YunoBlog

Author: tio

  • Pluralistic: Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid (23 Jun 2026)

    Today’s links


    Three early 20th C newsies in pageboy caps, surround by hovering, staring robots, flying on jets of flame.

    Spying on kids to save kids from spying is very, very stupid (permalink)

    The literature on harms to kids from online platforms is complex and nuanced, rife with people citing small, ambiguous studies as iron-clad evidence that kids are being destroyed by the internet:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ype6c6DdHQY

    It’s a weird coalition of anti-Big Tech campaigners (who are rightly angry at the platforms’ callous disregard for user welfare) and Heritage Foundation-backed culture warriors (who think that if their kids aren’t exposed to LGBTQ content they won’t come out as queer). While there’s plenty these groups disagree about, they share one consensus: there should be a “minimum age” for certain kinds of internet use.

    The problem is, there’s no such thing as “age verification” for the internet. What we call “age verification” is actually mass surveillance, so invasive and pervasive that it makes the ad-tech industry’s commercial surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

    “Age verification” means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry’s fondest dream, a world where it’s literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them!

    So it’s not just a weird alliance of anti-Big Tech crusaders and the conspiratorial right that’s pushing for age verification – they are unwitting allies of the very tech industry they think they’re fighting. Those tech industry insiders are fully aware that an “age verification” mandate is really a way for the government to teach every child how to use a VPN. They’re also fully aware that the next move is to ban VPNs:

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2217934/vpn-ban-table-july-labour

    Tech bosses are the ones sitting on our shoulders saying, “Go ahead, swallow that fly – it’ll be fine. And if you do have to swallow a spider afterward, well, that’ll surely be the end of it”:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/19/shes-dead-of-course/#consensus-hallucination

    Behind them is a long line of caliper-wielding grifters who claim they can use your phone’s camera to distinguish a child who is 17 years, 364 days old from an adult who’s just turned 18:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/facial-age-estimation

    It’s beyond farce. After all, whatever harms you believe the internet is inflicting on kids – and there’s absolutely some kids who are being harmed by their internet use – those harms all start with surveillance. Your kids can’t be targeted by algorithms without the surveillance data that’s being used to target them. They can’t be funneled into pro-anorexia content or extreme misogyny forums without that funnel being primed by commercial spying.

    Why do tech companies spy on your kids? The same reason your dog licks its balls: because they can, and no one stops them:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/10/ice-tech/#foreseeable-outcomes

    America hasn’t updated its consumer privacy laws since 1988 (when Congress banned the disclosure of your VHS rentals). The EU has the GDPR, but it also has Ireland, the country where all GDPR cases against Big Tech go to die, because any tax haven inevitably becomes a crime haven:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/31/losing-the-crypto-wars/#surveillance-monopolism

    Other countries have privacy laws to varying degrees, but are grossly outmatched by US tech giants, who have fused with the Trump regime, to the extent that Trump will impose penalties on your country if you attempt to regulate his tech companies – he’ll even have your top officials cut off from the internet in retaliation:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next

    Any attempt to save kids from online harms should start with saving kids from online surveillance, but that’s the opposite of what we’re doing today. After decades of failing to pass and enforce privacy controls for the internet, those same governments are breaking all land-speed records to pass “age verification” laws that make privacy illegal:

    https://bsky.app/profile/rebeccawilliams.info/post/3moviqzdit22z

    The fact that these bills have the firm backing of the tech industry’s most controlling, most spying companies tells you everything you need to know about them:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20260315022337/https://tboteproject.com/

    Kids are being harmed by online spying, and so are the rest of us. Whether you think that the algorithm made Grampy go Qanon or you’re suspicious that online surveillance data was used to deny you a loan, a job, or a lease, you should want privacy:

    https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

    Online surveillance is being used to raise the prices you pay and lower the wages you’re offered:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/#veena-dubal

    And the same data that’s being used to “verify age” today will be used by ICE tomorrow to figure out who to round up for a concentration camp:

    https://www.wired.com/story/ice-asks-companies-about-ad-tech-and-big-data-tools/

    You can’t protect kids from online surveillance by spying on them. You just can’t. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to get you to swallow a fly so they can sell you a spider, a bird, a cat, and an ICE chud in a gaiter, Oakleys and plate carrier (beneath which lurks a stick-and-poke Totenkopf tattoo).

