a judge's gavel on top of a flag
— Trump Admin: Hand Over the Data or Say Goodbye to Social Security. The Trump administration is bending over backwards to accommodate Elon Musk’s Dark Enlightenment plan to tear our government down and replace as many of its functions as possible with for-profit corporate programs. Given that Social Security cuts checks totaling $1.6 trillion a year, that’s where there’s a huge opportunity for big banks (and smaller ones like the one Elon wants to create with and for X) to administer the funds, skim a few percent off the top, and get rich, rich, rich.
A few federal judges aren’t as enthusiastic about the program, though, so Trump’s SSA guy Lee Dudek is now saying that if Elon and his teenage hackers can’t get fully into the guts of the Social Security Administration’s computers and date — giving them all of our medical, financial, and historic employment information — he’s going to simply shut the system down so nobody gets a check. “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” he said sarcastically according to Bloomberg News.
Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander, overseeing the AFL-CIO’s lawsuit against DOGE, noted that Musk’s boys were violating both administrative and privacy laws when they let the DOGE boys have “unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans, including but not limited to Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.” And, she added, they never even provided a good reason to inspect all our personal records: “[D]efendants, with so-called experts on the DOGE Team, never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government.”
It’s fascinating to see how hard Trump is fighting for the Dark Enlightenment guys who want to replace democracy in America with a technocratic oligarchy that they run. Will Americans wake up to what’s happening in time to stop or even slow them down? Will they figure out ways around the court cases they keep losing, or reach the point where they simply begin to deny the legitimacy of the courts and their orders? It feels like we’re at a very significant turning point in this process; stay tuned…
— Lock Them Up? Trump Officials Face Jail Time for Stonewalling. US District Court Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg is getting increasingly furious with Trump’s people who keep stonewalling him on the case of their deporting over 250 alleged Venezuelans without any semblance of the constitutionally-required due process. He has multiple remedies available to him should he decide to play hardball: he can fine and even jail the lawyers for Trump who keep bullshitting him in court. Will he have the courage to do it? Or will the threats of violence against his family — which have already begun from Trump’s fascist followers/base — cause him to back down? We should know by the end of next week, and this case could become a touchstone for others being brought against Trump where he and his lawyers are similarly stalling.
— One of the nation’s largest Democratic-aligned law firms caves in to Trump threats and pressure. On Thursday I wrote about how Trump was damaging the ability of law firms that worked for Democrats to do their jobs by denying them security clearances and even access to federal buildings, including federal courthouses. Now Paul Weiss, one of the big firms Trump went after by name, has caved in, promising to give $40 million in pro bono work to causes he approves of, to apologize for one of their lawyers who participated in prosecuting Trump in New York, and to strip all references to DEI from their company’s policies. People across the entire legal spectrum have expressed shock and horror at the decision; when you give your lunch money to the bully, you’re just setting up his next attempt the following day. This was a horrible mistake, particularly since the legal profession and our courts are the only defense we have right now against Trump, given that he’s effectively castrated every Republican in the House and Senate.
— Trump’s Budget: Robbing the Poor to Enrich the Wealthy. From the time Reagan cut the top income tax rate for the morbidly rich from 74% down to 25%, fully $50 trillion has been shifted from the pockets of the working class into the money bins of the top one percent. Now Yale University’s Budget Lab has looked at the budget outline Republicans pushed through the House and Senate a few weeks ago — which includes $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, $230 billion out of SNAP (food stamps), and a $4.5 trillion tax cut for billionaires — and found that it’ll lead to another massive transfer of wealth from the bottom half of Americans into the money bins of the morbidly rich.
“The overall effect of these policy changes would be regressive, shifting after-tax-and-transfer resources away” from families at the “bottom of the distribution towards those at the top,” wrote the two lead economists who examined the plan. Trickle-down is alive and well! And it’s every bit as much a BS fable now as it was in 1981 when Reagan first started pushing it. As the old saying goes, “They’re pissing on working people and telling them it’s raining.”
—Trump Wants Tesla Vandals Locked in El Salvador’s Notorious Mega-Prison. So, let’s get this straight: If you invade the nation’s capitol, smear feces on the walls and piss all over Democrats’ desks, and kill three cops and put 170 others in the hospital, that’s a “day of love” with “friendly tourists.” But if you set a Tesla on fire and nobody gets hurt, that’s an act of terrorism worthy of a federal response, deportation, and 20 years in one of the world’s most notorious prisons in El Salvador. At least that’s what Trump says, telling a reporter that the January 6th traitors were “nothing like those terrorists” who attacked Tesla vehicles. Nobody, including this writer, is encouraging people to commit vandalism, but the double standard here is truly astonishing.
— is Trump going to declare martial law? Jessica Wildfire over at The Sentinel Intelligence newsletter, points out that Hitler’s birthday is April 20th and there’s a huge buzz across the rightwing corners of the internet suggesting that’s the day Trump will declare a state of emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act, and begin rounding up people who’ve posted things to Substack and social media that offend him. Could it be? I’m skeptical that he’ll be so date-driven, but I have noticed that he’s shut down multiple counter-terrorism programs in the FBI, DOJ, and White House; I suspect he’s hoping for another 9/11-type event that he can exploit to become as popular as George W. Bush was. I wrote about this last month and still fully expect Trump to provoke, welcome, or fake some sort of disaster or attack to justify his going full dictator, just like Hitler did after the German Parliament building was burned in January of 1933. I hope I’m wrong, but Mark Twain sure seems to have been right about history rhyming…
Furry Alert! Don’t think the GOP are doing enough? Well it’s just not true: They are now tackling the furry crisis in our schools. Isn’t that more important than protecting social security or minimum wage? It’s amazing how an internet hoax, having bounced around the rightwing echo chamber for a few years, has become a deeply believed “fact” in Republican circles. A Texas state representative had now introduced legislation to rid Texas schools of the crisis of Furries: Children who Republicans believe are allowed to dress up in public school like cats, dogs, etc., use litter boxes in the back of the classroom, and answer questions with animal noises. The legislation specifically prohibits Texas schools from allowing kids to “bark,” “mew,” or use kitty litter to relieve themselves. Don’t these guys have anything better to do with their time? On the other hand, every time they actually do legislate something it tends to hurt working people or make it harder to vote; maybe it is best they focus their energy on the Great Furry Threat. (You may like our song on the topic; it’s here.)
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