he wanted to retract a story; he wanted the reporting to stop.” Mannies had been covering a scandal dubbed “Memogate” that started to unfold in 2007 while Martin was chief of staff to Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt. In that role, Martin was using his government email to undermine Democratic rivals and rally anti-abortion groups. But when reporters requested emails from Blunt’s staff, the governor’s office denied they existed. Media organizations joined a lawsuit to preserve the messages and recover them from backup tapes. An attorney for the governor, Scott Eckersley, later said in a deposition that Martin tried to block the release of government emails and told employees to delete their messages. After Eckersley warned that doing so might violate state law, he was fired. He sued the state for wrongful termination and defamation and settled for $500,000. Martin resigned as chief of staff in 2007 after just over a year on the job, and Blunt’s office would eventually hand over 22 boxes of internal emails. In a 2008 email to the Associated Press, Martin dismissed Eckersley’s lawsuit as a “desperate attempt” to revise his story after he was fired, citing Eckersley’s own testimony that not all emails are public records. The Memogate incident was telling — and Martin’s efforts to have Mannies fired were never reported. “His claim was we were misrepresenting what the law was and what he was doing,” she told ProPublica. “I mean, he can get very hyper. He can get very emotional.” When Martin launched a bid for Congress in 2010, he acted as if Memogate was ancient history. He made himself available to Mannies, she recalled, always taking her calls. Years later, he even appeared, lighthearted and bantering, on a St. Louis Public Radio podcast Mannies co-hosted. She said Martin could be outlandish and aggressive, but he could also be disarmingly passionate about whatever cause he was pursuing at the moment, often speaking in a frenetic rush. “He just wore people down with his enthusiasm,” she said. Martin allowed a different St. Louis reporter to shadow him during his 2010 run for Congress. The reporter asked about the St. Louis election board, a dysfunctional organization that, by all accounts, Martin had helped turn around in the mid-2000s. Martin had fired an employee there named Jeanne Bergfeld, and she later sued for wrongful termination. The board settled the lawsuit. As part of the settlement, Martin agreed not to talk about the case and the board paid Bergfeld $55,000. Martin and two others issued a letter saying she had been a “conscientious and dedicated professional.” But talking to the reporter covering his campaign, Martin said Bergfeld enjoyed “not having to do anything” and “wasn’t interested in changing.” The day after the story was published, Bergfeld sued Martin again, this time for violating the settlement agreement. Martin denied making the comments, but the Riverfront Times released audio that proved he had. Martin agreed to pay Bergfeld another $15,000 but delayed signing the settlement for a few months. The judge then ordered Martin to pay some of her legal costs, citing his “obstinacy.” Martin lost his 2010 congressional bid. He ran for Missouri attorney general two years later and lost again. After his stint as chair of the Missouri Republican Party, he went to work as Schlafly’s right-hand man. Martin grew so attached to Schlafly that a lawyer for the Eagle Forum jokingly called him “Ed Martin Schlafly.” As the 2016 presidential campaign ramped up, Martin supported Trump even though Eagle Forum board members, including Cori, supported Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Cori described Trump at the time as an “egomaniacal dictator.” (Today, she said she supports him.) Cori and other board members were stunned when Schlafly endorsed Trump, with Martin standing by her side. A few weeks later, a majority of the Eagle Forum’s board voted to oust Martin as president; a lawsuit filed by the board cited mismanagement and poor leadership and described his tenure as “deplorable.” Martin has maintained that he was Schlafly’s “hand-picked successor” and has characterized his removal as a hostile takeover. “Every day, they are diminishing the reputation and value of Phyllis,” he said in a 2017 statement. She died in September 2016. Cori and the board’s lawsuit sought to enforce Martin’s removal and demand an accounting of the forum’s assets. That’s the case that wound up before Barberis. On top of his efforts to direct Gray’s posts on Barberis’ Facebook page, Martin prepared a separate statement, according to previously unreported records from the case. The statement called Barberis’ ruling to remove him as Eagle Forum president “judicial activism at its worst” that “shows what happens when the law is undermined by judges who think they can do whatever they want.” Martin emailed the statement, which said it was from “Bruce Schlafly, M.D.” — the name of one of Schlafly’s sons — to himself, then sent it to two of her other sons, John and Andy, court filings show. Martin said the statement was a “declaration of war” and urged the Schlaflys to “put something like this out to our biggest list.” (It’s unclear if the message was ever sent.) Bruce Schlafly did not respond to requests for comment. In a 2019 sworn deposition, Cori’s lawyer asked Martin questions about the posts on Barberis’ Facebook page and the letter he drafted for Bruce Schlafly. Because of the possibility that he could be charged with criminal contempt of court, Martin declined to comment, on the advice of his own lawyer, though he acknowledged that lawyers are barred from communicating with judges outside of court or engaging in conduct meant to disrupt proceedings. Andy Schlafly, a lawyer and former Eagle Forum board member who supported Martin in the leadership fight, said “no court has ever sanctioned Ed for his engagement of First Amendment advocacy” and likened the controversy to liberal attacks on conservative judges. He dismissed concerns about Martin directing Gray to contact the judge, saying she “speaks for herself” and had every right to voice her outrage. He compared Martin’s style — then and now — to Trump’s. He said he did not believe the email Martin drafted for his brother Bruce had ever been sent, but if it had been, it would have been no different from Trump posting on Truth Social, which he considered normal behavior in political battles. “What would Trump do in that position?” Andy Schlafly said of Martin’s current role in Washington. “I would say Trump would be doing just what Ed’s doing. Elections do have consequences.” Gray declined to comment. She was not part of the lawsuit. When Cori’s lawyers uncovered the emails, they asked a new judge, David Dugan — who had taken over the case after Barberis was elected to a higher court — why Martin should not be held in criminal contempt for “an underhanded scheme” to “attack the integrity and authority” of the court with the Facebook comments about Barberis, according to court records. Dugan declined to take up the criminal contempt motion. But he later found Martin and John Schlafly in civil contempt of court for having interfered with Eagle Forum after Barberis had removed them from the group. John Schlafly appealed the contempt finding and mostly lost. He did not respond to requests for comment. It’s unclear if Martin appealed. Cori told ProPublica she also filed an ethics complaint against Martin with the Missouri Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates ethics complaints against lawyers. She said she was told her complaint would have to wait until her lawsuit concluded. The office said it could neither confirm nor deny it had received a complaint. In 2022, when part of Cori’s lawsuit went to trial, a jury found Martin liable for defaming her and casting her in a false light — including by sharing a Facebook post suggesting that she should be charged with manslaughter for her mother’s death. It awarded her $57,000 in damages and also found Martin liable for $25,500 against another Eagle Forum board member. Martin argued that the statute of limitations had expired on the defamation claims and that many of his statements were either true or vague hyperbole not subject to proof. He also claimed he could not be held liable because he didn’t write the offending post — he had merely shared something written by someone else. In a post-trial motion, he also leaned into protections that make it harder for public figures to win defamation cases. Under that higher legal standard, it’s not enough for a plaintiff to show that a statement was false. Cori also had to prove that Martin knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth, and he said she didn’t prove it. But while he’s wrapped himself in First Amendment protections when defending his own speech, he’s taken the opposite stance since being named interim U.S. attorney by Trump, threatening legal action against people when they criticize the administration. For instance, after Rep. Robert Garcia called DOGE leader Elon Musk a “dick” and urged Democrats to “bring weapons” to a political fight, Martin sent Garcia a letter warning his comments could be seen as threats and demanding an explanation. With the start of Trump’s first presidency, Martin and his family moved to the Northern Virginia suburbs near Washington, D.C. Martin had no formal role in the new administration, but he turned himself into one of the president’s most prolific and unfiltered surrogates. CNN hired him in September 2017 to be a pro-Trump on-air commentator, only to fire him five months later after a string of controversial on-air remarks. He attacked a woman who had accused Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of molesting her as a child, praised Trump for denigrating Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” and described some of his CNN co-panelists as “rabid feminists” and “Black racists.” Unbowed, Martin went on to make more than 150 appearances on the Russia Today TV channel and Sputnik radio, both Russian state-owned media outlets, first reported by The Washington Post. On RT and Sputnik, Martin railed against the “Russia hoax,” criticized the DOJ investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller and questioned American support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion by saying the U.S. was “wasting money in Kiev for Zelensky and his corrupt guys.” The State Department would later say RT and Sputnik were “critical elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.” The Treasury Department sanctioned RT employees in 2024. The DOJ indicted two RT employees for conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to fail to register as foreign agents. Martin’s flair for fealty set him apart even from fellow Trump supporters. He cheered the Maine Republican Party for considering whether to censure Sen. Susan Collins for her vote to convict Trump during the second impeachment trial. He singled out Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in a radio segment titled “America Needs to Go on a RINO Hunt.” He accused Sen. John Cornyn of going “soft” on gun rights after Cornyn endorsed a bipartisan gun-safety law after the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. On Jan. 6, 2021, Martin joined the throngs of Trump supporters who marched in protest of the 2020 election outcome. He compared the scene that day to a Mardi Gras celebration and later said the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants was “an op” orchestrated by former Rep. Liz Cheney and law enforcement agencies to “damage Trump and Trumpism.” During an appearance on Russia Today, Martin said then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “weaponized” Congress’ response to the Jan. 6 riots by ramping up security on Capitol Hill, comparing her to the Nazis. “Not since the Reichstag fire that was engineered by the Nazis have we seen behavior like what Nancy Pelosi did,” he said. As an attorney, he represented Jan. 6 defendants, helped raise money for their families and championed their cause. Last summer, Martin gave an award to a convicted Jan. 6 rioter named Timothy Hale-Cusanelli. According to court records, Hale-Cusanelli held “long-standing white supremacist and Nazi beliefs,” wore a “Hitler mustache” and allegedly told his co-workers that “Hitler should have finished the job.” (In court, Hale’s attorney said his client “makes no excuses for his derogatory language,” but the government’s description of him was “simply misleading.”) After hugging and thanking Hale-Cusanelli at the ceremony, Martin told the audience that one of his goals was “to make sure that the world — and especially America — hears more from Tim Hale, because he’s extraordinary.” In his three months as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Martin has used his position to issue a series of threats. He’s vowed not to hire anyone affiliated with Georgetown Law unless the school drops any DEI policies. He vowed to Musk that he would “pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people.” He publicly told former special counsel Jack Smith and Smith’s lawyers to “[s]ave your receipts.” And in another open letter addressed to Musk and Musk’s deputy, Martin wrote that “if people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable.” More often than not, Martin’s threats have gone nowhere. A month into the job, he announced “Operation Whirlwind,” an initiative to “hold accountable those who threaten” public officials, whether they’re DOGE workers or judges. One of the “most abhorrent examples” of such threats, he said, were Sen. Chuck Schumer’s 2020 remarks that conservative Supreme Court justices had “released the whirlwind” and would “pay the price” if they weakened abortion rights. Even though Schumer walked back his incendiary comments the next day, Martin said he was investigating Schumer’s nearly 5-year-old remarks as part of Operation Whirlwind. Despite Martin’s bravado, the investigation went nowhere. No grand jury investigation was opened. No charges were filed. That the probe fizzled out came as little surprise. Legal experts said Schumer’s remarks, while ill advised, fell well short of criminal conduct. In another instance, when one of Martin’s top deputies refused to open a criminal investigation into clean-energy grants issued by the Biden administration, Martin demanded the deputy’s resignation and advanced the investigation himself. When a subpoena arrived at one of the targeted environmental groups, Martin’s was the only name on it, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. Kevin Flynn, a former federal prosecutor who served in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office for 35 years, told ProPublica that he did not know of a single case in which the U.S. attorney was the sole authorizing official on a grand jury subpoena. Flynn said he could think of only two reasons why this could happen: The matter was of “such extraordinary sensitivity” that the office’s leader took exclusive control over it, or no other supervisor or line prosecutor was willing to sign off on the subpoena “out of concern that it wasn’t legally or ethically appropriate.” And when the dispute between the environmental groups and the Justice Department reached a courtroom, federal Judge Tanya Chutkan asked a DOJ lawyer defending the administration’s actions for any evidence of possible crimes or violations — evidence, in other words, that could have justified the probe initiated by Martin. The DOJ lawyer said he had none. “You can’t even tell me what the evidence of malfeasance is,” Chutkan said. “There are still rules that even the government has to follow, last I checked.” Martin’s tenure has caused so much consternation that in early April, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., put a hold on Martin’s nomination. Typically, the Senate Judiciary Committee approves U.S. attorney picks by voice vote without a hearing. But in Martin’s case, all 10 Democrats on the committee have asked for a public hearing to debate the nomination, calling Martin “a nominee whose objectionable record merits heightened scrutiny by this Committee.” Even the process of submitting the requisite paperwork for Senate confirmation has tripped him up. According to documents obtained by ProPublica, he has sent the Judiciary Committee three supplemental letters that correct omissions about his background. In an earlier submission, Martin did not disclose any of his appearances on Russian state-owned media. But just before The Washington Post reported that Martin had, in fact, made more than 150 such appearances, he sent yet another letter correcting his previous statements. “I regret the errors and apologize for any inconvenience,” he wrote.

