Yesterday the realization that Elon Musk and his DOGE bandits are dead set on stealing our Social Security hit home for millions of Americans. Perhaps some of the MAGA cultists are still lying to themselves, but plenty of Trump voters now know they made a huge mistake.
Two days ago, Maryland District Judge Ellen Hollander ordered the acting head of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek to stop DOGE bandits from accessing recipients’ personal information. Dudek responded by threatening to shut down the agency entirely.
March 20 (Reuters) – A federal judge said on Thursday the Social Security Administration likely violated privacy laws by giving tech billionaire Elon Musk‘s aides “unbridled access” to the data of millions of Americans, and ordered a halt to further record sharing.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland said Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was intruding into “the personal affairs of millions of Americans” as part of its hunt for fraud and waste under President Donald Trump.
“Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” he said….
Earlier on Thursday, Judge Hollander, in her ruling, said: “To be sure, rooting out possible fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the SSA is in the public interest. But, that does not mean that the government can flout the law to do so.”
The case has shed light for the first time on the amount of personal information DOGE staffers have been given access to in the databases, which hold vast amounts of sensitive data on most Americans.
The SSA administers benefits for tens of millions of older Americans and people with disabilities, and is just one of at least 20 agencies DOGE has accessed since January.
Hollander said at the heart of the case was a decision by new leadership at the SSA to give 10 DOGE staffers unfettered access to the records of millions of Americans. She said lawyers for SSA had acknowledged that agency leaders had given DOGE access to a “massive amount” of records.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” Hollander said….
One of the systems DOGE accessed is called Numident, or Numerical Identification, known inside the agency as the “crown jewels,” three former and current SSA staffers told Reuters. Numident contains personal information of everyone who has applied for or been given a social security number.
After a new order from Judge Hollander, Dudek has backed down on his threat to shut down the Social Security Administration.
Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.
Less than 24 hours later — after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened — Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”
Lucy Almey Bird, A good book
Dudek initially told news outlets, including in a Friday interview with The Washington Post, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems. But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.”
“Employees of SSA who are not involved with the DOGE Team or in the work of the DOGE Team are not subject to the Order,” Hollander wrote in the letter on Friday sent to lawyers involved in the case. “ … Moreover, any suggestion that the Order may require the delay or suspension of benefit payments is incorrect.”
In response to Hollander’s letter, Dudek said in a statement that the court clarified its guidance and “therefore, I am not shutting down the agency.”
Dudek, in a follow-up interview Friday afternoon with The Post, thanked Hollander for the clarification, adding, “The president is committed to keeping the Social Security offices open to serve the public.” He then acknowledged that this was an about-face from his stance in an interview with The Post earlier in the day.
“[The White House] called me and let me know it’s important to reaffirm to the public that we’re open for business,” he said. “The White House did remind me that I was out of line and so did the judge. And I appreciate that.”
Yeah, right. I’m sure King Trump is very concerned about us peons who need Social Security to live.
Hollander issued a two-week temporary restraining order Thursday that prohibits Social Security officials from sharing personally identifiable information with Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, which has been empowered to carry out cost-cutting across the government.
Hollander, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote that DOGE “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion” and “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems.”
To top all that, yesterday a video surfaced of Trump’s Commerce Secretary, billionaire Howard Lutnick, claiming that seniors who missed a social security check wouldn’t miss it and anyone who complained was a “fraudster” “stealing” from the government. I don’t think Lutnick understands that Social Security is funded by the payments made by recipients all of their working lives.
Rachel Maddow spent much of her show last night talking about Lutnick’s clueless statement.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn’t be worried if she didn’t receive her Social Security check one month.
Lutnick argued that the only people upset about DOGE head Elon Musk targeting Social Security are fraudsters abusing the system.
“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, wouldn’t call and complain,” he said during a Thursday appearance on the All-In podcast. “She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month.”
Public records suggest that his mother-in-law, Geri Lambert, lives with Lutnick and his wife Allison, at his Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan. If that is the case, she is unlikely to be relying on Social Security for rent or mortgage payments.
Lutnick, who was nominated to the role by President Donald Trump, amassed a fortune worth around $1.5 billion over more than 30 years as the CEO of the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald. He stepped down from the position in February when he was confirmed as commerce secretary.
