My experience is that everyone who's not close to any of these impacts is apathetic or treating events like they're reality TV, and even light attempts at convincing that there's more going on and that we might be in a historic and bad situation is met with hostility as if you just told someone's small kid that Santa isn't real.
At best they care about the financial parts of the news.
CalRobert 2 hours ago [-]
Some of us are scared shitless but have been called hysterical for years. Some of us emigrated.
throwaway984393 2 hours ago [-]
Fear is one thing, cowardice is another
markbnj 25 minutes ago [-]
Like using a throwaway account to accuse someone of cowardice.
myvoiceismypass 3 minutes ago [-]
And Congress is full of cowards afraid to offend their god-king.
ndsipa_pomu 25 minutes ago [-]
It might be wiser to emigrate if you cannot trust your fellow citizens and neighbours to care about your country becoming fascist. If you've got brown skin, then you'd be better off leaving on your own terms rather than being exported to a concentration camp in El Salvador.
i80and 3 hours ago [-]
People only caring about immediate financial impacts is so deeply disheartening
phkahler 2 hours ago [-]
I see that as a broad trend. Very very few people have guiding principles these days.
The "problem" with principles is that living by them sometimes means going against something we want right now. People don't want to concede anything, even for their own ideals.
DrillShopper 1 hours ago [-]
People want to be able to eat, not be homeless, and provide for their families.
The safety net in America is tattered and torn, with the current administration working to remove it.
bognition 2 hours ago [-]
Welcome to America where the only God is the greenback
iszomer 2 hours ago [-]
"..and I'll spend it as fast as I can." --Kingston Trio
"The Constitution explicitly forbids Congress from issuing bills of attainder—laws that single out individuals for punishment without trial. While that restriction technically applies to the Legislative branch, the spirit of it clearly applies here. A president cannot simply declare someone an enemy of the state for contradicting a political narrative. That’s not national security—it’s authoritarianism, dressed up in executive language."
So the Constitution does not forbid it. All executive orders, it could be argued, are authoritarian, not just the ones that you happen to dislike.
The moral? Be damned careful to whom you give this authority.
aqme28 1 hours ago [-]
Well the way it should work is that executive orders are not laws and should not be treated as such. They’re supposed to be memos about how executive agencies should interpret the law. Somehow though, as congress has languished they’ve been accruing more and more power
pclmulqdq 1 hours ago [-]
Congress largely relinquished that power by creating bills that establish rule-making executive agencies rather than writing the rules themselves. That leaves congresspeople free to do things like trade stocks and raise money for their respective parties. They claim they would be too busy to read all the rules they would have to pass, but (1) that's the point and (2) they pass massive bills they don't read anyway. This version of America is fundamentally broken, but it seems to be the nash equilibrium of the system given greedy congrespeople and a greedy executive.
danaris 18 minutes ago [-]
No, that's bullshit.
Requiring Congress to get involved every time a regulatory agency needs to adapt to new circumstances or new technology would leave us at the mercy of unscrupulous corporations who can and will "move fast and break things."
No; Congress relinquished their power when Congressional Republicans chose to become "the party of No" and just prevent anything from happening under Obama. That's when executive orders started to become much more common.
intended 1 hours ago [-]
All executive orders, it can be shown - expected a functioning set of co-equal branches of government.
Congress is broken - intentionally.
pjc50 48 minutes ago [-]
It's not broken, it's complicit. As I understand it Congress has a R majority, which is why all this is happening.
yubblegum 2 minutes ago [-]
The time window you indicate here is too narrow for the topic under discussion, and thinking in partisan terms about the dysfunction of this republic an error, in my opinion. At the foundational (practical not ideological) level, the complicity has been between the economic, political, and informational power centers in US. It is possible they did not foresee the black swan of Trumpism and now a faction of the ruling elite is being excised through mechanisms of their own making. But that would not absolve them of the responsibility for where we are today.
caseysoftware 34 minutes ago [-]
Congress abdicated their role quite a while ago.
They don't even pass a budget anymore.. which they're explicitly required to do. They learned there are political consequences to their action so they handed their job to agencies in the Executive Branch to write their own rules which acted like laws.
When SCOTUS struck down Chevron Doctrine last year, it boiled down to "No, Congress writes the laws."
The fix is Congress doing their job.
intended 1 minutes ago [-]
Yes, this is the fix, and waiting till the midterms is NOT an option. For what its worth, this has been my position from day 1, and its going to be the case every single day. Congress needs to get its ass in gear, and for that voters will need to take a look and see exactly what is stopping it, down to individual reasons for each congressperson.
Also, its easy to paint people as cowards, however most people don't want to be so. They are not traitors, perhaps just have misplaced their courage.
>Krebs ... falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen
This quote coming from "whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets" is pretty wild. This seems to be retribution, plain and simple.
ndsipa_pomu 23 minutes ago [-]
> This seems to be retribution, plain and simple.
It's hardly surprising as it's almost the defining feature of Trump - pettiness and revenge minded.
(though strangely, he hasn't publicly insulted his Pennsylvania would-be-assassin, but luckily his ear has healed remarkably well and so maybe he feels no need to do so)
So, I saw evanjrowley's post before it was flagged, and did my own research, following what his links said, to the sources they linked.
Simply put, evanjrowley's links are lies. The Kreb's specific claims are lies. They link to sources that are carefully edited, and even then, it's clear that is being presented by evanjrowley's sites is not what is being said.
Simply put, evanjrowley is trying to spread disinformation.
evanjrowley 40 minutes ago [-]
23 minutes elapsed between when I posted that comment and your reply. Did you really spend that amount of time to digest, research, and debunk the stories in those long articles? Either your research was surface-level at best, or you're just an LLM.
If those really are lies that are so easy for you to dismiss, then why don't you prove it?
jonahbenton 3 hours ago [-]
The silence from cybersec, with a couple of exceptions, about DOGE is stunning to me. Not this story but what I thought the headline referred to.
specialp 2 hours ago [-]
You see this in other areas too like academia being afraid they will get the ire of the administration and lose money. For a lot of firms they don't want to suddenly get their government contracts dropped by speaking out. This is how things slowly become more authoritarian, and freedom of speech dies. This is also why the gradual expansion of executive power was not good.
