#Civil Rights Investigation

[xtruss]

Yale University students celebrate graduation in 1914—despite what the date scribbled on the image says. In the early 20th century, U.S. elite colleges were panicked about an influx of Jewish applicants. They devised a system to screen them out that remains mainly in place today. Photograph By George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress

Why Do Colleges Have Legacy Admissions? It Started as a Way to Keep Out Jews.

Standardized tests. Interviews. Extracurricular Activities. In the early 20th Century, Universities used these Tactics to Ensure their Students were Predominantly Protestant.

— By Erin Blakemore | July 28, 2023

Should college students gain admission based on academic merit—or who their parents are? That question has become more pertinent than ever with the U.S. Supreme Court’s invalidation of affirmative action and the Department of Education’s announcement of a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s preferential treatment of “legacy” students with family connections.

Although it may seem like a modern problem, it’s only been about a century since U.S. colleges and universities began factoring family relationships and other criteria like extracurricular activities, interviews, and standardized test scores into their admissions decisions. These policies, it turns out, are rooted in anti-Semitic attitudes that aimed to keep Jewish students out of elite schools.

Here’s how anti-Jewish discrimination fueled modern college admissions—long before affirmative action ever existed.

Training Grounds For Society’s Elite

Before the late 19th century, a college education was largely out of reach for anyone but wealthy Protestants, who founded universities and colleges to prepare their sons for cultural and community leadership. Though these institutions extended preferential treatment to the sons of previous graduates, their entrance requirements were relatively lax. In a time before widespread public education, few who could afford to pay were turned away.

But beginning in the 1840s, the makeup of American society changed with waves of immigration that brought Catholics and Jews into the country in large numbers. As these emigrants flooded into the nation, write sociologists Deborah L. Coe and James D. Davidson, their presence threatened white Protestant groups who had previously dominated mainstream culture.

“As a result,” Coe and Davidson write, “anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiments found their way into a variety of mechanisms that were created in response to the undesirable demographic changes.” This soon filtered into college admissions too.

Catholics quickly founded their own universities and encouraged members of their religion to attend them. So it was Jewish college enrollment that generated special concern at predominantly Protestant institutions.

Panic Over 'Undesirable' College Applicants

Institutions historically tolerated some Jewish students, but only those whom officials felt had the proper class standing and had appropriately “assimilated” into mainstream American culture.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, newer arrivals from majority Jewish enclaves didn’t fit that mold, so elite Protestants attempted to close ranks. University officials who bought into longstanding stereotypes of Jews as clannish, conniving, and socially undesirable worried that admitting Jews would taint the reputation of the schools. Plus, they disliked the idea of their sons being educated alongside them.

No longer was mere money sufficient for acceptance into elite social circles. As historian John Higham writes, Protestant elites of the era “grasped at social distinctions that were more than pecuniary,” including “the cult of genealogy.” Suddenly, institutions including social clubs, sports organizations, prep schools, and even neighborhoods emphasized family connections as part of the price of entry—shutting Jews out by default.

It was no different in higher education, where leaders were alarmed by rising Jewish enrollment. In response, they began to brainstorm how to limit Jewish applicants without endangering public funding or damaging their reputations.

Elite Universities’ Anti-Semitic Legacy

Yale University was one of those institutions. “There seems to be no question that the University as a whole has about all of this race that it can well handle,” wrote Robert Nelson Corwin, Yale’s admissions chairman, in 1922. Though Jewish students showed the same academic achievement as their counterparts, Corwin wrote, “members of this race…graduate from college as alien in morals and manners as they were upon admission.”

He recommended that Yale implement “non-intellectual requirements,” including letters of recommendation, in-person interviews, and psychological testing, to limit its number of Jews.

Corwin was far from alone. From Harvard to Rutgers, Columbia to Tufts, elite colleges and universities began trying anything and everything to control the makeup of their student bodies. Some implemented quotas to limit the number of Jews in new classes. Others focused recruiting in areas they knew had lower populations of Jews, and began looking more closely at extracurricular activities that indicated the social class and religion of applicants. More admissions requirements meant more reasons to turn down students—and a way to mask anti-Semitic school policies.

When Jews won more academic scholarships, schools like Harvard and Yale discontinued them in favor of financial aid. They also embraced the new field of psychological testing, offering tests that measured aptitude and not achievement, such as the Thorndike Tests for Mental Alertness.

