Sunlen Serfaty explains what we know about federal workers who resigned over DOGE efforts
Twenty-one United States Digital Service technology staffers resigned in what is being seen as a mass protest resignation against the DOGE efforts, according to a federal government employee with knowledge of the resignations. CNN's Sunlen Serfaty and Harry Enten have more on the story.
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Mass. Sen. Warren: DOGE accessed ‘sensitive' student loan data at Education Dept., calls for probe
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she wants to know how the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency gained access to 'sensitive' student loan information at the U.S. Department of Education. On Monday, Warren and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, both Democrats, called for the agency's acting inspector general to find out how that breach happened. They were joined by Democratic senators from eight states, including U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Warren said lawmakers learned of the potential breach of systems at Federal Student Aid after DOGE, which was helmed until recently by tech titan Elon Musk, infiltrated the agency. In response, Education Department officials revealed that DOGE workers 'supported' a review of the FSA's contracts. As a part of that review, one employee was granted 'read-only' access to two internal systems that held sensitive personal information about borrowers. The agency said it had since revoked that access. But, according to Warren, it did not explain why that access had been revoked, or whether the employee had continued access to other databases. 'Because of the [Education] department's refusal to provide full and complete information, the full extent of DOGE's role and influence at ED remains unknown,' the lawmakers wrote in a June 8 letter to René L. Rocque, the agency's acting inspector general. That 'lack of clarity is not only frustrating for borrowers but also dangerous for the future of an agency that handles an extensive student loan portfolio and a range of federal aid programs for higher education,' the lawmakers continued. Warren, Markey and their colleagues have called on Roque's office to determine whether the department adhered to the Federal Privacy Act, which dictates how the government can collect and use personal information. They also asked Roque to 'determine the impact of DOGE's new plans to consolidate Americans' personal information across government databases.' 'It won't end well for Trump' if he does this amid LA protests, ex-GOP rep says All Ivy League schools are supporting Harvard lawsuit — except these 2 Embassies directed to resume processing Harvard University student visas Over 12,000 Harvard alums lend weight to court battle with Trump in new filing Markey: Trump using National Guard in LA to distract from big cuts in 'Big Beautiful Bill' Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's ‘California in Chaos' Dystopia? Not if You Live Here
For most people in Los Angeles, it was a run-of-the-mill weekend. There were kids baseball and soccer games, pleasant weather for getting outdoors, and Dodgers games on TV. On cable and local news, though, as well as X and other strident quadrants of social media, the scene was far less idyllic, playing into the dystopian narrative the Trump administration clearly wanted to advance regarding demonstrations over immigration policy. To put it the way an alliterative TV news chyron might, think 'CALIFORNIA IN CHAOS,' with President Trump stoking the fire by tweeting about immigrant invasions and rampant lawlessness. TV news and social media excel at offering snapshots of what's happening, but not the big picture. So the images emanating from L.A. (and the outlying city of Paramount, one many Angelenos likely couldn't find on a map) fueled the distorted scenario that Trump and his acolytes pushed, capitalizing on the fact that those information conduits and their viewers are drawn to the conflict like moths to the (literal, in this case) flames. Granted, more sober voices tried to clarify the overall dynamic — observing that Trump's tweets, for starters, were untethered from reality. Yet given the power of his megaphone and the legions who parrot his claims, it's hard to sway an audience that might have never been to California, or that lacks the media literacy to grasp a few hundred people taking to the streets — in a state with 40 million residents — doesn't translate into widespread chaos. 'Most people in L.A. probably don't even know that this is going on,' CNN national security analyst and Harvard professor Juliette Kayyem pointed out on Saturday. 'It's such a big city, and we need an administration that's not going to get to Defcon 1 every time they see something on TV they don't like.' Expecting or even hoping for restraint from Trump, however, merely reflects naïveté, especially because he and his advisors so obviously relish the idea of painting a blue state as something out of a 'Mad Max' movie, provoking confrontation and creating cover to try implementing a military response. That's all red meat for Trump and his base, playing into the stereotypes of California that Fox News pushes with regularity. Small wonder he's been spoiling for a fight with the state and its leaders, threatening to cut off federal funding even before the weekend's flare-up. By that measure, the few protesters that engaged in violence are playing right into his hands, as his weekend social media tirade — 'BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!,' he said in one all-caps, three-exclamation-point salvo — made utterly transparent. The onus for behaving responsibly thus shifts to news organizations and social media commentators with cooler heads, not to downplay or diminish what's happening but rather to provide what's so often the first casualty in the breaking coverage of such events: Context. 'There are a few protests downtown, and yesterday's drama was in a suburb 30 minutes away,' Pod Save America's Jon Favreau tweeted in response to Trump's bluster, accurately capturing the geography of what had transpired. 