No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight

Eli Hager, in an article for ProPublica posted on Daily Kos, reported the full story of what happened when the Department of Government Efficiency (remember DOGE?) came to the Social Security Administration. Much of that story comes from Leland Dudek, who was the SSA administrator for about four months last winter and spring. The story opens with Dudek posting a scroll 4 feet by 20 feet on the wall. In tiny print and diagrams it describes what SSA does. But that’s not yet entirely reflected in the agency’s computer systems. The SSA is 90 years old. It’s software dates back to the 1980s and has more than 60 million lines of code. Many things are still done on paper. It has been talking of upgrades for two decades without it happening. So when DOGE called for efficiency and the elimination of waste and promised IT whiz kids to make it happen Dudek thought great, bring it on. Except the other part DOGE called for was the elimination of fraud. And that was much louder than all other goals. Every little discrepancy these green kids found was taken as fraud and blown into a scandal – see the stories of 120 year old people turned into dead people still collecting SS.

They could have worked to modernize Social Security’s legacy software, the current and former staffers say. They could have tried to streamline the stupefying volume of documentation that many Social Security beneficiaries have to provide. They could have built search tools to help staff navigate the agency’s 60,000 pages of policies. (New hires often need at least three years to master the nuances of even one type of case.) They could have done something about wait times for disability claims and appeals, which often take over a year. They did none of these things.

Every time Dudek tried to work around his bosses, which were people at the White House, he would get a call reminding him what he was really supposed to be doing, which was not to make the SSA better. He realized the problem wasn’t the DOGE kids, it was the senior leaders. One example was the SSA Office of Transformation, which had been starting the work of modernizing the SSA systems. He was told the office was wasteful and to cut it. So he started acting the part that the White House wanted, while trying to push what would actually help the SSA. About all that did was make him unemployable after he was forced out. And the turmoil frightened many of the people who depend on their SS checks. It also made their experience working SSA agents on the phone and in person worse. The only good thing is that SS benefits are still being paid. So far. Maria Godoy of NPR discussed the release of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy. It has 100 recommendations for improving children’s health. Some of the points are good, things like promoting exercise and fitness and teaching good nutrition. But there are also not good things, such as studying the root causes of autism (which aren’t the things he wants to prove) and producing a new vaccine framework (when there is nothing wrong with the old one). There are also loopholes, such as calling on the reduction of unsafe food additives while letting food companies determine the safety and while specifying no penalties for using additives known to be harmful. And there are contradictions, such as calling for fresh local produce in schools after the administration canceled the program that did just that. Leila Fadel of NPR continued the conversation with Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. Popkin said yes, children’s health is bad. An example is the type of diabetes usually only seen in older adults is now seen in children and teens. But this list does nothing to fix that bad health. “It’s all promises but no teeth.” It’s all about “research, exploration, consideration, but nothing about any regulation or law to mandate change.” Nothing will happen, or at least nothing after Kennedy leaves office.

And you can see that, really, that the food and agriculture sectors that really profit highly from the ultra-processed food they're selling to our children and killing them at the same time, really have gotten to the government so that they had nothing in this document that will lead to any meaningful regulation, law or guideline that will improve America's health.

One thing that would help the health of children is money ffor school food programs that pay for eliminating ultra-processed foods and regulation to require it. But that won’t happen. Alix Breeden of Kos adds a bit more:

According to Marion Nestle, New York University professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health, the report doesn’t have much substance. “The report seems to twist itself into knots to make it clear that it will not be infringing upon food companies,” Nestle said in an email to NBC News. “MAHA has so much bipartisan support. This was the time to regulate food marketing to kids — not ‘explore.’” She went on to say that the report is “short of specifics and weak on regulatory actions,” echoing a similar sentiment from professionals when the preliminary report leaked.

At the bottom of the article is a quote from Kennedy:

We had lots of guns when we were kids. Kids brought guns to school and were encouraged to do so. And nobody was walking into schools and shooting people. There are many things that could explain this. One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs.

I’m pretty sure my student handbook for high school said that a student caught with a gun at school would be expelled. I never saw a gun at school (or anywhere else, though I didn’t go into the town gun shop because my family didn’t hunt). I never heard of a bring your gun to school day. So I rate his first two sentences as false. That bit about nobody shooting people in schools is true. We didn’t practice lockdowns and didn’t need to. But at the time the rate of gun ownership was quite low. At the ending of this quote is Kennedy trying to link psychiatric drugs given to students with school gun deaths? The kids aren’t doing the killing. Fadel spoke to reporter Adrian Florido about the recent Supreme Court order that lifted the temporary order that banned ICE from doing aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles. The order was brief, unsigned, and included no reasoning, meaning it was from the shadow docket. The order means ICE can resume targeting people based solely on skin color, accent, and occupation; what the ACLU called blatant racial profiling. Florido said:

In a concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh cited an estimate that 10% of LA's population is undocumented and said race can be relevant when agents are determining whether they suspect someone is in the country illegally. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent. And she wrote, quote, “we should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low-wage job.”