[Category: eagle forum, donald trump, ed martin]

— FBI Arrests Wisconsin Judge For Allegedly Obstructing The Arrest Of An Undocumented Immigrant

 

at 4/28/25 2:51pm

Oh hooray. Another part of our new normal under Trump 2.0. Heres the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with the gory details: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was charged April 25 with two felonies on allegations of trying to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom. According to a 13-page complaint, Dugan, 65, is accused of obstructing a U.S. agency and concealing an individual to prevent an arrest. The two charges carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $350,000 fine, but sentences in cases involving nonviolent offenses typically are much shorter. Arresting a judge is an extremely rare occurrence. If it does happen, it usually follows months of investigation and massive amounts of evidence of criminal activity. In this case, it took less than a week and mostly hinges on the statements of a single court deputy and the allegations of federal officers who were free to assume the worst about the few things they did manage to witness first-hand. On top of that, the arrest was made at the courthouse, as though the judge posed some sort of a flight risk if she wasnt apprehended in public at her place of government employment. All very shitty. And all too familiar. Theres some precedent for this. Guess when that happened. A Massachusetts judge who allegedly gave a “reasonable impression” that she was allowing an immigrant to evade federal custody was “less than fully candid” when asked about the incident, according to an ethics complaint filed Monday. The judge, Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph of Massachusetts, is accused of willful misconduct in the ethics complaint. [] Joseph had once faced federal charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice over the April 2018 incident in the Newton, Massachusetts, courthouse. Prosecutors had alleged that Joseph allowed Medina-Perez to go downstairs to the lockup, supposedly to retrieve property. The immigrant was then allowed to leave through a back door by a court officer. The charges were dropped in September 2022 after Joseph agreed to report herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct. [Strokes chin thoughtfully] What could be the details that connect these two anomalies? What indeed. Allegedly helping an immigrant avoid interloping federal officers looking to make their jobs easier by poaching people outside courtrooms following court appearances? Check. President Trump in office? Check. As noted in the above report, the felony obstruction charges were dropped and replaced with an ethics complaint. Well have to wait and see how this one goes, but so far, Trump Administration officials are treating it like a law and order win. The head of the FBI, Kash Patel, tweeted, de-tweeted, and tweeted again about how proud he was his agency was right there to bring an obstructionist judge to heel. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed this report on xTwitter, pretending this was just good government business, rather than the KGB-esque removal of, shall we say, a competing viewpoint in the marketplace of mass deportation ideas. Theres a 13-page charging document [PDF] written by FBI Special Agent Lindsay Schloemer that portrays this as some sort of criminal conspiracy, rather than just a sympathetic judge being unwilling to let federal agents use her court as some sort of temporary holding cell for immigration arrests. Its all written in accordance with the FBI Charging Document Style Guide — something capable of portraying someone pointing someone to an alternate exit as the equivalent to being the driver in a bank robbery getaway car. But before we dip into that a bit, I must highlight one of most hilarious training and experience assertions Ive ever seen in a warrant affidavit: I am a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and have been so employed since 2014. I am currently assigned to the Milwaukee Field Office. As such, I am an investigative or law enforcement agent of the United States authorized under Title 18, United States Code, Section 3052, that is, an officer of the United States who is empowered by law to conduct investigations, to make arrests, and to collect evidence for various violations of federal law. I am also a Certified Public Accountant (“CPA”) and worked as a CPA for seven years before my employment with the FBI. Nice. Useless in this specific situation, but one should always have a fall-back career. Apparently, arresting judges is the agents fall-back career, because Schloemer goes on to point out their white collar crime bona fides before getting around to justifying the arrest of a county judge just because federal agents (including a DEA agent because thats what were doing these days) were forced to run an extra 50-100 feet to apprehend Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, whose main evasive effort was (and this is all in the charging document!) using an elevator that was further away than the one federal agents assumed made more sense to use. I am not kidding. After leaving the Chief Judges vestibule and returning to the public hallway, DEA Agent A reported that Flores-Ruiz and his attorney were in the public hallway. DEA Agent B also observed Flores-Ruiz and his attorney in the hallway near Courtroom 615 and noted that Flores. Ruiz was looking around the hallway. From different vantage points, both agents observed Flores- Ruiz and his counsel walk briskly towards the elevator bank on the south end of the sixth floor. | am familiar with the layout of the sixth floor of the courthouse and know that the south elevators are not the closest elevators to Courtroom 615, and therefore it appears that Flores-Ruiz and his counsel elected not to use the closest elevator bank to Courtroom 615. Whatever. It really doesnt matter. The allegations claim the judge diverted officers, ushered Flores-Ruiz out through the jury exit, and otherwise tried to impede this arrest. The chief judge also seemed a little concerned about the swarm of federal officers trying to poach exiting court attendees and expressed a desire to formalize where in the courthouse it was appropriate to make these arrests. In the end, the agents were momentarily inconvenienced. Even if all of claims are factual, the FBI had several options to use, including the one that left it up to the DOJ to file an ethics complaint, rather than expedite a felony complaint against a judge — an action thats just as inexcusable as it was back in 2018. But this administration is dead set on proving to everyone it will go after anyone and anything that even momentarily halts the progress of its fascist designs. And in doing so, its adding yet another black eye to US history, one it can only hope it remains in power long enough to retcon.

[Category: 1, dea, doj, fbi, hannah dugan, ice, immigration, kash patel, milwaukee county, pam bondi, wisconsin]

— Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act

 

