September 26: Resist

"Has anyone ever been handed $50,000 cash in a paper bag for something legit?”

No charges against Trump's immigration czar because he apparently didn't steal enough

Jon Queally for Common Dreams

Tom Homan: "Show me the money"

Accusations of supreme corruption, demands for an investigation, and calls for impeachment proceedings for several high-level Trump administration officials erupted on Saturday after it was reported that a Justice Department probe into Tom Homan, who serves as President Donald Trump’s border czar, was dropped despite documented evidence he accepted a bribe of $50,000 delivered in a bag by undercover FBI agents as part of a sting operation.

Citing multiple people “familiar with the probe,” a review of internal documents, MSNBC was the first to report that during “an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan [...] accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents—who were posing as business executives—win government contracts in a second Trump administration.”

$50,000 is chump change compared to Trump
family grifting

The New York Times, which also spoke to people familiar with the case, reported that the “cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan,” and that the encounter, as MSNBC also reported, was recorded. The Times indicates that the recording was audio, while MSNBC‘s version of the evidence suggests that video footage exists.

The case implicates both FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney Pam Bondi, who heads the Justice Department. Both were appointed by Trump and are deeply loyal to him politically.

MSNBC reports:

It’s unclear what reasons FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting down the investigation. But a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a “deep state” probe in early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, the sources say.

On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.

The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”

The revelations prompted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to declare that Trump’s second term is the “most corrupt administration we have ever seen.”

Matt Duss, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, asked: “Seriously though, has anyone ever been handed $50,000 cash in a paper bag for something legit?”

While that’s not a legal standard, news of the dropped case against Homan, given his central role in Trump’s ramped-up attacks on migrants and communities nationwide, sparked an array of outrage, many questions, and a demand for more answers from the Justice Department.

“Who’s the illegal now, Tom Homan?” asked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Bobby Jr.'s new MAHA report is a corporate sell-out

MAHA report draws fire as critics say corporate pressure trumps public health

By Carey Gillam and Shannon Kelleher

An actual Trump tweet. Maybe he thinks putting
loony RFK Jr. in charge of the nation's
health will enhance his historical standing

A long-awaited and highly controversial report issued on September 9 by the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission provides a few “crumbs” for public and environmental health advocates, but big wins for powerful food and chemical industries seeking to skirt limits on their products and practices.

The report, unveiled in a press event in Washington DC, is significantly more friendly to corporate interests than a prior MAHA report released in May, which called for sweeping changes to US food, health, science and regulatory systems to address rising rates of chronic disease.

In contrast, the new report speaks of already “robust” regulatory oversight from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and removes or softens language about health risks stemming from exposures to pesticides and other chemicals. It also stresses a need for deregulation in farming operations to reduce the “regulatory burden” of permitting requirements for such things as hazardous waste handling.

The Trump administration said the new report outlines its “approach to pursuing rigorous, gold-standard scientific research to guide informed decisions, promote healthy outcomes for children and families, and drive innovative solutions.”

But nutrition experts and health advocates said the report falls far short of the type of aggressive actions needed to address Americans’ poor health, and appears to be rife with corporate influence.

More Rhode Island children lived in poverty in 2024, new data shows

Encyclopedia of facts about kids in Rhode Island

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Rhode Island had a higher percentage of children living in poverty in 2024 than any other New England state, according to an analysis of new census data.

Last year, the Ocean State’s child poverty rate rose from 13.4% to 16.3%, which made it the highest in New England. The Ocean State ranked 33rd nationally, according to new American Community Survey (ACS) data analyzed by Rhode Island KIDS COUNT.

The survey conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau counted 32,549 children experiencing poverty, up from the 26,901 children in 2023.

In 2024, the federal poverty threshold was defined as $26,650 for a family of three with one adult and two children, and $32,150 for a family of four with two adults and two children.

While this ACS data does not offer more granular breakdowns — like the percentage of children living in deep poverty, defined as living with less than half of the federal threshold — Rhode Island KIDS COUNT’s Executive Director Paige Parks said the news is still a cause for concern.