“A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining,” the commerce secretary continued. “Elon knows this by heart… The easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing.”
It isn’t the first eyebrow-raising statement Lutnick has made in support of Musk—even this week.
On Wednesday, Lutnick appeared on Fox News and urged viewers to “buy Tesla” stock, which has been plummeting amid protests against Musk’s efforts to reshape the federal government. Musk is the CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer.
He called Musk “probably the best person to bet on I’ve ever met,” saying: “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap.”
Advocates warn these sweeping moves could lead to seniors and people with disabilities having a harder time getting help with their crucial benefits.
Already, getting assistance can be burdensome.
“My first phone call that I made to Social Security, I was on hold for 3 hours and 15 minutes before I spoke to somebody,” Aaron Woods, who’s been trying for months to help his mother sort out her Social Security and Medicare benefits, told NPR.
Read more about Woods’ case at the link. These problems existed before DOGE got involved.
For years, advocates say the Social Security Administration has struggled to keep up with its growing workload. Besides retirement services, the agency runs programs that provide survivor benefits and disability benefits and supplemental income for the very poor.
“There simply have not been enough workers to administer the benefits timely,” said Kristen Dama, a managing attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, which helps people navigate the benefits process. “To make sure that mistakes aren’t made. And then when people get disconnected, whether it’s for financial reasons or for mistakes, there’s just not enough people … to allow recipients to get reconnected easily.”
And problem-solving could get harder as the agency plans to cut 7,000 jobs — though its current staffing of about 57,000 is already at a 50-year low….
The agency also announced it would undergo a massive restructuring by eliminating six out of its 10 regional offices, which Dama said would significantly affect her organization’s ability to sort out problems for her clients.
“For legal aid advocates, both at my organization and across the country, the regional offices are really the fixers, are the quality control, and they play that role also for constituent service staff, social services organizations,” she said. “They are really the place where problems that can’t be solved get escalated.”
There’s much more information at the link. This is a great article.
Veronica Taylor doesn’t know how to turn on a computer, let alone use the internet.
The 73-year-old can’t drive and is mostly housebound in her mountainous and remote West Virginia community, where a simple trip to the grocery store can take an hour by car.
New requirements that Social Security recipients access key benefits online or in person at a field office, rather than on the phone, would be nearly impossible to meet without help.
“If that’s the only way I had to do it, how would I do it?” Taylor said, talking about the changes while eating a plate of green beans, mac and cheese and fried fish with a group of retirees at the McDowell County Senior Center. “I would never get nothing done.”
The requirements, set to go into effect March 31, are intended to streamline processes and combat widespread fraud within the system, according to President Donald Trump and officials in his administration.
Time to Oneself, Marcella Cooper
Bullshit.
They say that’s why it’s vital for people to verify their identity online or in person when signing up for benefits, or making a change like where the money is deposited.
But advocates say the changes will disproportionately impact the most vulnerable Americans. It will be harder to visit field offices in rural areas with high poverty rates. Often these are the same areas that lack widespread internet service.
Many Social Security field offices are also being shut down, part of the federal government’s cost-cutting efforts. That could mean seniors have to travel even farther to visit, including in parts of rural West Virginia.
At least now the efforts to kill Social Security are out in the open. I guarantee you if there is a missed payment the public reaction will shock self-satisfied billionaires like Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Musk is throwing a tantrum about judges who are simply interpreting U.S. laws.
In the days after a federal judge ruled Elon Musk’s dismantling of USAID likely violated the constitution, the world’s richest person issued a series of online attacks against the American judiciary, offered money to voters to sign a petition opposing “activist judges”, and called on Congress to remove his newfound legal opponents from office.
“This is a judicial coup,” Musk wrote on Wednesday, asking lawmakers to “impeach the judges”.
Musk, who serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, posted about judges who ruled in opposition to the administration more than 20 times within 48 hours this week on X, the social network he owns, repeatedly framing them as radical leftist activists and seeking to undermine their authority. His denunciations came as his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) faces sweeping and numerous legal challenges to its gutting overhaul of the government, which has involved firing thousands of workers and gaining access to sensitive government data.