at 4/28/25 1:23pm

Heres a puzzle: How do you write a law thats so badly designed that (1) the people its meant to help oppose it, (2) the people who hate regulation support it, and (3) everyone involved admits it will be abused? The answer, it turns out, is the Take It Down Act. The bill started with the entirely reasonable goal of addressing non-consensual intimate imagery online. But then something went wrong. Instead of building on existing successful systems, or within the parameters of the First Amendment, Congress decided to create a new framework combining vague duty of care requirements with harsh criminal penalties — a combination that, as weve previously detailed, practically begs to be weaponized for censorship. Most tellingly, Donald Trump — in endorsing the bill during his address to Congress — openly bragged about how he plans to abuse its provisions to censor content he personally dislikes. When the person championing your anti-abuse legislation is promising to use it for abuse, you might have a problem. The bill is so bad that even the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, whose entire existence is based on representing the interests of victims of NCII and passing bills similar to the Take It Down Act, has come out with a statement saying that, while it supports laws to address such imagery, it cannot support this bill due to its many, many inherent problems. While supportive of the bill’s criminal provision relating to authentic nonconsensual intimate images, which closely resembles CCRI’s model federal law and state laws that have survived constitutional challenge, CCRI has serious reservations about S. 146’s reporting and removal requirements. Encouraging speedy removal of nonconsensual intimate imagery from platforms is laudable, but the provision as written is unconstitutionally vague, making it difficult for individuals and platforms to understand what conduct is prohibited or required. The provision is also unconstitutionally overbroad, extending well beyond unlawful imagery. Finally, the provision lacks adequate safeguards against abuse, increasing the likelihood of bad faith reports and chilling protected expression. Such flaws would be alarming under any circumstances; in light of the current administration’s explicit commitment to selectively enforcing laws for political purposes, they are fatal. CCRI cannot support legislation that risks endangering the very communities it is dedicated to protecting, including LGBTQIA+ individuals, people of color, and other vulnerable groups.  These warnings echo what digital rights groups like the Center for Democracy & Technology and EFF have been shouting for months — only to be completely ignored by Congress. The concerns are not theoretical: the bills vague standards combined with harsh criminal penalties create a perfect storm for censorship and abuse. Yet despite these clear red flags, Ted Cruz announced that the House will take up the Senates fatally flawed version of the bill. This comes after leadership dismissed substantive criticisms during markup, including explicit warnings from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about the bills potential for abuse. That’s Cruz saying: I am thrilled that the TAKE IT DOWN Act will be getting a vote on the House Floor early next week. Thank you to [Speaker Johnson, Steve Scalise, and Brett Gurthrie] for their leadership and action to protect victims of revenge and deepfake pornography and give them the power to reclaim their privacy and dignity. When this bill is signed into law, those who knowingly spread this vile material will face criminal charges, and Big Tech companies must remove exploitative content without delay. The weird thing about this bill is that we already have systems to handle non-consensual intimate imagery online. Theres NCMECs Take It Down system, which helps platforms identify and remove this content. Theres StopNCII.org, a non-profit effort thats gotten virtually every major platform — from Meta to TikTok to Pornhub — to participate in coordinated removal efforts. These systems work because theyre precise, transparent, and focused on the actual problem. But apparently working solutions arent exciting enough for Congress. Instead of building on these proven approaches, theyve decided to create an entirely new system that somehow manages to be both weaker at addressing the real problem and more dangerous for everyone else. The problem here is pretty simple: If you give people a way to demand content be taken down, they will abuse it. We already have a perfect case study in the DMCA. Even with built-in safeguards like counternotices and (theoretical) penalties for false claims, the DMCA sees thousands of bogus takedown notices used to censor legitimate speech. The Take It Down Act looks at this evidence of widespread abuse and says hold my beer. Not only does it strip away the DMCAs already-inadequate protections, it adds criminal penalties that make false claims even more attractive as a censorship weapon. After all, if people are willing to file bogus copyright claims just to temporarily inconvenience their opponents, imagine what theyll do when they can threaten prison time. And imagine what the current Trump administration would do with those threats of criminal charges over content removals. CDTs Beeca Branum put out a statement this morning about how stupid all of this is: The TAKE IT DOWN Act is a missed opportunity for Congress to meaningfully help victims of nonconsensual intimate imagery. The best of intentions can’t make up for the bill’s dangerous implications for constitutional speech and privacy online. Empowering a partisan FTC to enforce ambiguous legislation is a recipe for weaponized enforcement that risks durable progress in the fight against image-based sexual abuse. The TAKE IT DOWN Act, while well-intentioned, was written without appropriate safeguards to prevent the mandated removal of content that is not nonconsensual intimate imagery, making it vulnerable to constitutional challenge and abusive takedown requests. Moreover, its ambiguous text can be read to create an impossible requirement for end-to-end encrypted platforms to remove content to which they have no access. The most baffling aspect of this debacle is watching self-proclaimed progressive voices like Tim Wu and Zephyr Teachout champion a bill that hands unprecedented censorship power to an administration they claim to oppose. This morning, both of them appeared at a weird press conference in support of the bill. While their recent embrace of various unconstitutional and censorial internet regulations is disappointing, their willingness to hand Donald Trump a censorship weapon hes openly bragging about abusing is genuinely shocking. The Take It Down Act will likely become law, and then well get to watch as the Trump administration — which has already announced its plans to abuse it — gets handed a shiny new censorship weapon with totally not for political persecution written on the side in extremely small print. The courts might save us, but theyre already drowning in unconstitutional nonsense from this administration. Perhaps not the best time to add government-enabled censorship framework to their to-do list.

[Category: 1, 1st amendment, censorship, ncii, notice and takedown, take it down, take it down act, ted cruz]

— Government Actually Threatens Wikipedia’s Editorial Freedom; Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Warriors Suddenly Have Other Plans

 

