At a recent doctor’s appointment, the assistant began by asking the routine questions with which we are all familiar, concluding with “have you been depressed lately?” When I responded “Ever since the election,” that opened the floodgates–she confided to being terrified, angry, and desperately worried about the world her small daughter will inherit.
Millions of Americans are having similar conversations.
Given the firehose of rash and destructive assaults on poorly-understood agencies and programs, most of us are worrying about personal effects of the chaos: will my Social Security payment arrive? Will Medicare/Medicaid benefits be cut? What will Trump’s love affair with tariffs do to the stock market and my retirement accounts? Will the confirmation of an anti-science kook with a brain worm invite another pandemic?
Others wonder why we are spitting on America’s allies.
Given the sheer number of things to find appalling, it’s understandable that relatively few of us are focusing on an even more ominous aspect of this effort to destroy the federal government: the erasure of data from government websites. A recent report from In the Public Interest spelled out some consequences of those erasures.
The collection and dissemination of accurate data and findings fuel research all over the nation, in academic programs, think tanks, hospitals, private labs, and in state and local governments. But this isn’t just a problem for researchers whose projects or even life’s work have been interrupted or derailed. It’s the human cost of this loss that should worry all of us.
More than 8,000 web pages across a dozen U.S. government websites were purged, and while it covers everything from a veterans’ entrepreneurship programs to a NASA site, the purge of webpages and datasets related to public health is particularly alarming. The purges, which include more than 3,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have removed information and articles about vaccines, tuberculosis surveillance, veterans’ care, women’s health, HIV testing and prevention measures, Alzheimer’s warning signs, and overdose prevention training, among many other topics.
The datasets that have disappeared include large-scale national health surveys, indices, and data dashboards that are essential for policy makers and the public.
I spent 21 years teaching law and policy, and a bedrock principle of both was the importance of facts and evidence–the rather obvious connection between an accurate understanding of the reality of a situation and efforts to adjudicate it fairly or remedy its deficits via policy change.
The political disputes that have gotten us to this point have been significantly affected by the vast amounts of misinformation, disinformation and lack of information that have bolstered various bigotries while ignoring reality. (If you accept Musk’s description of programs with which he disagrees as “fraud and waste,” discussion of the merits of those programs–or the consequences of their sudden termination– becomes irrelevant.)
The erasure of data accumulated in rigorous studies–studies we taxpayers have funded and to which we are entitled–is an attack on knowledge and reality. The erasures are in service of MAGA bigotries– efforts to eliminate any mention of gay or trans people, avoid recognition of racial and gender realities, distort medical science and ignore climate change.
A Guardian essay (link unavailable) noted the ridiculous extent of the purges.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders attacking “gender ideology” and DEI programs, the word “women” – along with a number of other terms – is quite literally being erased. The likes of NASA have been busy scrubbing mentions of terms related to women in leadership from public websites in an attempt to comply with Trump’s executive orders, for example. Agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have taken down numerous webpages related to gender in the wake of Trump’s orders – although a federal judged ordered on Tuesday that they should be reinstated.
Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has an internal list of hot-button words (which include “women”, “gender”, “minority”, “biases”) that they are cross-referencing against active research projects and grant applications. The Washington Post reports that once one of these very dangerous words is identified, staff then have to go through a flowchart to see whether a research project should be flagged for further review.
The National Institutes of Health and multiple university research departments are going through a similar dystopian exercise. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego, for example, have said their work is now at risk if it contains language deemed potentially problematic, including the word “women”.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak was the language created by Oceana to meet the Party’s ideological requirements. It limited people’s ability to think critically–after all, if you lack the word for something, does it exist?
Welcome to Oceana.
Speaking of words…. when are we going to start using the word “TREASON”?
Rachel Maddow has been dispensing much “Missing Information….” on her nightly MSNBC “First 100 Days” of Trump’s misadministration and demolition derby tactics running this government…into the ground.
Her “outing” of Republican Sen. Dr. Cassidy of Louisiana whose strong stand on vaccines probably saved lives and helped elect him but he voted FOR RFK, Jr. to head HHS. This is the strength of the fear of Trump’s retaliation for anyone who would vote or speak publicly against his Executive Orders or smart-ass comments in speeches. That places Republican Sen. Dr. Cassidy in the position of a person who would hide the coffee pot and serve mixed drinks at an AA meeting and guarantee it would help them build a natural immunity to alcohol.
Theresa Bowers; Kudos! Aren’t many of these misplaced cabinet appointees sailing through “hearings” sedition at the least and treason at most? Coup is such a tiny word to have world shattering results after 250 years of successful, with a minority of expected glitches, democracy in this once democratic republic. Both words are being erased to be replaced unofficially with Fascist Dictatorship.
“The erasure of data accumulated in rigorous studies–studies we taxpayers have funded and to which we are entitled–is an attack on knowledge and reality. The erasures are in service of MAGA bigotries– efforts to eliminate any mention of gay or trans people, avoid recognition of racial and gender realities, distort medical science and ignore climate change.”
Erasures do NOT eliminate the facts; but only if we keep them in mind and fight for their return. But, we do need a leader; a name and a face to speak to, support and go to for answers. Who from the apparently forgotten Democratic ousted administration will step forward and remind us of that “Missing Information…”? We need an identifiable Flag Bearer to replace President Joe Biden who was forced out of his campaign and the sudden replacement by Vice President Kamala Harris with the split party not fully supporting her. She was then blamed for losing “their” election.
It has become nearly comical – if it weren’t so odious – watching and listening to Senators and Congressmen – invertebrates – mansplaining trump’s horrific and destructive actions as somehow in the normal range. It defies logic. We need the press to grow a pair and take on this effort to whitewash and sanitize the destructive actions of the current administration. What they are doing IS NOT OK, in any sense, legal, constitutional, moral or otherwise, and the first step in putting on the brakes is to have the truth of the matter revealed on a constant and regular basis, by all news outlets (I don’t include FOX as it doesn’t qualify as news, unfortunately, with its large viewership). MSNBC has it down pretty well but has a smallish and liberal viewership; CNN tries but coverage is uneven, and theirs and mainstream ABC, CBS, NBC’s attempts at “fair” and “even” coverage of the news, including maga GOPers, simply gives that crowd a chance to spout lies and political disinformation. That has to stop; we all know what the lies are, lies which become “truths” to those who hear them uncontested on their favorite news outlets. This is serious; our democracy hasn’t been challenged like this since WWII. Even the McCarthy hearings, the Vietnam War, Iran-Contra, etc., had loud enough opposition to not be the level of threat we are facing today.
It is right out of the authoritarian playbook. Hopefully, people saw this coming and prepared by making records of their own so once this storm has passed factual information can be restored.
Much like the A.P. Being booted out because of the refusal to use the Gulf of America. It is a test to see what he can get people to do. Remember Sean Spicer? The size of the crowd at the inauguration was not the point; the ability to make people obey is the point. We must hold on to our reality as hard and as long as we can. Every effort of resistance, no matter how small, is important.
James, you assume that this storm will pass. Maybe. But first it will intensify. In a disastrous scenario, Europe comes to the rescue of Ukraine and Trump sides with Putin – again. What do we have then?
My point is that this cancer in the White House and its tendrils across Congress and the country have to be excised, radiated out of existence somehow, some way before we no longer have a nation or a world.
The mother’s fear for the world he daughter will grow up into is valid. The Trump psychopathy seems to have no limits. Add the South African cheeseball raping our government for its money and we are literally sitting on the bomb that will blow us all to hell.
After the 2016 election, academic institutions recognized the threat that data on federal websites might be purged. They systematically downloaded and housed data with major universities. I personally harvested from the Department of Education website. I have not been able to find out if harvesting continued or was restarted after the 2024 election. Science data exists with the institutions that conducted the research as well as with NIH in many cases. Softer areas such as the National Endowments may disappear but we can hope that someone backed it up off site. My point is that there is awareness and quiet vigilance about data.