“The primitive and biased tests effectively reduced Jewish enrollment [at Columbia] by half,” write education historians Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, noting that many such tests were developed by eugenicists in search of “a purportedly objective way to quantify the structural racism of the day and to have it accepted as scientific.”

Another new requirement was so common it became almost ubiquitous during the period: the photograph. Historian Marianne R. Sanua writes that at Columbia, one fraternity publication satirically recommended that to get around newly tightened admissions requirements, applicants should dye their hair blonde, pretend they were taller, and have photos taken that downplayed stereotypically “Jewish” facial features.

Finally, higher education institutions also implemented internal legacy admissions policies, actively recruiting relatives of alumni and offering them a leg up on other applicants.

“All properly qualified sons of Dartmouth alumni and Dartmouth College officers will be accepted,” wrote Dartmouth College in its alumni magazine in 1922. The school also required applicants to submit multiple letters from Dartmouth alumni, promising that it would prioritize “men who plainly possess the qualities of leadership or qualities of outstanding promise” over those “qualified by high scholarship ranks but with no evidence of positive qualities otherwise.”

The Persistence of Legacy Admissions

As anti-Jewish sentiment became less mainstream in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust and with the rise of the civil rights movement, many universities phased out their more overtly anti-Semitic policies. But many of the restrictions put in place to limit Jewish applicants stuck. Standardized testing and interviews are still common requirements for college admissions, and today’s institutions of higher learning still admit more wealthy students.

One recent analysis found that children from the top 0.1 percent income bracket are more than twice as likely to gain admission to Ivy League schools compared to poorer students with the same test scores—and that 46 percent of their advantage can be attributed to admissions policies that extend preferential treatment to “legacy” students.

Despite some institutions like Amherst, Johns Hopkins, and Wesleyan announcing that they’ve abandoning the practice, the system is still common today. In a 2018 survey by Inside Higher Education, 42 percent of admissions directors at private colleges and universities said legacy status is a factor in their admissions process, compared to 6 percent at public institutions.

Among those institutions is Harvard, whose legacy admissions policy is now facing scrutiny by federal civil rights investigators. The Harvard Crimson reports that among its 2022 freshman class, more than 14 percent surveyed said they were legacy students, and self-reported legacies were likelier to be white. Over a third with one or more parents who attended Harvard reported a combined family income of $500,000 a year or more.

Will legacy admissions go the way of affirmative action? Until the results of the Department of Education’s reported investigation become clear, there’s no way of knowing. But many of the policies once implemented to keep Jews out of higher education in the U.S. are likely to persist.

[iwillgiveurest]

A lot of y’all really can’t think for yourself…and it’s low key kinda sad sksksksks. Group think will really be the end of us all.

[nando161mando]

FBI Targets Muslims and Palestinians in Wake of Hamas Attack, Civil Rights Advocates Warn

[ausetkmt]

Dozens of community members, families of police violence and activists joined a rally outside of the Antioch Police Department on April 18, 2023, to protest the racist and homophobic text messages shared among the department. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

The FBI arrested nine East Bay police officers on Thursday for alleged civil rights violations, interfering with investigations and defrauding their employers, Ismail Ramsey, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

The arrests were made in a series of raids early Thursday morning across and beyond the Bay Area, following an 18-month FBI investigation and the release of four federal grand jury indictments against the officers. Charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, deprivation of civil rights and destruction of records.

“Today is a dark day in our city’s history, as people trusted to uphold the law, allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI,” Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe said in a written statement shortly after the arrests. “As our city absorbs this tragic news, we must come together as one. Today’s actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process.”

The FBI arrested nine officers on Thursday and a total of 10 have been charged across four indictments, federal law enforcement officials said at the press conference Thursday. Eight of those arrested have made initial court appearances so far.

“This case is one of the highest priorities for the San Francisco Field Office,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp. “Law enforcement officers bear a tremendous responsibility to police out communities lawfully in keeping with the constitution, and we must always be true to that guiding principle.”A chart showing the list of charges against Antioch and Pittsburg police officers by a federal grand jury on Aug. 16, 2023. (Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman/KQED)

“Today’s announcement reporting the arrest of current and former APD officers is disheartening and undermines the incredible work our staff does on a daily basis,” Acting Antioch Chief of Police Joe Vigil said in a press release. “Any police officer who breaks public trust must be held accountable, especially because our effectiveness relies heavily on confidence and support from our community.”