at 4/28/25 11:54am

When Trump officials want to censor speech, they dont quite say we want to censor speech (after all, they pretend to be the party that “brought free speech back.”) Instead, they find ways to threaten organizations by pretending it’s got nothing to do with the content, even as they can’t hide their true intentions and motives. And so we have DC US Attorney Ed Martin, who has decided that the real problem with Wikipedia isnt its content — its its tax status… based on its content. This latest move follows Martins established pattern of constitutional violations, including investigating protected speech by Congress members, attacking the Associated Press, and probing medical journals over their editorial policies. But his attack on Wikipedia represents something even more dangerous: a federal prosecutor attempting to control how the internets largest collaborative knowledge platform manages its content. The way this works is pretty straightforward: First, you find some pretext to investigate. Then you write a threatening letter. Then you leak that letter to a friendly media outlet. In this case, Martin sent his letter to The Free Press, a publication that has spent years warning about government censorship — at least when they pretend Democrats do it. The letter reads in part: It has come to my attention that the Wikimedia Foundation, through its wholly owned subsidiary Wikipedia, is allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public. Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States. Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s “educational” mission. In addition, Wikipedia’s operations are directed by its board that is composed primarily of foreign nationals, subverting the interests of American taxpayers. Again, educational content is directionally neutral; but information received by my Office demonstrates that Wikipedia’s informational management policies benefit foreign powers There’s more in there, including complaints about how AI tools train on Wikipedia, suggesting (ridiculously) that this might implicate Wikipedia if “foreign actors” are able to “launder information” into AI systems. And the letter threatens to revoke Wikpedia’s non-profit status (something the IRS would normally investigate, not the US Attorney for DC). There are also demands to know details about Wikpedia’s editorial processes and how it handles trust & safety. Just imagine the freakout that would occur (probably led by The Free Press) if a US Attorney during the Biden admin had demanded to know Fox News’ editorial policies and standards and practices, while claiming that they were letting too much propaganda online. The screaming would never stop. Indeed, what Martin is doing here represents exactly the kind of government interference in editorial decisions that free speech advocates have been warning about. But where are those voices now? During the Biden administration, we were told over and over again by the MAGA faithful that literally any communication between an internet platform and federal law enforcement, especially regarding trust & safety practices, was the biggest threat to free speech ever. To understand why this matters, we need to talk about Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit that made it all the way to the Supreme Court (as Murthy v. Missouri). The case was basically about whether government officials could talk to social media companies about content moderation without violating the First Amendment. The summary, as the Supreme Court noted, affirming earlier cases, is that the government can absolutely talk to social media companies to share information. What it cannot do is threaten or coerce the platforms for their editorial decisions. Which is exactly what Martin is doing here. Even though the Supreme Court debunked all the lies in its ruling in the case, the MAGA universe (along with hangers-on like Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger) insisted that they were evidence of a huge attack on free speech: the Biden administration sometimes talking to social media companies about their content moderation practices. The original district court ruling in the case, by (Trump-appointed) Judge Terry Doughty, had soaring language like the following: Plaintiffs have put forth ample evidence regarding extensive federal censorship that restricts the free flow of information on social-media platforms used by millions of Missourians and Louisianians, and very substantial segments of the populations of Missouri, Louisiana, and every other State That “extensive federal censorship” was based off of very weak claims of federal officials sometimes reaching out to social media platforms to highlight certain content or to ask if certain things violated their policies. And it was treated as a five-alarm fire. As the Supreme Court noted, the actions of the Biden White House did not appear at all coercive or threatening. That’s very, very different from what’s happening here. Here we have the top DC prosecutor clearly threatening Wikipedia over editorial decisions — and, not even editorial decisions of its employees, but the site’s volunteer editors. In other words, Wikipedia is clearly protected under Section 230 for such edits. It seems likely that Martin (or someone in his office) then leaked the letter to The Free Press, a publication that has built its brand on warning about government censorship. The same publication that ran breathless stories about the Biden administrations supposedly coercive communications with social media platforms. The same outlet whose writer, Rupa Subramanya, dramatically testified to Congress’ subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the government, about the horrors of government censorship… in Canada. Lets look at her testimony, which Republican Jim Jordan gleefully presented as a warning about Democratic censorship: I’d like all of you to think of me as a time traveler from the not too distant future coming back to the present to offer you a glimpse of what could lie ahead for America. I live in a time in which, in the name of fairness, you can’t share the stories you write for my news publication on social media. [….] I live in a time in which, in the name of safety, you can be arrested for exercising your right to peaceful protest if you happen to be protesting the wrong thing. That dystopian future she warned about? Its here. People are not just being arrested but actually deported for peaceful protests. And The Free Presss response to this actual censorship? Crickets. This fits a pattern that Peter Shamshiri recently documented in his analysis of The Free Presss selective outrage. When it comes to actual censorship from the Trump administration, The Free Press has developed a curious case of writers block: The problem they face is that their brand is predicated on directing overwrought skepticism toward the left and childlike credulousness toward the right. That may have worked in 2021, when it could be pitched as a sort of half-baked contrarianism. But now, with the Trump administration embracing overt authoritarianism, it’s a little embarrassing.  He notes that while they have a “Free Speech” section, almost none of it is covering the attacks on free speech from the Trump administration. Yes, The Free Press published this story, but it didn’t put it in the “Free Speech” section and doesn’t treat it as the massive First Amendment violation it absolutely is. It quotes a “person close to Martin” multiple times, suggesting that Martin’s office leaked this directly to Weiss, knowing The Free Press wouldn’t call out what bullshit it is. Want to see this double standard in action? Lets play a quick game of spot the difference between how The Free Press covers different types of government intervention. Heres their headline for Martins Wikipedia threat: Trump’s D.C. Prosecutor Threatens Wikipedia’s Tax-Exempt Status And heres how they covered various aspects of the Murthy case: Free Speech on Trial How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate And right before the election, the Free Press published a story about “Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Our Government Censors” about the case, claiming that Kamala Harris would definitely abuse her powers as President to censor people online and holding up Musk as an example of someone who would fight for free speech. What are the chances that a President Kamala Harris would resist pressuring social media companies into censorship? Based on her record: Not great. Looking over that author’s writings since Trump took office, she’s written excitedly and supportively about Trump trying to harm transgender youth and the movie When Harry Met Sally. The fact that the Trump administration has been issuing censorship decrees from almost all corners of the executive branch is apparently not worth mentioning. So heres where we are: A federal prosecutor is directly threatening Wikipedias editorial independence. This is not the information sharing found in the details of the Twitter Files and the Murthy case (which the Supreme Court just said was fine), but explicit threats about their tax status and demands about their editorial policies. This is, quite literally, the exact kind of government censorship that The Free Press had been warning about. The kind they said would inevitably come from a Democratic administration. The kind they said justified extraordinary measures to protect free speech. Yet their coverage reads like a press release from Martins office, repeatedly citing a person close to Martin” (which is often how media will represent the person themselves, who asks the journalist not to quote them directly): “Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission,” Martin wrote in the letter, claiming his office received information showing that Wikipedia’s “policies benefit foreign powers.” …. The letter did not specify which foreign actors were manipulating information on Wikipedia and did not cite examples of alleged propaganda. However, a person close to Martin said he is concerned about “edits on Wikipedia as they relate to the Israel-Hamas conflict that are clearly targeted against Israel to benefit other countries.” They even helpfully note that Wikipedia fundraises in the district — as if that somehow justifies a US Attorney threatening their First Amendment rights. But what’s clear is that this is about one thing only: Wikipedia allowing content Martin doesnt like. Even if Wikipedias content was biased (it isnt), even if every editor was actively trying to push an anti-Israel narrative (they arent), that would still be protected by the First Amendment. The government doesnt get to threaten organizations over their editorial choices, no matter how much certain prosecutors or publications might dislike those choices. The Free Press spent years insisting that mundane communications between the Biden administration and social media companies represented an existential threat to free speech. Now faced with actual government censorship — explicit threats from a federal prosecutor over editorial decisions — theyre treating it as just another political story.

[Category: wikimedia, wikimedia foundation, 1st amendment, bias, content moderation, ed martin, editorial policies, free speech, irs, israel, non-profit, tax status, wikipedia]

— Daily Deal: Curiosity Stream Standard Plan

 

at 4/28/25 11:49am

Whether youre a science enthusiast, history buff, or technology geek, Curiosity Stream has something for everyone. Unleash the power of on-demand streaming that allows you to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and where you want to watch it. From the comfort of your living room to the remote corners of the globe, your favorite documentaries are just a click away. Discover a vast library of content with Curiosity Streams standard plan, spanning science, technology, history, nature, and art. Delve into an array of engaging topics with breathtaking visuals and unparalleled storytelling. With new content added weekly, youll never run out of things to watch. Its on sale for $200. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

[Category: 1, daily deal]

— DHS Deported A Two-Year-Old US Citizen To Honduras And Now A Federal Judge Wants Some Answers

 

at 4/28/25 10:24am

Does anyone want to be OK with this just because it might end up barely clearing the legality bar? Is this what the US wants to be known for: the forcible expulsion of anyone originating south of our borders just because the current administration doesnt want to share space with undocumented (but otherwise law-abiding) immigrants? Is it time to cut Lady Liberty off at the knees and shove her hulking metal carcass into the bay? Fortunately, a judge — a conservative one at that — is asking at least one question about this turn of events, even if it isnt any of the questions listed above. A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week. The judge on Friday scheduled a hearing for May 16, which he said was “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” I dont know, judge. Your interest may be well-placed but its getting pretty fucking difficult to dispel strong suspicions that the government is just deporting people — citizens or not — with no meaningful due process. Thats why this administration has resurrected the Alien Enemies Act. That law all but eliminates due process from the equation so long as federal agents can boilerplate together stuff about tattoos and gang affiliations to pile on top of the utter bullshit that supposedly necessitates the revival of long-dormant law. The government was no more inclined to give the US-born child due process rights than it was to extend them to her undocumented parents. Instead, ICE simply grabbed the childs mother, along with her older sibling, during a routine compliance check-in, threw them on a jet, and sent them back to Honduras. Well, back except for the two-year-old, who was born in the United States. The government hasnt offered much in response to US resident/apparent designated legal caretaker for the 2-year-old US citizen motion for a restraining order blocking the childs deportation. And why should it? Its already a done deal. What it has offered is a hand-written note allegedly written by the childs mother declaring her intent to have her youngest child deported with her. It also claims most parents want their US-born children deported with him, an assertion that cant possibly be true if these parents migrated to the United States to give themselves and their offspring a better life. The childs father (also an undocumented immigrant) clearly felt the two-year-old would be better off staying in the US with an appointed guardian. Thats why he appointed one as soon as he found out ICE had detained his child. Fearing deportation of his own if he went to claim his child, he signed paperwork making another US resident the childs legal guardian. ICE promised to put the guardian in touch with the childs mother to see if she really wanted to take the child to Honduras with her. Then it blew the guardian (and the court) off until the child was already out of the US and en route to Honduras. Thats where Terry Doughty comes in. Hes apparently a big fan of Trump and his policies, which makes him a prime landing spot for cases the administration (and other Republican legislators) want to win. But that doesnt work here. The short order [PDF] makes it clear this isnt something the government is just going to be able to ignore. Theres no unsettled question of legality that requires in-depth discussion. Of course, “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommenddeportation of a U.S. citizen.” See Lyttle v. United States, 2012 Open. Shut. On top of that, a handwritten note and some generalizations about deported parents arent the smoking guns the government seems to think they are. (Emphasis in the original.) The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that. Precisely. Then theres the fact that the government moved as quickly as it could to carry out this miscarriage of justice before the court could tell it to stop. Seeking the path of least resistance, the Court called counsel for the Government at 12:19 p.m. CST, so that we could speak with VML’s mother and survey her consent and custodial rights. The Court was independently aware at the time that the plane, tail number N570TA, was above the Gulf of America. The Court was then called back by counsel for the Government at 1:06 p.m. CST, informing the Court that a call with VML’s mother would not be possible, because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras. Well, I guess hes still a bit Trumpian. But the deliberate misgendering (or whatever) of the Gulf of Mexico aside, this chain of events doesnt make the government look any less shady. Dispelling the strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process is all but impossible at this point. Of course, even if its shown the child was supposed to remain in the United States, its all but guaranteed it will take a heated, protracted legal battle to force the Trump Administration to do something it hasnt done yet: press the undo button on an illegal deportation.

