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Wired: “Documents show that ICE plans to hire dozens of contractors to scan X, Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms to target people for deportation. United States immigration authorities are moving to dramatically expand their social media surveillance, with plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to sift through posts, photos, and messages—raw material to be transformed …
404 Media: “The Trump administration’s tariff regime and the elimination of fee exemptions for items under $800 is limiting resource sharing between university libraries, trapping some books in foreign countries, and reversing long-held standards in academic cooperation. “There are libraries that have our books that we’ve lent to them before all of this happened, and …
MIT Technology Review: “People over Papers, a crowd-sourcing project that maps sightings of immigration agents, was taken offline yesterday by Padlet, the collaborative bulletin board platform on which it was built. It’s just the latest ICE-tracking initiative to be pulled by tech platforms in the past few days. A Padlet customer service representative told Celeste, …
Follow up to Government Workers Say Their Out-of-Office Replies Were Forcibly Changed to Blame Democrats for Shutdown – See Also: Mashable: “The U.S. federal government shut down at midnight on Wednesday, bringing a halt to numerous government services after Congress could not agree on a crucial funding bill. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration was quick to …
Axios: “Hate crimes have hit record levels in the past few years. Analysts say antisemitic crimes rose again in 2024. MAGA activists are going after two of the nation’s most storied civil rights watchdogs, accusing them of smearing conservatives as extremists. MAGA leaders, backed by the Trump administration and Elon Musk, are trying to undermine the …
NextGov/FCW – “At least 15 government oversight websites were down — and with them, access to watchdog reports and required hotline and whistleblower links — as of Wednesday evening. That’s not due to the federal shutdown that began at midnight; it’s a deliberate move by the White House, whose Office of Management and Budget is …
Wired – no paywall: “On Wednesday, the first day of the US government shutdown, employees at the Department of Education (DOE) set their automatic out-of-office email responses to inform recipients that they would be unable to respond until after the shutdown. Hours later, many DOE employees realized their response message had been altered to contain …
Democracy Forward: “The United States is in an existential fight for democracy. With so much on the line for millions of people, the Supreme Court remains a decisive arena. The new term begins on Monday, October 6, and will determine the role of this Court on attempts at unchecked power. The authoritarian threats from the Trump-Vance …
The New York Times Gift Article: “The White House on [October 1, 2025] sent letters to nine of the nation’s top public and private universities, urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds. The letters came attached to a 10-page “compact” that serves as …
TechDirt: “…Here’s how the administration leads into its hit list of Democratic politicians (emphasis in the original): The carnage in Dallas, Texas — where a maniac with “ANTI-ICE” ammo gunned down an ICE field office in an attack clearly targeted at ICE personnel — lays bare the deadly consequences of Democrats’ unhinged crusade against our border …
CBS News: “The head of a presidential library resigned this week after a tug-of-war with the Trump administration over gift selection and a sword for King Charles III, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News. Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously held posts with the National Park Service and National Archives and Records Administration, …
PEN America – The Normalization of Book Banning: “In 2025, book censorship in the United States is rampant and common. Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the …