If the threat of financial loss stops people from criticizing actions, imagine what it would be like if you would be investigated and jailed on sham charges like in some other countries.
jnsie 17 minutes ago [-]
> imagine what it would be like if you would be investigated and jailed on sham charges like in some other countries
Some other countries? The US is renditioning people without due (any!) process ostensibly based on their tattoos. I'm not saying this to be pithy but to sound (or at least amplify) the alarm.
trw_speech 1 hours ago [-]
Freedom of speech in Academia has been dead for more than a decade. It's just that you disagree with what is being silenced right now.
You can't spend years after Obama carving out ever larger chunks of politics as hate speech and not expect payback.
This is payback.
And the people who cared most about freedom of speech have long been silenced. I hope you take this is the educational moment it is and start supporting the removal of exemptions for free speech that were put in place between 2008 and 2024.
specialp 56 minutes ago [-]
Did I infer that I did not see a problem with that as well? This is the token whataboutism that plagues us. People with this mindset do not have any ideals like free speech or democracy, they just use transgressions that "the other side" did to justify the gradually worse things they do ad-infinitum. If you are for freedom of speech, you would see a problem with both, not just what was done in the past, and portray what is being done now as "payback" That is just pure tribalism.
arunabha 17 minutes ago [-]
I can understand your position intellectually. Certainly, examples of right wing views being met with hostility can be found. But I hope you realise that whataboutism simply perpetuates the very behaviour that your are opposed to.
If you are opposed to conservative voices being suppressed, the surely you see the problem with the opposite kind of speech being specifically targeted by the president of the United States?
If, instead you would like to see right wing speech being free, but are ok with liberal voices being suppressed, then isn't your position hypocritical?
shadowgovt 57 minutes ago [-]
When did the Obama or Biden administrations cut university funding due to their speech policies?
> Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate
Isn't the executive a branch of government? Physician, heal thyself.
mikeyouse 30 minutes ago [-]
It seems to be a feature of this type of brain dead odious politics to revel in the hypocrisy. Reminded also of the Harvard EO that simultaneously decried their DEI efforts and hiring/admissions not based on merit and then demanding that every department install a bunch of conservatives..
Most of this was written by an LLM, with the writer doing some touchups. Susprised not to see any other comments on this yet!
That doesn't mean it's a bad piece, I think it's a good writeup.
derriz 2 hours ago [-]
It seems that the idea that someone could be motivated simply by having integrity, valuing honesty and pride in simply "doing their job" correctly is so alien to the current US administration that they see political motives everywhere and in everyone's actions.
The fact that people with such a cynical and amoral worldview wield so much power not only in US but globally and are willing to wield that power in capricious and petty ways is deeply upsetting.
But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls.
I love the US, have friends and family there, have a first cousin in the marines, grandfather born there, etc., and have visited many many times and just find it difficult to reconcile my positive experiences with the place and people with the idea that more than 4 out of 10 US adults could approve of the cruel and vindictive actions of this administration. I'm not being over dramatic by stating that it has genuinely shaken my world-view and belief in the innate goodness of humanity.
thinkingtoilet 2 hours ago [-]
A lot of people in the US, especially the Christian Trump supporters are nice but not kind. They will say hi, they will smile, they ask if you need anything, then they will happily defend the deportation of innocent people to secret prisons in foreign countries without any sort of due process. They will offer to bring you soup while your sick but will fight tooth and nail to make sure you don't have affordable health care. The list goes on and on...
spicyusername 1 hours ago [-]
I think they are just nice and ignorant, honestly.
So many I interact with are just simply unaware and vote based on their discomfort with urban liberal culture. That's it. The blue hair and the pronouns made them feel weird, so they voted the other way.
trinsic2 1 hours ago [-]
That's been my experience as well. There is a large population of uneducated people (At least in terms of critical thinking) in the US that are not able to understand the impact of what is happening regarding what this administration is doing. And I think this is by design as the attacks on educational systems are increasing.
stogot 24 minutes ago [-]
I’ve had many conversations that amount to “I’d agree that illegal citizens should not have entered the country and maybe deportation is the correct recourse” (even from immigrants) but if they saw how the inhumanity of how deportations happened they’d be appalled. The government could be nicer to humans, but it’s a government
nwsm 1 hours ago [-]
You're completing brushing over the rampant racism and xenophobia in white conservative America.
tremon 1 hours ago [-]
I don't buy that. They have allowed their ignorance to be weaponised against the entire country, and if they refuse to acknowledge that, they are complicit in its destruction.
stogot 21 minutes ago [-]
If you work two jobs to make ends meet, and get home at 11pm to fall asleep watching a low budget film on Netflix with ads, when are you going to have time to read non-partisan news and form an educated anger? Ignorance is a bigger driver than informed complicitness
Huxley was right
jrgd 1 hours ago [-]
Discomfort? Omg :) Yet it’s not taking anything to anyone, it’s not costing them anything and if they don’t feel the need to state pronouns nobody is going to force them to do so… so why refuse a little acceptance to the Other. A while back, some got crucified for having different ideas…
Happy Easter to those who celebrate and a happy weekend to all others :)
seydor 2 hours ago [-]
It's too early to see visible results of what has happened in less than 100 days. I am confident the approval will rise and fall as swiftly as the price of new iphones.
josefresco 2 hours ago [-]
Approval ratings might fall, but they've installed a system of nearly unchecked power, and have shown a blatant disregard for law. It's probably too late for even the base to affect change without bloodshed.
wizzwizz4 2 hours ago [-]
The flipside of the "states' rights" movement is that the Federal Government is much weaker: so while it's easier to strip away rights and dismantle federal institutions, it's also easier for individuals to oppose the concrete harm that'd cause by working the levers of their local government. https://plush.city/@scarlet/114355949314782873 gives a few concrete things that individuals (not even groups) can do, which might make an outsized difference.
josefresco 1 hours ago [-]
You're right in normal situations, but masked federal agents (HOURS FROM MY HOME) are kidnapping and sending US citizens to foreign gulags. As what point does "states rights" extend to the physical protection of its citizens? Will my local police protect me from the gestapo?
dingnuts 27 minutes ago [-]
US citizens? Plural? Please provide at least two examples. So far I've heard of one legal resident, and zero citizens.