Please fellow readers, add Congresswoman Victoria Spartz to your list of officials to contact re: Ukraine. She was born and raised there when it was Russian, came of age when it was a free nations, married into the United States and now represents a heavily Republican district. She bucked her party once before, maybe she can be persuaded to stand up again.
I continue to be disappointed in the questions journalists are asking in the nearly daily pressers. During the campaign Trump repeatedly said he was not familiar with 2025. Where is he being held to that lie ? Can someone please ask him about when he read it – has he read it – or something that makes him retract the lie? just call him out. I remember thinking when Trump talked about essentially firing lots of government employees – I thought now how can that be done. My poor attempt at creative thinking honed by years of non-dictators in the White House could not fathom this. Trump is making Zelensky pay for not “looking into” Joe Biden. The Ukrainian people are now paying. shameful. Shame on the silence of the Republicans. More demonstrations are needed but money over principle rules this administration.
In science, the word “research” means applying the scientific method. This is based on the belief that to understand the world beyond the range of our neurons (most of reality), we must realize it quantitatively. Numbers corresponding to ‘how many’ are expressions of mathematical precision and are, therefore, much more quantitatively descriptive than letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Numerical measurement is the key to understanding, which is key to our ability to employ new tools to get things done.
Statistics is the branch of mathematics that helps us understand groups of numbers. These numbers measure group members and can reveal what they might have in common.
Musk is clearly on the autism spectrum and, like others on the same spectrum, is predisposed to understanding the world quantitatively. Numbers hold power over him. Data processed through statistics by digital computers result in understanding groups, which can be viewed as having the power of understanding over the groups.
Power seeks power, and the ability to be influenced aims to influence others.
The mathematical unit that connotes power varies with region, but here, it is $. $ seeks $. Power is understanding to influence. Therefore, data is power, $ is power, and the ability to be influenced is the ability to influence. When currency and understanding hold power over a person, they use currency and understanding to influence others.
Another word of interest here is ‘worship’. In this concept, worship means influence. We worship higher powers, and when we are worshipped, we hold the ability to influence.
This all explains why Musk is invading our government computers. They deal with $ and measurements of individuals and, therefore, our ability to be influenced by superpower worship.
We have new gods in DC. MTV. Musk, Trump, and Vance, aided by sycophants Johnson and Roberts.
Gil, don’t waste your time trying to find an antagonist press on your TV – it doesn’t exist. When MSNBC had a chance to prove its worth in 2016, it folded under pressure from the DNC. They are a joke and have already acquiesced to Trump. Maddow kept the #RussiaGate hoax going, knowing it had already been debunked. If you watch, you are consuming propaganda.
Indiana is aligning with Trump in Washington and going after the social safety net. Right now, they are attacking Medicaid. They want to scale back the program because they can’t afford it. They mean they can’t cut taxes for their donors and afford Medicaid. I have no problem with a work requirement for eligible participants, but cutting the numbers back is abusive. Where will those people go for healthcare? Cutting a program doesn’t mean that there is less demand.
The federal government is doing the same because slashing agencies and departments doesn’t save enough money to make Trump’s tax cuts feasible. We all know he lied about Project 2025 and about cutting the social safety net. So, Medicaid is on the chopping block.
So that people grasp the accounting maneuver coming our way, MAGA wants to cut $4.5 trillion in taxes for their donors. The Democrats will pretend to resist, but their donors also want the cuts. They’ll cut programs the poor use to give to the rich in order to meet the magic number. They’ll still come up short, so they’ll order the Treasury to float bonds and print cash. They are taking from the poor and working classes, ordering the Treasury to give money to the wealthiest Americans and corporations, and then making the working class pay for the interest on the debt.
They’ll either need to raise taxes on the middle class or drive up our debt by $4 trillion. This is the pure definition of a kleptocracy. They’ve been doing this for 40 years and wonder why the US economy is heading for the dumps. It’s almost as if they are stealing intentionally since they know it will ultimately crash.
I have plenty to say about Ukraine, but I’ll spare ya’ll.