'We're the biggest county in America, with 10 million people, and you wouldn't know anything is up unless you read the news or happen to be downtown.' So how has the media fared in the early stages of this manufactured crisis? Predictably, not terribly well. On Saturday, for example, CNN cut away from its post-game coverage after televising a live performance of 'Good Night, and Good Luck' to interview a reporter at the scene in Los Angeles. Then again, the panel assembled to discuss the Broadway show's lessons in a town-hall-type setting represented the kind of journalism the play's subject, Edward R. Murrow, almost surely would have hated, a bit of irony that seemed to elude everyone participating in the forum. Ultimately, having a reporter going live at a chaotic, fast-moving event often doesn't tell you very much. That's certainly the case in a situation like the one unfolding in Los Angeles, where Trump's ICE raids rounding up undocumented immigrants have unleashed anger and prompted fear within local communities, while playing to Trump's xenophobic appeal and helpfully shifting the focus away from other topics, like the pending tax bill and breakdown of Trump's relationship with Elon Musk. Thanks to social media and satellites, the immediacy of information has never been faster, but the tradeoff is that the ability to digest and understand what we're seeing easily gets lost in the shuffle. And unless you live in L.A., the images create powerful impressions that play into preconceived notions without knowing exactly what you're seeing, in the same way footage out of Gaza or Ukraine can often turn out to be misleading once we've had a chance to absorb and sort out the details of the deeper story behind the pictures. Murrow could have explained all this, were he still alive, but he'd need to find a sympathetic platform to amplify those views. Alas, as things stand right now, the odds are Fox News wouldn't have put him on at all, MSNBC would simply let him preach to the choir, and CNN would have cut away from interviewing him to see what its squabbling, both-sides-ing panel of experts had to say. The post Trump's 'California in Chaos' Dystopia? Not if You Live Here appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump neutered Justice Department watchdogs that were there to prevent politically motivated prosecutions
Donald Trump's DOGE-ification of the federal government added a key team at the Department of Justice to its list of victims in a pair of moves that greased the wheels for his adminsitration to use the agency to go after Democratic members of Congress. The Justice Department's public integrity section (PIN) underwent a series of key changes this year at the direction of Trump-appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has overseen the agency as it charged a Democratic member of Congress, Monica McIver, with assault after she was repeatedly confronted by ICE agents during a legally permitted congressional oversight visit to a detention facility in Newark. McIver's charging is one of several instances where the Trump-led Department of Justice has brazenly defied the tradition of independence from the White House that agency officials typically follow. Under Bondi's leadership, the agency has quickly transitioned into an arm of the White House, focused on the president's priorities and willing to target his political enemies. Other targets of that trend have been a Milwaukee judge, arrested and charged with allegedly preventing immigration authorities from arresting a man outside of her courtroom by leading him out a back entrance after his hearing concluded, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to a hellish prison in El Salvador in violation of a court ruling. Abrego Garcia was charged with trafficking migrants last week after the federal government relented in a weeks-long battle with the courts and returned him to the United States. A federal prosecutor in Tennessee, Ben Schrader, resigned over his concerns that the charges were filed for political reasons, according to ABC News. McIver's charging shortly followed the agency-wide suspension of a rule which previously required prosecutors to obtain approval from the PIN before members of Congress could be criminally charged — a safeguard previously in place to prevent targeting of the administration's political opponents on spurious charges, Reuters reported. McIver was charged with assault after being involved in a scuffle with ICE agents outside of a Newark detention facility; video shows her making physical contact with an agent, but possibly by accident. The agency has not released an explanation for why agents engaged in a scuffle with McIver at the scene at all, given that the agency is, by law, prohibited from using its funding in any way to prevent members of Congress from conducting oversight visits. Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, was arrested at the scene. The Independent reached out for comment regarding the suspension of the rule regarding criminal cases which involve members of Congress, and to inquire about any other reductions to the PIN division's responsibilities. As part of staff reductions across the whole of the federal government, the PIN team was also hit. The decision of federal prosecutors to drop an investigation into New York's Democratic mayor sparked a wave of resignations at the division, with departing attorneys having been asked to give the order to end the probe after federal prosecutors in New York refused. What followed was a gutting of the PIN section, which is now a fraction of its former size, according to multiple reports, and no longer handling cases directly. Just five prosecutors were directly assigned to the division by mid-March, down from 30. The suspension of the rule in May and the other reported erosions of PIN's authority marks a serious reduction in a key safeguard that the agency implemented in 1976 after the Watergate scandal. At the time, another Republican president leaned on the Justice Department to influence an investigation into a break-in at the Democratic Party's headquarters and the extent of the Oval Office's knowledge of the plot. Donald Trump, in an executive order, directed Bondi to review all DOJ teams with 'civil or criminal enforcement authority ' and identify whether individual divisions were, by Trump's standards, used for political purposes by the Biden administration. Biden officials have denied any weaponization of the DOJ, with prosecutions of the president's son Hunter and a Democratic senator from New Jersey as evidence to point to. The stated purpose of that executive action was to end the 'weaponization' of the Justice Department and other agencies. But over the course of six months, the DOJ's greatest tool for preventing that possibility has all but vanished. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, wrote to Bondi in March about the dismantling of the PIN division, but his office has not released a statement on the matter since. The DoJ issued no public statement in response. 'Certain political appointees in this Department of Justice have already proven they put President Trump's political interests over their duties as prosecutors and as lawyers. Multiple Public Integrity Section attorneys resigned rather than endorse then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove's unethical quid pro quo in dropping the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams,' wrote the senator. He added: 'If the Trump administration's goal was to encourage corruption and abuse of office, it is hard to know what it would do differently.'