“I think sometimes in Rhode Island, we may feel like we are different than other states,” Parks said. “New England is very much known for doing well in many rankings, but this is where we are not, and we cannot ignore how many children are living in poverty in Rhode Island. I mean, we rank last in all of New England.”

KIDS COUNT examines the ACS estimates every year as one dataset which informs its annual Factbook, a compendium of data on children in Rhode Island and their wellbeing. The Rhode Island outfit of KIDS COUNT is one state-level affiliate of the nationwide Annie E. Casey Foundation, which collects data and produces similar reports in all 50 states. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: My congratulations to Kids Count RI for their extraordinary efforts to amass the data. However, their encyclopedic approach makes it difficult to actually understand and act on this data. Unlike the annual HousingWorks databook, there are no municipality-specific summaries. Before I retired, I was a strategic researcher for the labor and environmental movements and frequently taught the craft to novice researchers. I cautioned them against what I called "the data dump" where you assemble an impressive amount of research that is so big that no one can actually use it. More important than simply collecting information is to appropriately analyze it and then present it in a form that is useable.  HousingWorks does that, but Kids Count does not, in my opinion.   - Will Collette

It's way past time for the General Assembly to Tax the Rich

Republicans in Washington are gutting the social safety net, and Rhode Islanders will suffer.

Economic Progress Institute Executive Director Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies, Esq., detailed the litany of harms caused by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in a letter to legislative leaders urging the Rhode Island General Assembly to reconvene a special legislative session this fall.

Here’s the letter:

“I urge you to call for a Special Fall Legislative Session to take proactive action against federal cuts and forecasted state budget challenges.

“The passage of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act has set into motion devastating cuts to programs and services that hundreds of thousands of Rhode Islanders depend on, while extending tax breaks for the wealthiest. Rhode Island faces significant and immediate threats to health care access, food security, and our state budget. While some may argue that this is not an urgent situation necessitating the call to reconvene for a special fall session, because some federal cuts are one or two years down the road, we must be proactive in securing sufficient revenue to protect Rhode Islanders and the systems and programs upon which they rely, particularly in light of the projected $300 million state budget deficit for FY27. It is important to understand that some Rhode Islanders may experience existential challenges long before the general assembly is able to put responses into motion, likely at the close of the next legislative session, 10 months from now, with effects that might take six months to two years to be realized. Without swift action, these cuts will harm our residents, destabilize our budget, and exacerbate inequities in 2026 and beyond.

If they come from other countries, they're subject to tariffs

How to recognize antifa

The QUAHOGS Act seeks answers to shellfish decline

Sen. Whitehouse wants to know where the quahogs have gone

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

A bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) aims to address the decline of the quahog and other shellfish populations on the East Coast — and the legislation even bears the name of Rhode Island’s official state shell.

The Quantifying Uncertainty and Action to Help Optimize Growth of Shellfish (QUAHOGS) Act would create a research task force of state and federal agency representatives, fishery management councils, and industry leaders dubbed the “East Coast Bivalve Research Task Force” to find out why fewer bivalves are in the water.

At its peak in 1959, nearly 5 million pounds of quahogs were harvested from Rhode Island waters, according to a March 2024 report by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM). Between 2020 and 2023, that number was less than 500,000 pounds.

Database Bobby Junior uses to justify anti-vax decisions is loaded with unverified reports

Vaccine death and side effects database relies on unverified reports – and Trump officials and right-wing media are applying it out of context

Matt Motta, Boston University and Dominik Stecuła, The Ohio State University

Trump officials intend to link 25 child deaths to COVID-19 vaccines, according to reporting from The Washington Post. These findings will reportedly be discussed during the Sept. 18-19, 2025, meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, with implications for who may be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines in the future.