Doge is the subject of nearly two dozen lawsuits, which in some cases have already resulted in judges imposing more transparency on Musk’s initiative or reversing parts of its rapid-fire cuts at federal agencies. The legal pushback poses one of the most significant challenges to Musk’s plans, which for weeks after inauguration day involved operating with expansive powers and little evident oversight.
While Musk posts online, he is also directing some of his immense wealth towards those who support his cause. Musk donated funds to seven Republican members of Congress who called for impeaching judges, the New York Times reported, giving the maximum allowable donation of $6,600 to their campaigns.
Musk also launched a petition on Thursday against “activist judges” via his political action group America Pac, which offered registered voters in Wisconsin $100 if they signed. Musk’s Pac has funneled millions of dollars into the state’s 1 April supreme court race, in which he is backing a former Republican attorney general in another attempt to reshape the country’s courts.
How is that legal? But he got away with it in Pennsylvania during the 2024 election when he offered 1 million prizes for people who signed a petition.
By Laura El
Musk is also furious about “leakers” who have talked to the press about his DOGE meddling.
The pervasive fear and anger that have been rippling through federal agencies over Elon Musk’s slashing approach to shrinking government deepened even further on Friday over the billionaire tech mogul’s threat to root out and punish anyone who is leaking to the media.
They’ve already taken every precaution they can for fear of retaliation: setting Signal messages to automatically disappear, taking photos of documents they share instead of screenshotting, using non-government devices to communicate. But disclosing the chaos caused by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, for many, outweighs the risks that come with leaking.
Following Thursday’s New York Times report that Musk was set to receive a Pentagon briefing about a confidential contingency plan for a war with China, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO posted on his social media platform X that leakers “will be found” and, he intimated, punished.
“I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” Musk wrote in his post.
Oooooh! How scary!
But Musk’s post is not having the chilling effect on leakers he’d intended, according to conversations with more than half a dozen government employees who had previously spoken to POLITICO. If anything, it might be the other way around.
“We are public servants, not Elon’s servants,” said one Food and Drug Administration employee who, like all people interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal dynamics. “The public deserves to know how dysfunctional, destructive, and deceptive all of this has been and continues to be.”
“Leakers are patriots,” said one Agriculture Department employee. Helping the media report on problems or concerns inside agencies, the USDA employee added, is motivated by a desire for greater transparency — the same goal Musk has said undergirds his own work through DOGE….
Musk’s comments may not have caused a major shift in how federal workers view sharing information with reporters, one federal employee at a health agency said, citing group chats with other employees.
But even before Musk’s comments this week, the prevailing atmosphere inside many federal agencies — from constant threats of firing and being labeled enemies of the public to ousting them for following orders from previous administrations — have left employees feeling vulnerable, increasingly incensed and concerned about their physical safety.
There’s quite a bit more at the Politico link.
By Rakhmeet Redzhepov
Musk is also paying a price in attitudes toward his EV company Tesla. He and his rich buddies think attacks on Tesla locations and individual cars is a conspiracy, but it is really organic. Let me say up front that I don’t condone violence or vandalism.
Law enforcement officials and domestic extremism experts say they have found no evidence that a series of attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships are coordinated despite such claims from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.
At least 10 Tesla dealerships, charging stations and facilities have been hit by vandals, many of whom have lit cars on fire, while a growing collection of videos posted to social media have shown people defacing and damaging Tesla vehicles. One website appeared to encourage people to target Tesla vehicles, publishing a map with the information of dozens of Tesla owners and Tesla facilities. It’s unknown who started the site.
The attacks have come as Musk has emerged as one of the brightest flashpoints of an already tumultuous second Trump administration, leading a sweeping effort to cut large swaths of the federal government. Musk has decried the attacks on Teslas, and on Thursday claimed on his social media platform X that the attacks were “coordinated.” He did not provide evidence….
Trump has also claimed the attacks have been coordinated. In an interview Wednesday on Fox News, he said without evidence that “people that are very highly political on the left” are paying the vandals.
Trump has called the destruction of Tesla property domestic terrorism, and Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges on Thursday against three people accused of vandalizing Tesla properties in Oregon, South Carolina and Washington state.
Publicly available court documents for the three people make no mention of coordination, an NBC News review found.
Experts and law enforcement officials nationwide from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the two federal agencies investigating the attacks, all told NBC News they have found no evidence of any coordination around the attacks.
More details at NBC News.
I’m just heartened by the rising public anger over Trump and Musk working to destroy our democratic form of government and turn our country into a dictatorship.
Entering the magnificent great hall of the US Department of Justice, Donald Trump stopped for a moment to admire his portrait then took to a specially constructed stage where two art deco statues, depicting the “Spirit of Justice” and “Majesty of Justice”, had been carefully concealed behind a blue velvet curtain.
The president, who since last year is also a convicted criminal, proceeded to air grievances, utter a profanity and accuse the news media of doing “totally illegal” things, without offering evidence. “I just hope you can all watch for it,” he told justice department employees, “but it’s totally illegal.”
Cat Lady on a Couch, by Sharon Bursic
Trump’s breach of the justice department’s traditional independence last week was neither shocking nor surprising. His speech quickly faded from the fast and furious news cycle. But future historians may regard it as a milestone on a road leading the world’s oldest continuousdemocracy to a once unthinkable destination.
Eviscerating the federal government and subjugating Congress; defying court orders and delegitimising judges; deporting immigrants and arresting protesters without due process; chilling free speech at universities and cultural institutions; cowing news outlets with divide-and-rule. Add a rightwing media ecosystem manufacturing consent and obeyance in advance, along with a weak and divided opposition offering feeble resistance. Join all the dots, critics say, and America is sleepwalking into authoritarianism.
“These are flashing red lights here,” Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director turned Trump critic. “We are approaching Defcon 1 for our democracy and a lot of people in the media and the opposition leadership don’t seem to be communicating that to the American people. That is the biggest danger of the moment we’re in now: the normalisation of it.”
Much was said and written by journalists and Democrats during last year’s election campaign arguing that Trump, who instigated a coup against the US government on January 6, 2021, could endanger America’s 240-year experiment with democracy if he returned to power. In a TV interview he had promised to be “dictator” but only on “day one”. Sixty days in, the only question is whether the warnings went far enough.
The 45th and 47th president has wasted no time in launching a concerted effort to consolidate executive power, undermine checks and balances and challenge established legal and institutional norms. And he is making no secret of his strongman ambitions.
Trump, 78, has declared “We are the federal law” and posted a social media image of himself wearing a crown with the words “Long live the king”. He also channeled Napoleon with the words: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” And JD Vance has stated that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”.
Trump quickly pardoned those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, placed loyalists in key positions within the FBI and military and purged the justice department, which also suffered resignations in response to the dismissal of corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams after his cooperation on hardline immigration measures.
The president now has the courts in his sights. Last weekend the White House defied a judge’s verbal order blocking it from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law meant only to be used in wartime, to justify the deportation of 250 Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador, where they will be held in a 40,000-person megaprison.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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My aunt is actually meeting with a lawyer to discuss the possibility of moving to Portugal. I am so happy for them, I wish I could hide in a suitcase and skip out of the country too.
I have some stories to share and then the cartoons.
Powerful op-ed by @NickKristof on human lives being lost because #USAID suddenly stooped all funding incl for world’s poorest and most vulnerable. Reporting with evidence and empathy from frontlines of poverty as he has done for many years.#GoodJournalismhttps://t.co/xqqTBocWnd
The cost of first-line H.I.V. medications to keep a person alive is less than 12 cents a day.
I asked Labani if he had ever heard of Musk. He had not, so I explained that Musk is the world’s wealthiest man and has said that no one is dying because of U.S.A.I.D. cuts.
“That is wrong,” Labani said, sounding surprised that anyone could be so oblivious. “He should come to grass roots.”
Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive. Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son.
Please read the article or at least watch the video interview…just one more quote:
Civil war and famine in neighboring Sudan have sent refugees fleeing that country into South Sudan. Some are unaccompanied children, such as a 10-year-old girl who arrived recently on her own. The United States had supported a program to assist such children near the city of Renk and ensure they are not trafficked. That is one of the programs that has been canceled.
Many of the refugees from Sudan are raped along the way by soldiers or bandits, and upon arrival in South Sudan they used to receive free medical care from a nonprofit supported by the United States. Their sexually transmitted infections were treated, and they were protected from H.I.V.
When I visited, those rape victims were on their own. Sexual assault survivors told me that it was now difficult or impossible for them to get medicines. After my visit, the nonprofit was able to reopen the clinic for the time being and serve these women, but there is immense uncertainty among aid groups about whether they will be paid for their work and whether such operations can continue.
“The bludgeoning of PEPFAR and U.S.A.I.D., one of the most eloquent expressions of American values ever created, might be America’s most spectacular act of self-sabotage in generations,” the musician Bono, a longtime leader in campaigns against global poverty, told me. “U.S. development assistance had its flaws, as its recipients often pointed out, but it was as close to poetry as policy gets.”
I despise Trump and Musk…and all those people who support them.
Here is a follow up piece you can read as well:
The world's worst humanitarian crisis today is in Sudan, facing famine and atrocities that the US has already concluded are genocide. Sudanese refugees crossing the border told me what's happening–and meanwhile, the US is aggravating the crisis. https://t.co/LRIMBnvMud
I have to laugh…because that 👆🏼 is sooooo on point!
Some thoughts on this truly epic constitutional crisis we are in…
Trump may justify deportations by claiming the people involved are violent gang members (although no court has had that chance to test that assertion) but the problem is that once established, the power Trump is claiming can be used against other people too. joycevance.substack.com/p/deportatio…
My report on the hearing just now, in which Trump administration attorneys acknowledged disregarding a federal judge's order. "That’s a heck of a stretch,” the judge said. Later: "Apparently my oral orders don’t seem to carry much weight." Next filing due Tuesday.www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-…
Tense hearing over Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act:Judge Boasberg pressed the Trump DOJ on why it did not comply with his order to temporarily halt deportations.The lawyer refused to answer detailed questions.The judge summarized their position as "we don't care, we'll do what we want."
Here is Judge Boasberg's order—in writing—after the disaster of a hearing today. He wants a sworn declaration that no one was removed based on the AEA proclamation and setting out when it went into effect, an estimate of how many individuals may be subject, and why DOJ can't answer its questions.
I seriously believe that if any other lawyer and client would have done what was done this weekend, they would have been held in contempt. But as usual the fuck wad gets away with murder. And if you think SCOTUS will save us:
Fucker thinks he invented “due process is only good if it produces results that people who look like me approve of” and dresses it up in some pretentious nonsense.Rocky Road is against the common good because I do not like Rocky Road. I am a deep thinker at Harvard.
If you’re wondering “how does Harvard Law find enough students to fill this fascist’s classes,” I regret to inform you Harvard Law has always had plenty of people who are evil or indifferent to evil.
So it appears DOGE has decreed that Social Security administration will no longer provide phone support. At all. This is in addition to shutting down a ton of local SSA offices. http://www.axios.com/2025/03/17/s…
He is a Russian asset. That we know. He has Congress refusing to act. He is defying the courts. And now, he is trying to get people killed. Hey MAGAT'S, is this what you voted for?
The richest man in the world took over $5K out of this guy's bank account, claiming he was dead. The richest man in the world said he was saving money.He was not dead.
QUICK TURNAROUND: A federal judge has ordered an immediate hold on efforts by President Donald Trump to quickly deport Venezuelan nationals under rarely used wartime powers intended to resist a foreign invasion — and demanded the return of planes already headed to Central America. 👇🏻
After Daknikat’s comprehensive post yesterday, it’s hard to imagine there could be any more news to report on today, but I’ve found a few things.
There were two notable deaths yesterday, pioneering blogger Kevin Drum and former Senator Alan Simpson, half of Simpson-Bowles, who created what came to be known as the “Cat Food Commission.”
Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.
Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.
He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.
Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.
His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.
Four years after that, Mr. Drum moved to Mother Jones, where he wrote not just blog posts but also extensive reported pieces for the magazine.