If you have an example, I have people to yell at about it. But I don't think you're correct.
spicyusername 2 hours ago [-]
I know things feel dire, and things are certainly very bad for sure, but they have been bad before and things turned around.
The Gilded Age comes to mind. Hell, even Nazi Germany didn't last forever.
Don't despair. Do what you can to make the world you want to see, accept the things outside your control, turn off social media, and stay positive!
hermitcrab 54 minutes ago [-]
>Hell, even Nazi Germany didn't last forever.
But they did cause the death of some 70+ million people. And they didn't have nukes.
josefresco 50 minutes ago [-]
...or social media.
shadowgovt 53 minutes ago [-]
The Gilded Age was followed by the Great Depression.
delusional 31 minutes ago [-]
> accept the things outside your control, turn off social media, and stay positive!
Is a crazy statement to see next to
> even Nazi Germany didn't last forever.
DrillShopper 40 minutes ago [-]
> Hell, even Nazi Germany didn't last forever.
How'd that work out for the millions slaughtered while the vast majority of the German population (who knew about the death camps) did nothing?
I'm getting pretty sick of this twee bullshit about how "we've come back from worse!". No. Not all of us did. Stop it
jjtheblunt 2 hours ago [-]
> But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls.
It’s possible that percentage counts dissatisfaction with the previous administration more than approval for the current one. That is, it might just count people wanting any change.
basejumping 2 hours ago [-]
You should then be dissatisfied with both at the same time. When people wish 'any change' they actually wish a change into better, otherwise it's plain stupid.
jjtheblunt 52 minutes ago [-]
I agree: it’s strange and misleading statistics seemingly.
pclmulqdq 1 hours ago [-]
I think it's clear that the approval ratings Trump gets are more about disapproval of the rest of politics. When you have every politician getting rich somehow while your life gets worse and worse, a lot of people will want all politicians punished. Trump is that punishment, and many people are excited to see the political and professional classes suffer. That is the approval rating.
notahacker 53 minutes ago [-]
The irony being that Trump enriches himself and rewards politicians [mainstream or otherwise] for corruption to a greater extent than any previous politician, and doesn't even try to hide it. The people that are happy their savings and/or chances of making rent next week are being eroded to enrich Trump insiders because at least random mid level professionals and Hispanic people with autism awareness tattoos are suffering more deserve everything they get.
pm90 2 hours ago [-]
To a certain extent this is a result of living in a media ecosystem where most of the population doesn’t actually see an unbiased reporting of facts but whatever is shown to them by certain right wing news networks. But I do agree at some point people need to take responsibility for their information diet.
Fwiw media manipulation of American opinion isn’t new, its been a huge part of how America works since at least the Spanish American war of 1896.
intended 1 hours ago [-]
Bias is what exists on the left.
Monopoly and capture is what happened to the right. Theres a reason republicans march and Dems debate.
The republican strategists build this advantage over decades, it’s not the work of a single term. It’s a captured market of ideas, tariffs if you will. No competition from actual debates.
That’s why you can sell contradictory ideas within hours of each other, and never be called out for it. It’s why you can sell debates on Tan suits or prop up bogeymen, and never deal with debate.
This is news media. Eventually Fox wasn’t the sole juggernaut, and the techniques got adopted for online debates.
It’s been so wildly successful in building a reliable political voting bloc, that every political party in the world took notes.
LastTrain 2 hours ago [-]
There is no such thing as unbiased reporting of facts. People not understanding that, and the fact that there is nothing inherently wrong with bias, is a big part of the problem.
pyrale 1 hours ago [-]
You can be biased but adopt a systematic methodology and a deontology system, both of which help journalists mitigate their bias and produce quality reporting.
The big issue with the current news ecosystem and social media is their complete disregard for this methodology. By discarding the journalistic methodology, they make themselves propagandists, not journalists.
sheepdestroyer 2 hours ago [-]
Objective reality, it exists.
Telling your audience obviously false / anti-factual lies, without any regard for fact checking, is not just "biased reporting". And it is inherently wrong, malevolent, evil.
Anyway, I'm amazed each time I hear right wingers who did not get the joke seemingly complaining about how Reality has a left leaning political bias...
ANarrativeApe 2 hours ago [-]
Is that a fact?
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
Presumably yes but subject to benign bias.
AlexandrB 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
smallmancontrov 2 hours ago [-]
Fox and MSNBC are relentlessly partisan, but CNN aims for the center and misses. There's a big difference, and it's wild that Republicans got away with pretending that CNN was in the Fox/MSNBC tier just by repeating it as dogma until in their own minds it became true.
pclmulqdq 2 hours ago [-]
CNN joined that tier around 2018 for the ratings, then tried to un-join that tier. It didn't work.
hobs 2 hours ago [-]
Fox's main approach - repeating anything that's a lie as dogma until its parroted as core truth by their audience, then saying they are opinion and not news so everyone knows not to take them seriously.
r721 2 hours ago [-]
What about trying to be in the middle/upper part of this chart?
Where did you see any reference to any source or lean in what you replied to? You are projecting your viewpoint on which is good or bad.
lo_zamoyski 1 hours ago [-]
Don’t be disingenuous. The phrase “certain right wing news networks” is pretty clear in an American context.
QuadmasterXLII 2 hours ago [-]
The adults are talking, shh.
card_zero 2 hours ago [-]
What is their reply?
tpmoney 56 minutes ago [-]
> But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls
I feel this is largely a consequence of decades of overwrought hyperventilating about all things politics and a lot of crying wolf. Every republican candidate has been the next Hitler, every democratic candidate has been the next anti-christ. Every 4 years we go through this song and dance predicting the end of the world and untold human suffering and every 4 years life went on with barely a change. Why would people expect this time to actually be different? Why would they expect that this time the stories of corruption and abuse of power are actually true and being reported without ridiculous embellishment? Why would anyone who voted for Trump in the first place think that reports of abuse of power from the side of American politics that coined “chimpler” as a nickname for W. Bush would be sincere about Trump?
