Issues You May Know, 4 April 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Excuse for not fixing mistakes made by ICE renditions is that Trump is too weak and powerless?
AP - An ‘administrative error’ sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison, ICE says - By BEN FINLEY April 1, 2025 President Donald Trump’ s administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notorious El Salvador prison last month, but is arguing against returning him to the United States because of his alleged gang ties and the U.S. government’s lack of power over the Central American nation.
Postcard with photo by Chloe Humbert of jellyfish in the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, the postcard is addressed to Rep. Rob Bresnahan in Washington DC. Dated April 2, 2025. Dear Rob Bresnahan, I was disturbed to hear that President Trump is so subjugated by a foreign leader in Central America that they can’t fix the mistakes by ICE because the American president is so completely dominated by the iron hand of Bukele?? I don’t know why Congress would allow this level of impotence in the White House! Signed Chloe Humbert, Scranton PA
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
The authoritarian eugenics plans of tech moguls and the religious far right.
The far right may seem to be, and in many ways is, made up of a lot of different factions, but some of them have similar goals of living in their own segregated network states based on eugenics. And in fact, the tech elites have a form of "techno rapture" beliefs that are eerily like Christian ideas of The Rapture. And the Trump administration is planning on giving away federal lands for modern day coal patch company towns where democracy doesn't exist, and company tycoons play king dictator, and they're trying to sell this to people on the left as the "abundance" ideology solution to housing shortages which amounts to privatization and deregulation and just disregarding environmental impacts and rejecting public health.
Wall Street Journal - Federal Land Can Be Home Sweet Home Our departments will work together to solve the housing crisis. By Scott Turner and Doug Burgum March 16, 2025 3:48 pm ET Historically, building on federal land is a nightmare of red tape—lengthy environmental reviews, complex transfer protocols and disjointed agency priorities. This partnership will cut through the bureaucracy. Interior will reduce the red tape behind land transfers or leases to public housing authorities, nonprofits and local governments.
The American Prospect - The Abundance Agenda: Neoliberalism’s Rebrand The new centrist push to regain control of the Democratic Party, with corporate money by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis November 26, 2024 What exactly abundance adherents believe varies, of course, but there are a number of broad precepts: building more housing, producing more energy, and fostering more technological innovation. None of these are objectionable goals; the differences with progressives arise, largely, in how to get there. Abundance starts from a “growth above all” mindset. The agenda’s advocates hate residential zoning laws—which, contrary to what they frequently imply, is something they have in common with us and most progressives—but also detest the National Environmental Policy Act, support fracking, oppose tenant protections, and are often deferential to the policy preferences of Big Tech.
KQED Forum - Is ‘The Nerd Reich’ Taking Over the Government? By Mina Kim 2025 Apr 2 at 10 am A group of Silicon Valley billionaires is causing chaos in the federal government by shuttering agencies, firing workers en masse and flouting legal and political norms. According to journalist Gil Duran, the chaos is carefully orchestrated, as figures like Elon Musk, David Sacks and Peter Thiel follow a playbook conceived by far right thinkers on how to take down institutions and seize power. We talk to Duran about what these tech elites – a group he calls “The Nerd Reich” – are reading, thinking and saying. Guests: Gil Duran, journalist, produces a newsletter covering the tech industry, "The Nerd Reich"
BBC Intrigue - The Immortals: 9. Nerd Rapture 2 October 2023 The immortalist movement in Silicon Valley shares a lot with evangelical religions, says Dr Emile P Torres, a philosopher and former Nick Bostrom acolyte. In both, he explains, there’s a heaven in which the faithful will experience unsurpassed bliss and delight, and an apocalypse, which will separate out the people who can go there. After a decade at the epicentre of the transhumanist research community, Emile became concerned with the number of apocalyptic stories of techno-utopia that were being shared online. Was this philosophical movement becoming radicalised? When Emile raises the question, the consequences are swift and severe. Excommunicated, harassed and threatened.
Political Research Associates Trad Values Meets Tech The U.S. Right’s Pronatalist Coalition Gaby Del Valle March 27, 2025 These oft-disagreeing factions came together in Austin, Texas, in December 2023 for the inaugural Natal Conference. The conference was the brainchild of Kevin Dolan, a former data scientist who was ousted from his job after being outed for his involvement with Deseret Nationalism, a far-right faction within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that promotes an ultra-conservative brand of Mormonism.[2] Dolan billed the conference as a way of unifying disparate movements under a single goal. “The best thing I can do to move the needle on this issue personally is just unite the clans: throw up a rally point, let people come together,” Dolan said in a podcast episode posted shortly after the conference.[3] So far, the plan appears to be working: Elon Musk reposted Dolan’s speech from the 2023 conference on X, and another conference is slated for this March.[4] In many ways, the 2023 Natal Conference was a prelude for the coalition that helped elect Trump: a motley crew of old-guard Republicans, the MAGA hat-clad New Right, and members of the tech elite.
