privacylawchi.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Exactly why I've been writing, podcasting, and damn near screaming about using the right language. The mainstream media is failing us SO badly right now. Stop. Calling. This. Shit. DEI. This is (re)segregation. This is racial purging. Cleansing Black people from positions of power.

submitted 12 hours ago • 39 comments

The nations top research universities (R1) are under assault by the Trump administration. Pitts has paused all PhD admissions for next year. Many R1 schools are also Division 1 NCAA schools. All SEC, Big 10, ACC, Big 12, Ivy League schools. Suspend sports and explain it is due to Musk, Trump

submitted 21 hours ago • 56 comments

The entire business model of American R1 universities is not viable without restoration of federal funding, & every individual institution pretending it can solve this problem alone is also not viable. University presidents need to be speaking out, collectively & loudly about this, in DC, right now.

submitted 1 day ago • 40 comments

Last night's Pentagon massacre is much more than realized. Not just firing the black CJCS and first woman CNO but all the senior JAG officers and hiring a man who just joined 3 different crypto firms tied to Kushner and Thiel as Chairman. I did a deep dive into it open.substack.com/pub/fpwellma...

submitted 18 hours ago • 1195 comments

I was on the board of the ABA about 10 years ago and all I can say is what the actual fuck are they thinking

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

None of this has anything to do with effectiveness, or “lethality,” or promoting “warfighters," or any other buzzwords. It is praetorianism, plain and simple, and it is an assault on our military and our democracy. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 1 day ago • 341 comments

Slams dictionary shut til Monday

submitted 1 day ago • 42 comments

btw, i will tell you this - i have been talking to people all day, and the media is missing, whether intentionally or not, how absolutely, volcanically angry the people who have been fired are, not because they lost their jobs, but because their jobs matter, to us

submitted 1 day ago • 62 comments

This is very, very bad. Am working on a write-up, but let’s just say that firing military leaders for blatantly political reasons is wildly inappropriate; firing all the too lawyers is ominous; firing them all at the same time is a terrifying five-alarm fire

submitted 1 day ago • 114 comments

Friday night news dump: Trump fires Chairman of the Joint Chiefs(after he and Hegseth both repeatedly called for ousting him). Names a retired 3-star with no major command history as the replacement. Also fires Chief of Naval Operations New @taskandpurpose.com taskandpurpose.com/news/trump-b...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Side note. There are eight members of the joint chiefs. the chair is black. the CNO (navy) is a woman. the other six are white guys. chair and the cno got fired tonight.

submitted 1 day ago • 1090 comments

So the President not only fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He also fired the top JAGs at the Army, Navy and Air Force. Those are the lead people who determine what is a legal order and what is not. So if you're planning to do things that are illegal they're the most obvious obstacle.

submitted 1 day ago • 161 comments

it's really saying something that this is how an apparent friend explains Elon's goals www.vanityfair.com/news/story/e...

submitted 1 day ago • 179 comments

I think there’s this tendency to assume Musk enters each agency with some kind of plan. But his office is 30 people, largely children, and the federal government employs millions. He spends half his time on drugs, tweeting, doing interviews. It’s all random noise www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

submitted 1 day ago • 38 comments

If you still have friends/family who think this administration will help them, talk to them about money....

submitted 1 day ago • 39 comments

Powerful. Tomorrow’s front page of the most influential weekly publication in Germany. “BETRAYED. First Zelensky, Soon Us? The radical departure of the US from its allies.”

submitted 1 day ago • 295 comments

My God, @democrats.org Get this person into an online & TV ad NOW.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

wearily fuhrerprinzip

submitted 1 day ago • 22 comments

NEW: DOGE has operated in relative darkness even as it appears to be behind an explosive — and legally disputed — overhaul of the government. But details about the Musk-led agency teams have emerged in court. We review (and link to docs) here: www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

submitted 1 day ago • 30 comments

So. It has officially happened. I have been officially let go from my position at CDC. I wasn’t a probationary employee. I had stellar performance reviews every year. I’ll be ok. But please understand that many worked HARD to get into these positions and were doing great public health work.

submitted 1 day ago • 1857 comments

CSPAN Caller from West Virginia: I’m a diabetic and I’m on Medicare. When Biden was in there, my insulin was $6 for a 28 day supply. I just went to CVS, it went back up to $80…

submitted 1 day ago • 938 comments

We (@knightcolumbia) are launching a new research initiative on "Federal Funding and the First Amendment"--a topic that has suddenly become hugely significant. The call for proposals is here: knightcolumbia.org/blog/call-fo...

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party.

submitted 2 days ago • 78 comments

To the extent that American men have specific problems linked to their gender this is caused by a lack of feminism, rather than its excess.