These death reports are reportedly derived from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a database co-managed by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration. It was originally established in 1990 to detect possible safety problems with vaccines. Unfortunately, the anti-vaccine movement has used this database to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, has promulgated this misinformation through the Make America Healthy Again movement in efforts to limit access to COVID-19 vaccines.

VAERS is ripe for exploitation because it relies on unverified self-reports of side effects. Anyone who received a vaccine can submit a report. And because this information is publicly available, misinterpretations of its data has been used to amplify COVID-19 misinformation through dubious social media channels and mass media, including one of the most popular shows on cable news.

We are political scientists who study the social, political and psychological underpinnings of vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. In our research, we argue that VAERS, despite its limitations, can teach us about more than just vaccine side effects – it can also offer powerful new insights into the origins of vaccine hesitancy in the U.S.

UPDATED: Feds want to revoke SouthCoast Wind's construction permit even though the project is 80% complete

BOEM seeks revocation of SouthCoast Wind approval

By Anastasia E. Lennon, Rhode Island Current

The Interior Department agency regulating offshore wind development asked a federal judge on Thursday to revoke a key approval for the SouthCoast Wind project — an approval granted by the same agency in January in the final days of the Biden administration.

If the federal government’s request is approved, it would deal another blow to the beleaguered project — which has been delayed at least two years due to the Trump administration — and the industry at large.

This is the second time in a week that the administration has sought a remand of an offshore wind project approval, the other being for Maryland’s US Wind project. It comes just weeks after the Interior Department in court filings expressed its intent to remand not only its approval for SouthCoast Wind, but also New England Wind — two important projects for Massachusetts and New Bedford.

UPDATE: On Sept. 22, senior Federal judge Royce Lambreth ruled against the Trump administration, rejected its arguments and granted Orsted's motion to resume construction. 

While the January approval, formally termed the Construction and Operations Plan (COP), gave the green light for construction, SouthCoast Wind was still hamstrung by three outstanding federal permits, and no power purchase agreement with Massachusetts or Rhode Island.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed the motion as part of a lawsuit brought by the Town of Nantucket in March against BOEM and Interior’s approval of the project, which calls for up to 147 turbines and would sit about 20 miles south of Nantucket (and south of Vineyard Wind).

This latest move illustrates the growing role that lawsuits brought by municipalities and activist groups against offshore wind are playing in Trump’s crackdown on the industry. Of the 20 or so actions and orders issued since January, one has directed federal attorneys to review pending litigation against projects and consider a remand of permits that the litigation contests.

President of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO Responds to Federal Administration Moving to Vacate SouthCoast Wind’s COP

“The SouthCoast Wind offshore wind project will deliver affordable, reliable energy to over one million households and thousands of jobs in New England. SouthCoast Wind is creating thousands of family-supporting, union jobs that come with fair wages, healthcare, retirement security, job-site protections, and rigorous training standards. The jobs are now in jeopardy.

“It is unacceptable that this administration is doing everything in their power to kill offshore wind jobs. They say they care about domestic energy and bringing jobs back, and then kill huge sources of reliable, clean power and good union jobs in New England for no good reason. If the SouthCoast Wind project is halted, energy costs will rise, and families across New England will be left scrambling. Working people deserve better. This Federal Administration must withdraw their filing and allow this much-needed project to move forward immediately.”

Sen. Whitehouse Launches Investigation into Industry Groups’ Influence on Endangerment Finding Repeal

Whitehouse wants documents on industry lobbying leading to Trump regime plan to declare that greenhouse gases pose no harm

By Aidan Hughes

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse announced a probe on September 16 into the role that industry groups and other organizations played in the proposed roll back of the federal government’s key “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases.

The endangerment finding, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, has served as the basis for the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, power plants and oil and gas operations for more than a decade. But in July, the Trump administration announced its intention to revoke that finding.

In a statement announcing the proposal, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency had heard from “stakeholders” that “EPA’s [greenhouse gas emissions] standards themselves, not carbon dioxide … was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods.”

Whitehouse, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a longtime climate hawk, pushed against those claims on Tuesday and questioned whether fossil fuel interests had unduly influenced the administration’s decision.

