Tessera
Folgen

Keith Donald

@kpdonald.bsky.social

Ending homelessness, social housing, biodiversity, ecology, land conservation, habitat restoration, climate action, food security, finance reform, antimonopoly practices, ubi, job guarantee, mmt, universal healthcare, mitochondrial disease parent

2 Posts82 Follower122 Folgt
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · last yr.

Want to see something really insane? Look at this website for USGS's Water Science Centers and Regions and see how many of their directors have "Former Employee" after their names. Everyone's gone! My best friend from grad school was one of them. Who's monitoring floods, droughts, etc?

Water Science Centers and Regions

A list of all of the USGS Water Resources Mission Area Science Centers and regions, hubs for critical water science funded by Federal, State, and other partners and stakeholders located throughout the...

usgs.gov

Elise Gould@elisegould.bsky.social · last yr.

While there's little sign of elevated UI continued claims in the national data, there is a significant uptick in UI claims for DC (four-week average). Regular state continued claims rose just 5.1% overall, but by 100.1% in DC. Federal funding cuts are already having an impact. #EconSky #NumbersDay

Bild
ProPublica@propublica.org · last yr.

The request, spelled out in an email obtained by ProPublica, comes amid concerns that DOGE has overstepped its bounds in seeking highly restricted private information about taxpayers, public employees or federal agencies.

Inspector General Probes Whether Trump, DOGE Sought Private Taxpayer Information or Sensitive IRS Material

The request, spelled out in an email obtained by ProPublica, comes amid concerns that DOGE has overstepped its bounds in seeking highly restricted private information about taxpayers, public…

propublica.org

Rob Davis@robwdavis.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW: Nike says most of the 1.1M people making its products earn 1.9X their local minimum wage. We obtained a payroll ledger for a Cambodian factory that supplied Nike for two years. 1% of the workforce earned that much. Team effort with @sbmaneyphoto.bsky.social. www.propublica.org/article/nike...

Nike Says Its Factory Workers Earn Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. At This Cambodian Factory, 1% Made That Much.

Nike has made an expansive effort to convince consumers, investors and others that it is improving the lives of factory workers who make its products, not exploiting them. A rare view of wages at one ...

propublica.org

Nathan Tankus@nathantankus.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW PIECE: I've been working for a while on a piece on social security death notices and payment finality. Just as I was finalizing it, including with a new legal memo!- it was reported that DOGE declared four MILLION people dead. Read all about the issues here www.crisesnotes.com/the-crisis-a...

The Crisis at Social Security Illustrates Elon Musk and DOGE’s Plan: Explode the Number and Severity of Improper Payments.

Subscribe Over the past month I needed a break to deal with organizational issues, including getting the Notes on the Crises Manhattan office(!) set up and needed time to continue a number of investi...

crisesnotes.com

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW: A SECOND story was released today of a Venezuelan man disappeared by the Trump admin. Neiyerver Leon is a barber who entered legally seeking asylum in June 2023. ICE arrested him on March 13 and accused him of being in TdA. Days later, he vanished off the face of the earth.

Leon Rengel was briefly held at East Hidalgo Detention Center, a private facility in La Villa, Texas, used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Then — nothing. His alien number, a way to track his whereabouts, vanished two days later from ICE’s online system. He disappeared. ICE agents told Gutierrez her boyfriend had been deported to his home country. But the family has searched in Venezuela, and he isn’t there, she said. “I’ve been to the ICE office. I’ve contacted the FBI. The DEA. Everyone told me the same thing: He was deported,” Gutierrez said. “But where to? He never arrived in Venezuela.” It’s possible that the Trump administration deported Leon Rengel to a mega-prison in El Salvador, where hundreds of other Venezuelans were sent last month — but there is no official record to confirm it.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW from @nytimes.com: A bone-chilling account. A Venezuelan man detained alongside the 238 sent to El Salvador on March 15 seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. His name isn't among the names of those sent to CECOT that day and no one spotted him among those men. He's just... gone.

Miriam Jordan By Miriam Jordan Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. April 22, 2025, 5:04 a.m. ET In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful. The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela. That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world. But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.
Prem Thakker ツ@premthakker.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW— Nearly 200 US college presidents affirm their schools as places where "faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions…without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation." Signers include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, UPenn, Brown, Tufts Notably absent: Columbia

"As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding. America’s system of higher learning is as varied as the goals and dreams of the students it serves. It includes research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses. Some institutions are designed for all students, and others are dedicated to serving particular groups. Yet, American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation. Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good. Colleges and universities are engines of opportunity and mobility, anchor institutions that contribute to economic and cultural vitality regionally and in our local communities. They foster creativity and innovation, provide human resources to meet the fast-changing demands of our dynamic workforce, and are themselves major employers. They nurture the scholarly pursuits that ensure America’s leadership in research, and many prov…
Nathan Tankus@nathantankus.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW PIECE: I've decided to finally publish a piece from four years ago that is unfortunately very relevant today: defending the Federal Reserve's status as an independent agency doesn't require embracing the ideology of "central bank independence" www.crisesnotes.com/just-another...

Just Another Administrative Agency: Preserving Central Bank Discretion Without Illusions

The extensive “Notes on the Crises Investigative Journalism Source Wish List” can be found here. All listed items are important to me. As always, Sources can contact me over email or over signal (a se...

crisesnotes.com

Chris Morran@themorrancave.bsky.social · last yr.

The CDC eviscerated divisions that oversee a database on accidental deaths and injuries AND the team that maintains a tool for tracking sexually transmitted diseases. The EPA will stop requiring that industry measures greenhouse gas emissions. If you don't measure, it's not a problem, right?

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More

By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose con...

propublica.org

Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · last yr.

We've reached the point where Republicans are flying to El Salvador to visit one of the most vicious prisons in the world to have photo ops so they can prove their loyalty to the President of the United States.

BildBild
Rachael Sirianni, PhD@docsirianni.bsky.social · last yr.

Not the headline I want to post. But for everyone trying to understand what’s happening at UMass Chan, why things are so difficult, this is what’s happening. We are a service institution. We educate; we care; we give; we serve rural MA. We dont make money. Our own govt is crushing us. Link below

Bild
ProPublica@propublica.org · last yr.

NEW: Amid increasing reports that U.S. citizens have been caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet, a dozen members of Congress have written to the government with pointed questions. None has received a reply. By @nicolefoy.bsky.social

Congress Has Demanded Answers to ICE Detaining Americans. The Administration Has Responded With Silence.

Amid increasing reports that U.S. citizens have been caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet, a dozen members of Congress have written to the government with pointed questions.…

propublica.org

Nathan Tankus@nathantankus.bsky.social · last yr.

It's finally out! Drink coffee, drink soda, take whatever stimulate you prefer. This is extremely long, even by my verbose standards. But its the absolute minimum word count I thought I could tell the "foreign exchange liquidity crisis" aspect of this with. www.crisesnotes.com/is-the-trump...

Is the Trump Tariff Financial Crisis A Crisis of the Dollar? It Doesn’t Seem to Be … Yet

SubscribeTip! For those just tuning in: I wrote a piece a day for the first three days of this week on what we should probably now term the “Trump Tariff Financial Crisis”. I am coming to you Sunday ...

crisesnotes.com

ProPublica@propublica.org · last yr.

Previously, the arrests of pro-Palestinian voices on university campuses would’ve drawn instant attention from the DHS civil rights office’s First Amendment watchdogs, attorneys in the compliance branch said. That guardrail is gone. By @davidmcswane.bsky.social & @hannahallam.bsky.social

“They Don’t Care About Civil Rights”: Trump’s Shuttering of DHS Oversight Arm Freezes 600 Cases, Imperils Human Rights

The closure of the 150-person office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, strips Homeland Security of its internal guardrails as the Trump administration turns DHS…

propublica.org

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · last yr.

This is bullshit—of course the US could apply diplomatic pressure to have him returned—but if it is allowed to stand, the executive branch has the power to disappear people permanently without any sort of due process. That in turn will be the end of all other constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Kyle Cheney@kyledcheney.bsky.social · last yr.

BREAKING: Trump administation attests that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is alive and secure but is under the "sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

ProPublica@propublica.org · last yr.

Climate experts expressed shock and dismay at the move. “It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” one said. By @fastlerner.bsky.social

Trump’s EPA Plans to Stop Collecting Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data From Most Polluters

Climate experts expressed shock and dismay at the move. “It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” one said.

propublica.org

John Burn-Murdoch@jburnmurdoch.ft.com · last yr.

Economic uncertainty update: The thing about veering wildly between policy positions, favouring and then discarding a new maverick advisor each week, and using contradictory justifications at every turn, is that even if one particular pivot is in the direction of sanity, chaos is the constant.

Bild
Max Kozlov@maxkozlov.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW: Entire scientific fields have been wiped out by the nearly 800 grants cancelled at NIH, finds a @nature.com analysis of the unprecedented cuts. About half of all 2024 NIH projects related to LGBT+ health or vaccine hesitancy — gone. See the other topics and US states hardest hit here:

How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts

Nature analyses which fields of science and US states are being hit hardest by grant terminations.

nature.com