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

Lawyers at Twitter are reportedly threatening advertisers to spend more money on the platform “or else” Elon Musk will use his connections with Trump to hurt their companies.

submitted 2 days ago • 827 comments

People have gone to jail for less.

submitted 2 days ago • 202 comments

New: DOGE's spending has been secret. No longer. My colleagues have uncovered it. www.propublica.org/article/doge...

submitted 2 days ago • 857 comments

“Either it’s an agency covered by FOIA with the authority to do what it’s doing, or it’s purely advising the president and can’t be directing agencies in the way it now is.”

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

@jenpsaki.msnbc.com: "Inspectors general are a headache for everyone. You know why? Because they're investigating every agency and they find stuff! Including waste and fraud and abuse! They wouldn't be firing them if they cared about waste, fraud, and abuse."

submitted 2 days ago • 327 comments

Good speech by Pritzker who is stepping up in this moment.

submitted 2 days ago • 32 comments

Pritzker: If we don’t want to repeat history, then for god’s sake, in this moment, we better be strong enough to learn from it.

submitted 3 days ago • 567 comments

Susan Collins believes what the White House and Musk are up to is illegal, and she expects lawsuits. But she doesn't have to wait for the courts: She's the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which gives her real power that she could be using right now. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

submitted 2 days ago • 50 comments

This kind of hard hitting in-depth reporting is why I'm proud to be a monthly supporter of the @texasobserver.org Join: texasobserver.org/join

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

"It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable confidence that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things." www.wired.com/story/doge-i...

submitted 2 days ago • 15 comments

This is like Senators asking for Trump to release funding for their pet projects. When you campaigned for a personalist presidency you have turned yourself into a beggar seeking the King’s favor rather than a citizen who can be confident of equal treatment for all.

submitted 2 days ago • 110 comments

How incompetent is Muskrat and DOGE? They just fired the newly hired future director of the NIH center for Alzheimer’s research just because she was still in her probationary period.

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

The root that tears apart your foundation begins as a seed of distrust, hate, and blame. The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

submitted 3 days ago • 845 comments

UPDATE: Nearly 100 migrants, recently deported by the United States to Panama where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, several of the migrants said. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/w...

submitted 3 days ago • 59 comments

The DoD firings are going to be... interesting. The DoD civilians are the ones who actually keep the major functions on every base up and running. The military personnel move around so much, there's no continuity without the DoD civilians.

submitted 4 days ago • 67 comments

The tragedy is not merely that the old world is gone—that’s the nature of history. The horror is that most still cling to its ghost, sleepwalking as predators circle. Comfort has made them cowards. Wake them, or history will do it with a fist.

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

This article understates the danger of the Musk-Trump lies on Social Security. They will claim massive fraud as a justification to massively cut, which helps them with tax cuts for the wealthiest. No, there are not millions of dead people receiving SS checks. www.ksat.com/news/politic...

submitted 3 days ago • 43 comments

I had more to say about Missouri's lawsuit against Starbucks, and AG Andrew Bailey's apparent belief that if you’re overcharged for black coffee, you should blame a Black barista--not a corporation tryna make as much money as possible offa pumpkin-spiced nonsense ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

submitted 3 days ago • 8 comments

In 2019, RFK Jr visited Samoa to spread anti-vax lies, spurring a measles outbreak that led to the deaths of 83 people - mostly children. We can’t let that tragedy repeat in Texas. The MMR vaccine is 97% effective at preventing measles. Let’s stop the spread. www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-m...

submitted 4 days ago • 918 comments

Senators can, at any time, tell Trump he has exceeded his power. Instead, they have conceded their power, turning themselves into beggars. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

submitted 3 days ago • 17 comments

"This is in violation of a presidential executive order. It needs to stop" -- Elon Musk, on Hannity's show, makes clear he has no idea how the American government works by asserting that Trump can use executive orders to unilaterally impound funds appropriated by Congress

submitted 4 days ago • 454 comments

I understand why these stories exist but it’s important to be clear that he’s not “saving” 16 billion, he’s choosing, personally, without oversight, to wipe out 16 billion dollars of government services to veterans and the disabled and food safety etc etc

submitted 3 days ago • 518 comments

With this EO, Trump is explicitly seizing control of agencies meant to operate free from presidential interference, such as the FCC, FTC, FEC and financial regulators. Now any new regulations must go through the White House. Monumental change here. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

submitted 4 days ago • 46 comments

I've noted some of the procedural things Democrats could be doing in Congress, but this point from @edgeofsports.bsky.social's great piece in the Nation deserves emphasis. This is basic politics, and it's baffling that every Democrat isn't doing it every day. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

submitted 3 days ago • 321 comments