Attention to the Unseen

The Verge reports: The Trump administration breached a federal privacy law by letting workers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access information on millions of government workers, privacy advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) allege in a new lawsuit filed on behalf of two labor unions and a group of current and former federal employees. The groups allege that DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) violated the Privacy Act of 1974, which protects information maintained…

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The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate. The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called “the plain text” of an edict he issued on Jan. 29. That…

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By Jake Pearson and Anjeanette Damon This story was originally published by ProPublica When the federal courts first blocked the Trump administration’s funding freeze, Jessyca Leach was cautiously optimistic. For days, the pause had prevented her from accessing the money she needs for her Phoenix health clinic to serve thousands of at-risk people, most of them poor and many of them members of the LGBTQ+ community. Things had gotten so bad that she had to lay off three employees and…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump has removed the director of the Office of Government Ethics, an official tasked with ensuring government workers comply with conflict of interest and ethics requirements. David Huitema was confirmed by the Senate in December for a five-year term. His dismissal was announced in one sentence on the OGE website, stating that the office had been notified that Trump is removing him as director. The website also said OGE will revert to an acting director: Shelley…

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NBC News reports: Legal and constitutional experts warned Sunday that the United States could be headed toward a “constitutional crisis” or a “breakdown of the system” after Vice President JD Vance suggested judges don’t have jurisdiction over President Donald Trump’s “legitimate power.” “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also…

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Mike Brock writes: Consider what we’re being asked to believe about Elon Musk. That he is simultaneously managing Tesla, a global automotive manufacturer facing fierce competition and complex production challenges. That he is overseeing SpaceX, a company conducting human spaceflight and handling critical national security contracts. That he is running X/Twitter through a tumultuous transformation affecting global discourse. That he is developing experimental brain implants at Neuralink under federal investigation. That he is competing in the most sophisticated artificial intelligence…

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  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivers remarks on the Senate floor on the dangerous nominations of Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to serve as Attorney General and FBI Director.

Yesterday, in response to my own sense of powerlessness while watching the ongoing assault on democracy led by Elon Musk and Donald Trump, I engaged in a quixotic gesture: I went down to my local FBI field office to offer a small token of public support. Not surprisingly, it isn’t possible to walk into an FBI office. Since the Oklahoma bombing, all such offices are well fortified. This office did have a kiosk in front of the main entrance where…

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The New York Times reports: Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot. To start, Mr. Driscoll’s appointment was an accident. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the White House identified the wrong agent as acting director on its website and never corrected the mistake. Even if he was not meant to be leading the agency, he…

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Politico reports: FBI agents who worked on cases stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — or the criminal investigations of President Donald Trump — have filed a class action lawsuit to block Justice Department leadership from assembling lists of agents they say will be used as part of a retaliation campaign. The agents, who brought the federal suit anonymously, included screenshots of a three-page survey they say DOJ leadership intends to use to identify thousands of agents…

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