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When you catch the subway, many of your personal details, including banking information and location, are collected and entered into a database. Walk around the city and you're being recorded by thousands of cameras. Drive into the city "and traffic cameras will automatically photograph your car, capturing your vehicle's license plate, make, model, color, distinctive markings and even passengers." Post on social media and your views, friends, thoughts, and plans can be scraped. This isn't some far of place. This is in New York City (and other cities and towns across America). So, what's the problem? As long as I don't commit a crime, isn't all this surveillance just protecting me? Well, that depends who you are: "Take a teenager living in the Marcy Houses, a public housing complex in Brooklyn. Simply because of where he lives, if he posts photos with certain classmates or if he tries out certain hashtags, he might be added to the N.Y.P.D.’s gang database, which contains active entries for more than 13,000 people, 99 percent of whom are people of color...Even if there is no suspicion that this particular young man has engaged in any crime, his presence on that database exposes him to a level of monitoring previously reserved for intensive undercover operations targeting organized crime." OK, but I'm not a teen living in public housing, so do I really need to worry? Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez explains why this kind of surveillance is a big deal for everyone. The N.Y.P.D. Is Teaching America How to Track Everyone Every Day Forever. Here's one example you may not have considered. "Today, abortion is legal in New York. But in many states it is not, and some of them are actively considering whether to criminalize out-of-state travel for abortion-related care. No current laws would prevent the federal government from demanding access to the N.Y.P.D.’s data or stop the department from granting it. The system could quickly identify out-of-state cars and people who visit or have visited Planned Parenthood. Dossiers could easily be generated for each person and then expanded to include information about their travel, social networks, habits and beliefs. From there, it would be easy to create a watch list targeting suspects for further monitoring, stops, questioning and property seizures. That may seem improbable today. Will it seem that way tomorrow?" (A few days ago, it seemed improbable that a US administration would target individuals and groups that may have different political opinions about a recently killed activist. Today, it's all but certain.)
2
Left Hook
"President Trump and his top advisers threatened on Monday to unleash the power of the federal government to punish what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on Charlie Kirk’s killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents. Investigators were still working to identify a motive in the death of Mr. Kirk." (We may not know the killer's motive, but we definitely know the adminstation's motives.) NYT (Gift Article): White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups.
+ JD Vance backs mass ‘doxing’ campaign to find and harass Charlie Kirk critics. And, Pam Bondi faces criticism for saying DOJ will 'target' anyone who engages in 'hate speech.'
+ But wait. Isn't far right politically-motivated violence much more prevalent in America? Yes. But the DOJ Deleted the Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing. (The report is still on the Wayback Machine, for now.)
3
Online of Fire
"The far-left accounts cheering political assassination and prominent right-media personalities calling for civil war against 'the party of murder' were engaged in a mirrored cosplay, both play-acting as violent revolutionaries from the comfort of air-conditioned rooms with WiFi. How can something like this happen in America? is an important question to ask, but not a difficult one to answer. To see what we are doing to ourselves, you only had to do the easiest thing: log on." Derek Thompson: All the Sad Young Terminally Online Men. "As young single men have dramatically increased their time alone and online, they’ve marinated in a unique attentional environment that is more charged with extremist ideas and emotional negativity. Political scientists have found that social isolation increases the risk that young men develop a 'need for chaos,' and law enforcement officers have independently confirmed that modern political violence is more likely the result of isolated lone wolves who stitch together a bespoke ideology of hatred that is disconnected from any formal organization."
+ "A confounding aspect of where we are right now as a country is that the everyday person in their home or workplace is horrified and frightened by acts of violence, political or otherwise. But the people we are online are often not." Yes, It’s the Guns. It’s Also the Phones.
+ "Sean Aaron Smith delighted in the sheer volume of attention the tower fire was receiving, even if most of it dripped with sarcasm. A lean, tattooed—and until recently, entirely apolitical—27-year-old, Smith had come to view 5G as the linchpin of a globalist plot to zombify humanity. To resist that supposed scheme, he’d spent the past five months setting Texas cell towers ablaze." Wired: One Vigilante, 22 Cell Tower Fires, and a World of Conspiracies. "Inside the mind of the most prolific anti-5G arsonist in the world—and the incoherent, very online political violence of our era."
4
America Is Now Pro Cancer
"In a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more. It is trying to sharply reduce the percentage of expenses that the government will cover for federally funded cancer-research labs. It has terminated hundreds of government employees who helped lead the country’s cancer-research system and ensured that new discoveries reached clinicians, cancer patients and the American public. And the president’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for a more-than-37-percent cut to the National Cancer Institute — the N.I.H. agency that leads most of the nation’s cancer research — reducing it to $4.5 billion from $7.2 billion. Adjusting for inflation, you have to go back more than 30 years to find a comparably sized federal cancer-research budget." NYT Magazine (Gift Article): Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer.
5
Extra, Extra
Kash Poor: FBI Kash Patel appeared before a Senate committee. Yelling ensued. Among other things, he was dishonest about FBI firings. Here's a look at a couple of them. A ‘Broken’ Trust: F.B.I. Agents Fired by Patel Speak Out.
+ Gaza City Bombardment: "Israel unleashed a long-threatened ground assault on Gaza City on Tuesday, declaring 'Gaza is burning' as Palestinians there described the most intense bombardment they had faced in two years of war. An Israel Defense Forces official said ground troops were moving deeper into the enclave's main city, and that the number of soldiers would rise in coming days to confront up to 3,000 Hamas combatants the IDF believes are still in the city ... In launching the assault, Israel's government defied European leaders threatening sanctions and warnings from even some of Israel's own military commanders that it could be a costly mistake." Here's the latest from CNN.
+ Chips on the Table: Trump Sues The New York Times for Articles Questioning His Success. They're definitely not questioning his success at lining his own pockets as president. Anatomy of Two Giant Deals: The U.A.E. Got Chips. The Trump Team Got Crypto Riches. "At the heart of their relationship are two multibillion-dollar deals. One involved a crypto company founded by the Witkoff and the Trump families that benefited both financially. The other involved a sale of valuable computer chips that benefited the Emirates economically."
+ The Old Man and the Sea: "'All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, describing 'big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.' The video posted by Trump appears to show the boat barely moving or stopped in the water when it was destroyed. There were no drugs visible in the ocean in the footage released by the administration. Venezuelan drug gangs don’t produce or smuggle fentanyl, experts say." U.S. Strikes Second Alleged Drug Boat From Venezuela, Trump Says.
+ Pac and Play: "Thanks to a unique corporate ownership structure that gives him complete control of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has essentially created his own personal California super PAC, allowing him to spend Meta’s money on politically protecting his priorities in the heart of the tech industry — and, possibly, against the interests of his corporate rivals." Meta created its own super PAC to politically kneecap its AI rivals. "Mark Zuckerberg, via Meta, can now essentially spend unlimited money in California elections." (Every day, there's more influence being amassed in fewer hands.)
+ Deleting History: "The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back." WaPo: