It's Bad

I mentioned that there were a lot of bad things happening or starting to happen yesterday. I made a list of them, and I've probably forgotten some of what I saw just since Thursday:

The Trump administration yanking Social Security numbers from legal immigrants, which makes them unable to work legally, or have a bank account. If they can move these folks to the "dead file" this way, they can move anyone's record... A similar scenario was used on the women in The Handmaid's Tale, if I'm not mistaken.

DOGE beginning to invade the FDIC to destroy it and undermine faith in the banking system.

RFK Jr. declaring he would determine the "cause of autism" by September. As if that could be done in a few months if there was something to uncover through accepted medical research methods…let alone that his purpose is to eliminate neurodivergence.

The Trump administration monitoring social media content of all visa holders for "anti-semitism," when its most prominent members are promulgators of anti-semitism themselves.

The House passing its budget bill, including giant cuts to Medicaid.

The House passing a bill that lifts the recently created cap on bank-overdraft fees.

The House passing the SAVE Act, which (if passed by the Senate) will result in massive voter suppression. As Ari Berman put it, "It is a modern-day poll tax that would disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans, end online, mail + voter registration drives and require voters to register in person at election offices, forcing some rural voters to drive 8 hours to register."

The administration announcing it plans to gut NOAA and NASA funding for all climate research. Not climate change: climate. Bill McKibben's comment: "The world knows about climate change mostly because of great American researchers, and that work has been largely centered at NOAA."

Note: This list does not include what the courts have done.

As Tom Tomorrow said on BlueSky a few hours ago, "every third post these days is just “this is so fucking terrible” with a link to some news story and they’re all 100% correct."