Trump is not industrious or smart enough to have created the initiatives he is enacting. If he is the puppet, who is the puppet master? Money aside, what is their strategic objective: collapse of the US, takeover by Russia, economic collapse that only the extremely wealthy will survive, large-scale environmental disruption that will undermine all of our systems? I don’t understand how they will measure success and victory. Is it when we lay down our weapons and welcome Putin as a new leader?
Thank you, Fran. I’ve been wondering about this too.
JoAnn. Treason is exactly what these idiots are doing. As Trump himself has reminded us, that is a capital offense.
In Germany, they have a muzzle on social media to prevent discussions promoting fascist leanings! As we all know, Germany suffered greatly and so did the entire planet over white Aryan fascism. So what does our illustrious vice president do? He gets into an argument with the German government about freedom of speech, and how their methods are draconian and blot out the opinions of what he considers, right leaning conservatives!
Now, we can see how easily It is the coax the Nazi out of someone for all to see. Not very hard at all actually! And, it’s sad to say we haven’t seen anything yet. The book, “Virus Of The Mind’ was discussed here quite a while back, and the trouble with a virus, is they are not easy to get rid of. Sometimes, rather, more often than not, viruses are fatal depending on the type. The measles virus, the polio virus, HIV, hepatitis, dengue fever, meningitis, coronavirus, and a list is much longer than this!
So the virus of the mind, is pretty serious because it prevents action concerning clear and present danger to the body politic! It becomes so bad that people start begging for an authoritarian to fix everything. Basically a deranged king! And we all know that’s even worse. It’s like rabies, you need to nip it in the bud very early, or it causes a deranged insanity that cannot be cured except by euthanization.
When these things were pointed out before it got to a point of no return, people just figured riding it out would be the best way to go, but like any virus, that infects the body, including the mind, The mortality rate climbs every hour it’s not treated.
Do yourself a favor and read the second chapter of Daniel! Later on, Jesus Christ repeated Daniel’s words. Matthew the 24th chapter. You might not be a believer in this sort of thing, but it is shockingly on the mark. I would suggest reading both chapters of Daniel and Matthew and compare.
in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Mr. Trump went a step further, likening himself to a king as he celebrated his administration’s move to kill New York City’s congestion pricing program.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The White House then reinforced the message, recirculating it on Instagram and X with an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown on a magazine cover resembling Time, but called Trump.
The misalliance that is our current sitting governmental body has, by a mix of action and inaction between the parties, created a starter dictatorship in a government created and designed to prevent dictatorship after successfully removing the new nation from under the rule of British Monarchy. It has worked, with some occasional glitches, for 250 years only to be dissected over a 9 year period leading up to this 30 day global disaster of rule by Executive Orders, how many are treasonous? But if Trump has his way and birthright citizenship becomes the Rule of Law,; is that what he meant by voting for him would result in never having to vote again?
This is not Trump’s first acts of sedition or treason but he used it successfully to move back into our White House; where he can rarely be found. How many millions of tax dollars have been spent on his pleasure trips home to golf away his days while Musk is doing his dirty work for him? Evidently crime does pay and it pays well. We have enough information to stop it; we are missing loyal lawmakers more than information.
Mea culpa!!! That should of course read ENDING birthright citizenship. My thoughts are no clear after 6 hours of news. I do apologize.
Thanks Theresa Bowers! Here is what I just posted on Facebook:
Hoosiers (and others): Please contact Rep. Victoria Spartz (R, Indiana), who is an immigrant from Ukraine. Please urge her to support Ukraine against the aggression of Putin and to try to convince her Republican colleagues to do the same.
https://spartz.house.gov/services/general-contact-form
I am not an alarmist, but we are on a precipice of losing our democracy. Trump, Musk, and Putin are doing the oldest and the easiest con-game ever. Watch over here while we do what we want over here and before the American people realize what is happening Musk and Trump will hand over the US agencies’ hard-drives and control to Putin while they settle in comfortablely in Russia or Saudi Arabia. Our economy will dead stop because they have control over Social Security checks, Medicare, Medicaid, even the Unemployment of all the government workers that have illegally been fired. No money flowing, no US economy.
