Incompetence, negligence & corruption
Another week proving information is power.
Farrah was traveling last week, but Lyn was on the case, so here are the…
Headlines
Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it, Oliver Milman and Andrew Witherspoon, The Guardian, 3/26/2025
Climate research remains significantly under threat by the administration, and FEMA staff attempted to save a charting tool which demonstrates county-by-county projections of potential losses and various climate risk scenarios like wildfires and coastal flooding, intended as a key resource for local governments, utilities, and other planners.
Preservation attempts started even before Trump took office for the second term, with the team renaming it as The Future Risk Index to avoid mention of climate crisis. However, fears of retribution won out and the tool was removed.
“It was taken down because there is now a fear of anything climate-related. There is such a culture of fear and uncertainty in Fema, people are worried about getting fired or defunded.”
The data was preserved and the tool was originally restored by data company Fulton Ring. In collaboration, The Guardian is assisting in its maintenance and publication as a public resource.
See also: Trump wants to wind down FEMA. Could states fill the gap?, Jake Bittle, Grist, 3/27/25
See also: E.P.A. Investigations of Severe Pollution Look Increasingly at Risk, Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times, 3/27/2025
Trump Shuts Down 3 Watchdog Agencies Overseeing Immigration Crackdown, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Hamed Aleaziz, Adam Goldman and Eileen Sullivan, The New York Times, 3/21/2025 (Archive)
As the administration ramps up deportation efforts, three watchdog agencies responsible for immigration and civil rights oversight in the Department of Homeland Security have been shut down.
These agencies have been investigating Trump’s immigration policies since his first term, and this euphemistic “workforce reduction” is notably opaque.
To put it mildly, “Critics say it’s an attempt to sidestep any scrutiny.”
‘People will die’: alarm as Trump’s DEI rollback hits anti-trafficking efforts, Katie McQue, The Guardian, 3/21/2025 (Archive)
Agencies and orgs remain caught between a rock and a hard place, capitulating to directives to remove DEI language to retain funding at the expense of supporting their at-risk communities and patrons.
Government agencies and non-profits that rely on federal funds raise flags that these sweeping censorship directives effectively remove the ability to continue research, provide resources, and mobilize policy and protections; and instead pushes people to less informed aid while maintaining widespread, uninformed environments.
As an anonymous prosecutor notes, “You can’t really take a victim-centered approach if we’re not allowed to categorically approach the victim for who they are as a person.”
The Pentagon’s DEI purge: Officials describe a scramble to remove and then restore online content, Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp, Associated Press, 3/21/2025 (Archive)
Sweeping directives with little clarity apart from loud, foreboding consequences: removal of “DEI” data, imagery, and content remains disastrous for record keeping, historical preservation, worker morale, and more.
Officials erred on the side of bulk removal in fear of consequences for non-compliance. Employees looked for keywords en masse, flagging and removing work tagged by AI and through immense and frustrating manual review. Tens of thousands of posts have been removed, many of which are unable to be restored.
Despite defensiveness from Pentagon leaders and spokesmen, outrage continues to build as the sweeping removals become increasingly impossible to ignore.
US House Speaker Johnson says Congress can 'eliminate' district courts, David Morgan and Nate Raymond, Reuters, 3/25/2025 (Archive)
In response to “activist” judges’ endeavors to maintain constitutional democracy, US House Speaker Mike Johnson warned (read: threatened, though saying otherwise) that Congress has the ability to eliminate district courts.
As judges continue to file injunctions halting the current administration’s various efforts, both the House and the Senate will continue to face the tug-of-war of checks and balances currently under threat.
FinCEN Guts Corporate Transparency Act; Narrows Scope to Cover Only Foreign Companies and Beneficial Owners, Thomas W. Antonucci, Vesna K. Harasic-Yaksic and Ira B. Mirsky, Wiley, 3/25/2025
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau within the US Department of the Treasury, is changing the Corporate Transparency Act to no longer require reporting of beneficial ownership information (BOI) by domestic companies, instead narrowing in solely on foreign reporting companies.
Though under the guise of lessening the burden on domestic businesses and US federal investigative resources, the prepared logic for the announcement proves lacking: if this data is vital for tracking possible foreign risks to national security, then how is it irrelevant or burdensome when considering possible domestic risks to national security?
Note from Farrah: We submitted our BOI form before knowing what the rule would be, but after it went into limbo. It took exactly two minutes. Meanwhile, the previous standard of LLCs (in particular) not having to list their beneficial ownership me means real estate investors still get to buy and sell real property without anyone knowing they did. Perfect for money laundering and other financial crimes and fraud, as FinCEN itself noted in this paper from 2006.
See also: Official Press Release, US Department of the Treasury
DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse, Makena Kelly, Wired, 3/28/2025 (Archive)
After misinformed (read: false) accusations of fraud within the Social Security Administration and continuous battles for data access, Musk and DOGE are doubling down on the agency by ordering a rush migration of the SSA’s systems to a modern code language.
While this migration is justifiably needed – a projected five-year plan was developed in 2017 but pivoted at the onset of COVID-19 – a project of this scale requires years of investment to prevent irreparable complications for millions of Americans. DOGE has been given a timeframe of a few months.
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, 3/24/2025 (Archive)
Somehow, Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist for The Atlantic and occasional target of Trump ire, was added to a groupchat on Signal created by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, in which a principals committee coordinated Houthi-targeting war plans.
Reader, we have been astonished for days.
Despite what most people consider a blatant OPSEC violation, Trump, alongside groupchat members – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and director of the CIA John Ratcliffe – have all claimed that the contents of the chat contained no classified information.
In light of this response, The Atlantic has released the entire contents of the chat, only withholding the name of a CIA officer, in spite of the White House later objecting to the release of its full contents.
The question holds: if the chat contained no classified information, and the timeliness of the messages are no longer a risk after the executed military operations, why would there be an objection to the release of the whole chain?
See also: Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal, Matthew Gault, The Verge, 3/28/2025
Semi-Related
Homeland Security revokes temporary status for 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, Gisela Salomon, Associated Press, 3/21/2025 (Archive)
The Department of Homeland Security is revoking legal protections for migrants that entered the US through the humanitarian parole program. The decision impacts over half a million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, effectively prematurely ending parole terms and setting grounds for deportation starting April 24.
Notably, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are US adversaries, and the administration continues to emphasize deportation efforts while reducing legal immigration routes as a key aspect of national security campaigns.
Don’t forget to back up your data.