I agree with you that I think more people should be more concerned than they are. I just don’t think it’s all that surprising either. The lesson of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” is that when the wolf finally comes, no one will believe you. Of course the other lesson is that eventually the wolf does come. It didn’t work out so well for the village, and it might not work out so well for us either.
alabastervlog 31 minutes ago [-]
The thing is, there has been a wolf. It's now eating us, and the time to stop it is gone. But sure, it's the fault of the people who correctly told you there was a wolf, and that it's been coming closer and looking hungrier and hungrier since the '70s.
shadowgovt 55 minutes ago [-]
Something interesting to watch about the current executive is he never talks about the future concretely.
Keep an eye on his rhetoric. He'll talk in broad strokes, bright-shining-future abstracts... But he never talks about anything specific. Never about how any specific policy will create a specific good outcome. No concrete ideation.
An idea that has been floated on this topic is that he's not actually capable of imagining such a future because he won't be in it (one way or the other; dude's 78).
It makes him dangerous. He can accidentally destroy something he can't even conceive of existing.
layer8 43 minutes ago [-]
He'll likely live another 15 years or so. I'm pretty sure he's imagining a future for himself. He's talking about a third term, which means at least eight years of "future". He also has children whose continued success he probably cares about. That said, I agree that he doesn't seem interested in building anything but his personal kingdom (including walls to protect it).
Applejinx 2 hours ago [-]
Bear in mind that a lot of people took pains to not look at their candidate too closely, to the point where a (slim) voting majority wasn't showing up to rallies etc. during the campaign. One might see this as signs of their being fake, but it could also be suggestive that they didn't want to come out and see where their guy was really at. They voted for the IDEA of him and what they figured he represented, and were indulged in those beliefs as hard as possible.
So this 'approval' is sort of phantom approval. It's approval of a fantasy man who doesn't track too closely with the reality of what's actually happening.
The point where people pay heavily for their erroneous beliefs, for instance by losing their retirements and savings, is a point where people re-evaluate.
intended 1 hours ago [-]
Sure. There’s many reasons to vote for Trump.
Now, someone has to act to deal with reality. This is pretty much the job of every adult in america.
I suspect this is why Vance has been so over the top as well. I think he expects Trump to get impeached, and take over the party faithful. This is an idle musings though.
scarface_74 2 hours ago [-]
Everyone who voted for Trump knew exactly what they were getting or should have known. He was in office for four years. 40% of the people know what he is doing and approve of it.
sylens 2 hours ago [-]
Silence from companies in terms of press releases and official statements, maybe. But almost everyone I know in the industry is somewhere between concerned and outraged over this.
Another shining example in the first few months of this administration of how we should not defer leadership to private industry, because they will always be motivated by preserving their bottom line.
gorbachev 32 minutes ago [-]
Trump's entire 2nd term is about settling scores. He's set up his entire administration to get back at everyone who slighted him in some way over the past few decades, but especially in 2020.
This is what happens when a felon gets to be the president.
mapt 1 hours ago [-]
Per yesterday's whistleblower, DOGE is apparently exfiltrating confidential NLRB data en masse while explicitly seeking to leave no logs of them doing so, followed immediately by login attempts to those systems using the same freshly created credentials from Russian IPs.
I think we can presume the same pattern with IRS, Census, GSA, OPM, etc that just have not had whistleblower-inclined people in the right place to observe.
Espionage shit.
ripe 3 hours ago [-]
The administration needs to be sued in court. What else can be done? This is awful.
Griffinsauce 2 hours ago [-]
The supreme court is stacked, they're blackmailing lawyers. They're generally ignoring judges already. The law is irrelevant to them unless convenient.
iszomer 1 hours ago [-]
I think it was mentioned that state district courts cannot order the executive branch of the government to do a thing and that scotus ruled in favor of that? Will need to read more into this after work.
iudaihd 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bambax 2 hours ago [-]
> What else can be done?
Civil war. It will probably have to come to this, some day or other.
intended 60 minutes ago [-]
Or you know - find everyone congressperson who is not doing their job, figure out if they are breaking state, federal law, or even party law. Get special elections going and get a working congress.
This paralysis amongst Americans is very un American.
You have a decent poltical set up. Use it. You don’t need a magic wand like a civil war.
You need to do the boring dull work of reading, analyzing and then making executable plans and getting to it.
I’m not that old, and I remember people learning how to make satellites as undergrads in the states. For elective classes. And actually having the damn things go up into space.
It’s your life and your country.
edit: I was wrong in suggesting finding ways to get to special elections. There are very few ways for a congressperson to be removed.
For other ideas - just ask them to resign. Seriously - I doubt many republicans wanted to be part of THIS congress, and have already stated they are afraid of retribution.
Ask them to resign, and have people who can take the heat take their seats.
Either way, congress needs to work, and for this people need to find their spines, or make way for someone who has a spine.
Civil war is NOT a solution, its a failure state, and a failure of imagination and effort on the part of what I remember America to be about.
hiatus 13 minutes ago [-]
> Get special elections going and get a working congress.
There are no recall elections for Congressional seats.
intended 4 minutes ago [-]
You are correct, I was ignorant and my words reflected it. I have updated the comment.
shadowgovt 48 minutes ago [-]
> Get special elections going and get a working congress
That's not actually legal in many (most?) states. Recall is not a universal feature.
What you're advocating for is civil war. In many states, the only way to get Congresspeople to leave would be "voluntarily" (i.e. "We threaten to burn down every piece of property you have if you don't give up your seat"). Which, actually, has worked deep in America's past; the post-Revolutionary era had a lot more "We don't like the governor, so we're going to take his house apart and throw it into the river" stories.
You're not wrong exactly, but I think you've underestimated how fundamentally anti-democratic American democracy is. It was a 1.0-template and had baked pretty deeply into it fear of mob rule (hence the President not being chosen by direct vote, for example).
hiatus 12 minutes ago [-]
I think you are conflating two concepts. Most states do not allow recall of state legislators as you mentioned, but recalling federal legislators is not allowed in any state—there is no constitutional mechanism enabling it.
deadbabe 2 hours ago [-]
If you’re not willing to pick up arms and fight, chances are no one else is, so it will never happen. Most likely nothing can be done and people will just live under a totalitarian fascist regime for the duration of their lives. Keep talking about civil war, you’ll be imprisoned and silenced. You should delete your post.
jasonjayr 2 hours ago [-]
They should NOT delete their post.
