[RD] Trump in Charge: The MAGA Presidency

What were their "offences"? Being insufficiently sycophantic to the Tango Tyrant?
 
US office that counters foreign disinformation is being eliminated, say officials

The only office within the US State Department that monitors foreign disinformation is about to be eliminated, two State Department officials have told MIT Technology Review.

The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office in the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns.

In shutting R/FIMI, the department's controversial acting undersecretary, Darren Beattie, is delivering a major win to conservative critics who have alleged that it censors conservative voices. Created at the end of 2024, it was reorganized from the Global Engagement Center, a larger office with a similar mission that had long been criticized by conservatives who claimed that, despite its international mission, it was censoring American conservatives. In 2023, Elon Musk called the center the "worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation" and a “threat to our democracy.”

The culling of the office will leave the State Department without a way to actively counter the increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns from foreign governments like Russia, Iran, and China. The office could be shuttered as soon as today, according to sources at the State Department who spoke with MIT Technology Review.
 
GoodEnoughForMe said:
Reuters and Bloomberg have now been removed from the press pool, in addition to the continuing ban on the AP.
Click to expand...
The list goes on and on. It's a good list to keep in mind for anyone looking for quality news.
 
Broken_Erika said:
Anything to the left of Fox News and Breitbart is radical far left communist DEI fake news
Click to expand...

Essentially, yeah. They have extended new invites to:

The Daily Signal (far right conspiratorial rag)
Christian Broadcasting Network (self explanatory name/same as above)
 
GoodEnoughForMe said:
Reuters and Bloomberg have now been removed from the press pool, in addition to the continuing ban on the AP.
Click to expand...
AP and Reuters were probably the most objective, fact-oriented news outlets available. In fact, they are very often the actual original "source" for lots of the other news media stories. I often see "Originally reported by AP" or "Originally reported by Reuters" in the fine print of articles from major national news outlets.

The fact that Trump's administration has expelled them is pretty telling...
 
IglooDame said:
My passport that is about to be declared invalid because it has an F on it where the Feds now insist should be an M? :huh:
Click to expand...
sorry - i'm aware a bunch of people are currently in that situation, should've added some caveat about that. i can't imagine what it's like in that situation. :/
 

US government sues Maine over refusing to ban transgender athletes​

The Trump administration is suing the state of Maine for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women's sports.

The move is an escalation in the public battle between the state's governor and Donald Trump that has included threats from the president to cut funding to Maine's education department.

"The Department of Justice will not sit by when women are discriminated against in sports," US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Wednesday. "This is also about these young women's personal safety."

In response, Maine's Governor Janet Mills said the issue has "never been about school sports of the protection of women and girls".

She also accused the federal government of "imposing its will" on states.

The dispute centres around Title IX, an American civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs.

In February, Trump signed an executive order mandating that the statute be interpreted as prohibiting the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports.

The federal government claims Maine's education department is violating the law.

During a press conference, Pam Bondi said the administration wanted to strip titles from transgender athletes.

"We are also considering whether to retroactively pull all the funding that they [the education department] have received for not complying in the past," Bondi said.

The suit comes days after the Trump administration attempted to cut off all of Maine's federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program.

That move appeared to be in response to a public spat between the state's governor and Trump during a meeting of US governors on 21 February.

During the meeting, Trump threatened the state's funding if Mills did not comply with an executive order banning transgender women from female sports.

Mills responded: "We'll see you in court."

On Wednesday, she said the federal government had been "acting unlawfully".

"For nearly two months, Maine has endured recriminations from the federal government that have targeted hungry school kids, hardworking fishermen, senior citizens, new parents, and countless Maine people," Mill said in a statement.

"We have been subject to politically motivated investigations that opened and closed without discussion, leaving little doubt that their outcomes were predetermined."

Mills has said there are two transgender athletes competing in Maine schools.

Less than 1% of people over 13-years-old in the US are transgender, according to a study by the UCLA Williams Institute.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of actions taken by Trump to roll back policies around transgender people put in place by the Biden administration.

In February, Trump has signed an executive order that prevents transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.

Following that decision, the NCAA, the governing body for US college sports, banned transgender women from competing in women's sports.

Also on Wednesday, in the UK, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. The court said transgender people still have legal protection from discrimination.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy48r02zrpvo
 
SemiLazyGamer said:
El Salvador VP told Senator Van Holland that they will continue holding the Maryland guy Trump's admin admitted was a mistake because Trump is paying them.

https://bsky.app/profile/annabower.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3lmx7fzkxvk2j
Click to expand...
The justification changes daily based on who is questioned. They were previously saying he couldn't be released because he is a citizen of El Salvador, then they were saying that he couldn't be released because he is a gang member, then because he is a terrorist... on and on.

Now he can't be released because the Trump administration is paying El Salvador to hold him... which of course would constitute about as direct of a violation as you could get of the wishy-washy SCOTUS Order... because even that Order at least stated that the administration had to "facilitate" his release. Actively paying to keep him imprisoned is the opposite of facilitating his release. Its not even the coy, feigned inability to act, or the passive-aggressive slow-walking, or engaging in indifferent inaction, which they at least had a fig leaf to do, because of the milquetoast Order... this is deliberately acting contrary to the Order, actively going against what the Order called for... "Facilitate his release"... "Nope, we will facilitate his continued detention instead".

Aaaaand as if on cue...

Judge finds probable cause to hold Trump administration in contempt for violating deportation order​

A federal judge on Wednesday said he has found probable cause to hold President Donald Trump’s administration in criminal contempt of court for violating his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg warned he could refer the matter for prosecution if the administration does not “purge” its contempt. Boasberg said the administration could do so by returning to U.S. custody those who were sent to the El Salvador prison in violation of his order so that they “might avail themselves of their right to challenge their removability.”
Click to expand...
https://apnews.com/live/donald-trump-news-updates-4-16-2025

Trump is calling for this Judge to be Impeached BTW... and Republicans in Congress have been taking him up on it.
 

Pentagon’s ‘SWAT team of nerds’ resigns en masse​

Employees of a defense tech unit say they were sidelined by DOGE. “Either we die quickly or we die slowly,” says the director.

Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.

The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.

Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.

The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.

The Defense Digital Service was created in 2015 to help the Pentagon adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises and push Silicon Valley-style innovation inside the Pentagon. It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid, drone detection technologies and more.

Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech talent pipeline and counter adversarial drones will be sunset, one soon-to-be former employee said.

Once dubbed the Pentagon’s “SWAT team of nerds,” DDS was one of the department’s earliest efforts to inject Silicon Valley ethos into its massive bureaucracy.

Jennifer Hay, director of the 14-person office, plans to leave by May 1. Eleven other employees plan to take President Donald Trump’s deferred resignation package by then. The two remaining staffers are also leaving.

A Pentagon spokesperson did not comment on the resignations but said the office’s functions would be absorbed by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, of which the DDS is a part.

Hay said her staff initially expected to be part of Musk’s efforts to automate the Pentagon’s operations and adopt AI.

“The reason we stuck it out as long as we have is that we thought we were going to be called in,” said Hay.

Instead, according to interviews, they were sidelined by DOGE’s efforts.

Several other digital modernization efforts within the government have met similar fates. The U.S. Digital Service, which helped the government modernize its technology and attract tech talent, has now been subsumed by DOGE, amid mass layoffs and firings. A program called 18F, a technology unit within the GSA, was eliminated by DOGE as well.

The DDS had struggled in recent years to stay at full strength, buffeted by what employees said was political infighting, hiring freezes, travel restrictions and an increasing number of bureaucratic layers. A watchdog audit released in May 2024 also found that former DDS directors had granted unauthorized waivers for certain tech tools. But every employee interviewed said they wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t for DOGE.

One former senior Pentagon official, who asked not to be named because of possible retaliation, described DOGE’s wider incursion into the Defense Department as damaging and unproductive

“They’re not really using AI, they’re not really driving efficiency. What they’re doing is smashing everything,” the former official said.

At the DDS, “The best way to put it, I think, is either we die quickly or we die slowly,” Hay said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/...ions-00290930?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
 
Angst said:
sorry - i'm aware a bunch of people are currently in that situation, should've added some caveat about that. i can't imagine what it's like in that situation. :/
Click to expand...

And my apologies, I didn't mean for it to come across as... er... that.

But, yeah, just about every trans person I know in the US has at least participated in a conversation (not initiated by me) about What They're Going To Do. Whether it being urgent emigration, or stay-at-home options. The passport thing in particular leads most to figure that leaving the US right now - no matter how short or what intent the visit elsewhere - could turn out to be permanent when one's passport is regarded as invalid and possibly fraudulent.

Any more than that probably merits a separate thread...
 

U.S. senator who travelled to El Salvador says he's been denied access to Kilmar Abrego Garcia​

Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and has since been jailed there​

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Wednesday authorities in El Salvador had denied him access to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and being held in a notorious prison in the country.

Van Hollen arrived in the Central American nation on Wednesday morning saying he would seek to meet with senior Salvadoran officials to secure Abrego Garcia's release.

But Van Hollen told reporters El Salvador's Vice President Felix Ulloa had told the senator he could not authorize a visit or a call with Abrego Garcia.

Van Hollen, who is a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Ulloa had also told him El Salvador was not releasing Abrego Garcia because the United States was paying to keep him incarcerated.

"Why should the government of the United States pay the government of El Salvador to lock up a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime?" Van Hollen said.

The government of El Salvador did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Van Hollen's visit.

'Administrative error' in U.S.​

After Washington acknowledged Abrego Garcia had been deported due to an "administrative error," the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an order by Judge Paula Xinis directing the government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return.

In a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia. Earlier on Monday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a court filing that it "does not have authority to forcibly" bring Abrego Garcia back.

On Tuesday, Xinis said she would not immediately hold the government in contempt of court, but said there was no evidence the Trump administration had tried to retrieve Abrego Garcia and said she would not tolerate "gamesmanship or grandstanding."

Along with Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, whom it says are gang members, to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without presenting evidence and without a trial.

Neither government has released the names of the men incarcerated, and the men have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since arriving at the prison, lawyers have said.

In March, after a judge said flights carrying migrants prosecuted under the Alien Enemies Act should return to the United States, Bukele wrote on X that it was too late, alongside images showing men being rushed off a plane in the dark.

Contempt charges possible for U.S. officials: judge​

A federal judge on Wednesday said officials in Trump's administration could face criminal prosecution for contempt of court for violating his order last month halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law.

Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence, his lawyers have said. He was granted a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the United States. He has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to Abrego Garcia's lawyers, who have denied the U.S. Justice Department's allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.

During his press conference, Van Hollen stressed that neither the Salvadoran government nor the Trump administration have presented any evidence that Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang.

U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth was to meet on Wednesday with El Salvador's minister of national defence, Rene Merino, at the Pentagon.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-senator-el-salvador-kilmar-abrego-garcia-1.7512059
 
IglooDame said:
And my apologies, I didn't mean for it to come across as... er... that.

But, yeah, just about every trans person I know in the US has at least participated in a conversation (not initiated by me) about What They're Going To Do. Whether it being urgent emigration, or stay-at-home options. The passport thing in particular leads most to figure that leaving the US right now - no matter how short or what intent the visit elsewhere - could turn out to be permanent when one's passport is regarded as invalid and possibly fraudulent.

Any more than that probably merits a separate thread...
Click to expand...

I'm not even trans and am afraid to leave the country in case when I come back some fascist psycho in a CBP uniform decides my perpetually sweaty palms are proof i'm smuggling drugs and sends me to a freezing cage for 20 days.
 
Broken_Erika said:

Pentagon’s ‘SWAT team of nerds’ resigns en masse​

Employees of a defense tech unit say they were sidelined by DOGE. “Either we die quickly or we die slowly,” says the director.

Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.

The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.

Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.

The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.

The Defense Digital Service was created in 2015 to help the Pentagon adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises and push Silicon Valley-style innovation inside the Pentagon. It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid, drone detection technologies and more.

Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech talent pipeline and counter adversarial drones will be sunset, one soon-to-be former employee said.

Once dubbed the Pentagon’s “SWAT team of nerds,” DDS was one of the department’s earliest efforts to inject Silicon Valley ethos into its massive bureaucracy.

Jennifer Hay, director of the 14-person office, plans to leave by May 1. Eleven other employees plan to take President Donald Trump’s deferred resignation package by then. The two remaining staffers are also leaving.

A Pentagon spokesperson did not comment on the resignations but said the office’s functions would be absorbed by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, of which the DDS is a part.

Hay said her staff initially expected to be part of Musk’s efforts to automate the Pentagon’s operations and adopt AI.

“The reason we stuck it out as long as we have is that we thought we were going to be called in,” said Hay.