    Hey look at this (permalink)


    A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

    Object permanence (permalink)

    #20yrsago Darwin’s tortoise dead at 176
    https://web.archive.org/web/20060704143750/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060623/od_afp/australiaanimal_060623102146;_ylt=Ave_b4Ps2r9TGXqs5nZIVIoFO7gF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5bGVna3NhBHNlYwNzc3JlbA–zoo

    #15yrsago Major US ISPs set to limit repeat infringers with throttling, limiting access to 200 websites, and copyright reeducation school https://web.archive.org/web/20111105225114/http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20073522-261/exclusive-top-isps-poised-to-adopt-graduated-response-to-piracy/

    #15yrsago Why fair use doesn’t work unless you’ve got a huge war-chest for paying lawyers https://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/

    #15yrsago Model net neutrality rule for municipalities https://web.archive.org/web/20110626114610/http://envisionseattle.org/2011/06/model-net-neutrality-ordinance-for-seattle.html

    #15yrsago Campus hookups: college sex isn’t new, but hookups are different https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/06/21/the-promise-and-perils-of-hook-up-culture/

    #15yrsago A Brief History of the Corporation: understanding what an attention economy is and where it comes from https://ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/

    #15yrsago Eliza: what makes you think I’m a psychotherapeutic chatbot? https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/eliza-part-1/

    #10yrsago Broken Windows policing is nonsense https://www.nyc.gov/assets/oignypd/downloads/pdf/Quality-of-Life-Report-2010-2015.pdf

    #10yrsago How it feels to be under DDoS attack https://www.oreilly.com/radar/ddos-emotions/

    #10yrsago 2016: the first presidential election in 50 years without Voting Rights Act protections https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/welcome-to-the-first-presidential-election-since-voting-rights-act-gutted-179737/3/

    #10yrsago Google is restructuring to put machine learning at the core of all it does https://web.archive.org/web/20180530051703/https://www.wired.com/2016/06/how-google-is-remaking-itself-as-a-machine-learning-first-company/

    #10yrsago Misconfigured database exposes sensitive data for 154 million US voters https://dailydot.com/politics/154-million-voter-files-exposed-l2

    #10yrsago To understand the Trump campaign, study real-estate developer hustle https://web.archive.org/web/20161028030522/https://storify.com/KC_EDM/trump-is-running-his-campaign-like-a-real-estate-d

    #10yrsago Writing the Other: intensely practical advice for representing other cultures in fiction https://memex.craphound.com/2016/06/23/writing-the-other-intensely-practical-advice-for-representing-other-cultures-in-fiction/

    #1yrago The case for a Canadian wealth tax https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/23/billionaires-eh/#galen-weston-is-a-rat

    Upcoming appearances (permalink)

    A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


    A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

    Recent appearances (permalink)


    A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

    Latest books (permalink)


    A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

    Upcoming books (permalink)

    • “The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

    • “Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

    • “Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

    • “The Memex Method,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


    Colophon (permalink)

    Today’s top sources:

    Currently writing: “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

    • “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

    • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

    This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

    How to get Pluralistic:

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    Pluralistic.net

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    https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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    https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

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    https://doctorow.medium.com/

    Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

    https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

    “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla

    READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

    ISSN: 3066-764X

  • Syria Arrests Assad-Era Military Officer over Alleged Corruption and Wartime Abuses

    In its latest push to hold Assad-era figures accountable, Syria’s Interior Ministry has arrested a former military officer accused of corruption and abuses committed during the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad, marking the first time a former official has been detained also over financial offenses.

    The Interior Ministry said security forces arrested retired Brigadier General Abdul Ghaffar al-Hussein, considered a prominent military figure during the Assad regime. He was allegedly linked to arrests and forced disappearance of civilians while his regiment was overseeing a security checkpoint in Daraa province, state news agency SANA reported. 

    After retiring in 2015, al-Hussein became involved in corruption networks and exploited his connections within the government to embezzle public funds, the ministry claimed.  

    “The arrest of Brigadier General Abdul Ghaffar al-Hussein is a moment worth marking,” said Alreem Kamal, legal officer at the London-based Syrian Legal Development Program (SLDP), noting that al-Hussein’s detention is the first of its kind involving economic crimes. “It signals that the transitional government is prepared to treat corruption as a serious crime in its own right, not a lesser one.”

    “When public funds meant for schools, hospitals, and housing are siphoned away, the loss is not merely financial; it directly impacts the human rights to education, health, and adequate housing, to name a few,” she told OCCRP on Tuesday. “The focus on al-Hussein’s place within corruption networks and his role in embezzling public money is therefore welcome.”

    Over the past months, Syria’s transitional government has been pursuing Assad-era figures and former officials implicated in crimes and abuses against civilians during the 2011–2024 civil war. However, while al-Hussein’s arrest marks a new turn, Kamal added, “the difficulty is that this welcome step does not yet sit within a consistent approach.”

    “Against the arrest of al-Hussein stands the treatment of figures long woven into Assad’s crony network,” he said. A number of them have allegedly been exploiting the country’s brutal, decade-long civil war for personal enrichment and some were sanctioned by the U.S and blacklisted by the U.K.

    With figures like this still not held accountable, Kamal noted, “the inconsistency matters, because accountability is undermined if it reaches the available and spares the powerful.

    “If the al-Hussein arrest is to be more than a single gesture, it should mark the beginning of a coherent approach in which economic crimes are pursued through independent judicial channels regardless of the standing of those implicated,” he said. “This is vital for the credibility of Syria’s transitional justice and the trust of those it is meant to serve.”

  • First drug to delay onset of type 1 diabetes made available on NHS

    The immunotherpay can give children and adults three extra years before they need to use insulin.
  • The Silence on Climate Change Is Totally Unacceptable

    The Silence on Climate Change Is Totally Unacceptable

    Something odd and disturbing has happened on the issue of climate change in the last few years. Even as the crisis has gotten worse, and the need to address it more urgent, elected officials have been talking about it less. This month, Vox’s Kate Yoderobserves that “Democratic politicians who once talked about climate change as the defining crisis of our time now barely mention it at all” and “the phrase has begun disappearing from their speeches, social media posts, and podcast appearances.” (Republican politicians never pretended to care about it in the first place.) That includes some politicians who had previously been major climate advocates. And it’s not just among politicians. A recent Rockefeller Foundation report found “there has been a broad, persistent retreat in public language about climate,” with climate news coverage falling by nearly 40% and companies stopping discussing sustainability. Americans now “say they are hearing less about climate change in the news, on social media, and from people they know.”

  • Spain’s Supreme Court Sentences Former Minister to 24 Years in Landmark Pandemic Graft Case

    The Spanish Supreme Court has sentenced a former minister and former official of the Spanish Socialist Party to 24 years and three months behind bars for his role in a criminal organization, bribery, embezzlement, and influence peddling.

    José Luis Ábalos, the former Minister of Transport and former Organization Secretary of the ruling party, was found guilty alongside two co-conspirators in the so-called “Masks case”—a sprawling corruption scandal that first erupted in early 2024. The court ruled that Ábalos and his advisor, Koldo García, accepted systemic bribes in exchange for awarding lucrative public contracts for face masks and other medical supplies during the chaotic early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

    The judicial ruling outlined distinct penalties for the three main architects of the plot, handing Ábalos a sentence of 24 years and three months in prison. However, the court established a legal cap on his continuous time served, meaning the maximum time he will actually spend behind bars is 15 years and 18 months.

    Koldo García was sentenced to 19 years and eight months for leveraging his proximity to the ministry. Meanwhile, businessman Víctor de Aldama received a sentence of four and a half years but will avoid immediate prison time because he cooperated extensively with the prosecution. The Supreme Court suspended the execution of Aldama’s sentence on the condition that he does not commit another crime, submits a semi-annual activity report, and completes one year of community service.

    According to the ruling, the criminal ring relied on a transactional abuse of institutional power. Judges highlighted that Ábalos provided his “authority” and “direct influence” whenever necessary to smooth the way for contracts, receiving a steady kickback of 10,000 euro a month from October 2019 until June 2022.

    Aldama, for his part, was “the one in charge” of “locating companies or individuals” interested in administrative procedures, “articulating their interests” to ensure they would “prevail with preference and arbitrarily before it.” This fraudulent mediation was conducted “always in exchange for the corresponding economic compensation, which he equally shared with José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García,” the ruling concluded.

    The illicit deal also extended to personal favors, with the network financing the rent of a luxury apartment in central Madrid for Jessica Rodríguez, Ábalos’s partner at the time. To “guarantee” that Ábalos could smoothly “collect the illicit commissions” generated by the mask procurement contracts, the former minister and the businessman “entered into a lease agreement with an option to buy” a property owned by Aldama, setting an acquisition “price” that sat far below the real market value.

  • Puberty blocker trial will help reduce harm, says Cass report author

    Dr Hilary Cass says she is “absolutely convinced that more children will be harmed if we don’t do the trial than if we do.”

  • Pluralistic: Good politics (22 Jun 2026)

    Today’s links

    • Good politics: Just make people’s lives better.
    • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
    • Object permanence: WWII online; Xbox security blunders; Homeless bloggers; Thermal printer racing game; Robbing a bank to get healthcare in jail; Crumb v Trump; “The Blues Brothers”; Bagelheads; Pickpocket training mannequin; Windmill joke; Singularity skepticism; GPU Dieselgate; Peleton bricks treadmills; Juul’s junk science.
    • Upcoming appearances: Toronto, NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
    • Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.
    • Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.
    • Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.
    • Colophon: All the rest.


    A group portrait of a working class family picnicking and enjoying themselves, dating from about 1930. They look like they're really enjoying themselves.

    Good politics (permalink)

    Some people love to admire a beautiful football play; me, I can’t get enough of politicians doing good politics – and like those World Cup fans, I am doubly pleased when it’s my team making the play.

    I definitely have a team in Brazilian politics: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party. Lula’s done so many amazing things in his career, and these often intersect with my own special interests. Like, he made Gilberto Gil his minister of culture, and his people built the telecentros, free software-based internet dojos for the poorest kids in the country, living in favelas:

    https://www.informationweek.com/software-services/brazil-turns-away-from-microsoft

    Lula was royally ratfucked – framed by a corrupt justice minister who secretly conspired with the country’s oligarchs – and imprisoned, and the conspirators installed Jair Bolsonaro, a fascist war criminal whose covid bungling led to mass death:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Car_Wash

    When Bolsonaro lost his next election – to a triumphant Lula – he attempted a coup, for which he was arrested and handed a long prison sentence, despite Trump and Microsoft trying to intimidate the Brazilian judge into letting him walk:

    https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/22/bolsonaro-prosecution-us-sanctions-00575122

    Now, Lula is fighting to keep Bolsonaro’s nepobaby failson, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, from wrestling back control over the country for his fascist party; and that’s where the good politics come in.

    Lula’s party has just scored a massive, national political victory by tabling legislation to establish a five-day workweek. While Brazil’s professional/managerial class enjoy a two-day weekend, the working poor of the nation are prisoners of the escala 6×1 system, which sees them working six days per week. It’s a hangover from the era of Brazil’s fascist dictatorship, which (nominally) ended in 1988, but whose legacy still haunts the Brazilian people.

    Lula’s 40-hour workweek is incredibly popular. So popular that Bolsonaro’s party whipped its members to vote for it, because they fear that to do otherwise would hand an even bigger majority to Lula, who might go on to give workers a four-day work-week:

    https://prospect.org/2026/06/22/lula-sees-boosts-as-he-pushes-to-reduce-brazilian-workweek/

    It turns out that weekends are popular and promising the electorate access to a weekend is good politics. What’s more, denying weekends to the electorate is shitty, awful politics, which is why Bolsonaro’s fascists were forced to vote in favor of a policy they hate, even though all credit for that policy will still go to Lula and the Worker’ Party. The bill passed 461-19.

    Contrast Lula’s muscular, deliverism-based politics that seeks to improve the lives of working people in tangible, immediate ways with the catastrophic series of blunders that Keir Starmer’s Labour has delivered. Despite having won a majority so large it would have made Saddam Hussein blush (not because Labour was popular, but because the outgoing Conservatives were universally loathed), Starmer has refused to lift a finger to improve Britons’ lives. Instead, he’s abetted genocide, criminalized protest, proposed ending jury trials, imposed austerity, handed the NHS over to Palantir and all the remaining potable water and electrical capacity in the country over to American most unprofitable AI giants.

    Starmer’s insistence that we can’t have nice things is bad politics, because (and it’s weird that this has to be said) a government that makes people’s lives worse is less popular than a government that makes people’s lives better:

    https://www.whatwelo.st/p/everyone-hates-tech-but-nobody-knows

    Now, the right is incapable of making working people’s lives better, because broad improvements to the vast majority necessarily come at the expense of the tiny minority of morbidly wealthy hoarders whom the right serves. In order to get millions of turkeys to vote for Christmas, the right substitutes spectacular acts of cruelty against disfavored minorities to distract their voters from the quiet acts of everyday cruelty they subject those voters to:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/12/always-great/#our-nhs

    This isn’t good politics. The sadistic torture of your base’s enemies will never please them so well nor so durably as making immediate, significant improvements in their lives will.

    That’s why the corporate Dems who say that the party should campaign against renewables and in favor of fossil fuel companies aren’t merely climate criminals, they’re also bad at politics:

    https://prospect.org/2026/06/22/affordability-climate-envioronment-policy-gas-oil-prices-iran-war-trump/

    Cleantech is fucking great. Since I put in solar, a heat pump and an induction top, my energy bills have fallen to less than $80 per month, even in Los Angeles, even at the height of summer. My EV – a 7-year old Kia Niro – costs pennies to run, because I charge it off my roof. Not only that, it’s fast, maneuverable, silent, and incredibly reliable. It handles like that Mustang a rental agency once upgraded me to. I mean, I’d rather have a subway, but if I have to drive, this is so much better than any ICE car I’ve ever owned.

    Sure, our solar was a giant pain in the ass to get installed and working, but that’s because the same corporate Dems who say climate is a political loser also said the best way to roll out solar nationwide was to set up an elaborate system of financialized tax-credits. That meant that every solar installer I talked to was more interested in swindling me by putting solar on my roof that they would own than they were in selling me a system I owned outright. Financializing America’s rooftop solar conjured up a vast army of scammers and hustlers who screwed the majority of people they sold solar to, and my installers, Solaredge, were no exception:

    https://www.propublica.org/article/missouri-pace-loans

    Everything about living in the cleantech future is better. I can boil a gallon of water in under a minute on my stovetop! And it’s only gonna get better: not only is cleantech improving every year, but fossil fuel is getting shittier every year, thanks to Trump’s lunatic war of choice in Iran, the cost of using fossil fuels will only go up from here:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/20/praxis/#acceleration

    Look, as a workaholic whose unhealthy anxiety coping mechanism is to work even harder, I might not make the best use of an extra day off:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/14/compartment/#flow

    But as Pete Seeger sang in 1941, your time is all you have, and every hour you give to your boss is an hour you can never get back:

    You’ll get shorter hours
    Better working conditions
    Vacations with pay
    Take your kids to the seashore

    https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-talking-union-lyrics

    It’s something Lula understands, which is why he’s winning. Good politics are a delight to watch, especially when it’s your team doing them. But man, it can be pretty demoralizing to watch your team fumble play after play after play.