Do not comply in advance.
deadbabe 32 minutes ago [-]
Do NOT resist compliance unless you’re willing to go all the way with it. It’s not worth losing your comfortable life.
mschoch 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
nonrandomstring 2 hours ago [-]
Information not inflamation. Please.
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
Would that still work? It seems the administration can safely ignore court orders.
FrustratedMonky 2 hours ago [-]
He's already ignoring Supreme Court rulings. What can the court do to enforce the laws if the military and police also ignore them.
everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
My impression is that the first Trump presidency left everyone at a loss. If you react with outrage, you're labeled in some negative way. This is really an extension of online trolling, where any emotional reaction proves that you "lost." Everyone has a chance to speak up now, but this actually diminishes the power of everyone's voice. You're one drop in a few billion or a few hundred million now. And to the extent that you do speak up, it's fully partisan; the complaints of "the other side" are never heard nor granted legitimacy.
I imagine there are people who would call this cynical and defeatist, but I think often people speaking up is purely counter-productive these days. So many attempts to speak up are just yet another partisan volley which can be written off on partisan grounds alone. Worse, given the way that social media works, the worst and most extreme voices from your faction will be the ones which get the most attention. They will paint your entire faction, and from a public opinion perspective, people will view your side as being far more extreme than it might actually be.
I think people have a model in their head of the civil rights movement, and they think that protest alone will be successful just like it once was. It's not clear to me that protest, in and of itself, actually does much these days. Trump seems to enjoy seeing his ideological opponents outraged, and his supporters are either cowed towards him, if not far more vindictive than the man himself. Maybe it's just because I keep seeing the mindless noise from the internet, but real push-back here requires a centralized and most importantly, a focused movement. One that doesn't just incorporate the most extreme policy positions from its wings, and understands how to build a broad coalition. It's something people have forgotten how to do. It might be trite to blame social media, but no one seems to understand how to build a broad coalition in the way that Dr. King did during the civil rights movement. Movements these days tend to exclude, rather than include, and tend to be led by radicals and extremists, which defeat the cause they claim to fight for.
lordgrenville 1 hours ago [-]
Great comment, articulates something I've been feeling lately but didn't quite have the words for. (Not American, but similar situation in my country.)
Where do we go from here? What kind of action would be effective?
teddyh 58 minutes ago [-]
For protests and movements to actually succeed, they will eventually need candidates in the polls. But the U.S. is a two-party system, and the other party has, with their many years in power, shown what they will do, i.e. not much.
phirschybar 1 hours ago [-]
this sums up the situation eloquently and perfectly
> All the cybersecurity companies saying "We don't have anything to say about this situation." is just them being true to their main in-group: for-profit companies that don't want to upset a big current or potential buyer. They are, first and foremost, part of that "community", and they happen to be involved in cybersecurity. Solidarity is happening there, just not to the people in cybersecurity.
This sucks and we should change it for sure. So many other industries have successfully become professionalized, unionized, and kicked the grifters to the curb. But it feels more and more like the cybersecurity grifters are the ones holding the reins.
nonrandomstring 3 hours ago [-]
We are not "silent", we're just not being heard. Those are not the
same things. You'll find plenty of critique and analysis,
anticipating and commenting on the unfolding cybsersecurity calamity
[0,1,2] ...
When those who own and control the means of discourse are donors to,
and so in collusion with the problem, don't expect to hear opposition.
keyringlight 2 hours ago [-]
Another one [0] SpyCast - DOGE Layoffs and the Counterintelligence Threats They Pose
Also on their podcast RSS, but it seems they haven't added a webpage to link to for that individual show
If they don't shout to defend you, they're happy about what happened to you (perhaps that's because you made lots of enemies)
hobs 3 hours ago [-]
There's two options, either they are fools to believe it is a good thing (and they should not be in security) or they are cowards because they think the same fate will befall them.
markus_zhang 1 hours ago [-]
I don't even know the impact of that...but I agree this government is, how should I put it, not very stable.
Spooky23 3 hours ago [-]
Duh. There’s cash to be grabbed.
anovikov 3 hours ago [-]
These days it does not matter anymore if something is legal or not. Which may be bad news for the tech industry actually, because it's all about valuations, and valuations suffer if property rights are not guaranteed.
Lerc 2 hours ago [-]
First they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I fear they cannot be stopped
They will come for more
speaking out makes you their next target
bigolkevin 1 hours ago [-]
Being their next target is inevitable. Their greed has no bounds.
Will you be a silent victim or will you resist?
Will you fight back now, when you have more potential allies, or later, when so many have already been erased?
Lerc 1 hours ago [-]
It's not something that I necessarily agree with. Just a thought that came into my head when thinking about the "What would I have done?" scenario.
Perhaps an alternate form might be
---
First they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because they will be coming for people like me
If I speak out, they will find me.
---
The intuition that I think it expresses is that perhaps people stay silent more from fear than disinterest.
jillyboel 2 hours ago [-]
dead link, it's just a blank page in both chrome & firefox
qiqitori 3 hours ago [-]
What the hell? This is the first time I've heard of this. Trump is a fucking shit cunt.
Note, to make this comment at least slightly informative: the security guy we all know is Brian Krebs, so it's someone else.
aaron695 1 hours ago [-]
> has probably wondered how Germany allowed Hitler to rise to power.
We have been Nazis for years now, J.K Rowling is a Nazi, Joe Rogan is a Nazi, Jordan Peterson is a Nazi, Scott Adams is a Nazi, everyone is a Nazi.
When you can never ever win, when you will always be called a Nazi, why would you bother?
The mainstream media is like Russia, they profit from chaos. They successfully got the IT industry to turn on their own, too late now.
Dildonics4All 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
eutropia 1 hours ago [-]
That's not the fucking point!
The dude is being retaliated against for doing his job and reporting facts that contradict an authoritarian conspiracy; regardless of your personal opinion of the man - this is, like so many other egregious abuses of power this admin has done, an illegal and flagrant abuse of power.
seethishat 2 hours ago [-]
If I have not seen evidence for or against something, then I would not offer an opinion either. Sometimes, people speak confidently when they are ignorant of the context and the facts. That's not the right thing to do.
