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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 …
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 …
404 Media: Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples’ phones. “The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has bought access to a surveillance tool that is updated every day with billions of …
Politico: “The Energy Department has added “climate change,” “green” and “decarbonization” to its growing “list of words to avoid” at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, according to an email issued Friday and obtained by POLITICO. The words on the DOE list are at the heart of EERE’s mission: It is the government’s …
Peters Report Finds that DOGE Continues to Operate Unchecked, Likely Violating Federal Privacy and Security Laws, and Putting the Safety of Americans’ Personal Information in Danger. “U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a report revealing that the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is …
404 Media: In a blog post published in June, Garrett Langley, the CEO and co-founder of surveillance company Flock, said “We rely on the democratic process, on the individuals that the majority vote for to represent us, to determine what is and is not acceptable in cities and states.” The post explained that the company …
The New York Times Gift Article: “Journalists have long shaped history through scrutiny of the military. Now the Defense Department plans to cut off access for reporters who publish even unclassified information without official approval. These days, in covering traditional conflicts like the one in Ukraine, or the new battlefields of space and cyberspace, or …
Wired – no paywall – “In August, months after Elon Musk left the federal government, the director of the Office of Personnel Management offered the first hard estimate of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s impact on the civil service. The government would likely end 2025 with about 300,000 fewer employees than it had at …
Access To Stochastically Approximate Information – “Through a series of public records requests, Cascade PBS and KNKX obtained thousands of pages of ChatGPT conversation logs from city officials in Washington. The volume of the records suggests widespread use of the technology in local government.” When government officials use generative AI chatbots those ‘conversations’ are considered public …
Via Benjamin Strick @bendobrown.bsky.social – The @archive.org has many epic features like saving sites and viewing deleted pages, but it’s also got some little useful functions like tracking edits, searching broadcasts and visualising topics in news items. I visit all of them in this YouTube tutorial. This tutorial is part 26 of the OSINT At …
A LA Times review of the Trump administration’s settlement proposal to UCLA lays out sweeping demands on numerous aspects of campus life. The government has fined UCLA nearly $1.2 billion to settle allegations of civil rights violations. Hiring, admissions and the definitions of gender are among the areas the Department of Justice seeks to change. …