    Hey look at this (permalink)


    A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

    Object permanence (permalink)

    #25yrsago WWII Online https://web.archive.org/web/20010625120559/https://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/reviews/0,10867,2778704,00.html

    #20yrsago Microsoft’s myriad Xbox security mistakes https://web.archive.org/web/20060703000421/http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System

    #20yrsago Kentucky government censors political watchdog site https://web.archive.org/web/20060628055926/http://www.bluegrassreport.org/bluegrass_politics/2006/06/bluegrassreport.html

    #20yrsago Life among the homeless bloggers https://web.archive.org/web/20060702205047/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71153-0.html

    #20yrsago Disney, 1939: No woman animators allowed https://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/disney-1939-girls-are-not-considered.html

    #15yrsago Sick man robs bank for $1, demands jail and healthcare https://web.archive.org/web/20110628144748/https://www.gastongazette.com/news/bank-58397-richard-hailed.html/

    #15yrsago Car-racing game on a thermal printer https://www.undef.ch/project/receipt-racer

    #15yrsago Toronto police swear off kettling https://web.archive.org/web/20110625131204/http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1012959–exclusive-toronto-police-swear-off-g20-kettling-tactic?bn=1

    #15yrsago LEAKED: UK copyright lobby holds closed-door meetings with gov’t to discuss national Web-censorship regime https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/rights-holders-propose-voluntary-website-blocking-scheme/

    #15yrsago Georgia’s anti-immigrant law leaves millions in crops rotting in the fields https://web.archive.org/web/20110620213900/https://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/06/17/gas-farm-labor-crisis-playing-out-as-planned/

    #15yrsago Bagelheads: toroidal saline forehead injections https://web.archive.org/web/20110619033443/https://vicestyle.com/en/news/today/post/japanese-bagelheads

    #15yrsago Spitalfields Nippers: East London street-urchins of 1912 https://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/04/02/spitalfields-nippers/

    #15yrsago Danish police proposal: Ban anonymous Internet use https://www-computerworld-dk.translate.goog/art/117279/forslag-du-maa-ikke-laengere-gaa-anonymt-paa-nettet?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US

    #15yrsago Bell-mannequin for training pickpockets https://web.archive.org/web/20110626045035/http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2011/06/23/amateur-pick-pockets-study-in-crime-college/

    #15yrsago Skeptical take on Singularity http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/06/reality-check-1.html

    #15yrsago Windmill joke https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/4p8qkb/two_windmills_are_standing_in_a_field_and_one/

    #10yrsago Electronics repair shops overbill for labor when the customer has insurance https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/computer-repair-shops-screw-over-customers-if-theyve-got-insurance/

    #10yrsago Being a Craigslist scammer is hard work https://web.archive.org/web/20160622140008/https://www.infoworld.com/article/3086304/cyber-crime/interview-with-a-craigslist-scammer.html

    #10yrsago Dieselgate for GPUs: review-units ship at higher clockspeeds than retail ones https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/6/21/11986836/msi-asus-overclocked-graphics-cards-review

    #10yrsago Phones without headphone jacks are phones with DRM for audio https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/6/21/11991302/iphone-no-headphone-jack-user-hostile-stupid

    #10yrsago Donald Trump sources $6M worth of campaign expenditures from companies he and his family own https://web.archive.org/web/20160621142100/https://bigstory.ap.org/article/9f7412236962464f9f2c0a8d2696ba25/trumps-campaign-cycles-6-million-trump-companies

    #10yrsago Samantha Bee puts the NRA before a firing squad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M4qHzd3xfM

    #10yrsago Improv Everywhere: asking random New Yorkers to give a commencement speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drvcLC3DuHo

    #10yrsago R. Crumb v. D. Trump, 1989 https://dangerousminds.net/comments/robert_crumb_and_friends_flush_donald_trump_down_the_toilet_1989/

    #10yrsago Cleveland: “First Amendment zones” will fence protesters far away from RNC https://www.wired.com/2016/06/cleveland-will-create-city-within-city-keep-rnc-civil/

    #10yrsago Space botanists are beneficiaries of Canada’s legal weed boom https://web.archive.org/web/20160624043929/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-space-technology-will-produce-the-best-weed-marijuana-cannabis-pot

    #10yrsago Debullshitifying the EU referendum (radio comedy edition) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03yylpn

    #10yrsago Judenstaat: an alternate history in which a Jewish state is created in east Germany in 1948 https://memex.craphound.com/2016/06/21/judenstaat-an-alternate-history-in-which-a-jewish-state-is-created-in-east-germany-in-1948/

    #10yrsago Gun control is a great idea, terrorist watchlists are bullshit https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/2016_06_20_aclu_vote_recommendation_on_feinstein_and_cornyn_amendments_to_h.r._2578.pdf

    #5yrsago New Yorkers just missing the subway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWh385F5lms#5yrsago
    #5yrsago Peloton bricks its treadmills https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

    #5yrsago Juul’s junk science https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#smokescreen

    #5yrsago Improving the ACCESS Act https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#improve-access

    #1yrago Daniel de Visé’s ‘The Blues Brothers’ https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/21/1060-west-addison/#the-new-oldsmobiles-are-in-early-this-year

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  • Rewiring the life sciences: why foundations come first for AI in science

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  • ‘A Huge Grab of Power’: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid

    This story was originally published by ProPublica.