It's better not to say anything when you don't actually know what you are talking about.
elicksaur 1 hours ago [-]
This is interesting when you run it up the abstraction ladder.
What if we take this perspective from “knowledge of news topic of the day” and apply it to “knowledge of the virtue of commenting on a topic”. Are you qualified to actually speak on that subject? Am I? Maybe best not to say anything, since I’m not sure.
HeatrayEnjoyer 1 hours ago [-]
What does that have to do with anything? We're up to our neck in evidence.
hobs 2 hours ago [-]
Did you watch the TV on Jan 6?
Did you hear Trump repeatedly lie about the election?
Are you saying your eyes and ears were lying to you?
What are you saying here - that unless you walk around the barn all four sides might not be red? You are not a perfect witness, you are reporting on the most obvious fact of the matter.
Noumenon72 3 hours ago [-]
Deafening silence about what the executive order actually says or any facts about the case.
projektfu 2 hours ago [-]
1. "It isn't really true, never really happened" <-- you are here
2. "It happened but it's not as serious as you make it out to be."
3. "It may be serious but it is legal and within the president's right."
4. "It may not be legal but when the president does it it is effectively legal because he has to be able to be president without being undermined."
5. "Fascism? What about cancel culture?!"
smallmancontrov 3 hours ago [-]
No, the article sums it up correctly. He refused to go along with the "stolen election" narrative Trump was trying to build (and a few others) and is now being punished for it.
> Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines
Here's an article supposedly of Krebs provenance, which implicitly lumps Trump himself in as a "malicious actor".
> can lead to uncertainty in the minds of voters; uncertainty that can be exploited by malicious actors
Maybe not something I would want said or repeated by my administration either, disregarding the veracity.
There's no date or byline either, so according to the authoritative FAQ, if this were to stand, it would be an admission of acting in bad faith.
Given federal government communications sprawl, it's quite a needle, pretty good performance in my opinion to root this out, disregarding sowing doubt about a federated election and who's will specifically it should / will service.
Voter inclusion (who should / may vote) is itself at issue, but even in the assessment here given DOGE findings unveils possible oversights, FWAB in the FAQ is cited to depend in part on SSNs and in light of the DOGE findings regarding 150+ year olds collecting social security, the security assessment itself does not describe a system that is definitively air-tight, or even terribly reassuring, if there's doubt in your mind about who voted, and how.
richbell 2 hours ago [-]
> in light of the DOGE findings regarding 150+ year olds collecting social security...
The claims made by DOGE were highly misleading (i.e., lack of death date does not mean a 150 year old is receiving money).
A downvote seems insufficient but I'm really lost for words at how to even reply to this. The tone of reasonableness while posting absolute bonkers insanity is alarming.
foogazi 1 hours ago [-]
Sartre’s quote in anti-semites applies to many of these:
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
snozolli 2 hours ago [-]
implicitly lumps Trump himself in as a "malicious actor".
Trump is a malicious actor. He literally tried to overthrow democracy on January 6!
Maybe not something I would want said or repeated by my administration either, disregarding the veracity.
Congratulations on empathizing with an authoritarian.
in light of the DOGE findings regarding 150+ year olds collecting social security
Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.
meltyness 32 minutes ago [-]
> Trump is a malicious actor. He literally tried to overthrow democracy on January 6!
> Congratulations on empathizing with an authoritarian.
It speaks to the strength of different agency administrators if they can walk into the next oval office, grab the duly elected President by the arm, and say "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" over and over again. Putting a stop to that wouldn't be so controversial, I think.
> Stop being so gullible.
You are disregarding the election angle and instead misdirecting, the system of validating votes (according to Krebs' own assessment) is dependent on a system with publicly-known flaws.
I understand that the aim can be to enfranchise and enable more voters, but to that aim my statements are agnostic, except for revealing more facts about the case.
Rendered at 14:05:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
At best they care about the financial parts of the news.
The "problem" with principles is that living by them sometimes means going against something we want right now. People don't want to concede anything, even for their own ideals.
The safety net in America is tattered and torn, with the current administration working to remove it.
- https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=YvGxZD-HNCM
So the Constitution does not forbid it. All executive orders, it could be argued, are authoritarian, not just the ones that you happen to dislike. The moral? Be damned careful to whom you give this authority.
Requiring Congress to get involved every time a regulatory agency needs to adapt to new circumstances or new technology would leave us at the mercy of unscrupulous corporations who can and will "move fast and break things."
No; Congress relinquished their power when Congressional Republicans chose to become "the party of No" and just prevent anything from happening under Obama. That's when executive orders started to become much more common.
Congress is broken - intentionally.
They don't even pass a budget anymore.. which they're explicitly required to do. They learned there are political consequences to their action so they handed their job to agencies in the Executive Branch to write their own rules which acted like laws.
When SCOTUS struck down Chevron Doctrine last year, it boiled down to "No, Congress writes the laws."
The fix is Congress doing their job.
Also, its easy to paint people as cowards, however most people don't want to be so. They are not traitors, perhaps just have misplaced their courage.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
>Krebs ... falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen
This quote coming from "whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets" is pretty wild. This seems to be retribution, plain and simple.
It's hardly surprising as it's almost the defining feature of Trump - pettiness and revenge minded.
(though strangely, he hasn't publicly insulted his Pennsylvania would-be-assassin, but luckily his ear has healed remarkably well and so maybe he feels no need to do so)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/michael-benz-rising-vo...
Simply put, evanjrowley's links are lies. The Kreb's specific claims are lies. They link to sources that are carefully edited, and even then, it's clear that is being presented by evanjrowley's sites is not what is being said.
Simply put, evanjrowley is trying to spread disinformation.
If those really are lies that are so easy for you to dismiss, then why don't you prove it?
If the threat of financial loss stops people from criticizing actions, imagine what it would be like if you would be investigated and jailed on sham charges like in some other countries.
Some other countries? The US is renditioning people without due (any!) process ostensibly based on their tattoos. I'm not saying this to be pithy but to sound (or at least amplify) the alarm.
You can't spend years after Obama carving out ever larger chunks of politics as hate speech and not expect payback.
This is payback.