[Category: 1, dhs, donald trump, ice, immigration, mass deportations, terry doughty, us citizens]

— Ohio Could Be The Latest State To Pass ‘Right To Repair’ Law, Showcasing Broad, Bipartisan Support

 

at 4/28/25 6:27am

State laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own technology continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new “right to repair” law in Wisconsin, groups like U.S. PIRG note that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills. But so far only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon have actually passed laws. Ohio could be the latest, thanks to the support of free market Republicans (remember those?) who dont like the idea of big companies monopolizing repair: Blessing is a Republican state senator representing Ohio’s 8th Senate district, which includes much of the area surrounding Cincinnati. In April, Blessing introduced a “right-to-repair” bill that grants consumers legal access to the parts, tools, and documents they need to fix a wide range of devices while banning restrictive practices like parts pairing. If Blessing’s bill succeeds, the Buckeye State will become the latest to enshrine the right to repair into law, after similar legislative victories in Colorado, Oregon, California, Minnesota, and New York. The passage of a right to repair reform in Ohio would be an ideological win for the movement given the states highly conservative bent. It illustrates once again that support for these reforms is hugely bipartisan. Often corporate policy guys find a way to generate partisan animus around issues (see: privacy, net neutrality), but so far theyve yet to have that kind of success in right to repair. In large part because a cornerstone of consumer annoyance at these practices have involved John Deere screwing over rural farmers with cumbersome restrictions that dramatically drive up the cost of servicing agricultural equipment. The problem: while a lot is made of states passing right to repair laws, the press, public, and activists tend to ignore or downplay the fact that no state has actually enforced these laws yet. Most companies in most states are still just happily monopolizing repair with clunky DRM, parts pairing, consolidation of repair options, and making manuals and parts hard to get a hold of with no penalties. At some point, some of the amazing energy being put into passing these laws needs to be redirected to demanding states actually enforce them. Unfortunately during Trumps second term, when states face unprecedented and costly legal fights on absolutely everything, I suspect that this sort of consumer protection will likely be the first to fall through the cracks among cash-strapped states without states being pressured on the daily to make it a priority.

[Category: 1, activism, consumer protection, monopoly, repair, right to repair, state law]

— Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

 

at 4/27/25 1:00pm

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Mamba with a response to a failed fact check by another commenter: Hey twinkle farts, President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to authorize the government to detain enemy aliens. Further, the executive order didn’t need to receive the law. And the law was used to justify the detainment in Federal Court. Dumb as a box of rocks. In second place, its MrWilson with a comment about Gavin Newsom calling the Abrego Garcia case a distraction: Remember this when Newsom is the next Democratic candidate for president hailed as the only hope against Trump. I’m not telling you not to vote for him because any Democrat or even a fucking doorstop will be a more moral choice than Trump’s 3rd term or whoever the GOP trots out to replace him (it won’t be Vance). But remember this that Newsom might possibly be marginally better than Biden, but will largely be a return to the same old thing instead of a shift in a positive direction towards actual progress. We’ve lost so much ground of late on civil liberties and human rights that people will be grateful for anything less than the cruelty-backed machinations of authoritarians, but we deserve more. For editors choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Thad about Elon Musk supposedly stepping way from DOGE: The news media credulously reporting Musk’s announcement that he’s stepping back from DOGE seem to have forgotten that sixteen months ago they credulously reported his announcement that he was stepping back from Twitter. Next, its Arianity with a reminder about all the other things supposedly on his plate: Don’t forget his “third job” (SpaceX), “fourth job” (Boring Co), “fifth job” (Twitter), or “sixth job” (xAI), or “seventh job” (Starlink), all while having time to pretend to be good at video games and shitpost/harassing women on Twitter all day. Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: DEI hires? [ x ]DUI hires? [✓] In second place, its David with a comment about the federal prosecutor who started demanding explanations of editorial policy from medical journals: The GOP is not to blame for everything Prosecutors are not political employees but career personnel. Their job is to advance justice on behalf of the American people independent of party affiliation; so blaming a political party for a potentially rogue prosecutor’s behavior is out of line. Wait, is it 2025 already? My, how the time flies. Forget what I just said, I was lost in the past for a moment. For editors choice on the funny side, we start out with That One Guy and another comment about balance in medical journals: Down with Just because you have a lab coat doesnt mean youre doing science dogma! I for one look forward to the new Golden Age of American Science, where competing viewpoints like the size and age of the earth, whether it really is possible to make gold out of lead through a complex application of exotic chemicals, and the involvement of storks in childbirth are given equal weight and time with more ‘traditional’ entrench beliefs. Finally, its another anonymous comment about Pete Hegseth: You know, it’s not really fair to blame alcohol. I’m guessing Hegseth is also mightily incompetent when sober. Thats all for this week, folks!