Boycott Disney!

Turns out taking bribes is a requirement for Trump appointees

Homan is Trump's "immigration czar" and the architect for Trump's mass deportation scheme. Most undocumented migrants do not carry enough cash with them to earn a pass from Homan

URI filmmaker puts spotlight on vulnerable Saltmarsh Sparrow

Jason Jaacks’ new documentary, ‘Between Moon Tides,’ now airing globally on Guardian Documentaries

Kristen Curry 

URI filmmaker Jason Jaacks is putting a spotlight on the vulnerable Saltmarsh Sparrow in a new documentary, “Between Moon Tides.” (Photos / Jason Jaacks)

Rising tidal waters are posing increasing threats to one of our most inconspicuous shore dwellers: the Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammospiza caudicuta), found only in healthy salt marshes along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Weighing less than an ounce (the equivalent of three nickels), the sparrows nest in tidal salt marshes from Virginia to Maine during the summer, then migrate as far south as Florida for the winter. Threatened by a number of factors, this unique species is projected by multiple scientists to become extinct by mid-century, unless prudent conservation measures are implemented.

Deirdre Robinson and a small team of citizen scientists are
fighting, against the odds, to save Saltmarsh Sparrows from extinction.

In Rhode Island, the sparrow is listed as a species of greatest conservation need and is the most threatened species of bird that nests in the state, according to URI Professor Emeritus Peter Paton, with sea level rise their primary threat. 

A new documentary, “Between Moon Tides,” by the University of Rhode Island’s Jason Jaacks, details local efforts to help prevent the extinction of this unique bird, depicting its imperiled home habitat. The documentary was recently purchased by Guardian Documentaries and is airing online and locally this fall.

Meeting of Bobby Jr.'s hand-picked advisors was a mess

Mercury in Your Hot Dog? Vaccine Skeptics Face Their Limits at Crucial CDC Meeting

Arthur Allen and Renuka Rayasam 

Public health officials watched with dread as a panel shaped by the Trump administration took up an agenda to begin dismantling six decades of vaccination development and progress.

But while the result seemed foretold, the debate was far from unanimous.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, met at a satellite campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because the agency’s headquarters were still smashed up from a deadly gun attack last month by a man who said the covid vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made it clear he wants the panel to change the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule, which establishes, sometimes with legal authority, which vaccines are to be mandated, paid for, and administered by states, insurers, and doctors across the country.

Kennedy fired the 17-member panel in June and has so far restocked it with 12 people, including outspoken critics of vaccination. On Sept. 18, the new panel’s discussions reflected its thin expertise and ignorance of how the vaccination schedule came to be. Scientific questions answered decades ago were asked as if they were brand-new.

RI ACLU scores a win for free speech

At a time when Free Speech is under fire, an important win in Rhode Island

---

For background, see: Void of Truth: RI ACLU sues Trump Administration over gender ideology prohibitions in arts grants.

From an ACLU of Rhode Island Press Release:

In an important victory for First Amendment rights, a federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled in favor of four arts organizations in their challenge to the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) policy disfavoring any grant applications for projects that the government believes “promote gender ideology.” The court held that the NEA’s policy violates the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and enjoined and set aside its implementation of an executive order that prohibits federal funding for grants that express ideas disfavored by the government.

U.S. Senior District Court Judge William Smith held that the NEA’s grant application review process “violates the First Amendment because it is a viewpoint-based restriction on private speech.” The order explains, “the NEA intends to disfavor applications that promote gender ideology precisely because they promote gender ideology. The Final Notice, therefore, promises to penalize artists based on their speech.”