    After the Trump administration upended the U.S. Agency for International Development last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely.

    But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter USAID, the world’s largest foreign aid provider, and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world. 

    Congress said no. Lawmakers, who hold the government’s purse strings and have oversight of federal agencies, wanted USAID to remain, even in its diminished form. They detailed precisely how much the State Department should spend on foreign aid and for what, including $9.4 billion on global health to treat and prevent maladies like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and more than $5 billion on emergency humanitarian aid. They also insisted on regular, detailed reports about how the administration was spending the money. 

    Trump signed the bill, enshrining their orders into law.

    Now, eight months into the fiscal year, Trump officials are failing to follow many of those orders, ProPublica has found. Officials have delayed spending on global health, have not issued funds for some projects and have labeled money destined for humanitarian aid as “unallocated” to control how it can be spent, according to a ProPublica review of government records and interviews with legal experts, current and former government employees and members of Congress. And when lawmakers have asked officials about their actions, they often have not responded.

    Eight months into the fiscal year, Trump officials are failing to follow many of those orders.

    The White House and Congress have been battling over federal spending since Day 1 of the Trump administration, setting up a constitutional crisis — a breakdown of the division of power among the three branches of the federal government, according to several legal scholars. 

    Nowhere has that crisis been more visible than with foreign aid. Last year, the administration took the unprecedented step of gutting USAID, terminating thousands of aid programs and letting funding expire, all without permission from Congress. Lawmakers did little to stop it.

    Now, in defying Congress on foreign aid that Trump himself agreed to spend, the administration is quietly escalating the battle.

    “It is a huge grab of power from the president, taking powers away from Congress,” said David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on administrative and constitutional law.

    USAID was created by Congress decades ago as a means of promoting American diplomacy and soft power around the world. As ProPublica previously reported, when Trump officials dismantled the agency last year, stopping payments on thousands of lifesaving programs that provided food, medicine and other supplies to impoverished nations, many people died, including children. 

    Even with USAID in shambles, Congress has made clear that it expects the administration to continue providing foreign aid — in some cases, at nearly the level it did in previous years.

    “It’s proof that there is still broad, bipartisan support for America showing up in the world, helping people and working with our allies and partners on shared challenges, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it directly benefits us,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the ranking member of the Senate committee with oversight of foreign aid funds. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the committee’s chair, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    But the administration has taken a variety of steps to thwart Congress’ directives. The Office of Management and Budget, run by Russell Vought, was instrumental in blocking the spending of aid money last year. This year, it has labeled both humanitarian aid and global health money as “unallocated,” meaning the OMB must approve how it is spent.

    “It is a huge grab of power from the president, taking powers away from Congress.”

    Legal scholars say such moves, and the delayed spending by the State Department, likely violate the law. Foreign aid is a prime example of why Congress made it illegal for administrations and agencies to slow-walk such funds, said Bobby Kogan, an OMB adviser under former President Joe Biden currently with the Center for American Progress. “If you spend no money for a year and all the clinics close, then those people die,” he said.

    The State Department has made little effort to spend some foreign aid money that Congress earmarked for specific purposes, including family planning, neglected diseases and nutrition, according to government staff and budget documents. 

    And programs have been given fewer dollars, even when Congress has kept funding steady. That includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the hallmark HIV program that’s been credited with saving 26 million lives around the world. 

    Administration officials are also spending on foreign aid at a much slower rate than they had in recent years, according to an analysis of federal funding data shared with ProPublica by Aid on the Hill, an advocacy group created by former USAID employees, although the State Department disputes its conclusions. Another group published a similar analysis last week.

    Where Trump officials have made plans to spend funds, it’s often spurred outrage. Under the new America First Global Health Strategy, Trump officials are signing bilateral deals with poor countries, asking for access to health data as a condition for receiving lifesaving medications the U.S. once donated. 

    Jeremy Lewin, a 29-year-old lawyer who came into government via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with no prior humanitarian experience, is in charge of foreign aid. He has said that this new strategy will not only save countless lives, but also reform the aid sector and reduce dependence on U.S. funding.

    Since last July, Lewin has been “performing the duties” of undersecretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, a position that must be approved by Congress, though the administration has yet to nominate him or anyone else to the job. 

    But he rarely, if ever, meets with career staff and doesn’t share information about his plans, even with the people who are expected to carry them out, according to six current and former career officials. Lewin insists that he approve even routine payments, creating a stranglehold on funding and information. 

    And all the while, Trump appointees have failed to answer basic questions from Congress about what they are doing. Letters from lawmakers have gone unanswered and required reports unfiled. 

    Trump appointees have failed to answer basic questions from Congress about what they are doing.

    To understand the administration’s compliance with congressional mandates and federal law, ProPublica reviewed administration documents, including agreements, memos and internal communications, and spoke with dozens of current and former government officials, congressional staff and international experts in global health and humanitarian aid. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the administration. 

    In response to a list of detailed questions about the concerns, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be named said they would continue to follow the president’s direction on foreign aid spending. “We are not withholding any funds appropriated to, or available to, State,” they said. “If additional funds are made available to State, we will work to obligate them consistent with legal requirements and Administration priorities.”

    They said officials have regularly briefed Congress and that Lewin had recently spent four hours discussing foreign assistance. They also said they have “reduced by 80% the number of outstanding reports and letters” since Trump retook office. 

    “We are working with Congress to spend appropriated balances and find the right future-appropriated level for global health,” the spokesperson said. 

    In response to a series of detailed questions about this story, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley said, “This is patently false,” adding that “USAID was a weaponized government agency.” She did not respond to a follow-up question asking what was false.

    Spending less — or not at all 

    After nearly all of USAID’s employees were fired and the majority of its programs closed down last summer, the agency’s remnants were transferred to the State Department. Despite repeated promises from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that lifesaving aid would continue, the State Department began winding down many of the remaining programs earlier this year.

    And staff have been working with a severely constricted budget; officials gave them just half of the available money for the AIDS relief program PEPFAR, said Dr. Mike Reid, who was the program’s chief scientific officer until he left earlier this year over concerns about how it is being run. Of the $9.4 billion for global health spending for the State Department that Trump signed into law earlier this year, Congress earmarked about $4.6 billion for PEPFAR. But staff say it’s unclear how much of that they will be allowed to spend.

    Congress also explicitly directed the State Department to spend pots of money on family planning ($524 million), nutrition ($165 million) and neglected tropical diseases ($109 million), according to the bill. According to a review of government records and two people with knowledge of the department’s activities, State Department officials have made little or no effort to spend from those funds. 

    In response, a State Department spokesperson said it has “continued to obligate and spend every dollar appropriated for global HIV/AIDS programs” and “we continue to implement life-saving care in global health priority areas, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child health.”

    They added: “The State Department has been in the process of slowly replacing old carry-over USAID grants with new State Department grants and contracts which have fresh funds, new terms and conditions, and better align with the new America First foreign assistance strategy.”

    The State Department began winding down many of the remaining programs earlier this year.

    Global health programming in general is moving at a much slower rate than it did previously, according to the Aid on the Hill analysis of federal funding data. Of the more than $9 billion that Congress told the Trump administration to spend on global health last year, the administration had by the end of this March obligated just $190 million, 5% of what was spent on average in that period in the five years before Trump returned to office. Typically, officials would have obligated about half of the money by then. Another advocacy organization, the Health Security Policy Academy, published an analysis last week that drew a similar conclusion.

    The State Department said it “cannot and will not” verify any independent analysis, but disagreed with the figures, saying that it has “approved and implemented spending” for more than $7.5 billion to align with the bilateral agreements and disaster response. “You either have vastly outdated numbers or are simply mistaken,” it said, but would not elaborate.  

    The agreements signed with nations around the world, a centerpiece of the State Department’s foreign aid policy, will in many cases involve sending funds directly to those governments, some of which have been mired in corruption scandals. But the specifics of the programs are still being determined, and the funding has yet to flow. 

    Meanwhile, Lewin has been increasingly leaning on large international organizations to deliver aid once managed by USAID employees.

    Earlier this year, Lewin funneled $3.8 billion to a small arm of the United Nations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), quadrupling the budget of the agency. 

    Trump has frequently criticized the U.N. as ineffective. But after nearly all of USAID’s staff was fired, the skeleton crew at the State Department doesn’t have the capacity or expertise to manage so much humanitarian aid themselves, according to a dozen people familiar with the new system.

    The agreement with OCHA, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, also does not allow the U.S. to independently audit the funds, though the U.N. agreed to run a pilot project for greater internal oversight.

    Eri Kaneko, OCHA’s spokesperson, said the agency has worked quickly since December to disburse funds for “the most urgent and life-threatening needs” and that U.N. entities are “fully committed to the highest standards of accountability and oversight.”

    The U.S. has been the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multilateral organization that provides medicines and prevention measures to millions of people around the world, since its inception. Lewin recently announced an expanded partnership with the fund to provide HIV prevention across Africa. But the Trump administration last year withheld payments pledged under the Biden administration, forcing the fund to reduce the amounts it gave to nations.

    “The State Department is underfunding the Global Fund.”

    So in this year’s spending bill, Congress directed the State Department to make good on its pledges, issuing specific instructions to Rubio on what to pay and when, and telling him to make those contributions “in a timely manner.” 

    That hasn’t happened. 

    A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica that “all current funding obligations have been met.” But according to a board member for the Global Fund, congressional staff and Friends of the Global Fight, an organization that advocates for the fund in the U.S., the administration should contribute another $661 million. 

    “The State Department is underfunding the Global Fund,” Schatz said. “It’s out of compliance with congressional appropriations.” 

    When the senator asked about the funding during Rubio’s recent testimony to Congress, Rubio said, “I think that will move shortly, very quickly.”

    A “fundamental threat to the rule of law”

    During previous administrations, once Congress passed laws to approve federal spending, the money flowed through the OMB, which in turn parceled out the funds to designated agencies, making sure they didn’t spend the funds too quickly or too slowly. 

    Under Trump, the OMB, led by Vought, has repeatedly blocked funds approved by Congress from going to agencies using legally dubious maneuvers, experts in federal spending and constitutional law told ProPublica. 

    As ProPublica has chronicled, Vought takes an expansive view of presidential power and has moved to give the executive branch dramatically greater authority to not spend legally appropriated money. Foreign aid has been a clear focus; after USAID was razed last year, Vought was made acting administrator and tasked with overseeing the closeout of the agency. Eric Ueland, a Vought deputy at the OMB, is currently performing those duties. 

    The OMB currently has labeled more than $500 million in global health money as “unallocated,” according to its own data, which makes it impossible for the State Department to spend without first going through the OMB. It had also labeled most of the humanitarian aid money this way, but began releasing some of those funds in May. By June 11, the OMB had released all of that money to the State Department.

    The OMB currently has labeled more than $500 million in global health money as “unallocated.”

    Several people inside and outside the government told ProPublica they fear that the administration is withholding the funds because it is planning not to spend them at all. They have good reason to be concerned: That’s exactly what Trump did last year. 

    In 2025, the administration clawed back some $13 billion in foreign aid that Congress had passed into law, some of it by using a maneuver widely considered by legal experts to be illegal.

    That maneuver, which Vought calls a “pocket rescission,” essentially asks Congress to cancel funds so late in the fiscal year that there isn’t enough time for them to be spent if Congress says no. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ watchdog, has said pocket rescissions are illegal, and several constitutional scholars told ProPublica the move violates the Impoundment Control Act. That law, passed in 1974 in the wake of disputes with President Richard Nixon, restricts the president’s authority to withhold, or impound, funds approved by Congress. 

    A federal court initially blocked the maneuver as part of ongoing lawsuits related to the dismantling of USAID. But the administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which issued an emergency — ruling split along ideological lines — that allowed the clawback to continue, though it did not rule on the merits. 

    The GAO has standing to take legal action on a pocket rescission. Edda Emmanuelli Perez, the GAO’s general counsel, told ProPublica that her office was continuing to review potential impoundments and monitoring ongoing litigation, and that it has not made a decision to file any lawsuits at this time.

    While there are still nearly four months left in this fiscal year, career officials and legal experts say another rescission — legal or not — would further erode Congress’ power of the purse, threatening the U.S. democracy. 

    “If that’s going to be a regular occurrence, then we have a real fundamental threat to the rule of law,” said Cerin Lindgrensavage, a former Justice Department lawyer who works for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights against authoritarianism. “Congress has said spend the money, and the president doesn’t want to. The question is, who wins? Under the law, Congress is supposed to win. Right now, the president is.”

    Budget watchers say there are concerning signs that the administration plans to withhold more funds. 

    In April, the OMB informed Congress that it was withholding funds earmarked for global health to pay the hefty bills for severance fees and other costs for the thousands of USAID programs Trump officials terminated last year.

    “Congress has said spend the money, and the president doesn’t want to. The question is, who wins?”

    OMB officials told lawmakers they were setting aside $19 billion to cover those costs, though they anticipated the total would be “substantially” less. (Internal documents reviewed by ProPublica say the figure doesn’t include the cost of the litany of lawsuits associated with the closures — or the dozens of new hires and other agency operations needed to process them.) 

    The bulk of that money came from unspent funds for the canceled programs and other unobligated dollars from previous years. But $3.2 billion came from funds earmarked by Congress for global health and development programs that Trump signed into law in 2025. If it’s not obligated by the end of September, that money will expire and can no longer be spent. 

    Democratic lawmakers were incensed by the OMB’s decision. In a letter to Trump officials, senators called it an “appalling admission of waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars” and demanded that the administration use the $3.2 billion as directed, “consistent with the law.” They asked for a response by May 8. As of June 16, lawmakers had not received one. 

    Asked about the funds during the recent Senate hearing, Rubio claimed they were under the purview of the OMB. Schatz pointed out that Rubio had moved all foreign aid under the State Department and had just wrestled some of that money away from the OMB to respond to an Ebola outbreak. “It also demonstrates you are perfectly capable of getting money released from those closeout funds if you wish,” he told the secretary. “Ebola is an urgent priority, but so is malaria, so is TB and so is HIV/AIDS.” 

    “Proposing a rescission is a Presidential authority, and we will follow President Trump’s direction as to any future rescissions,” the State Department spokesperson told ProPublica. “We are currently planning to obligate all appropriated balances, consistent with law.”

    The post ‘A Huge Grab of Power’: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid appeared first on Truthdig.