The first indictment includes charges against Morteza Amiri and Samantha Genoveva Peterson of the APD, along with Pittsburg Police Department officers Brauli Rodriguez Jalapa, Ernesto Juan Mejia-Orozco, and Amanda Carmella Theodosy-Nash, for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faking college credits in order to receive pay bumps.

The second indictment alleges that APD officers Daniel Harris and Devon Wenger illegally obtained and distributed anabolic steroids, and for attempting to destroy evidence that they had tried to do so.

Timothy Manly Williams of the APD was indicted on obstruction of evidence and for destroying and falsifying records to obstruct a federal investigation using a wiretap.

The fourth and final indictment announced Thursday alleges that Morteza Amiri, Eric Rombough and Devon Wenger, all with the APD, carried out what Ramsey called a “disturbing litany” of civil rights violations. The violations include inappropriately deploying a canine and other weapons in order to deliberately harm individuals in Antioch.

Ramsey said that officers shared photos of their victims’ injuries and collected mementos from attacks, such as ammunition used against people of Antioch. “Defendants boasted about their illegal uses of force,” the federal attorney said.

The investigation is still ongoing.

The indictments and subsequent arrests mark a turning point for many members of the community who have been reeling from the recent police scandals.

The investigation kicked off in 2022 after concerns were raised about police officers who lied about their college degrees. But the FBI and Contra Costa County district attorney’s investigation into the local police department would reveal far more crimes and civil rights violations from Antioch and Pittsburg officers.

Among discoveries was a culture of explicitly racist and homophobic messages sent between numerous Antioch police officers. The investigation revealed officers not only using racial epithets including the N-word and describing Black people as “gorillas,” but it also showed officers had falsified confessions to build cases and physically assault suspects.

In several messages, the officers bragged about racial profiling and beating suspects.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a separate civil rights investigation into the APD in May, after it was revealed that officers had exchanged racist and homophobic text messages about community members and people in custody.

“It is our job to protect and serve all of our communities,” Bonta said in a press release announcing his investigation. “Police departments are on the front lines of that fight every day as they work to safeguard the people of our state. However, where there are allegations of potentially pervasive bias or discrimination, it can undermine the trust that is critical for public safety and our justice system. It is our responsibility to ensure that we establish a culture of accountability, professionalism, and zero tolerance for hateful or racist behavior, on or off duty.”

Former Antioch Police Chief Steven Ford announced his retirement last month and officially stepped down on Aug. 11 amid the scandal.

The spiraling revelations have impacted nearly half of the department’s sworn officers, and texts were exchanged between nearly 45 Antioch officers. As of July, 40 out of 90 officers were no longer working, the East Bay Times reports.

Dozens of cases that officers in the probe were involved in have since been dropped or derailed.

Robert Collins, whose step-son Angelo Quinto was killed by Antioch police in December 2020, told KQED that the arrests were an important step in rebuilding trust that has been lost between the community and its law enforcement officials.

“It’s amazing and shocking and sad that the lack of transparency and accountability has led to a police department that is so culturally deficient and problems that are so ingrained, so pervasive. But it’s good that there is some accountability and transparency coming out of the results of this federal indictment,” Collins told KQED. “It’s painful, but it’s a first step in improving the situation.”

Bella Quinto Collins, Quinto’s younger sister, was cautiously optimistic.

“This arrest is really good news,” she told KQED, “But at the same time, I don’t see this as necessarily the end of anything. It’s pretty clear that there’s still an ongoing issue within the culture of APD and there’s so much more work to be done to look into other officers that seem to be involved in various other issues and who are implicated in those text messages.”

Gigi Crowder, executive director of National Alliance on Mental Illness in Contra Costa, called the arrests “one step in a long road,” and that a lot of young people and families she works with have grown fearful of their own law enforcement agency.

“This might send a message to officers who hold those beliefs but hadn’t been involved … that you can’t get away with being asked to protect and serve and carry these racial belief systems about a community.”

She added: “We get complaints from across the county. If they do deeper probing, they will find it’s not isolated to Pittsburg and Antioch.”

Mayor Thorpe has previously faced criticism for seeking accountability for officer misconduct. In his written statement on Thursday, the mayor wrote: “Today’s arrests are demonstrative of the issues that have plagued the Antioch Police Department for decades. Seeking to reform the Antioch Police Department is not anti-police, it is pro our residents, and pro officers that have served and continue to serve with honor.”

[reasoningdaily]

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is facing a federal civil rights investigation over how the Los Angeles hospital treats Black women who give birth there, an official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed.

The investigation comes after allegations of racism and discrimination emerged in the years after the death of Kira Dixon Johnson.

Johnson went to Cedars-Sinai in April 2016 to deliver her second son by cesarean section but died hours later after hemorrhaging blood. News of the incident spread over social media and led to her husband, Charles Johnson IV, filing lawsuits against the hospital over her death.

The Times obtained a copy of a letter the federal agency sent to Charles Johnson in March indicating that it was aware of the allegations involving the hospital’s level of care for Black women.

The Office of Civil Rights “has been made aware of concerns regarding the standard of care provided to Black women in the care of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,” the letter said. “Specifically, OCR is aware of allegations that Black women are provided a standard of care below what is provided to other women who are not Black when receiving health care services related to labor and delivery.”

The letter noted that based on the allegations and the fact that Cedars-Sinai receives federal funding, the agency is reviewing whether the hospital is complying with federal civil rights laws.

Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of HHS’ Office of Civil Rights, confirmed the agency’s investigation in an emailed statement.

“Maternal health is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration and one in which the HHS Office for Civil Rights is working on around the country to ensure equity and equality in health care,” Fontes Rainer said. “To protect the integrity of this ongoing investigation we have no further comment.”

In 2017, Johnson sued Cedars-Sinai in state court as well as the doctor who attended to his wife during her hospital stay, alleging wrongful death and emotional distress.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

According to the lawsuits, Kira Johnson was admitted to Cedars-Sinai for a cesarean delivery, but hours later, Charles Johnson said he noticed her catheter was draining blood. Dr. Arjang Naim, her doctor, was made aware of her predicament and a “surgical emergency” CT scan was ordered.

But the scan was never performed, according to the lawsuits. By the time she was sent in for surgery, doctors found three liters of blood in her abdomen, and she soon died from hemorrhagic shock due to the blood loss, the lawsuits say.

The hospital said in a statement last year about the lawsuit that officials “reject any mischaracterization of our culture and values” and they were actively working to “eradicate unconscious bias in healthcare.”

In an emailed statement to The Times, Cedars-Sinai officials referred questions about “any potential investigation” to Health and Human Services.

“Cedars-Sinai clinicians, leaders and researchers have long been concerned with national disparities in Black maternal health, and we are proud of the work we’ve done (and continue to do) to address these issues in Los Angeles as well as at the state and national levels,” the statement said.

Hospital officials also pointed to their work to improve maternal health outcomes, including working with the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, which brings state agencies, hospitals and health provider associations together to look for ways to prevent pregnancy complications and deaths.

The hospital also noted it is conducting clinical studies aimed at improving Black maternal and infant health; providing annual unconscious bias training for staff members; and giving more than $2.2 million in grants to Los Angeles County-area nonprofit organizations seeking to improve Black maternal health.

The hospital also has a partnership with Cherished Futures for Black Moms & Babies, to connect healthcare organizations and Black community leaders to develop solutions to reduce inequities in Black maternal and infant health.

Cedars-Sinai helps nearly 7,000 women deliver their babies each year, according to the hospital’s website.

The National Center for Health Statistics reported in March that 1,205 pregnant women died in the United States in 2021, a 40% increase over 2020, when 861 deaths occurred. The total was 754 in 2019.

Pregnant Black women continued to have the highest risk of dying, according to the report. In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for white women at 26.6 deaths. Among Hispanic women, the report found there were 28 deaths per 100,000 live births.

[seat-safety-switch]

You can tell a lot about the health of a civilization by their warning signs. Places with a lot of dumb folks will have very broad, very dumb warnings in public. "No feeding the birds." "Stop swimming in this drainage pond." That kind of thing.

Advanced civilizations have very precise signs. They've covered the bases of their regular, run-of-the-mill idiots, and now they're working hard to cover that other end of the bell curve: the talented idiot. When I was in Germany last time, there was a big warning sign that consisted of a 76-letter-long word that means "stop bothering this particular goose, Sven." I don't know who Sven was, but the goose looked pretty calm. It worked.

Now, I have a secret to tell you. You can just make your own signs. There's no law against it, except perhaps "littering," and the municipal sign factory doesn't have very good security. If you show up there past close and put in the door code that you shoulder-surfed off one of the employees returning from lunch a week prior, you have all night to fuck around with their sign-printing machine, making the most official-looking placards you can think of.

Is this wrong? I don't think so. It's a public space, and being able to put up an aluminum sign that says wacky crank shit is your right. For instance, just last week, I banned pickup trucks from parking by the playground. The cops figured out something was going on, because they didn't get any calls for toddlers getting backed over for a couple of days and sent a patrol truck to investigate. Took my sign right down.

What I discovered after that is that nobody keeps records of what signs are supposed to be there. Why would anyone put up a sign for no reason? They cost money, after all. The city is now suing the shit out of that officer for stealing the "no trucks" sign, thanks to an anonymous tipster who called in the theft. Guy wearing a reflective vest came by and put like four more of them up after the lawsuit made the news, just out of spite. I'm not entirely sure if he's actually a city worker; we ran into each other at 3am at the sign factory and just grunted. He was working on some really crazy signs about not feeding a particular swan. Probably German.

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

Okay so we have this huge problem with forgetting about everything that’s happened by the time the next election rolls around so I’d like to keep a running list of things as they’re happening to help remind us when the 2026 midterms roll around. And please add to this if I’ve missed anything.

January 2025:

Donald Trump pardoned 1500 people who participated in the insurrection of January 6th, including those who violently assaulted and nearly killed police officers.

Donald Trump has declared that trans and non-binary people don’t exist.

Donald Trump is working towards firing everyone in the government who isn’t loyal to him.

Donald Trump has effectively fired everyone who he claims is an “illegal DEI hire” …whatever that means

Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization

Congress are trying to pass the Laken Riley Act to, effectively, round up every immigrant in the country, including LEGAL immigrants

Donald Trump removed caps on prescription drug prices.

Donald Trump wants to withhold federal aid to help combat the LA wildfires and help the thousands of people who have been displaced and lost their homes.

The Department of Justice has put a hold on all civil rights cases.

Donald Trump has cut off aid to Ukraine.

Laken Riley Act has been passed by Congress and is awaiting being signed into law by the President. Here’s the breakdown of the votes: House Senate

Donald Trump purged a dozen inspectors general from the federal government and intends to replace them all with people loyal to him.

Pete Hegseth has been confirmed as Secretary of Defense. Here’s the breakdown of how the Senate voted. Note, it was a 50-50 tie that JD Vance had to break.

Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Colombia after the Colombian government turned away two airplanes carrying migrants. Columbia has retaliated by imposing a 25% tariff of its own on US goods.

Donald Trump has also issued a travel ban for Colombian citizens and revoked visas from Colombian migrants coming to the US.

Donald Trump has now backed off the tariffs and other threats against Colombia. Note for future reference: this comes just hours after Trump made the threat in the first place and he and the Colombian president got into a big fight on social media.

Nearly 1,000 migrants were arrested mostly in Chicago on January 26th by ICE and ICE has been told to meet a quota of 75 migrant arrests every day.

Donald Trump rescinded an anti-discrimination executive order from Lyndon B. Johnson

Donald Trump signed an executive order banning trans people from serving in the military and also ordered that people who were discharged for refusing to get mandatory vaccines be reinstated.

Donald Trump has frozen all federal grants to institutions.

After pressure from state governments, activist groups, and the general public, the White House has rolled back some of the freezes on federal funding.

Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) has proposed a change to the 22nd Amendment to allow Donald Trump, specifically, to serve a third term.

Donald Trump is trying to fire all federal employees who don’t want to return to the office (work-from-home saves the federal government millions of taxpayer dollars in overhead). He also sent an email to federal employees saying that if they’re not loyal to him, they’ll be investigated.

Donald Trump has signed the Laken Riley Act into law.

Donald Trump has said he doesn’t think Palestinians should be allowed to return to Gaza but instead should be sent to Egypt and Jordan.

Native Americans have been targeted by ICE raids.

Donald Trump has ordered undocumented immigrants to be sent to Guantanamo Bay

Donald Trump signed an executive order to expand federal funding for school choice programs. [x]

Donald Trump signed an executive order saying that he will deport visa-holding students who protest against Israel. [x]

Donald Trump has blamed DEI for the plane crash that killed 67 people in Washington D. C. [x]

Donald Trump signed an executive order that schools should no longer teach about racism and discrimination. And that schools should only teach history that is “patriotic” [x]

Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna wants to add Donald Trump’s face to Mount Rushmore. [x]

Trump’s Department of Education has called book bans a hoax. [x]

The Department of Justice has barred certain news outlets from receiving information from the Pentagon. [x]

The Trump administration has fired multiple FBI officials who investigated the January 6th insurrection. [x]

February 2025

I’ll keep adding to this list as new things come up and, again, please feel free to add anything I’ve missed. I know that in this world of constant news it’s easy to forget, so let’s give our future selves a little help!

[myberndpulch]

✌️Leaked: DOJ Report on Mount Vernon Police - Original Document

“Justice Under Scrutiny: A symbolic depiction of the DOJ’s investigation into the Mount Vernon Police Department, highlighting the pursuit of accountability and reform in the face of systemic misconduct.” Read all at https://t.me/ABOVETOPSECRETXXL/46226 The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a civil rights investigation into the Mount Vernon Police Department (MVPD) to address concerns…

[silencespring]

Anonymous OPM employee posts the following to Reddit:

"I'm a current employee at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I’m posting this because people need to know what’s going on at OPM.

I’ve been an OPM employee for nearly a decade and a Federal Employee for almost 20 years. I’ve never witnessed anything even remotely close to what’s happening right now. In short, there's a hostile takeover of the federal civil service.

Let me say this in no uncertain terms — OPM has been compromised and taken over. The very backbone of American Government, the HR of all HR in the U.S. Government has been taken over by outside politicals. In just five days, they managed to push aside dozens of non-political, career civil servants who were there specifically to prevent the civil service from becoming the President's henchmen.

The current Acting Director, Charles (Chuck) Ezell is a low-level branch chief. He's the friendliest “yes man” you'll ever meet. He never says no. It’s clear they pushed aside all the high-level non political civil servants who refused to do Donald Trump's bidding, until they found Chuck.

Under his name, they’ve sent numerous requests to all the agencies to collect information on gov't employees that they see as a threat to their agenda. Instructions say to send these lists to Amanda Scales. But Amanda is not actually an OPM employee, she works for Elon Musk. She wasn’t even properly cleared by OPM Personnel Security.

Our CIO, Melvin Brown, (also a non political career public servant) was pushed aside just one week into his tenure because he refused to setup email lists to send out direct communications to all career civil servants. Such communications are normally left up to each agency.

Instead, an on-prem (on-site) email server was setup. Someone literally walked into our building and plugged in an email server to our network to make it appear that emails were coming from OPM. It's been the one sending those various “test” message you've all seen. We think they're building a massive email list of all federal employees to generate mass RIF notices down the road.

The non-political civil servants here at OPM are watching helplessly as our government is being systematically dismantled bit by bit. Even the IGs are being fired to prevent them from investigating the numerous whistleblower complaints we've filed.

Please share this and tell the world that OPM is not the bad guy. We're just as helpless to stop this as the rest of our fellow public servants. Hopefully someone out there can help us, but it’s looking pretty grim."

Note: it has since been removed, but has been reposted here.

[michael-j-dean]

Michael J Dean Videographer Journalist Director Producer Civil Rights Daily 🍞 Intelligence Report News About Corruption In Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Washington DC Hollywood CA. America ©™®{P}

[msclaritea]

Rev. William Barber hires civil rights attorney Harry Daniels to investigate movie theater incident | abc11.com

REV. WILLIAM BARBER HIRES CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY HARRY DANIELS TO INVESTIGATE MOVIE THEATER INCIDENT

Absolutely fucking ridiculous. #AMC publicly apologized and I never hear other incidents like this, so what is Progressive #RevBarber up to?

Monday, January 8, 2024 5:21PM ET

[enerdsout]

north Carolina GOP decides to make secret police force

[porterdavis]

I'm going to post the entire dispatch in hopes more people will read it. It's a stylized version of how US media would cover events in America if they were happening in a foreign country. Chilling.

(Written by Garrett Graff)

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Musk Junta Seizes Key Governmental Offices February 1, 2025 By William Boot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

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The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.

Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces. 

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor.