Additionally, the court determined the NEA’s policy was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the APA because “…there is zero explanation of what it means for a project to ‘promote gender ideology,’ let alone how that concept relates to artistic merit, artistic excellence, general standards of decency, or respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”

Like Orwell's totalitarian state in 1984, they're forcing us to accept that 2 + 2 = 5

MAGA's mandatory canonization of Charlie Kirk

Aaron Regunberg

Former Charlestown state Rep. Blake "Flip" Filippi
 jumps on the bandwagon

I really didn’t want to write about Charlie Kirk. But over the last week I’ve become increasingly shaken by MAGA’s attempts use this tragedy to sever our nation’s grasp on the existence of an objective reality, and by the willingness of too many Democrats to let them. So I wanted to share this piece, published in The New Republic. Thanks for reading, and wishing you the best in these bleak, bleak times.

—Aaron

'O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?’

In the days since Charlie Kirk was murdered, I’ve found myself repeatedly musing on this passage from George Orwell’s 1984. The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, had once written in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” In Orwell’s totalitarian state, this assertion was a thought crime, and following Winston’s disappearance into Big Brother’s torture chambers, the party sought to break him—or, more specifically, to break his commitment to the existence of an objective reality.

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ Winston blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’

The moment that news of Kirk’s shooting hit the internet, MAGA—its influencers, podcasters, media figures, Republican elected officials, cabinet directors, Vice President JD Vance, and President Donald Trump—immediately began insisting that two and two make five. Their gaslighting around Kirk’s death has been so extensive—and so speedily promulgated—that it’s hard to fully grasp the sheer magnitude of their mendacity. 

Thank you for your attention to this matter

 

Times sure do change

URI poll shows 93% of Rhode Islanders believe housing costs are a problem

Survey finds health care, housing, roads and bridges among top concerns

Dawn Bergantino 

A new public opinion poll from researchers at the University of Rhode Island finds that 93% of Rhode Islanders believe that housing costs are a problem; yet, when it comes to solutions, opinions are divided. The poll is the third from the Rhode Island Survey Initiative, led by URI’s Harrington School of Communication and Media; Social Science Institute for Research, Education, and Policy; and Department of Political Science.

The annual poll surveyed a representative sample of 500 Rhode Island residents ages 18 and older between Aug. 1 and Aug. 18, 2025. Administered by the polling firm YouGov via the internet, survey participants were chosen from YouGov’s opt-in survey panel of Rhode Island residents. The margin of error for the poll is +/- 6.01%.

“In addition to core questions, each year the Rhode Island Survey Initiative selects one major theme for in-depth study,” said Ashlea Rundlett, URI associate professor of political science, who was a member of the research team. “Given rising costs and the lack of affordable and available housing across the state for people at many income levels, this year we felt it pertinent to explore Rhode Islanders’ opinions on the topic.”

A monster seaweed bloom is taking over the Atlantic

Seaweed: threat or menace?

Florida Atlantic University

US Fish and Wildlife Service

Researchers at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute have released a landmark review tracing four decades of changes in pelagic sargassum - free-floating brown seaweed that plays a vital role in the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem.

Once thought to be primarily confined to the nutrient-poor waters of the Sargasso Sea, sargassum is now recognized as a rapidly growing and widely distributed marine organism, whose expansion across the Atlantic is closely linked to both natural processes and human-induced nutrient enrichment.

The review, published in the journal Harmful Algae, sheds new light on the origins and development of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, a massive recurring bloom of sargassum that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of West Africa to the Gulf of America.

Since its first appearance in 2011, this belt has formed nearly every year - except in 2013 - and in May, reached a new record biomass of 37.5 million tons. This does not include the baseline biomass of 7.3 million tons historically estimated in the Sargasso Sea.

By combining historical oceanographic observations, modern satellite imagery, and advanced biogeochemical analyses, this review provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the dramatic changes in sargassum distribution, productivity and nutrient dynamics. It also highlights the broader implications of anthropogenic nutrient enrichment on ocean ecology and the need for coordinated international efforts to monitor and manage the impacts of these massive seaweed blooms.

Yes, this is who we are: America’s 250-year history of political violence

"Violence is as American as apple pie"

Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino

Punishment by tar and feather of Thomas Ditson, who purchased
 a gun from a British soldier in Boston in March 1775. 
interim Archives/Getty Images

The day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, commentators repeated a familiar refrain: “This isn’t who we are as Americans.”