And the people who cared most about freedom of speech have long been silenced. I hope you take this is the educational moment it is and start supporting the removal of exemptions for free speech that were put in place between 2008 and 2024.
If you are opposed to conservative voices being suppressed, the surely you see the problem with the opposite kind of speech being specifically targeted by the president of the United States?
If, instead you would like to see right wing speech being free, but are ok with liberal voices being suppressed, then isn't your position hypocritical?
I thought the same.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1913023007263543565.html
> Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate
Isn't the executive a branch of government? Physician, heal thyself.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/15/agencies-demand...
That doesn't mean it's a bad piece, I think it's a good writeup.
The fact that people with such a cynical and amoral worldview wield so much power not only in US but globally and are willing to wield that power in capricious and petty ways is deeply upsetting.
But what is more horrifying for me is that apparently this administration remains representative of a large section of the US population - with seemingly unshakeable approval by between 40% and 50% of the US adult population according to polls.
I love the US, have friends and family there, have a first cousin in the marines, grandfather born there, etc., and have visited many many times and just find it difficult to reconcile my positive experiences with the place and people with the idea that more than 4 out of 10 US adults could approve of the cruel and vindictive actions of this administration. I'm not being over dramatic by stating that it has genuinely shaken my world-view and belief in the innate goodness of humanity.
So many I interact with are just simply unaware and vote based on their discomfort with urban liberal culture. That's it. The blue hair and the pronouns made them feel weird, so they voted the other way.
Huxley was right
If you have an example, I have people to yell at about it. But I don't think you're correct.
Don't despair. Do what you can to make the world you want to see, accept the things outside your control, turn off social media, and stay positive!
But they did cause the death of some 70+ million people. And they didn't have nukes.
Is a crazy statement to see next to
> even Nazi Germany didn't last forever.
How'd that work out for the millions slaughtered while the vast majority of the German population (who knew about the death camps) did nothing?
I'm getting pretty sick of this twee bullshit about how "we've come back from worse!". No. Not all of us did. Stop it
It’s possible that percentage counts dissatisfaction with the previous administration more than approval for the current one. That is, it might just count people wanting any change.
Fwiw media manipulation of American opinion isn’t new, its been a huge part of how America works since at least the Spanish American war of 1896.
Monopoly and capture is what happened to the right. Theres a reason republicans march and Dems debate.
The republican strategists build this advantage over decades, it’s not the work of a single term. It’s a captured market of ideas, tariffs if you will. No competition from actual debates.
That’s why you can sell contradictory ideas within hours of each other, and never be called out for it. It’s why you can sell debates on Tan suits or prop up bogeymen, and never deal with debate.
This is news media. Eventually Fox wasn’t the sole juggernaut, and the techniques got adopted for online debates.
It’s been so wildly successful in building a reliable political voting bloc, that every political party in the world took notes.
The big issue with the current news ecosystem and social media is their complete disregard for this methodology. By discarding the journalistic methodology, they make themselves propagandists, not journalists.
Telling your audience obviously false / anti-factual lies, without any regard for fact checking, is not just "biased reporting". And it is inherently wrong, malevolent, evil.
Anyway, I'm amazed each time I hear right wingers who did not get the joke seemingly complaining about how Reality has a left leaning political bias...
https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Media-B...
I feel this is largely a consequence of decades of overwrought hyperventilating about all things politics and a lot of crying wolf. Every republican candidate has been the next Hitler, every democratic candidate has been the next anti-christ. Every 4 years we go through this song and dance predicting the end of the world and untold human suffering and every 4 years life went on with barely a change. Why would people expect this time to actually be different? Why would they expect that this time the stories of corruption and abuse of power are actually true and being reported without ridiculous embellishment? Why would anyone who voted for Trump in the first place think that reports of abuse of power from the side of American politics that coined “chimpler” as a nickname for W. Bush would be sincere about Trump?
I agree with you that I think more people should be more concerned than they are. I just don’t think it’s all that surprising either. The lesson of the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” is that when the wolf finally comes, no one will believe you. Of course the other lesson is that eventually the wolf does come. It didn’t work out so well for the village, and it might not work out so well for us either.
Keep an eye on his rhetoric. He'll talk in broad strokes, bright-shining-future abstracts... But he never talks about anything specific. Never about how any specific policy will create a specific good outcome. No concrete ideation.
An idea that has been floated on this topic is that he's not actually capable of imagining such a future because he won't be in it (one way or the other; dude's 78).
It makes him dangerous. He can accidentally destroy something he can't even conceive of existing.
So this 'approval' is sort of phantom approval. It's approval of a fantasy man who doesn't track too closely with the reality of what's actually happening.
The point where people pay heavily for their erroneous beliefs, for instance by losing their retirements and savings, is a point where people re-evaluate.
Now, someone has to act to deal with reality. This is pretty much the job of every adult in america.
I suspect this is why Vance has been so over the top as well. I think he expects Trump to get impeached, and take over the party faithful. This is an idle musings though.
Another shining example in the first few months of this administration of how we should not defer leadership to private industry, because they will always be motivated by preserving their bottom line.
This is what happens when a felon gets to be the president.
I think we can presume the same pattern with IRS, Census, GSA, OPM, etc that just have not had whistleblower-inclined people in the right place to observe.
Espionage shit.
Civil war. It will probably have to come to this, some day or other.
This paralysis amongst Americans is very un American.
You have a decent poltical set up. Use it. You don’t need a magic wand like a civil war.
You need to do the boring dull work of reading, analyzing and then making executable plans and getting to it.
I’m not that old, and I remember people learning how to make satellites as undergrads in the states. For elective classes. And actually having the damn things go up into space.
It’s your life and your country.
edit: I was wrong in suggesting finding ways to get to special elections. There are very few ways for a congressperson to be removed.
For other ideas - just ask them to resign. Seriously - I doubt many republicans wanted to be part of THIS congress, and have already stated they are afraid of retribution.
Ask them to resign, and have people who can take the heat take their seats.
Either way, congress needs to work, and for this people need to find their spines, or make way for someone who has a spine.
Civil war is NOT a solution, its a failure state, and a failure of imagination and effort on the part of what I remember America to be about.
There are no recall elections for Congressional seats.
That's not actually legal in many (most?) states. Recall is not a universal feature.