Most notable was a deep dive in 2013 into the theory that the crime wave of the late 20th century was driven in large part by childhood exposure to lead in gasoline and paint, a key factor in the development of behavioral problems and, in turn, delinquency. As lead was phased out, health outcomes improved and crime rates dropped.
“He was just able to unpack very complicated — particularly economically complicated — stories in an immensely readable way,” said Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones.
Alan K. Simpson, a plain-spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died on Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.
He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.
By Matt Cauley
Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Mr. Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom school children and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmental lobbyists.
The son of a former Wyoming governor and United States senator, Mr. Simpson had been a hell-raiser as a teenager. He and some friends shot up mailboxes, killed a cow with rifles and set fire to an abandoned federal property. He punched a police officer who arrested him. While no one had been seriously hurt, he faced prison. But he was put on probation for two years and paid restitution….
Mr. Simpson had love-hate relationships with the press. Many journalists liked his earthy humor and easy accessibility. But his language could be coarse and his tone contemptuous when he attacked the news media, sometimes singling out reporters by name. He crossed a line when he accused Peter Arnett of CNN of being an enemy “sympathizer” for his reporting from Iraq during the Persian Gulf war, and wrongly accused him of bias in the Vietnam War because he had married a Vietnamese woman.
His political positions sometimes seemed contradictory, or perhaps personal. He supported abortion rights and right-wing nominees to the United States Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v. Wade. And partly out of a friendship forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the nation to apologize to Japanese Americans who were interned as potential security risks during World War II.
Read more at the NYT if you’re interested. Frankly, I thought he was a horrible person, but what do I know?
Daknikat covered the Republicans’ horrific continuing resolution yesterday. Of course it pass with Democratic help.
In the end, nine senators who caucus with Democrats joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in voting to advance legislation to avoid a government shutdown, essentially giving up Democratic leverage over President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.
Their support meant the bill was able to break the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster, 62-38….
“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” Schumer told The New York Times earlier on Friday, arguing a shutdown would be far too unpredictable.
Internal party critics have said Schumer gave up a rare moment of leverage far too easily, misplaying his hand after an often-fractious House Republican Caucus passed a party-line spending bill with Trump’s blessing.
Schumer suggested he was willing to face withering criticism from moderate House members to angry progressive activists: “I’ll take some of the bullets.”
These nine senators are likely to share in Schumer’s political suffering, though none of them are an obvious target for an immediate primary challenge.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.): The party’s leading contrarian at the moment, Fetterman has repeatedly said he will never vote for a government shutdown under any circumstances. He’s not up for reelection until 2028.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.): Cortez Masto said her vote was not an “easy decision,” but she was refusing to “hand [Trump and Musk] a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm.” She’s not up for reelection until 2028.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the party’s Senate leadership, is up for reelection in 2026 but is widely expected to retire.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): King’s state is heavily reliant on government funds, and he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page giving Musk and Trump power would be a “significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.” King is not up for reelection until 2030.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): Schatz is known to have leadership ambitions, and taking this vote may show he’s willing to take a political hit for the rest of the caucus. Hawaii is also heavily reliant on federal employees. “Given the number of federal workers in Hawai‘i, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state,” he said in a statement. Schatz is up for reelection in 2028.
Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): The Granite State duo are both moderates, and Shaheen is set to retire rather than run for reelection in 2026. Hassan is up for reelection in 2028. “Allowing the federal government to shut down with this President in charge is too dangerous to risk,” Hassan said in a statement.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters has already announced his plan to retire in 2026. He said a shutdown under Trump would be “catastrophic”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): A close ally of her fellow New Yorker, Gillibrand is also the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle. She’s not up for reelection until 2030.
I thought Schumer had some good arguments; but when we are facing a takeover by a dictator, it seems to me the Democrats should fight tooth and nail.
Schumer’s politically dicey decision—ahead of a midnight Friday shutdown deadline—has infuriated Democrats to the point some are suggesting he step aside as leader. He explained on the Senate floor late Friday afternoon that his decision was “a Hobson’s choice,” conjuring images of a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk.
”I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said. “The shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to the city, the state and the country. And that is a far worse alternative.”
