Okay—the news is still awful. But I find signs of hope in resistance. And you can do some part of that resistance. Three sections in today’s post: hopeful news, awful news, one or two things you can do today.
Hopeful News
Republicans do not all support the unconstitutional and illegal actions of the Trump/Musk administration. Today, April 17, the Fourth Circuit ruled against the Trump administration’s appeal from the order of District Judge Paula Xinis in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (For an excellent summary of his illegal imprisonment in a Salvadoran prison, see Immigration Impact.)
The Fourth Circuit opinion and order were written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a conservative Republican appointed as judge by Ronald Reagan. From that opinion:
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. …
“The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with power come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?* And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” would lose its meaning. …
“We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance o vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”
Note: the entire opinion/order is only six pages long. I highly recommend reading it in full.
Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said she is afraid of retaliation by the Trump administration if she speaks out. That’s not exactly a strong voice, but anything that indicates defection from solid Republican support has to be a hopeful sign. Murkowski recently co-signed a letter with Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga, criticizing the Trump cut-off of legal assistance to unaccompanied minors in the immigration court system.
[Washington Post] “’We are all afraid,’ Murkowski said Monday at a leadership summit in response to a question about what she would say to Alaskans who are afraid of what the Trump administration is doing, according to video posted by the Anchorage Daily News.
“’I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real, and that’s not right,’ Murkowski added.”
Trump wants to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The good news: he can’t. The bad news: Powell’s term ends in May 2026, leaving the position open for Trump to fill.
[Washington Post] “Despite Trump’s talk about removing Powell, the president’s advisers in his first term concluded he could not fire Powell without cause.
“The Federal Reserve, which regulates financial institutions and sets monetary policy, is an independent body and is meant to make decisions about the long-term health of the economy without political interference. In his Chicago speech, Powell said ‘our independence is a matter of law.’ He noted that officials serve long terms and that Fed independence has broad support among Republicans and Democrats alike.”
Awful News
Emergency food aid—canceled. Trump and Musk—lying. Children—dying.
[The Atlantic] “After Elon Musk made a public show of remedying an apparent error in DOGE’s massive cuts to foreign aid, the Trump administration has quietly doubled down on its decision to stop sending emergency food to millions of children who are starving in Bangladesh, Somalia, and other countries. Without urgent intervention, many of these children are likely to die within months, experts told me.”
The Trump administration canceled orders for “a lifesaving peanut paste widely recognized as the best treatment for malnutrition.” Then they said they reinstated the orders. That was a lie. They only reinstated payment for orders already underway.
“But two weeks ago, without any fanfare, the Trump administration then canceled all of its upcoming orders—that is, everything beyond those old orders that were previously reinstated—according to emails obtained by The Atlantic. The move reneged on an agreement to provide about 3 million children with emergency paste over approximately the next year. What’s more, according to the two companies, the administration has also not awarded separate contracts to shipping companies, leaving much of the food assured by the original reinstated contracts stuck in the United States.”
Trump administration officials issued a rule that says harm to habitat does not count as harm to endangered species. So you can drain the swamp or bulldoze the forest, but as long as you don’t actually touch the frogs, dragonflies, or other wildlife, that doesn’t count as harm.
[New York Times] “Administration officials called the current definition of harm to endangered species overly broad, siding with businesses that have long argued that the language imposes a burden. They called for a more narrow interpretation, saying that species should be protected only from intentional killing or injury, like through hunting or trapping.
“Habitat loss is the single biggest reason that many species face extinction. Environmental advocates said the changes would make it all but impossible to protect the forests, grasslands, rivers and other habitats that threatened species rely upon to survive.”
Russian and Chinese disinformation floods social media, as well as being disseminated in their government-sponsored media, such as Russia Today. Most of the U.S. government office set up to counter foreign lies and disinformation was gutted by Attorney General Pam Bondi in February. Now Secretary of State Marc Rubio has disbanded the small remaining office.
The reasoning? Right-wing critics say that the office has stifled their voices. (They don’t sound at all stifled to me.)