A reminder that Sotomayor is Latina. There is an underlying court case. The lower court said these sweeps cannot happen while the case proceeds. The Supremes said the sweeps can. And the order will probably affect what ICE does in Chicago and other cities. Fadel and Steve Inskeep then spoke to Sarah Isgur, editor of SCOTUSblog, who recently interviewed Justice Amy Coney Barrett about the shadow docket. A Supreme Court case takes time to read through the briefings, hold oral arguments, and write the opinions. That takes several months to a year or two. The purpose of the emergency (shadow) docket is what should the law be between now and when the case is officially decided. Even so this can have permanent effects that can not reversed even if the eventual decision goes the other way. An example is a person deported now. Other examples are everything the nasty guy does through executive order, such as whether he can fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission. A problem is the orders are not explained and they usually (almost always?) favor the nasty guy. These orders leave lower courts caught between previous Supreme precedents and what these order say. This post includes a bit of that Barrett interview. She admits the emergency docket does not allow the justices to think about the issue, there is less information, and no time for reasoned opinions. Isgur says these nine people don’t really know how to handle the emergency docket and with the start of their term next month they’re going to be hit with a lot of cases coming from all those executive orders, cases like can the president invoke tariffs or fire a Federal Reserve governor. Another issue is what should be the status quo. The emergency docket is supposed to protect the status quo while the case is being decided. Is the status quo what was in effect before the president took office? Or, as the nasty guy’s team claims (and has Biden’s team claimed before them), since he is voted in by the people and is there only four years should his orders be status quo? Lisa Needham of Kos added her take on the Supreme Court orders.

The now familiar 6-3 lineup at the United States Supreme Court just threw out decades of settled law so that President Donald Trump’s roving bands of masked federal agents in Los Angeles can engage in a little light racial profiling, as a treat, and can continue scooping up people based on nothing more than looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and working at a low-wage job like a car wash. You know the drill. A lower-court judge wrote a detailed, thoughtful, lengthy opinion about how this practice was 100% racial profiling and ordered the government to stop doing it. The Trump administration ran to the Supreme Court to say that the world would crumble if they couldn’t racially profile brown people in Los Angeles right away, and the Supreme Court obliged by staying the lower court’s order. That stay prevents the lower court’s order from going into effect, so federal agents can continue this straight-up racist, unconstitutional behavior. ... Does arresting or detaining people for no reason at all violate the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that probable cause is required to search or seize someone? It sure does! If a police officer wants to stop someone on the street and search them, they have to have a level of reasonable suspicion about that particular person, such as believing they are armed and about to commit a crime. Law enforcement officers have to be able to justify stopping specific people based on specific concerns rather than being able to stop whole groups of people based on shared characteristics. ... Justice Sonia Sotomayor pulled no punches, even refusing to engage in the faux-civility of the tradition of saying “I respectfully dissent.” Nope, here it is just “I dissent.” While that may seem like a nerdy, legalistic, tiny thing to focus on, in the context of how the justices communicate with one another through their opinions, it’s Sotomayor saying the actions and reasoning—or lack thereof—of her colleagues are not worthy of respect.

Needham also reported some of the ICE ways of doing business have changed for the worse. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says ICE agents are facing assaults (what the rest of us would consider freedom of speech). Filming of ICE agents isn’t allowed. No Supreme Court ruling has said one way or the other, though numerous state courts have rules that is a protected right. ICE agents used to be required to document the specific person they want to arrest, giving lots of details, and getting supervisor approval. Now they just arrest who they please. DHS is blocking members of Congress from doing their ICE facility oversight duties without prior approval, while the law says approval can’t be required. And DHS has shut down the oversight office, freezing 500 civil rights cases.

No recordings, no paperwork, no oversight. DHS is systematically eliminating every way we have to keep tabs on law enforcement to ensure that Trump’s immigration crackdown, no matter how illegal or violent, can’t be stopped.

In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Politico:

The justices, who apparently divided 6-3 along ideological lines, put on hold a federal district judge’s order that reined in what critics called “roving” raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That judge had found the tactics were likely unconstitutional because agents were detaining people without probable cause at car washes, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots based on stereotypes. The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision to grant the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to block the district judge’s order. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately in support of the decision, saying it was reasonable to briefly question people who meet multiple “common sense” criteria for possible illegal presence — including employment in day labor or construction, and limited English proficiency.

That little bit about “common sense” is partly why Sotomayor lost respect for the decision. In the comments Matt Davies posted a cartoon titled “Supreme Court guide to use of race in admission:” Over the entrance to a university is “Not OK.” Over the doors of an ICE detention van is “OK.” David Wolfe tweeted, “Children are born perfect without the need for toxic injections. Once vaccinated, the brain and body are harmed forever.” Dr. Neil Stone, infectious diseases doctor, responded, “Before vaccines, 1 in 5 kids never made it to their first birthday.” I add: What’s the evidence that the brain and body of an infant are harmed? Every vaccine must document they aren’t harmful to the vast number of people who take them. Acyn tweeted a quote from the vice nasty, “The bad news is...one of the pollsters once told me, anger usually wins midterm elections and because we done so much of what we said we are going to do, people are angry.” Gavin Newsom responded: “JD Vance admits he policies are wildly unpopular on national television.” In the comments of Wednesday’s roundup is a meme by Dan Pfeiffer,

There are only two possibilities – John Roberts is so afraid of a constitutional crisis that he will give Trump everything he wants, or Roberts is 100% in on the MAGA project to destroy our democracy.

Or both? Way down in the comments is a cartoon by the Naked Pastor. Under a banner saying these are the “Lost sayings of Jesus” Jesus is talking to a group of women. “Beware when men write something and claim it is inspired by God, for then you can’t dispute it.”