Others similarly weighed in. Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” declared that Americans solve political disagreements peacefully: “This is not the way we do it.”

Yet other awful episodes come immediately to mind: President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on Nov. 22, 1963. More recently, on June 14, 2025, Melissa Hortman, speaker emerita of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was shot and killed at her home, along with her husband and their golden retriever.

As a historian of the early republic, I believe that seeing this violence in America as distinct “episodes” is wrong.

First lady Jacqueline Kennedy leans over to assist her husband,
John F. Kennedy, just after he is shot in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963.
 Bettman/Getty Images

Instead, they reflect a recurrent pattern.

American politics has long personalized its violence. Time and again, history’s advance has been imagined to depend on silencing or destroying a single figure – the rival who becomes the ultimate, despicable foe.

Hence, to claim that such shootings betray “who we are” is to forget that the U.S. was founded upon – and has long been sustained by – this very form of political violence.

Trump and FCC actions violate Trump's own Executive Order banning government censorship

Here in its entirety is Donald Trump's own January 2025 Executive Order with sections highlighted that ban Trump and the FCC's actions to sue and threaten the media.

RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP

The White House

January 20, 2025

     By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

     Section 1.  Purpose.  The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.  Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.  Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.  Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.  

     Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to:    

(a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;

     (b)  ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;

     (c)  ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and

     (d)  identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.

     Sec. 3.  Ending Censorship of Protected Speech.  

(a)  No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.

     (b)  The Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies, shall investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years that are inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings of the report.

     Sec. 4.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)   the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

     (b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

     (c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    January 20, 2025.

For reference, here is Wikipedia's description of the anti-criticism law adopted in Nazi Germany that, among other things, prohibited criticizing the government, Nazi Party or Nazi Party officials. One key difference between the Heimtückegesetz and Trump's acts against the news media is that the Nazi law was actually enacted by the legislature, albeit under Nazi pressure, whereas Trump's actions are entirely without legal foundation.

Treachery Act of 1934

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Treachery Act of 1934 was a German law established by the Third Reich on 20 December 1934.^[1] Known as the Heimtückegesetz, its official title was the "Law against Treacherous Attacks on the State and Party and for the Protection of Party Uniforms" (Gesetz gegen heimtückische Angriffe auf Staat und Partei und zum Schutz der Parteiuniformen). It established penalties for the abuse of Nazi Party badges and uniforms, restricted the right to freedom of speech, and criminalized all remarks causing putative severe damage to the welfare of the Third Reich, the prestige of the Nazi government or the Nazi Party.

Universal remedy

Put them on a plane to El Salvador

Voluntary staff buy-outs allow RI public media to avoid lay-offs

RI PBS, The Public’s Radio avoid layoffs despite federal defunding

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

CLICK HERE

Rhode Island’s newly created public media entity will not lay off any employees, after enough workers opted to take voluntary buyouts, Pam Johnston, CEO of Rhode Island PBS and The Public’s Radio, said in an email to company employees Wednesday.

A copy of the internal email was obtained by Rhode Island Current.

“While the built-in waiting period included in the Voluntary Separation Program offered to staff is still open, we can now confirm that the program has achieved the savings necessary to close the $1.1 million budget gap caused by the elimination of federal funding,” Johnston wrote. “This means we will not have to move to layoffs at this time.”

The update comes almost a month after Johnston put employees on notice of potential staffing cuts, estimating a $1.1 million hole for the newly merged public media organizations due to congressional defunding. 

The loss of longstanding federal funding for public broadcasting, approved by Congress as part of the federal rescission package, came on the heels of renaming the new Rhode Island entity as Ocean State Media. 

Mosquito report: we are still at high risk for West Nile Virus but other mosquito-borne pathogens not detected so far this season

Also: Looks like we're going to dodge another hurricane

Soon to be Hurricane Gabrielle is forecast to veer away from the US. Bermuda likely to take a big hit. 