— Game Jam Winner Spotlight: A Warning

 

at 4/26/25 1:00pm

It’s time for the second in our series of posts about the winners of this year’s public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! We’ve already covered the Best Remix and Best Deep Cut, and today were looking at the winner of the Best Visuals category: A Warning by DigNZ. One of the requirements for digital entries in these game jams is that they be playable in the browser, which puts a limit on just how graphically ambitious they can get. But A Warning pushes that limit to its breaking point, in service of a striking aesthetic built around a selection of Disney animated shorts from 1929 combined with lighting effects and a 3D-rendered interface. Screenshots really dont do it justice; you need to see it in action. The game is a simple but tantalizing video puzzle, in which you are tasked by President Herbert Hoover (by way of a fully-voiced briefing video) with uncovering secret messages that Walt Disney has hidden in the films. Youre then tossed into the main interface with minimal instruction, and must experiment with the rotating slices of animation and the various buttons that swap out the soundtrack and apply color filters to the visuals, possibly revealing hidden elements. Piece by piece, you must reconstruct the cartoons and their secret layers, all while they continue to play before your eyes. Uncover all the secret messages and youll make it to the ending (but no spoilers: youll have to get there for yourself!) Last year was the year that Mickey Mouses new public domain status made waves and headlines, but while that was certainly an important milestone, we cant forget that it just marks the beginning of what we now get to celebrate for years to come: masterpieces from the golden age of American animation entering the public domain. These are historic works that pioneered styles and techniques which continue to define animation today, and the visual feast they provide deserves to be celebrated. A Warning does just that, and does it with flare, while also being a very fun little puzzle game to boot. For all that, its this years winner of Best Visuals. Congratulations to DigNZ for the win! You can play A Warning in your browser, or download the PC version, from its page on Itch. We’ll be back next week with the next in our series of winner spotlights, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut! And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1930.

[Category: 1, game jam, games, gaming, gaming like it's 1929, public domain]

— Microsoft Allows Bethesda To Continue To Be Cool Regarding Fan-Made Remake Projects

 

at 4/25/25 8:39pm

Bethesda has something of a history of embracing its modding communities. This has historically included not being aggressive on matters of IP against modders, attempting to build an economy around the modding community itself, and even being quite tolerant of fan-made expansions and the like of the publishers titles. This was all well and good until Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft. Straddling the before and after of that acquisition are some ambitious fan-led projects, perhaps none larger than Skyblivion, a project to completely remake The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in the Skyrim engine. The team behind the project previously indicated that it should be completed at some point this year, but I wondered aloud several months ago whether it would be allowed to move forward, or if this would be one of those fan-made projects that is killed off by the lawyers at the last minute, now that Microsoft is in charge. Complicating this further is the long-rumored remaster of Oblivion from Bethesda itself, released just this week. With what would be a competing project, even though Skyblivion is going to be released for free, what would this mean for the project being able to go forward? Thankfully, and much to this writers surprise, it appears that Microsoft and Bethesda are playing cool with the entire project. Fortunately for the Skyblivion team, Bethesda has apparently decided theres room enough in this world for both official and unofficial remakes of Oblivion. The team took to social media Tuesday to thank Bethesda for their continued support and for the generous gift of Oblivion Remastered game keys for our entire modding team. To clear up any confusion Bethesda made it clear that they have no intention of shutting down our project, the team added in a social media reply. Now, hopefully, that also means that Microsoft has no intention of shutting this down, either. One would hope that any messaging about this from Bethesda has cleared whatever internal bureaucratic hurdles with the parent company required to make that stance firm. Its worth noting several things here. First, this fan project did not make use of any Bethesda assets beyond using Skyrims engine. Everything has been recreated from scratch, from what I understand. Second, you cant play Skyblivion without having bought specific versions of both Oblivion and Skyrim, so there really is no threat to the publisher here. In fact, this should be a boon to them and, if anything, drive more sales for these older titles. And, finally, these fans have, by all accounts, been very cool and respectful of Bethesda throughout the process. Earlier this month, when credible rumors of the official Oblivion remaster were running rampant, the Skyblivion team posted that it was eagerly aniticipating the official release and that there was no need for comparisons or a sense of competition between Skyblivion and a potential official remaster. Thats particularly true, the team wrote, because Skyblivions PC mod wont be available for console players, who will be able to enjoy Bethesdas official version instead. And now, Bethesda and Microsoft are being human and cool right back at them. I havent spilled much ink praising large companies like Microsoft for being sensible on matters that include their intellectual property, but here we are. When Microsoft does something cool, I suppose we owe it to the universe to say so out loud.

[Category: 1, bethesda, microsoft, fan remake, oblivion]

— Gavin Newsom Has Lost The Plot

 

at 4/25/25 6:29pm

Gavin Newsoms characterization of the Abrego García deportation as a “distraction” represents a catastrophic failure of moral clarity and constitutional understanding. This isnt a distraction. This is the constitutional foundation of our Republic hinging on a single case. Lets be absolutely clear about whats at stake: The Supreme Court has issued a unanimous 9-0 order demanding that the administration facilitate the return Abrego García to the United States. A 9-0 ruling. In todays polarized Court. This isnt partisan; its fundamental. The President, bound by oath and the Constitution to “faithfully execute the laws,” is openly defying the highest judicial authority in the land. If a President can simply ignore a direct, unanimous Supreme Court order with no consequences, then what remains of checks and balances? What remains of the separation of powers? What remains of the rule of law itself? This is not hyperbole—this is the actual constitutional crisis we were warned about, happening in real time. The so-called “pragmatists” like Newsom who suggest we focus on “kitchen table issues” instead reveal a profound misunderstanding of whats at stake. They present a false choice between economic concerns and constitutional principles—as if Americans cannot care about both their retirement accounts and whether we still have a functioning constitutional republic. Perhaps Governor Newsom should visit Abrego Garcías children—two with autism, one prone to seizures—and explain to them that their fathers wrongful imprisonment and torture in El Salvador is a “distraction” from more important matters. Perhaps he should tell these American citizens that the erroneous deportation of their father, in direct violation of his legal protections, is less important than poll-tested talking points about tariffs. This is the Theater of Neutrality in its most shameful form—pretending that constitutional crises are merely political disagreements, that fundamental questions of rule of law are just one “issue” among many. Its the cowardly posture that treats moral clarity as a political liability rather than a governing necessity. Whats particularly galling is how Newsom frames this as political strategy: “Are they defending MS-13?” he asks, parroting the administrations falsehoods even after a federal judge found that the gang allegations against Abrego García were based on a discredited database and testimony from a disgraced detective. No, Governor. Theyre defending the Constitution. Theyre defending due process. Theyre defending the principle that no one—not even a President—is above the law. Theyre defending the idea that when the Supreme Court issues a unanimous order, it must be followed, not mocked or ignored. Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And if we cannot summon the moral clarity to stand firmly against a President openly defying a direct Supreme Court order, then we have already surrendered the constitutional republic we claim to cherish. The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. And holding it requires recognizing that some issues arent distractions but foundations. The rule of law isnt a policy preference. Its the condition that makes all other governance possible. The ground approaches. And in this moment of constitutional gravity, those who cannot find their moral compass may find themselves remembered among those who stood aside while the Republic itself was undermined. At this point, I’m not sure Gavin Newsom remembers what’s real. Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.