Vintage Lady with White Cat, by Sharyn Bursic
“Next question,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries answered Friday afternoon when a reporter asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate. Jeffries said House Democrats are “strongly opposed to the partisan funding bill” that Schumer says he now supports.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi repudiated Schumer’s choice earlier in the day, saying, “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Schumer’s “unthinkable” acquiesce was a “betrayal,” adding she was “texting, calling, sending carrier pigeons” to Senate Democrats to beg them to not follow suit.
Democratic lawmakers are so “infuriated” with Schumer that some have spoken to Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, about running against him in a Senate primary race, according to CNN, which noted even “centrists” are “so mad” at Schumer they are “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate” come 2028 when he is up for re-election.
Daknikat wrote quite a bit about the Democrats’ anger yesterday. They were even angrier, if possible, after the bill passed. Schumer should retire anyway. We have to get rid of these old fossils.
Remember the days when the Bush administration was disappearing people they decided were terrorists? It looks like Trump is going to follow a similar playbook. I just hope it doesn’t involve torture. The Trump gang are coming down hard on Columbia and other elite universities about protests against the Israel war on Gaza. As you know, they have basically disappeared former Columbia student and protest leader Mahmood Kahlil.
Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week — said he overheard federal agents say that the White House was asking for an update on his detention, his attorneys said.
“He was surrounded by many DHS agents, or people he believed to be DHS agents, and he believes that he saw or heard, during a call, one of them say that the White House wants an update on what’s going on,” Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Khalil, said at a press conference Friday.
“We have every reason to believe, as we allege in the petition, that many people within the executive branch of the government were involved, including the White House,” Sisay said.
Khalil took part in student protests at Columbia University calling for the institution to divest and cut ties with Israel, and he participated in negotiations with university administration.
“His one and only goal was to get Columbia University to divest from its complicity with Israeli government crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing Khalil….
The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without providing evidence.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.
A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, on charges that she overstayed an expired visa.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president’s “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. “That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”
Blanche didn’t say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.
A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.
Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.
This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.
Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)
The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.
A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.
A Hmong American woman who has lived in the Milwaukee area since she was 8 months old was deported last week to Laos, a country she has never visited, and says she is stranded in a rooming house surrounded by military guards.
Ma Yang, 37, a mother of five, said she does not speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country and that the military is holding all her documents. She was born in Thailand, the daughter of Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War, and she was a legal permanent U.S. resident until she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.
“The United States sent me back to die,” she said. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”
As President Donald Trump pushes the mass deportation of immigrants, Yang believes she is one of the first Hmong Americans to be deported to Laos in recent years. As of November, the U.S. considered Laos an “uncooperative” country that accepted few, if any, deportees. Zero people were deported to Laos in the last fiscal year, according to federal data.
Once she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on March 6, she said she was questioned by military authorities then sent to a rooming house, where guards did not allow her to leave or contact anyone for five days. She paced in circles around the compound and ate food the guards gave her.
A few days ago, she was taken to buy a cellphone and withdraw cash. She could finally reach out to her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub of South Milwaukee, a U.S. citizen. The military official in charge of her situation — she does not know his rank or title — then said she could leave if she wanted. But she is scared to venture out.
The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.
A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said….
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.
Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.
See the full draft list of countries at the link. I can’t reproduce it here.
This is getting too long, but I need to touch on Trump’s speech at the “justice department” yesterday. The speech was supposed to be about fentanyl.
Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.
The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.
Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.
The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.
The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.
In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.
“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.
But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to in effect run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle….
Trump offered notable praise for the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.
“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”
President Donald Trump launched some of his harshest attacks yet on the media on Friday, using a speech at the Department of Justice to baselessly accuse outlets including CNN of illegal and corrupt behavior.
In his Friday speech, Trump praised Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed in 2020 and who sided with him in January, blocking the DOJ from sharing a report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with members of Congress.
But Trump claimed news publishers had gone after Cannon because of the January ruling, alleging “they do it all the time with judges” and that they “will write whatever these people say,” without offering proof.
“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”
“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump continued, addressing DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”
While Trump did not immediately clarify who “they” are, he later claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”
“In my opinion, they’re really corrupt,” Trump said.
He’s doing everything in the dictator’s playbook, folks.
That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?
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