Tyranny & Tantrums: A Rant on America’s Collapse

America is to going to hell in a hand basket, and the cracks in its foundation are glaring. As Linkin Park’s Burn It Down echoes, “We’re building it up to break it back down,” the cycle of destruction and collapse feels all too familiar. Institutions meant to uphold democracy are being dismantled, only to be rebuilt on even shakier ground. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few, while the vulnerable are left to fend for themselves. Like the song’s imagery of betrayal and downfall, the current political landscape mirrors a system that prioritizes control and greed over people. The flames of collapse are fanned, and the question remains—what will rise from the ashes?

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Social Security rushing service cuts at White House request, sources say

The Social Security Administration is rushing cuts to phone services at the White House’s request, the agency’s acting commissioner told Social Security advocates in a meeting on Monday, two sources who attended tell Axios.

Social Security rushing service cuts at White House request, sources say

Previously:

Trump’s Billionaire Commerce Secretary: Only ‘Fraudsters’ Will Complain If Social Security Checks Don’t Arrive

No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits

Trump’s Medicaid reversal should worry Social Security recipients.

The ADA Is Turning 35—And It’s in Trump’s Crosshairs + More

The ADA Is Turning 35—And It’s in Trump’s Crosshairs

Since the bill was signed into law, disabled Americans have benefited from a much wider array of protections in the workforce, in education, and in the ability to access public places and private spaces open to the public, such as stores and restaurants. But in a world where disability rights victories, and disabled people themselves, are being attacked by anti-DEI activists who have President Donald Trump’s ear, disability civil rights feel a little more fragile. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, another essential and wide-ranging item of civil rights legislation, is also in peril, most notably through a lawsuit filed by 17 Republican state attorneys general and led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as my colleague Sarah Szilagy reported in October.

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The Trumpists Agitating To Coup Honduras + More

The Trumpists Agitating To Coup Honduras

Prospera, a Peter Thiel-backed crypto ‘city’ running unregulated medical experiments on a Honduran island may very well be the spark for a US coup against Honduras this November.

Another group to have visited Prospera in recent weeks are Republicans for National renewal, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Mark Ivanyo, a former staffer in Trump’s first term Department of Justice. They touted Prospera as ‘similar to President Trump’s proposed Freedom Cities’ and also took aim at Castro, saying Prospera was ‘a bastion of pro-Americanism, economic freedom & Bitcoin acceptance in socialist Honduras.’

Prospera was also visited last week by Cremieux, an anonymous twitter account regularly retweeted by Elon Musk (and likely run by more than one white crypto-libertarian type) that helps set the libertarian discourse.

Given these links it’s inconceivable that Trump hasn’t heard about Prospera and the threats to its existence. Marco Rubio, a man aggressively hostile to anything that looks or smells like socialism in Latin America, almost certainly has as well. It was telling that he didn’t bother visiting Honduras on his recent trip to Latin America, his first outside the US.

I’ve strongly suspected that these so-called ‘Network States’ would be used as staging grounds for regime change operations. I am aware of the ones in Venezuela and Brazil, as well as a few others in Africa.

Related:

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Donald Trump’s Next Diversity Target: People With Disabilities

President Trump’s suggestion last month that the tragic Potomac air crash was somehow the fault of disabled federal air traffic controllers was appalling—but it should have come as no surprise. Trump’s contempt for people with disabilities has been well documented, and it’s that animus, combined with the accelerating MAGA assault on diversity throughout the United States, that has disability rights advocates preparing to defend decades worth of hard-won protections.

One month into his presidency, Trump has unleashed a government-wide attack on people with disabilities, from anti-diversity executive orders to proposed special-education rollbacks to threats to slash programs like Medicaid that are lifelines for disabled people across the country. If successful, these actions could have catastrophic consequences for millions of Americans, according to disability rights experts.

Donald Trump’s Next Diversity Target: People With Disabilities

Related:

In the video below, Rep. Jahana Hayes mentions how Trump’s DEIA order is already affecting special education.

If Trump Dismantles the Dept. of Education, Who Will Pay the Biggest Price?

DEI (A?) – The Effect of Donald Trump’s DEI Executive Order on Accessibility

On President Trump’s first day in office, he immediately issued a new Executive Order declaring Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) efforts “illegal.” With this new order in effect, previous mandates that implemented DEI efforts both in the federal government and among federal contractors were revoked.

While the primary focus is on race- and sex-based affirmative action, the Order lumps together “DEI” and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (“DEIA”) efforts. So, disability inclusion efforts may now be under scrutiny as well.

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did (archived)

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE’s Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.

As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits [Social Security Disability Insurance], and veteran’s pay.

On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.

Previously:

Cloud Software Group: As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

Prescribing the American Dream

This is from something that I’ve been working on regarding Freudian psychology and social conditioning. Unfortunately, one of the author’s sources is Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, which falsely equates Communism with Nazism. To be honest, I haven’t found any “perfect” sources for my project. Even Michael Parenti’s Against Psychopolitics quotes problematic sources (Harold Lasswell was involved with the RAND Corporation). While Karl Korsch had worked for the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, which was home to the CIA front Frankfurt School, I like the above quote. I’ll probably end up using a different one when it’s all said and done, though.

Prescribing the American Dream: Psychoanalysts, Mass Media, and the Construction of Social and Political Norms in the 1950’s

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