The Canadian roots of Elon Musk's conspiracist grandpa - Raised in Saskatchewan, Joshua Haldeman was a tech-utopian, politician and apartheid fan By Geoff Leo Mar. 20, 2025 “An ‘Invisible Government,’ working to carry out the objectives of the International Conspiracy, is operating in every country,” he wrote in his book The International Conspiracy in Health, which was published in the mid-1960s. In it, he also said the conspiracy was pushing for the fluoridation of water supplies, mandatory milk pasteurization and mass vaccination programs. Haldeman dedicated his life to fighting it. “Only by following the example and guidance of Jesus Christ will man be able to successfully combat the evil forces of the International Conspiracy and achieve the greatness for himself and his country.” Haldeman thought government was being badly mismanaged and at one point in his career, he embraced the solution proposed by a movement called Technocracy: that government should be run by scientists and engineers, not politicians. Over his lifetime, Haldeman would lead two Canadian political parties (one of which he founded), campaign against Canadian prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and John Diefenbaker, write a book defending South Africa’s system of apartheid and spend years flying and driving across the African wilderness with his family — hunting for the Lost City of the Kalahari.
Trump pardoned a cryptocurrency corporation as if it was human.
THE INTERCEPT Trump Just Pardoned … a Corporation? In what may be an American first, President Donald Trump pardoned a company sentenced to $100 million in fines for breaking money laundering laws. Matt Sledge April 2 2025 Amid a flurry of pardons President Donald Trump issued to white-collar criminals last week, one name that has largely escaped notice did not belong to a person at all.In what may have been a first, Trump pardoned a corporation. The company to earn that distinction was a cryptocurrency exchange sentenced to a $100 million fine for violating an anti-money laundering law. The move surprised scholars of presidential pardons, which have traditionally been considered the domain of human beings.
Corporations exist to serve the public. If they're not doing that, or worse, hurting the public, why should they be let off the hook?
My letter to reps:
I'm appalled that our American President actually "pardoned" a corporation. Especially a shady cryptocurrency company. The failure of our government to hold white collar criminals to account the way that ordinary people are put through the paces is why people are so angry at the system. Something should be put in place to prevent this type of corrupt pardoning of corporations. The whole reason corporations were created as a concept was to protect human beings involved from being accountable and to limit legal liability for individuals involved. Perhaps that needs to end entirely, and we as a society need to start jailing executives for the conduct of the companies they own, operate, or work for. But at a minimum it should be forbidden to pardon a corporation.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
About mask bans, and the legislation to prevent mask bans containing a wrecking amendment.
Here is my interview on TheLetterHack youtube channel to discuss the ongoing political battle around masks and the expansive implications of it all.
PRO-MASK BILL "POISON PILL" w/ Chloe Humbert The Letterhack Apr 1, 2025
Stream by TheLetterHack, who also does comics that get used for lefty cake decoration.
Just what we need especially during stock market turbulence & a shock to The Economy — another big bank merger.
Investopedia - Justice Department Won't Challenge Capital One-Discover Merger, Report Says By Sarina Trangle Published April 03, 2025 03:54 PM EDT The news removes one potential roadblock for the proposed $35 billion merger of two of the U.S.'s largest credit card companies. The Federal Reserve or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency could still block the deal, although they are generally viewed as less likely to object, the Times reported. Shares of Capital One and Discover shot up at midday Thursday after the report, though they were ultimately dragged lower amid a broad descent for stocks that began late Wednesday when President Donald Trump announced a fresh round of tariffs, prompting a broad market sell-off.
I’m familiar with both financial institutions and Discover is heads and tails more customer friendly than Capital One. I expect that won’t last long.
My letter to reps:
I’m concerned about the merger of Capital One taking over Discover and the monopoly situation with too big to fail banks. I think consolidation is bad.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Democratic politicians to hold shadow hearing on Justice Dept. dropping corruption charges against Eric Adams.
Politico - Democrats plan ‘shadow hearing’ to question lawyers pressured by Trump administration It’s one of few tools available to the minority party to fight the new president’s alleged weaponization of the Justice Department. Hailey Fuchs 04/02/2025, 6:01pm ET Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) are orchestrating a so-called shadow hearing to question former Justice Department official Ryan Crosswell, an attorney who resigned after the department moved to drop corruption charges against Adams.
I’m all for shadow government — bring it all over this shitshow. If you have Dem elected representatives at the federal level, I say write them and ask for more of this. (I’m writing to John Fetterman, so back me up here.)
Former McKinsey & Company partner presides over mortifying gaffe at federal agency.
Someone should investigate the incompetence going on at CMS.
The New Republic - Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling April 3, 2025 People Trying to Fight Trump’s Job Purges Told to Call Dead Woman Yet another example of the Trump administration’s incompetence and cruelty. Recently laid-off employees from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were told to contact Anita Pinder, the former director at the agency’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, with any complaints. A notice informed severed workers that they had 45 calendar days to contact Pinder following their termination date, listing Pinder’s name, email, and phone number. But those who knew Pinder said the directive came as a “gut punch,” according to The Washington Post, since Pinder died last year. “They couldn’t have run it past the people at CMS that were at the funeral and knew she died,” Karen Shields, one of Pinder’s former co-workers, told the Post.
Stephanie Carlton is the acting director of CMS, and surely leadership should be held accountable for this gaffe, which shows that the communication and operational decisions are compromised, and might actually indicate a larger problem here. Which is not surprising since they made huge cuts to the department already and RFKJr is creating chaos.
My letter to reps:
I read in the news that recently laid off employees of Medicare and Medicaid Services were directed to contact someone who not only no longer works at CMS, but died last year. This seems to indicate a serious breakdown in communication at a minimum and this agency needs to be investigated, including the current acting director and the head of HHS.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.