There is so much more to unpack but this is the simple core of where we are headed. This is going to happen fast, faster than anyone could have anticipated.
Everyone keeps wondering what is Trump’s end-game? How did Musk audit the agencies so quickly and where are the results? Let’s look at Trump’s behavior since elected. Anyone familiar with working in a public office knows he is not governing at all, nor is anyone else because he fired all the people who know HOW the Executive Office SHOULD BE RUN. This is fine for Trump while he wants to act like a King signing a ridiculous number of Executive Orders to cause chaos, he is playing golf, going to the Superbowl, going to Daytona 500-he is doing his last hurrah around the US. He has no plans to stay here once reality hits his followers that he just screwed everyone in the US and our Allies. Once he has everything broken and in chaos, he is going to board a private plane and leave DC burning from the inside out.
Now, let’s look at Musk, he is going into OUR government agencies with his boys and firing or forcing resignations from those who would know how the internal systems work because those government workers will know they are not auditing the systems, they are hacking them and changing codes while shutting down systems. These systems have not been put back online after they have left, have they? Also, if you look at the DOGE website, we are not seeing any actual auditing results. Musk is not planning to stay in the US because as we can start to see people are turning on him, not Trump, and he is just fine instigating more hate. He has his golden tickets out because he holds all the US information in his hard drives.
The United States is in the weakest position it has ever been in the 250 years since we became a sovereign nation while half of the nation is cheering Trump on because they are watching his propaganda and do not realize the damage being done or how it is tragically going to affect them. The other half of the nation believes people are inherently good and will follow the laws and morality we expect in elected officials ” yes, deep down we believe politicians will do what is right”. Congress was complacent going into this Administration, but I believe they were conned as well. They thought they were getting Project 2025/White Christian Nation, but they are SLOWLY realizing this is much more than they signed up for and they have lost control.
The question now is who do we turn to in order to lead us and to get the word out before it is too late? This, I do not know. I have been standing up with the protests and getting information out, but too many people are looking for a person to lead them and tell them what we need to do to stop this. Experts like you, who know Constitutional Law and Ethics, are able to explain better than I what the next steps should be, but we definitely have to get the message out of where this is headed. It isn’t too late yet, but people need to get motivated to resist and to prepare as hard as we can and quickly. We cannot wait until mid-terms, unless we act now we will not have a US democracy to even have a voice in an election.
This is my professional and educational summation as someone who has worked in Indiana politics, government agencies, and has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in public administration. This is not a conspiracy theory and I truly hope I am wrong in my summation.
Here’s just one example of the stupidity level of what’s going on: “A grant to study linguistic differences between Hebrew and English was flagged as an example of “woke DEI grants” in a new database released by Sen. Ted Cruz.
The database is part of ongoing Republican efforts to justify significant cuts to federal research funding and diversity programs under US President Donald Trump.
The $226,000 grant, given by the National Science Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022, was flagged by the Texas Republican senator’s team as having an inappropriate focus on “gender.”
But according to the description of the research in Cruz’s own database, the sole mention of gender in the grant’s description is in reference to the fact that the Hebrew language (like many others) assigns gender to nouns.”
The entire article: https://www.timesofisrael.com/ted-cruz-believes-a-grant-to-study-hebrew-is-woke-dei/
Way to go, Paula! The way I see it, if your district is gerrymandered you are fair game to one and all citizens.
@Pete
As an Autistic person myself, the Actually Autistic community does not claim Musk. He may very well be Autistic, but he is not part of the Actually Autistic community.
Musk represents a lot of the stereotypes about Autism, but I don’t think that it is clear that Musk has Autism. A lot of stereotypes are wrong or at least misunderstood.
Most Autistic people are not quantitative, although I wish they were because I happen to be both. Being Autistic seems to be an enhancer trait for learning and organization. So if you are otherwise quantitively predisposed, then also being Autistic seems to make one be super quantitative. I don’t quite see Musk as quantitative, but it just may be that he is very bad at it. There is a reason why he brought in young hackers and I think it is because it is not his strength. Musk is just misusing data because it creates money for him. His unsatiable thirst to be richer than anyone who has ever existed before is not necessarily quantitative either.
Another stereotype that has been proven wrong about Autism is that we don’t feel emotions enough. We express emotions differently, and we frequently shut down because we are easily overwhelmed with emotions. Also, a lot of this stereotype goes back to the disproven horrible distant mother theory. As for Musk, many people have expressed that Musk doesn’t seem to have any empathy. That is a related stereotype to the don’t feel emotions, but the vast majority of Autistic folks do actually have empathy. Given how morally bankrupt that Musk is, I have doubts that he has much empathy, but that is not an actual Autistic trait.
An aside, a common misperception is that Autistic folks like to line things up, and it was sadly even part of screenings back in the day. Lining things up is part of another learning and organizational spectrum that we are all on, called Auditory Sequential-Visual Spatial spectrum. Everyone has characteristics of both, but society norms tend to default to Auditory-Sequential traits, and lining things up or being neat and tidy are Auditory-Sequential traits. Being Autistic enhances learning and organization traits, so if an Autistic person has the Auditory-Sequential trait to line things up, then being Autistic can intensify that trait, and they may even have trouble organizing differently. If the Autistic is mainly Visual-Spatial on that trait, then they are predisposed to more circular organization like an analog clock, clusters, and vertical staking instead, and being Autistic enhances those traits for them. Not wanting to even line things up, does not make them any less Autistic, it just means that they are not Auditory-Sequential for that particular trait.
So getting back to Musk, it is hard to tell, because Autistic can enhance other traits that people have, and Musk definitely has several other disorders. I think other disorders rule his personality, not Autism.
The only true thing Orange Jesus has said is that he never read Project 2025. That followed the lie that he knew nothing about it.
The thing that gets me exercised most is that they have no idea what the agencies they are gutting actually do. They send letters to staff, firing them. Then they discover what the fired staff actually do and frantically try to rehire them. They don’t do any homework, they just cut, cut, cut.
Today I had an opportunity to listen to a group of MAGOTS at breakfast. They parroted what they have seen on FAUX News, including the130 year old collecting Social Security
I had to laugh. The group was from a local church. They went from talking about God (no mention of Jesus) to “Glocks are terrible. Smith and Wesson is my choice.” From that they went on to talk about the enemy, i.e. Democrats. I doubt anyone can change those people. They will have to discover for themselves what government does when Mom and Dad can’t stay in the nursing home because we don’t like Medicaid.
At least the assistant understood there is a danger. At my last Dr’s appt in January my Dr. gaslighted me when I explained why I was so anxious and worried.
Paula Cardoza-Jones. I just checked the Victoria Spartaz web site. She is backing the MAGA propaganda that Zelenski is corrupt and does not deserve our support. There is no use appealing to her.
I have read this blog daily for a few years. To date, I have never felt it necessary to add a comment. I guess the time has come.
I am extremely depressed since the election. I have removed all social-media accounts and am holding my breath (only 3.92 more years). I have one daughter who married a young man with an “Arab” name. Though he was born in Indianapolis 33 years ago, they are both harrassed daily and told to go back home. I have another daughter who has worked as an auditor for the Department of Defense for nine years. She received her Federal Government Workforce Reduction notice about two weeks ago. Some of her colleagues have already been terminated. We are making plans for “what-if” she is terminated. She may have to sell her house and move in with us. The same may be true of the other daughter and our son-in-law. It may be a return to the 30s and 40s when extended families are forced to co-habitate in order to survive.
The irony is that her job is the weed out Fraud and Abuse. But we cannot have any investigation of improper payments made to Trump cronies.
I just returned from Europe. The people with whom I spoke are quite concerned and are adjusting their strategies to deal with the new reality. These strategies include no longer sourcing their purchases from the U.S., no longer trusting any information coming from the U.S. government, being leery of U.S. visitors, and other reactions of suspicion. We have lost our reputation around the world in only 32 days. I cannot conceive of what else we will lose in the next four years. Yes. I am depressed for my children and grandchildren. And this is not how I wanted to spend my last years on this earth.