Middle Aged and Out of Touch

It explains how Democrats in the Senate are playing hardball. They are blocking by partisan bills in ways they never have before. I don’t think most people are aware of that. I mean, I wasn’t aware of it until about five minutes ago.

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Gene Hackman as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle

Mountain Scops Owl (Otus spilocephalus), juvenile, family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, India

Meryl Kornfield at WaPo:

The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive. The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.

Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.

Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The disclosure was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it offers the most detailed account yet of howofficials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been. Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.

[...]

Being moved into the Death Master File can be devastating to someone who is still alive because it can cut off their financial access. Last year, career staff warned that falsely giving people death dates could be catastrophic, though the administration overrode those objections. In the past year, two other whistleblowers have also shared concerns about Americans’ personal information being accessed and shared by DOGE. One whistleblower, former Social Security chief data officer Charles Borges, alleged DOGE members shared data through third-party services and placed Americans’ personal information on a cloud. A second whistleblower anonymously claimed in disclosures to the inspector general that a DOGE member allegedly took a thumb drive of Americans’ data to a private company, which is being investigated by the agency’s watchdog.

When Schofield left Social Security in October, he did not expect to blow the whistle. He said he followed legal requirements to destroy documents in his possession. He had told family and other co-workers about the call when it happened but had otherwise kept quiet as he watched other civil service workers facing retaliation in the Trump administration. But months later, at a February happy hour, he told another former federal worker he was haunted by what he had seen and how Social Security data had been compromised, and she encouraged him to speak out.

[...]

‘Lots of red flags’

When DOGE officials first arrived at Social Security headquarters in February 2025, Schofield welcomed their help and hoped they would help modernize the agency’s outdated systems, he said in an interview with The Post. Schofield joined the agency in 2000 as a customer service representative and rose through the ranks to become head of IT modernization and the key person transmitting headquarters policies to field offices. He had witnessed many ways the social service program — serving 75 million beneficiaries, including retirees, people with disabilities, widows and orphans — could be run more efficiently. So he came to his first meeting with DOGE officials with several ideas on how to help them.

But when he met with the DOGE members — Antonio Gracias, Jon Koval and Payton Rehling — the three identified themselves as volunteers, he said. He noticed they weren’t using the standard-issue laptops provided to Social Security employees. They had whiteboards in their conference room listing the agency’s key databases. They talked as if they had already seen data few others in government could access, he said. He said he worried DOGE was improperly accessing sensitive data. “Lots of red flags went off,” he said. Gracias was a longtime confidant of Musk’s and appeared alongside Musk at an event last year where the two made inaccurate claims about Social Security, including that that millions of undocumented immigrants were receiving federal benefits and voting in elections.

Excerpt from this story from the San Antonio Current:

The Department of Homeland Security waived dozens of environmental laws Monday to ease the way for construction of border barriers and roads through Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park.

DHS’s notice of determination, which goes into effect Tuesday, is the latest action by the federal government that environmentalists read as preparations to construct a physical border wall through the revered West Texas parkland.

Even though the Trump White House has given numerous assurances over the past few months that it doesn’t plan to build a physical wall through the public lands, watchdog groups argue the administration is still waiving laws and earmarking inflated budgets as if preparing to do just that.

Monday was the first time in U.S. history that the federal government has cast aside such a broad slate of environmental laws — including provisions to protect public lands, endangered species and fragile ecologies — in a national park, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The dozens of laws waived by the Trump administration include the National Park Service Organic Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, officials with the organization said.

“The absolute disdain this administration has for our national parks is disgraceful, and now they’re targeting Texas’ most beloved national park,” Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release.

That may sound like I’m being sarcastic but no

A flailing Trump lies about Iran peace agreement, presides over spectacle on White House lawn.

June 15, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

As the grotesque mixed-martial arts fights took place on the White House lawn to mark the aging of the president, there was some sort of agreement that allegedly ended hostilities against Iran by the U.S. The absence of the actual text of the three-page memorandum of understanding has not stopped gullible media from repeating Trump’s claims about the agreement. A few media outlets—like the NYTimes—had the decency to couch their reporting as “claims made” by Trump. See, e.g., Trump Claims Strait Will Be ‘Permanently Toll-Free’ Under Agreement With Iran. Iran appeared to contradict the premise of Trump’s claim on Sunday, saying that the Strait would reopen “under Iran’s administration.”

Even as Trump’s claims about the agreement shifted inexplicably on Sunday, Iran contradicted Trump. So, the only prudent thing to do is to say what we don’t know about the agreement. A good example of such reporting can be found in The Guardian, What do we know about the US-Iran peace deal – and what questions remain?

As explained by The Guardian, the following items are subject to competing claims on Sunday evening:

The timing of the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. On Sunday, Trump said the Strait would open “immediately,” but then changed position to say it would open by Friday of this week “to allow for clearing of mines.” The intermediary who helped broker the agreement, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, said that “the agreed memorandum of understanding calls for the reopening of the strait within 30 days.”

Control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump says the Strait will open “toll-free.” Iran’s Prime Minister said the Strait would reopen “under Iranian arrangements.” Whatever “under Iranian arrangements” means, it appears to be something different than “toll-free.” Per the New York Times, the agreement says only that Iran agrees to “suspend tolls in the strait for only 60 days.”

Ceasefire in Lebanon. An Iranian negotiator said, “A permanent and immediate end to the war has been declared on all fronts, including Lebanon.” Trump made no mention of Lebanon in his remarks. Israel is not a party to the agreement; Israel and Hezbollah (in Beirut) exchanged strikes on Sunday, an hour before the agreement was electronically signed. See Axios, Trump to Axios: Netanyahu has “no ******* judgment” but Iran deal still on. In short, the inclusion of Lebanon in the ceasefire seems to be a disputed question as of late on Sunday.

Iran’s nuclear program. Trump claims that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” but if it develops one, the US will recommence hostilities against Iran. So, a real lack of clarity on this point, even from Trump. Per The Guardian,

The president repeated on Sunday his promise that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” but senior Pakistani officials told the Associated Press that nuclear talks would continue over the next 60 days. Trump himself told the New York Times that if Tehran failed to reach a nuclear deal, it could come under fresh attack by the US military.

While administration officials (like JD Vance) are saying that the agreement will “fundamentally reshape the Middle East for the next 50 years,” the unreleased agreement seems to reduce to the following:

The Strait of Hormuz will resume its prewar status, except that Iran may charge tolls; and

The US and Iran will continue negotiations over Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

That’s it. Despite all of the posturing and preening that will follow, Trump got nothing in exchange for an illegal war that costs hundreds of billions of dollars, inflicted global economic injury, increased inflation in the US, and resulted in the deaths of 14 US soldiers and thousands of Iranian citizens, including much of its moderate civilian leadership. The Middle East and the US now face a newly emboldened Iran with more militant leadership.

Trump again asks Republicans to abolish the filibuster

In another sign of Trump’s desperation to implement voter suppression measures ahead of the 2026 midterms, he posted on Sunday that he would oppose the extension of Section 702 of FISA unless the SAVE Act is attached. Axios, Trump won’t back FISA renewal without SAVE America Act voting bill.

Not to be lost in the detail below is this simple fact: Trump is asking Republicans to override the filibuster, once again. The request is another sign of Trump’s desperation and weakness heading into the November midterms. Republicans will once again refuse Trump’s request because they know their existence depends on the continuation of anti-democratic measures like the filibuster in the Senate and gerrymandering in statehouses.

Section 702 authorizes intelligence agencies to engage in warrantless interception of communications by foreign nationals. Section 702 is controversial because such electronic communications frequently involve US citizens. See Brennan Center for Justice, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): 2026 Resource Page.

To no one’s surprise, Section 702 has been abused by politicians eager to use US intelligence capabilities against their opponents. Per the Brennan Center,

To give just a few examples, the FBI has conducted warrantless searches of Section 702-acquired information to access communications of Black Lives Matter protestors, U.S. government officials, journalists, political commentators, and 19,000 donors to a single congressional campaign.

Because Section 702 has been abused by use against Americans, even GOP hardliners like Reps. Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, and Sen. Mike Lee have attempted to impose a warrant requirement for any communication involving an American citizen.

The statutory authorization for such searches expired last Friday, but existing court authorizations extend warrantless searches through March 2027.

Republicans are keen on re-authorizing Section 702, as is the intelligence community. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune sent the Senate home on Friday despite Section 702’s expiration. Democrats and a handful of Republicans opposed the extension of Section 702 because of Trump’s nomination of Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence.

Two points:

As noted above, warrantless searches have been authorized by court order through March 2027, so Trump’s threat not to sign a bill re-authorizing Section 702 is empty.

Second, Trump’s demand to attach the SAVE Act to the FISA reauthorization is simply another attempt to pressure Republicans into overriding the filibuster—something Senate Republicans have refused to do on multiple occasions. Most recently, they refused to add the SAVE Act to the reconciliation bill funding ICE and Border Patrol. It is doubtful that they will do so to extend Section 702, especially when warrantless searches are authorized through March 2027.

Concluding Thoughts

Well, I have hit the wall with jet lag, so I will stop here. But the events of Sunday would not be complete without some recognition of the depths to which Trump’s insecurity and vanity have plunged the once dignified Office of the President.

First, Trump has left a tarp in place in front of the Kennedy Center to conceal the memorial’s official name after his name was removed, per court order. See CNN, Kennedy Center exterior remains covered after Trump’s name is removed. What a petulant little baby! What his fragile ego prevents him from understanding is that keeping the name covered makes him look weaker and smaller with each passing day.

Second, Trump’s grotesque mixed martial arts display on the south lawn of the White House was an embarrassment to everyone who participated—including attendee Mark Zuckerberg, whose own insecurity rivals that of Trump. See HuffPo, Trump Celebrates ‘America 250,’ Birthday With Bizarre UFC Spectacle.

Despite the enthusiastic bloodlust of those in attendance, the event was popular with a tiny minority of Americans. See Reuters, Few Americans back Trump’s White House cage match plan, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds. Per Reuters,

Just 16% of Americans said it was appropriate for Trump to hold the Ultimate Fighting Championship event, scheduled for his 80th birthday, while 46% said it was inappropriate and the rest didn’t offer an opinion.

Joe Rogan attended and interviewed some of the fighters, one of whom blurted out that “Michelle Obama is a man,”—confirming everyone’s intuition about the intelligence and political views of fighters who are repeatedly punched in the head with bare fists.