What you're advocating for is civil war. In many states, the only way to get Congresspeople to leave would be "voluntarily" (i.e. "We threaten to burn down every piece of property you have if you don't give up your seat"). Which, actually, has worked deep in America's past; the post-Revolutionary era had a lot more "We don't like the governor, so we're going to take his house apart and throw it into the river" stories.
You're not wrong exactly, but I think you've underestimated how fundamentally anti-democratic American democracy is. It was a 1.0-template and had baked pretty deeply into it fear of mob rule (hence the President not being chosen by direct vote, for example).
Do not comply in advance.
I imagine there are people who would call this cynical and defeatist, but I think often people speaking up is purely counter-productive these days. So many attempts to speak up are just yet another partisan volley which can be written off on partisan grounds alone. Worse, given the way that social media works, the worst and most extreme voices from your faction will be the ones which get the most attention. They will paint your entire faction, and from a public opinion perspective, people will view your side as being far more extreme than it might actually be.
I think people have a model in their head of the civil rights movement, and they think that protest alone will be successful just like it once was. It's not clear to me that protest, in and of itself, actually does much these days. Trump seems to enjoy seeing his ideological opponents outraged, and his supporters are either cowed towards him, if not far more vindictive than the man himself. Maybe it's just because I keep seeing the mindless noise from the internet, but real push-back here requires a centralized and most importantly, a focused movement. One that doesn't just incorporate the most extreme policy positions from its wings, and understands how to build a broad coalition. It's something people have forgotten how to do. It might be trite to blame social media, but no one seems to understand how to build a broad coalition in the way that Dr. King did during the civil rights movement. Movements these days tend to exclude, rather than include, and tend to be led by radicals and extremists, which defeat the cause they claim to fight for.
Where do we go from here? What kind of action would be effective?
https://crankysec.com/blog/community/
> All the cybersecurity companies saying "We don't have anything to say about this situation." is just them being true to their main in-group: for-profit companies that don't want to upset a big current or potential buyer. They are, first and foremost, part of that "community", and they happen to be involved in cybersecurity. Solidarity is happening there, just not to the people in cybersecurity.
This sucks and we should change it for sure. So many other industries have successfully become professionalized, unionized, and kicked the grifters to the curb. But it feels more and more like the cybersecurity grifters are the ones holding the reins.
[0] https://www.schneier.com/
[1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/
[2]https://www.dataandpolitics.net/trump-is-a-critical-vulnerab...
When those who own and control the means of discourse are donors to, and so in collusion with the problem, don't expect to hear opposition.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLsTVQwBIg
Is CVE-47 taken?
and I did not speak out
because I fear they cannot be stopped
They will come for more
speaking out makes you their next target
Will you be a silent victim or will you resist?
Will you fight back now, when you have more potential allies, or later, when so many have already been erased?
Perhaps an alternate form might be
---
First they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because they will be coming for people like me
If I speak out, they will find me.
---
The intuition that I think it expresses is that perhaps people stay silent more from fear than disinterest.
Note, to make this comment at least slightly informative: the security guy we all know is Brian Krebs, so it's someone else.
We have been Nazis for years now, J.K Rowling is a Nazi, Joe Rogan is a Nazi, Jordan Peterson is a Nazi, Scott Adams is a Nazi, everyone is a Nazi.
When you can never ever win, when you will always be called a Nazi, why would you bother?
The mainstream media is like Russia, they profit from chaos. They successfully got the IT industry to turn on their own, too late now.
The dude is being retaliated against for doing his job and reporting facts that contradict an authoritarian conspiracy; regardless of your personal opinion of the man - this is, like so many other egregious abuses of power this admin has done, an illegal and flagrant abuse of power.
It's better not to say anything when you don't actually know what you are talking about.
What if we take this perspective from “knowledge of news topic of the day” and apply it to “knowledge of the virtue of commenting on a topic”. Are you qualified to actually speak on that subject? Am I? Maybe best not to say anything, since I’m not sure.
2. "It happened but it's not as serious as you make it out to be."
3. "It may be serious but it is legal and within the president's right."
4. "It may not be legal but when the president does it it is effectively legal because he has to be able to be president without being undermined."
5. "Fascism? What about cancel culture?!"
> Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addr...
WTF? Black is white, and white is black.
Here's an article supposedly of Krebs provenance, which implicitly lumps Trump himself in as a "malicious actor".
> can lead to uncertainty in the minds of voters; uncertainty that can be exploited by malicious actors
Maybe not something I would want said or repeated by my administration either, disregarding the veracity.
There's no date or byline either, so according to the authoritative FAQ, if this were to stand, it would be an admission of acting in bad faith.
Given federal government communications sprawl, it's quite a needle, pretty good performance in my opinion to root this out, disregarding sowing doubt about a federated election and who's will specifically it should / will service.
Voter inclusion (who should / may vote) is itself at issue, but even in the assessment here given DOGE findings unveils possible oversights, FWAB in the FAQ is cited to depend in part on SSNs and in light of the DOGE findings regarding 150+ year olds collecting social security, the security assessment itself does not describe a system that is definitively air-tight, or even terribly reassuring, if there's doubt in your mind about who voted, and how.
The claims made by DOGE were highly misleading (i.e., lack of death date does not mean a 150 year old is receiving money).
Moreover, it wasn't a novel discovery. It had already been identified and published in a 2023 audit: https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Trump is a malicious actor. He literally tried to overthrow democracy on January 6!
Maybe not something I would want said or repeated by my administration either, disregarding the veracity.
Congratulations on empathizing with an authoritarian.
in light of the DOGE findings regarding 150+ year olds collecting social security
Stop being so gullible.
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-social-security-1...
Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.
> Congratulations on empathizing with an authoritarian.
It speaks to the strength of different agency administrators if they can walk into the next oval office, grab the duly elected President by the arm, and say "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" over and over again. Putting a stop to that wouldn't be so controversial, I think.
> Stop being so gullible.
You are disregarding the election angle and instead misdirecting, the system of validating votes (according to Krebs' own assessment) is dependent on a system with publicly-known flaws.
I understand that the aim can be to enfranchise and enable more voters, but to that aim my statements are agnostic, except for revealing more facts about the case.