Instead, according to interviews, they were sidelined by DOGE’s efforts.

Several other digital modernization efforts within the government have met similar fates. The U.S. Digital Service, which helped the government modernize its technology and attract tech talent, has now been subsumed by DOGE, amid mass layoffs and firings. A program called 18F, a technology unit within the GSA, was eliminated by DOGE as well.

The DDS had struggled in recent years to stay at full strength, buffeted by what employees said was political infighting, hiring freezes, travel restrictions and an increasing number of bureaucratic layers. A watchdog audit released in May 2024 also found that former DDS directors had granted unauthorized waivers for certain tech tools. But every employee interviewed said they wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t for DOGE.

One former senior Pentagon official, who asked not to be named because of possible retaliation, described DOGE’s wider incursion into the Defense Department as damaging and unproductive

“They’re not really using AI, they’re not really driving efficiency. What they’re doing is smashing everything,” the former official said.

At the DDS, “The best way to put it, I think, is either we die quickly or we die slowly,” Hay said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/...ions-00290930?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
Click to expand...
This will expedite Musk's digital takeover of the country... All Hail Skynet.

Lexicus said:
I'm not even trans and am afraid to leave the country tyin case when I come back some fascist psycho in a CBP uniform decides my perpetually sweaty palms are proof i'm smuggling drugs and sends me to a freezing cage for 20 days.
Click to expand...
Don't leave the country, at least for a couple months... the risk is unjustifiably high... unless you're planning to leave permanently...
 
Lexicus said:
I'm not even trans and am afraid to leave the country in case when I come back some fascist psycho in a CBP uniform decides my perpetually sweaty palms are proof i'm smuggling drugs and sends me to a freezing cage for 20 days
Click to expand...
My partner's coworker's wife was in the process of getting a green card when Trump came in. She still doesn't have it.

They were thinking of travelling soon and were told by their immigration lawyer, point blank, to avoid LAX because ICE has been grabbing people there.
 

Trump administration threatens Harvard with foreign student ban​

The US government has threatened to ban Harvard University from enrolling foreign students - after the institution said it would not bow to demands from President Donald Trump's administration and was hit with a funding freeze.

The White House has demanded the oldest university in the US make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices - to help fight antisemitism on campus.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has asked for records on what she called the "illegal and violent" activities of its foreign student visa-holders.

Harvard earlier said it had taken many steps to address antisemitism, and that demands were an effort to regulate the university's "intellectual conditions".

"The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message on Monday to the Harvard community.

The new request from Noem said the institution would lose the "privilege of enrolling foreign students" if it did not comply with the demand for records.

Harvard said it was aware of the new request from Noem, which was made in a letter, the Reuters news agency reported.

International students make up more than 27% of Harvard's enrolment this year. Even before Noem's statement, billions of dollars hung in the balance for the university, after the freeze of some $2.2 bn (£1.7bn) in federal funding.

Trump has also threatened to also remove Harvard's valuable tax exemption, the loss of which could cost Harvard millions of dollars each year. US media reports suggest the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) has started drawing up plans to enact this.

"Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World's Great Universities or Colleges," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.

"Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds."

The administration's attacks on Harvard are not isolated. The government's antisemitism task force has identified at least 60 universities for review.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pitched a funding crackdown on universities, painting them as hostile to conservatives. He and Vice-President JD Vance have long railed against higher education institutions.

Polling by Gallup last year suggested that confidence in higher education had been falling over time among Americans of all political backgrounds, particularly Republicans - in part due to a belief that universities push a political agenda.

Since taking office, Trump has focused particularly on universities where pro-Palestinian protests have taken place. Some Jewish students have said they felt unsafe and faced harassment on campus.

In March, Columbia University agreed to several of the administration's demands, after $400m in federal funding was pulled over accusations the university failed to fight antisemitism.

These included replacing the official leading its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department and pledging to take on a review to "ensure unbiased admission processes".

Harvard too has made concessions - including by dismissing the leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies, who had come under fire for failing to represent Israeli perspectives.

But it has drawn the line at the White House's recent list of demands.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1egdy24v7po
 
There are other English speaking universities those would be students may study at.

I am sure the prospect of an extra revenue stream will delight our (Oxford and Cambridge) universities.
 
How can Trump supposedly ban Harvard from enrolling foreign students? No executive order has the power to do that.
 
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