February 7, 2026

Another heart - thank you so much kind DU'er!

February 7, 2026

Thank you kind DU'er!

January 23, 2026

Trump's Chilling Weaponization of Confidential Government Records

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-chilling-weaponization-confidential-government-records-data-information?publication_id=87281&post_id=185363685&isFreemail=true&r=69mr8o&triedRedirect=true

Over the past year, I’ve been tracking the Trump administration’s use and abuse of federal data. For the most part, this has involved deletions of records that the regime finds inconvenient, or other forms of censorship. For example, the administration has stopped publishing certain statistics on climate change, hunger, trade and sexual orientation. It has also deleted photos of nonwhite people serving in the military. When Trump found the official jobs reports insufficiently flattering, he fired the head of the statistical agency that produces those figures, after having already slashed the agency’s staffing by 20 percent.

But now it’s becoming clearer that some of the most disturbing developments don’t involve data the administration is suppressing, but rather data it’s collecting—in some cases illegally—and the ways those data can be weaponized against perceived enemies.

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For example, the Trump administration recently sued the University of Pennsylvania to force it to hand over a list of Jewish faculty, staff, and students. The government is demanding the school release these records without first obtaining consent from Jewish community members themselves; authorities say they need the university to produce this Jewish registry to help the government “combat antisemitism” on college campuses.

THE POSSIBILITY THAT THESE DATA could be misused is not just a baseless, hypothetical concern: Again and again the Trump administration has been caught sharing data and breaching confidential records for purposes other than the stated reason for why those confidential records were collected in the first place.

January 12, 2026

Pro-Auschwitz Republican flips to Democrat in bid to win after California redistricting

https://www.rawstory.com/california-redistricting-2674875476/

A Republican candidate for governor in California will instead run for Congress as a Democrat despite floating Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp, as an "unemployment plan."

In paperwork filed on Monday, Kyle Langford indicated that he would be vying for Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley's seat in the primary for California's 26th Congressional District. Brownley announced she would not run for another term.

Langford's move comes several months after California voters approved a redistricting plan that was expected to have little impact on the 26th.

Last year, Langford shared a photo of himself standing in front of the former Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people, mostly of Jewish ancestry, were murdered during World War II. He included a caption that said the concentration camp was his "0% Unemployment Plan."

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December 14, 2025

Secret Documents Show Pepsi and Walmart Colluded to Raise Food Prices Across the Economy

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart

The Trump FTC tried to hide a complaint showing Pepsi forced shoppers to pay higher prices everywhere but Walmart. But now it's unsealed. And the politics of affordability are explosive.

Last month, the Atlanta Fed came out with a report showing a clear relationship between consolidation in grocery stores and the rate of food inflation. Unsurprisingly, where monopolies prevail, food inflation is 0.46 percentage points higher than where there is more competition. The study showed that from 2006-2020, the cumulative difference amounted to a 9% hike in food prices, and presumably since 2020, that number has gone much higher.

Affordability, in other words, is a market power problem.

And yesterday, we got specifics on just how market power in grocery stores works. The reason is because a nonprofit just forced the government to unseal a complaint lodged by Lina Khan’s FTC against Pepsi for colluding with Walmart to raise food prices across the economy. A Trump official tasked with dealing with affordability tried to hide this complaint, and failed. And now there’s a political and legal storm as a result.

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November 15, 2025

'Extraordinary rebuke': Judge torches Trump's sweeping push against major university

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-university-of-california/

A federal judge delivered a blistering blow to the Trump administration on Friday, ordering officials to stop using the threat of massive research funding cuts to coerce the University of California into accepting sweeping viewpoint-based restrictions – a tactic she said violated the First Amendment, the New York Times reported.

Judge Rita F. Lin of the Federal District Court in San Francisco said the administration’s pressure campaign had veered into outright retaliation and barred the government “from seeking payments” or tying federal dollars to ideological conditions in its investigations of the 10-campus UC system.

The 80-page ruling – which the Times called “an extraordinary rebuke to the federal government’s pressure campaign against elite schools” – threatens to upend settlement talks after the Justice Department demanded more than $1 billion from the university earlier this year, the publication said.