[Wired] “In early February, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Justice Department task force on covert foreign influence and radically narrowed enforcement of the law that outlawed secretive propaganda for overseas regimes. …
“First established during the war on terror to counter and keep tabs on militant messaging overseas, the GEC expanded over the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations into a $60-million, 120-person shop which also tracked and exposed rival nation-state campaigns to spread propaganda and pollute the information environment. It mapped a multibillion-dollar Chinese influence program that stretched from Pakistan to Latin America. It looked into the social media accounts boosting Germany’s far-right AfD party and spreading neo-Nazi propaganda. It revealed a covert Russian effort to undermine public health in Africa. And the GEC called out the Kremlin’s claims that the ‘United States worked with Ukraine to train an army of migratory birds, mosquitos, and even bats to carry biological weapons into Russia.’ …
“[Bi-partisan support for GEC] started to change after the pandemic—and Musk’s purchase of Twitter. The so-called “Twitter Files”—reports based on Musk’s release of internal company emails—seemed to show the GEC being far too aggressive in its attempts to tamp down on alleged Covid disinformation during Trump’s first term. Republican critics like US Representative Brian Mast of Florida complained that the GEC wasn’t being aggressive enough in support of Israel after October 7.”
See also: Trump administration shutters office countering foreign disinformation.
AmeriCorps is a federal agency that pays a very low wage to young volunteers to do community service work. Now the Trump administration has “abruptly pulled teams of young people out of a variety of community service projects.” The rationale: DOGE cuts to increase efficiency. Efficiency and community service, however, are big losers in this move. Also losing out: the young people fired and sent home with no notice.
[Wired] “Each year, [AmeriCorps] recruits 2,200 people between the ages of 18 to 26 to serve in teams working across the country on different projects. Some volunteers also work directly alongside staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Forest Service, as part of smaller programs that are run within the NCCC. Graduates of the program get access to an award to help pay off federal student loans. …
“The volunteer cuts, which included young people who told WIRED they were tasked with making forests more resilient to wildfires and helping out FEMA staff at the agency’s headquarters, come just weeks before the official start of hurricane season. …
“’I understand that the [Trump administration] has been cutting and gutting so many important programs, but I want people to know about what they did to Americorps. For many of us, this was our way to pay for college, to get away from home, to figure out what to do with our lives, it was a big step,’ says 19-year-old Coloradan Noe Felix Burns, who was rebuilding houses in Philadelphia damaged by 2021’s Hurricane Ida. ‘And they just ripped it out from under us without even a two-week’s notice.’”
DOGE has infiltrated one government agency after another. But the government is not their only target. They also tried to infiltrate a non-profit organization that is focused on the criminal justice system.
[The Guardian] “Staff at Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) demanded to meet with an independent non-profit to discuss embedding a team within their organization, according to the non-profit, stating that refusal to take the meeting would mean a violation of Donald Trump’s executive order empowering Doge.
“Doge staff member Nate Cavanaugh emailed the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice reform non-profit that is independent from the government, on 11 April to demand the meeting, according to a copy of the email. Vera’s staff was confused by the request, as its government funding had been canceled a week prior, but agreed to a call which they said took place on Tuesday.”
In Minnesota news—Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi threatens to sue Minnesota for allowing transgender rights. NCAA President Charlie Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said there are fewer than 10 trans athletes in college sports—out of a total of 510,000 college athletes. At the high school level, less than one percent of all students identify as transgender.
[Minnesota Reformer] “The administration is asking the court to bar Maine trans athletes from participating in women’s sports and asking the court to ‘have the titles returned to the young women who rightfully won these sports,’ Bondi said.
“’We’re looking at Minnesota. We’re looking at California. We’re looking at many, many states but they are the top two that should be on notice because we’ve been communicating with them,’ Bondi said during a news conference.
“In February, Trump signed an executive order barring trans athletes from playing girls and women’s sports. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison issued a formal legal opinion that states barring trans athlete participation would violate the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which supersedes Trump’s executive order.”
A whistle blower in the IT department at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) describes DOGE taking over systems and gaining access to confidential information. NLRB data includes testimony, union leadership, lists of union activists, personal information and Social Security numbers, legal strategies and internal data on competitors. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of the companies that has cases pending before the NLRB.
The NPR reporting is well-verified and extremely detailed, pointing to serious security breaches not only at the NLRB but also at other government agencies by DOGE.
[NPR] “But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It’s possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending.
“Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.
“The employees grew concerned that the NLRB’s confidential data could be exposed, particularly after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia, according to the disclosure. …
“Meanwhile, [the whistleblower’s] attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone ‘physically taping a threatening note’ to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone, according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid. “
After news of the whistleblower complaint broke, DOGE returned to the NLRB.
[NPR] “’DOGE coming into the building with access to systems prior to an investigation is a major red flag — what are they doing now? Someone needs to step in, isolate the systems, and conduct an investigation,’ said Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, who is Berulis’s attorney. …
“Several companies run by Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump ally and de facto head of DOGE, have cases before the NLRB — as do Musk’s competitors. His SpaceX company is also part of a lawsuit seeking to have the courts declare the agency’s structure as unconstitutional. …
“In more than a dozen federal court cases, DOGE and the Trump administration have largely failed to give consistent and clear answers about who has access to the data and how that access complies with privacy and cybersecurity protections in place.”
Pro Publica, a non-profit news organization that does important investigative journalism, has built a publicly accessible database on Elon Musk’s DOGE crew—who they are and what government agencies they are connected to. You can access that database here.
The General Services Administration (GSA) manages federal contracts, oversees federal buildings and real estate, and assists other agencies in building websites. Many of its top officials have been replaced by Musk loyalists. Among their goals: selling federal buildings and moving federal agencies to privately owned buildings, where they will pay rent to private businesses.
[AP] “On the rooftop patio of the General Services Administration headquarters, an agency staffer recently discovered something strange: a rectangular device attached to a wire that snaked across the roof, over the ledge and into the administrator’s window one floor below.
“It didn’t take long for the employee — an IT specialist — to figure out the device was a transceiver that communicates with Elon Musk’s vast and private Starlink satellite network. Concerned that the equipment violated federal laws designed to protect public data, staffers reported the discovery to superiors and the agency’s internal watchdog.
“The Starlink equipment raises a host of questions about what Musk and his efficiency czars are doing at GSA, an obscure agency that is playing an outsized role in the Trump administration’s quest to slash costs and bring the federal government to heel. …
“It is not clear why the agency is using Starlink. The network provides internet service but is not generally approved for use in most government computer systems.”
Last month, about one-fifth of the scientists serving on boards that review research at the National Institutes of Health were fired. Most of them—38 out of 43—were Black, Hispanic, and/or female.
[Washington Post] “The scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal. About a fifth of the roughly 200 board members — who provide an independent, expert layer of review for the vast research enterprise within the NIH — were fired. These scientists rate the quality of the science on the nation’s largest biomedical research campus, where 1,200 taxpayer-funded investigators lead laboratories focused on Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, cancer immunotherapy, and other diseases and treatments.
“Six percent of White males who serve on boards were fired, compared with half of Black and Hispanic females and a quarter of all females, according to the analysis. Of 36 Black and Hispanic board members, close to 40 percent were fired, compared with 16 percent of White board members. The chairs’ analysis calculated the likelihood that this would have happened by chance as 1 in 300.”
What you can do
Pick a single issue. Put together what you want to say about it. Then call Minnesota 6th District Congressional Representative Tom Emmer. He’s a high-ranking Republican, the House Majority Whip. Give him a piece of your mind. He needs to hear it.
Example:
“Hi, I’m calling Congressman Emmer about the cut-off of emergency food assistance to millions of children who are starving in Bangladesh, Somalia, and other countries. You need to tell Trump and Musk that starving children is wrong. As the majority whip, you should have some influence in Washington. This food aid needs to be restored right now. That’s all I have to say today. Goodbye.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.OFFICE
326 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2331
OTSEGO, MN OFFICE
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Suite 206
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Phone: (763) 241-6848
CHASKA, MN OFFICE
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Phone: (952) 262-2999
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Mary Turck