News and commentary for understanding and coping with the years ahead...
Existence Denied
[T]he administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with six people familiar with the plans. The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.
When the Trump regime took over in January and Elon Musk's data-raiders started hacking federal agencies of various kinds, a group chat in which I participate started speculating about what kinds of terrible things this crowd might do. One member of the group wondered if the hacking might include the Social Security Administration's "death master file" – a list of people, presumably deceased, who would not receive any federal benefits and whose names and other identifying information would be flagged so that financial institutions would refuse to serve them.
What if, the conversation continued, the infamously cruel and paranoid regime decided to add living persons to the death master list? Doing so would destroy people's actual lives – which might make it just what a vicious government would do.
It doesn't matter in the slightest that the victims of this Orwellian treatment are supposedly "convicted criminals or 'suspected terrorists'" – given the regime's penchant for lying and infinite bad faith, there is zero reason to believe this. They're kidnapping and sending innocent immigrants to Central American hellholes, after all – and they're destroying the credibility of a a database that should be especially sacrosanct from manipulation.
Naturally, as the Times and others are reporting, the regime sees more opportunity for screwing with people's lives. Documents show that the regime intends to expand this vicious program, which as the contemptible "acting" Social Security chief crowed to his staff, means that targets' financial lives are "terminated."
Since the Republican-controlled Congress is obviously not interested in doing anything to slow, much less stop, the rampaging of Trump, Musk, and their cultists, the courts are likely to be the only guard rail. I hope they're equipped for this new burden. Meanwhile, before you or someone you know gets financially disappeared, call your senators and member of the House and demand that they get loud about this, and fast.
At least one senator – Ron Wyden of Oregon – does get it. I'll give him the last word here, in this statement:
“Donald Trump is intent on weaponizing Social Security against American citizens and those he has deemed an enemy of the state This move will victimize American citizens who have had their identities stolen or who naturalized. Declaring a Social Security number as dead is nearly impossible to undo, doubly so now that Elon Musk and DOGE have eviscerated customer service at the agency. This action raises the prospect of the Trump Administration stealing legally earned Social Security benefits from American citizens, further proof that Trump’s promise to protect Social Security is a lie. The Trump Administration officials who perpetrate this unconscionable act of erasure will be held accountable when the bill comes due.”
During a tense hearing before US District Judge Paula Xinis on Friday afternoon, Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign repeatedly stonewalled the judge as she sought to nail down details about the steps the administration is taking to secure the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, at one point even admitting he had no information to provide on exactly where the Maryland father of three currently is.
Why are Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and “border czar” Tom Homan showing up personally for raids, cameras and influencers in tow? Because the Trump administration currently does not have enough agents to round people up or camps to put them in. (ICE is currently looking for new contractors, with plans to spend an additional $45 billion over the next two years on immigrant detention.) But if Noem and Homan appear in person for these raids—if they become news events, if they generate posts—they can terrorize many more thousands of people than they can deport. This mass-deportation machine relies upon propaganda, chaos, and fear to accomplish what they cannot with the laws, enforcement officers, and infrastructure they have at their disposal.
America's up-and-down tariff "policy" has demonstrated the Trump regime's fundamental indifference to what ideology means to actual people. When it comes to immigration, the moves we're seeing are clear evidence of Dear Leader's (and his cult's) racism, hostility to norms and laws it doesn't like, penchant for cruelty, and – above all – pure contempt for the human beings it harms.
The CNN report above is the latest exhibit in Trump world's crime wave, in this case the abduction and shipping to an El Salvador infamous slave-labor prison a man it admits is innocent of any crime – and then willfully dodging the judge's plain orders to bring him back. Let's be clear what this is about: an up-yours to the judicial branch, and a warning to everyone one else that no one is safe from this stuff.
Meanwhile, Trump apparatchiks are competing with each other to flaunt their cruelty. The reliably creepy Kristi Noem's alliance with one of the absolute vilest of extreme right-wing "influencers" is, as the New Republic's commentary explains, part of a propaganda campaign to dehumanize people the regime hates and/or fears. It's meant to condition us to the growing mistreatment of those people, and normalize the flagrant lawbreaking.
The "mainstream" press is mostly playing along, which sickens me. Our journalists can't get their brains around the reality that fascists are in charge and intend to bring their evil to all of our towns. This evil "entertainment" is a warning to the administration's immediate targets, to leave before it's their turn to be put on display. And it's a warning to everyone else who has a conscience: Support this shredding of American values, or just shut up, because it could be you.
In his second term, Donald Trump combines a form of paranoia with a strong desire for revenge against anyone he considers to have slighted him or to stand in his way. And now he reportedly takes advice on national security from fruitcakes and could have his hands on the ability to spy on anyone he wants. There’s a horse loose in the hospital, and no one knows what to do about it.
The episode prompting this Prospect magazine commentary is bonkers, and scary. It is a capsule of the Trump regime's criminal insanity, where the president of the United States fires senior government/military officials because a cartoonishly extreme agitator is able to pull his strings.
Not only is Dear Leader getting this (wretched) advice from a way-out-there conspiracy theorist, he is moving fast to control – for his own fascist use – the most invasive array of surveillance tools humanity has, in its collective contempt for liberty and human rights, ever assembled. The U.S. under Trump will soon outstrip China's vile dictatorship in watching, and controlling, its citizens.
It's vital to remember that pervasive spying on everyone and everything didn't happen only on Trump's watch, though his first administration was certainly culpable. It happened because administrations and Congresses of both major parties wanted it to happen, because they have routinely opted to use taxpayers' money to buy more surveillance tools and then give presidents unchecked power to abuse them. State and local governments have been entirely complicit, installing all manner of spying devices. And of course, corporate spying on us is now the absolute norm – and you can bet corporations are collaborating with the regime to stay in its favor.
So here we are. A visibly deranged, wannabe fascist is in power, getting his ideas from nutcase extremists, and getting ready to turn the most powerful tools of oppression against his own people. "Scary" doesn't begin to capture what's happening here.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Devan Cole, Emily R. Condon
Melissa Gira Grant
Alan Rusbridger