R.I. Secretary of State Gregg Amore rejects Trump DOJ probe into R.I. voter data

Despite threats, Amore tells Pam Bondi NO to private voter information

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Amore in Charlestown for the 350th annual
Narragansett powwow. That's him on the left

More than two months after the U.S. Department of Justice asked Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore for information about registered voters, Amore has finally responded:

No.

At least, the Trump administration won’t get anything beyond the state voter lists already publicly available — typically requested by filling out an online form and paying $25 —  though Amore indicated he will hand over the information to the Justice Department for free.

The Justice Department, which has sent similar requests to states nationwide, wanted more: Rhode Island voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers, even though this data is protected under state and federal laws.

“The current presidential administration has a long track record of seeking to, and in some cases, succeeding in, interfering in the operation of elections and sowing seeds of distrust between the general voting public and the very election processes that maintain and further our democracy,” Amore said in a statement Tuesday. “I will not participate in an unsubstantiated search for data and information.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has continued to promote false claims about election fraud, directing federal agencies to “scrub” voter rolls he claims are rife with noncitizens, even though documentation of noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

Amore’s refusal to comply with the federal directive comes the same day as the Justice Department sued Maine and Oregon for refusing to turn in personal information about state registered voters and applicants, along with state election administrators.

The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security

Unneeded, unhelpful and still there

By Eli Hager for ProPublica

Steve Chan in Pro Bono Photo

Reporting Highlights

• Missed Opportunity: Some Social Security officials said they welcomed DOGE — the agency needs a technological overhaul — only to see DOGE ignore them and prioritize quick (often empty) wins.
• Internal Revolt: Leland Dudek, the agency’s then acting chief, helped DOGE at first, then tried to resist when he saw what it was doing, Dudek said in 15 hours of candid interviews.
• DOGE Lives On: Multiple former DOGErs have taken permanent roles at the Social Security Administration, and Senate-confirmed Commissioner Frank Bisignano has embraced its approach.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

On Feb. 10, on the third floor of the Social Security Administration’s Baltimore-area headquarters, Leland Dudek unfurled a 4-foot-wide roll of paper that extended to 20 feet in length. It was a visual guide that the agency had kept for years to explain Social Security’s many technological systems and processes. The paper was covered in flow charts, arrows and text so minuscule you almost needed a magnifying glass to read it. Dudek called it Social Security’s “Dead Sea Scroll.”

Dudek and a fellow Social Security Administration bureaucrat taped the scroll across a wall of a windowless executive office. This was where a team from the new Department of Government Efficiency was going to set up shop.

DOGE was already terrifying the federal bureaucracy with the prospect of mass job loss and intrusions into previously sacrosanct databases. Still, Dudek and a handful of his tech-oriented colleagues were hopeful: If any agency needed a dose of efficiency, it was theirs. “There was kind of an excitement, actually,” a longtime top agency official said. “I’d spent 29 years trying to use technology and data in ways that the agency would never get around to.”

The Social Security Administration is 90 years old. Even today, thousands of its physical records are stored in former limestone mines in Missouri and Pennsylvania. Its core software dates back to the early 1980s, and only a few programmers remain who understand the intricacies of its more than 60 million lines of code. The agency has been talking about switching from paper Social Security cards to electronic ones for two decades, without making it happen.

DOGE, billed as a squad of crack technologists, seemed perfectly designed to overcome such obstacles. And its young members were initially inquisitive about how Social Security worked and what most needed fixing. Several times over those first few days, Akash Bobba, a 21-year-old coder who’d been the first of them to arrive, held his face close to Dudek’s scroll, tracing connections between the agency’s venerable IT systems with his index finger. Bobba asked: “Who would know about this part of the architecture?”

Before long, though, he and the other DOGErs buried their heads in their laptops and plugged in their headphones. Their senior leaders had already written out goals on a whiteboard. At the top: Find fraud. Quickly.