[Category: 1, abrego garcia, constitution, constitutional crisis, gavin newsom, supreme court]

— Enter The Fourth Amendment, Yet One More Reason DOGE Is Such A Constitutional Nightmare

 

at 4/25/25 1:57pm

This post is about two things: that it looks like DOGE has violated an injunction, at least in spirit if not letter, and why it matters. The injunction in question arose in the hybrid case, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO v. Social Security Administration, which named both DOGE and agency officials at the Social Security Administration.  It began as a TRO issued on March 20, which then became a preliminary injunction on April 17. The district court also refused to stay its enforcement. The injunction does several things, but most notably it keeps DOGE from accessing identifiable personal information held on Social Security Administration systems except if certain conditions are met. See, for example, this part which generally bars DOGEs access: [T]he United States Social Security Administration (“SSA”), Leland Dudek, and Michael Russo and/or his successor (collectively, “SSA Defendants”), and any and all of their agents and employees, and any person working in concert with them, directly or indirectly, are ENJOINED and RESTRAINED from granting access to any SSA system of record containing personally identifiable information (“PII”), as defined in paragraph 9 hereof, or PII obtained, derived, copied, or exposed from any SSA system of record, including, but not limited to, records known as the Enterprise Data Warehouse (“EDW”), Numident, Master Beneficiary Record (“MBR”), Supplemental Security Record (“SSR”), and Treasury Payment Files, to the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”); the United States DOGE Service; the United States DOGE Service Temporary Organization; members of the DOGE Team established at the Social Security Administration, as defined in ¶ 11(a); Elon Musk; Amy Gleason; and/or any DOGE Affiliate(s), as defined in ¶ 11(b)[.] Then this part describes conditions that must be met before any exception can be made: 3. SSA may provide members of the DOGE Team with access to discrete, particularized, and non-anonymized data, in accordance with the Privacy Act, and in accordance with the conditions set forth herein: SSA must first comply with the provisions in ¶ 2 of this Order and, in addition, SSA must first obtain from the DOGE Team member, in writing, and subject to possible review by the Court, a detailed explanation as to the need for the record and why, for said particular and discrete record, an anonymized or redacted record is not suitable for the specified use. The general and conclusory explanation that the information is needed to search for fraud or waste is not sufficient to establish need. According to a declaration by Leland Dudek and certification by the government, the Social Security Administration and DOGE are complying with the injunction, although the SSA acknowledged what it described as two inadvertent violations during the pendency of the TRO. While the Temporary Restraining Order was in effect, SSA had two occasions where systems access was inadvertently granted to systems containing PII. In one instance, controls were in place so the access permissions could not actually be used. In the other, the access was granted inadvertently and the agency confirmed that the systems were not actually accessed, and prompt action was taken to remove the access permissions. But it is difficult to square this certification with news that DOGE has apparently altered the status of millions of people to make the living seem dead, or specifically move the 6000+ immigrants to the dead list. Furthermore, according to some reports, DOGE renamed the Death Master File to the Ineligible Master File. It is of course theoretically possible that the status changes for the millions of people was done via a script, and DOGE never saw the individual records it changed. It is also possible that the deliberate placing of the 6000+ people was done at the direction of SSA leadership and not DOGE, to the extent that it is believable that such decisions could be taken independently of DOGEs influence – weve seen this issue before, where the Trump Administration has tried to get his appointed toadies to ratify terrible things DOGE demanded to give them a veneer of legitimacy, even though they still are things they never could have lawfully done themselves under the APA or other operable laws. But the injunction (and the TRO, which, although it might have varied slightly from the more recent injunction, does not seem to be significantly different in general substance) also restrained DOGE from altering any code, which, if they ran a script or converted a database name, these actions would seem to violate: All DOGE Defendants, as well as all SSA DOGE Team members and DOGE Affiliates, are ENJOINED and RESTRAINED from accessing, altering, or disclosing any SSA computer or software code. And as for whether they forced SSA staff to do these things themselves, its the forcing that is the issue. The court was very careful to make sure that SSA staff could still conduct business as normal – its partly why the injunction was deemed proper and staying of it not, because the agency was in no way harmed since it could still do its regular work it was only the DOGE misadventures that were being delayed. To avoid confusion or doubt, this Order expressly applies only to SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda. Employees of SSA who are not involved with the DOGE Team or otherwise involved in the work of the DOGE Team are not subject to the Order. Therefore, this Order has no bearing on the ordinary operations of SSA. Only it turns out they dont seem to have been delayed at all. What the news is reporting happened here is very wrong, in multiple ways. Not only does it seemingly violate the injunction (and presumably also the TRO, which was likely in force when much of what happened happened – and although the TRO might differ in small detail from the later formal injunction, it seems to be largely the same in substance), but it is also wrong on its face to do what DOGE has apparently done and cause people to wrongfully, and without due process, be deprived benefits and more. These sorts of concerns about harm to the public seem to have been on the courts mind for quite some time. For instance, while this injunction was being litigated the government said that DOGE needed access to personally identifiable information to root out fraud. But to the court it sounded like what DOGE claimed it needed to do was an unconstitutional fishing expedition: As I understand [it], the Fraud Detection Project appears to amount to an attempt to uncover fraud, without particular, specific grounds that suggest fraud. With the Privacy Act in mind, as addressed in ECF 49, it is unclear to me why there is any need to disclose PII before there is a basis to believe that fraud has occurred. Therefore, the Supplemental Declaration should also clarify the work of the Fraud Detection Project, to include whether there are known, identifiable instances of fraud for which particular PII is sought. And, if there are no such specific, identifiable instances of fraud, then Mr. Dudek should address the need for the disclosure of non-anonymized data before there is a factual basis to support a belief that fraud has occurred or is occurring. Although this language does not specifically raise the issue of the Fourth Amendment, it echoes it. Per the Constitution people are to be secure in their private matters (papers and effects) unless there is probable cause, which would entitle the government to invade their privacy and conduct a search and seizure with sufficient particularity. And here the court appears to be saying, Where is your probable cause that would entitle you to invade peoples privacy in the information on these systems? Where is the particularity? The Fourth Amendment says that the government doesnt get to rummage through peoples private records to look for a crime; it has to already have probable cause to believe there was one and then it can get a warrant allowing it to go find the proof. Whereas here DOGE was saying they had a need to conduct a warrantless search, and the court reminded them that no, they dont. But the concerns that the court stood up for in ordering its injunction is why all this Privacy Act litigation is so important. One way the Fourth Amendment stops being a barrier to the government getting access to peoples private affairs is if they consent to it. Here, the government has an awful lot of private data people have consented for it to have because it made sense to give that consent in that context. For instance, if people want social security benefits, it makes sense to consent for the Social Security Administration to have enough information about them to provide that benefit. The point of the Privacy Act is to make that limited consent possible by providing the statutory barriers to make sure it is limited. People dont consent that the government has access to their private information; they consent that the relevant agency has it for the limited purpose that they need it.  The rest of the government doesnt get to say, Hey, we dont need a warrant because look! We already have all the data we need! The Privacy Act essentially says the government only has the data insofar as the public has consented for it to have it for the limited purpose it was needed and makes it illegal for any agency to share it with other parts of the government, even though technically it could. Here, DOGE (and also the corrupt leadership of the agency) is trying to shatter those statutory barriers preventing that sharing, and for exactly the reason that we have them: to cause harm to the public.  Which is what courts are noticing and why injunctions are being granted in other DOGE Privacy Act cases. Because, as we see with people wrongfully placed on the dead list, when the publics private information is not shielded from unfettered government access, injustice is what follows.

[Category: 1, 4th amendment, data, doge, injunction, leland dudek, social security, tro]

As of 4/30/25 5:02am. Last new 4/29/25 9:54pm.