“Trump administration officials have spent much of this year trying to remake elite American universities that they perceive as hubs of liberal indoctrination and depict as epicenters of antisemitism,” according to the Times. “They have often wielded the halting of federal research funding to prod schools into negotiations, and the government has already reached settlements with a handful of top universities, including Brown, Columbia and Cornell.”

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October 18, 2025

Checking in from the Cotati, CA protest (10 miles south of Santa Rosa)

It's a small town and the main intersection area included a tiny park. I estimated about 1500 people showed up, in the park and lining the adjacent sidewalks. There was also constant honking from the passing cars. Very encouraging.

September 9, 2025

How ICE Is Using Fake Cell Towers To Spy On People's Phones

https://www.forbes.com/sites/the-wiretap/2025/09/09/how-ice-is-using-fake-cell-towers-to-spy-on-peoples-phones/

It’s been some time since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been seen using a tool known as a Stingray, or a cell-site simulator, in its attempts to find and remove undocumented immigrants. The tool tricks a phone into thinking it’s a cell tower, and when a suspect’s device connects, the cops can trace its location. Its use is controversial because anyone in the same area as the target is at risk of having their information exposed.

In a recently-unsealed search warrant reviewed by Forbes, ICE used such a cell-site simulator in an attempt to track down an individual in Orem, Utah. The suspect had been ordered to leave the U.S. in 2023, but is believed to still be in the country. Investigators learned last month that before going to Utah, he’d escaped prison in Venezuela where he was serving a sentence for murder, according to the warrant. He’s also suspected of being linked to gang activity in the country, investigators said.

When the government got the target’s number, they first got a warrant to get its location. However, the trace wasn’t precise–it only told law enforcement that the target was somewhere in an area covering about 30 blocks. That led them to asking a court for a Stingray-type device to get an accurate location.

The warrant was issued at the end of last month and it’s not yet known if the fugitive was found. But the case shows that, despite having been criticized by civil rights groups for using Stingrays during the last Trump administration, ICE continues to use the technology. Earlier this year, new media publication Straight Arrow News said it had analysed “mobile network anomalies” around a Washington state protest against ICE raids that were consistent with Stingray use.

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This topic was previously introduced by DU'er douglas9 in July

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220476160

July 17, 2025

Is it possible that pigs are now flying? Nick Fuentes turning on tsf?

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-epstein-2673339959/

'Liberals were right': Far-right Trump ally calls MAGA 'biggest scam in history'

White supremacist and antisemitic podcaster and Donald Trump supporter Nick Fuentes went on an epic rant attacking the president as "fat" and "a joke."

Speaking on his Thursday podcast, Fuentes questioned, "And now he says if you're not on board with the Epstein coverup — oh, I don't want your support. You're a weakling."

“F--- you. F--- you," Fuentes blasted. "You suck. You’re fat. You’re a joke. You’re stupid. You’re not funny. You're not as smart as you think you are. And, honestly, if you watch my show, you know I've been very critical; I've never been this far. This just goes to show this entire thing has been a scam. When we look back on the history of populism in America, we are going to look back on the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history, and the liberals were right. The MAGA supporters were had. They were."

"When we look back in history, we will see Trump as a scam artist who served as a vehicle for this rather than the other way around. We were not the vehicle for Trump. Trump was the vehicle for all of us," he later said.

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July 11, 2025

'Slap in the face': GOP governor defies voters and repeals paid sick leave

https://www.rawstory.com/slap-in-the-face-gop-governor-defies-voters-and-repeals-paid-sick-leave/

Missouri's Republican governor on Thursday signed legislation repealing the paid sick leave portion of a ballot measure that the state's voters approved with nearly 60% support in the 2024 election.

The short-lived provision, which will officially be repealed on August 28, required Missouri employers to provide workers with an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours of work. Businesses with 15 or more employees were required to provide up to 56 hours of earned paid sick time per year, and businesses with fewer than 15 employees were required to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick time.

The Missouri Budget Project estimated before its passage that the ballot measure's paid sick leave benefits would reach 728,000 private-sector workers in the state.

The bill that Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed Thursday, known as H.B. 567, also restricts increases in the state's minimum wage. The voter-approved initiative called for raising the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2026 and indexing it to inflation thereafter. H.B. 567 eliminates the inflation adjustment.

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