In one of his first moves upon returning to the presidency, he mobilized far-right paramilitary security forces to begin raids at churches, schools, and workplaces to identify and remove racial minorities, including those who had long lived in harmony with the country’s white Christian majority. He also immediately moved to release from prison some 1,500 supporters who had participated in his unsuccessful 2021 insurrection, including members of violent far-right militias who promptly upon release swore fealty to him in any future civil unrest. Elsewhere, even as he released violent criminals onto the streets, Trump by fiat pulled longstanding government security protection from former military and health officials he felt had betrayed him.

Underscoring his apparent disconnection from reality, reports surfaced that the president had ordered military forces to unleash an environmental catastrophe and flood regions of a separatist province known as California that is led by a high-profile political opponent. The order underscored how the military, which had resisted Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs in his first administration, was now led by a subservient defense minister, a favored TV personality with no experience in management who faced an embarrassing series of allegations about his drunken behavior in the workplace.

Foreign allies who had long aligned themselves with the United States on the international stage were unsettled by increasingly destabilizing nationalistic and imperialist rhetoric coming from the president’s social media accounts—largely posted to a network owned and run by Trump himself—and worried in private conversations in capital embassies that he would mobilize the compliant military to fulfill heretofore unimaginable territorial ambitions that included seizing the country’s northern neighbor, which shares the world’s longest undefended border, and potentially colonizing Panama and Greenland.

Both the country’s defense minister, who has previously said he does not believe women should be allowed to serve in combat roles, and Trump’s new interior minister, who appeared on national TV wearing the paramilitary uniform of the border security force central to Trump’s political rise, spent much of their first days echoing and amplifying the president’s hysteria about racial and ethnic minorities. They and other government officials also immediately canceled all official observances of religious and ethnic minority holidays and launched efforts to scrub official websites and prohibit educating workers or schoolchildren about those minorities’ long, proud history in the country. Overnight Friday, hours after journalists had gone home, the defense minister’s office announced it would bar establishment independent media outlets from working out of the country’s military headquarters and replace them with friendly right-wing media organs.

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The administration’s propaganda minister also announced Friday, apparently with little preparation, that it would initiate an immediate, unexpected, and seemingly ill-considered trade war with the country’s two primary economic partners, a move that if implemented would upend the national economy, disrupt supply chains, and accelerate the return of an inflationary crisis that has roiled domestic politics over the last five years and had just seemed to be returning to normal. Ironically, it was that very inflationary crisis and Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to lower the price of eggs that paved the way for his unforeseen election victory in November.

The country’s other business oligarchs have watched Musk’s unexpected and rapid rise to power with trepidation, and leading media and technology companies who compete with Musk’s extensive business empire—like Meta, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, Apple, and OpenAI—have quickly lined up to negotiate and pay bribes to the president that would allow their companies to operate unimpeded; initial payment terms ranged from million-dollar gifts to the presidential inauguration to $15 million and $25 million payments, made by Disney and Meta, to fund the construction of a presidential shrine. The highest known payment was $40 million from Amazon, which was structured as a gift to the president’s wife in exchange for the media company having the opportunity to film a hagiographic biopic.

It was unclear, exactly, what deal terms any of those bribes and payments unlocked and when subsequent tribute payments would be expected, although on Saturday Trump moved to fire and neuter government watchdogs that had long bedeviled the country’s financial elite.

Throughout the week’s fast-moving seizure of power—one that seems increasingly irreversible by the hour—neither loyalist nor opposition parliamentary leaders raised meaningful objection to the new regime or the unraveling of the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances. A few members of the geriatric legislature body offered scattered social media posts condemning the move, but parliament — where both houses are controlled by so-called “MAGA” members handpicked for their loyalty to the president — went home early for the weekend even as Musk’s forces spread through the capital streets.

It was unclear what role, if any, Musk’s forces would allow parliament to have in the new governmental structure by the time it next returned to the national assembly known as Capitol Hill.

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THE STORY OF FRED HAMPTON AND COINTELPRO by Michael Harriot

            Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Dirksen Federal Building, 1969                                    Photo by Paul Sequeira, Fair use image         NOTE: HE MEANT J. EDGAR HOOVER, NOT HERBERT HOOVER. Preventing the rise of a ‘messiah’ by Jonathan David Farley           FBI – KING SUICIDE LETTER   NOTE: HE’S ABOUT TO WRITE MARK O’NEAL WHEN HE MEANS WILLIAM…

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Ida B Wells by Paul Collins

American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement.