Chuck Darwin

Social and economic justice, technology and tennis.  I'll have what @jbf1755 is having. 
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Last Notes

2026-04-16 03:28:37 UTC

The French government is pressing the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to
release the 86-year-old French widow of a military veteran from immigration custody after she was detained earlier this month.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained
Marie-Therese Ross in Alabama on 1 April after she overstayed her 90-day visa, according to DHS.
Ross is now being held at a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
She is among the thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda that has resulted in the spouses of US soldiers and military veterans detained,
who previously received greater leniency under policies since scrapped by Donald Trump in his second term in office.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/15/french-widow-detained-ice-marie-therese-ross?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-03-11 17:23:07 UTC

Mining the strait would mean a protracted closure of at least a month, because finding and removing mines is a difficult and time-consuming process.
This would create a global economic disturbance well beyond what we are already seeing.
Laying mines is comparatively easy and can be done from both modern fishing boats and dhows.
In the area of the strait, both of these number in the thousands.
Iran used this strategy for conducting the clandestine mining of the Persian Gulf in the 1980s as part of the “tanker wars,”
the name for the series of military attacks by Iran and Iraq against merchant vessels in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz from 1981 to 1988, and later U.S. intervention to protect maritime traffic.
Stopping these boats would require constant surveillance of a large area, a difficult task even with the vast array of forces in the area.
Indeed, during the Persian Gulf War, Iraq managed to lay 1,300 sea mines right “under the noses” of the coalition.
Iran also has the capability to flood the zone with dozens or hundreds of civilian boats at the same time.
It can be difficult or impossible for the U.S. to tell which ones have mines and which don’t.
Exacerbating the problem is that the munitions used to sink these boats would likely be more expensive than the boats themselves.
The mines themselves are potentially very cheap and easy to produce, and can be deployed in large numbers.
Simple contact mines with a design dating back to World War I can cost as little as $1,500 each.
More advanced magnetic influence mines are still remarkably cheap, as low as $25,000 apiece.
The relatively shallow waters of the Persian Gulf are an ideal place for using mines against shipping,
and this creates many of the same cost-imposing problems as the Iranian Shahed-136 drones that have been employed in vast numbers against U.S. and Gulf State air defenses.
Mines, like Shaheds, are cheap, plentiful, relatively easy to produce, and easy to deploy.
They can disable or destroy vessels worth hundreds of millions of dollars, or even a billion dollars (such as an Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyer).
Countering them requires expensive, rare, specialized equipment, highly trained personnel, and a lot of time to carry out the mission.
https://newrepublic.com/article/207631/iran-mining-strait-hormuz-implications?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_source=Bluesky

2026-03-11 01:00:42 UTC

DHS Ousts CBP Privacy Officers Who Questioned ‘Illegal’ Orders
Department of Homeland Security leaders removed top privacy officers who objected to mislabeling government records to block their public release, WIRED has learned
https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-privacy-threshold-analysis-foia/

2025-12-07 02:12:24 UTC

Medicare pilot program will allow private companies to use artificial intelligence to review older Americans’ requests for certain medical care — and will reward the companies when they deny it.
In January, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will launch the
"Wasteful and Inappropriate Services Reduction" (WISeR) Model to test
👉AI-powered prior authorizations on certain health services for Medicare patients in six states:
Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington.
The program is scheduled to last through 2031.
❌The program effectively inserts one of private insurance’s most unpopular features
— prior authorization
— into traditional Medicare,
the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older and those with certain disabilities.
Prior authorization is the process by which patients and doctors must ask health insurers to approve medical procedures or drugs before proceeding.
https://stateline.org/2025/12/04/medicares-new-ai-experiment-sparks-alarm-among-doctors-lawmakers/

2025-12-05 19:09:18 UTC

The Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to
👉 dismantle protections for trans and intersex people
in federal, state, and local prisons, jails, and youth detention facilities,
according to a government memo obtained by Prism.
The memo, dated Dec. 2, takes aim at existing standards of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA)
that the department says do not comport with the Trump administration’s first-day executive order that,
among other things, targeted protections for trans people behind bars.
PREA was passed in 2003, and President Barack Obama added new protections for LGBTQIA+ people to the DOJ’s PREA rulebook in 2012.
The proposed changes would affect all facilities that are subject to PREA standards,
including adult prisons and jails,
lockups,
community confinement facilities such as halfway houses,
and juvenile facilities that are operated by the DOJ, state, or local governments
or by corporate or nonprofit organizations.
Facilities operated by other agencies,
such as the Department of Homeland Security,
are subject to their own detention standards.
https://prismreports.org/2025/12/04/prison-rape-elimination-act-trans-intersex-trump-doj/

2025-04-04 13:41:15 UTC

RFK Jr says 20% of Doge’s health agency job cuts were mistakes
Health secretary says roles will need to be reinstated amid Trump administration’s push to slash federal workforce
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/04/rfk-jr-doge-cuts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2025-02-07 15:56:39 UTC

Criticism and concern spread across both sides of the aisle Tuesday night after President Donald Trump announced that the United States
“will take over the Gaza Strip.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called the proposal “problematic,”
adding that he does not think his constituents would be excited about sending U.S. soldiers to take control of Gaza.
“We’ll see what the Arab world says, but you know, that’d be problematic at many, many levels,” Graham said
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., slammed the proposal as “deranged” and “nuts,”
calling U.S. military presence in the region “a magnet for trouble.”
“I don’t know where this came from, but I can tell you ... that would not get many expressions of support from Democrats or Republicans up here,” said Kaine,
a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
“You can report that I was speechless,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Foreign Relations Committee member. “That’s insane. I can’t think of a place on Earth that would welcome American troops less and where any positive outcome is less likely.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the proposal failed to address Palestinians’ concerns.
Asked whether it was something the United States could handle safely, she said:
“I don’t think it’s something that’s in America’s best interest.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian American member of Congress, was blunter.
She called the proposal “ethnic cleansing” and “fanatical bull-sh!t"
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/deranged-problematic-bipartisan-lawmakers-bash-trumps-gaza-proposal-rcna190733

2025-02-02 18:01:38 UTC

In a non-corrupt state Musk would be in prison by now
Today's outrage 👇
https://bsky.app/profile/kenklippenstein.bsky.social/post/3lh7kstqi5s2k

2024-12-23 16:11:58 UTC

In the shadows of Arizona’s data center boom, thousands live without power
 As data centers drain America’s power grids,
a fierce battle is being waged for electricity.
On Navajo Nation land, many are on the losing end.
Living on one of the largest swaths of land in America without electric power,
Thomasina Nez’s entire life is a scramble to complete basic tasks.
 To take a hot shower,
she must wait for buckets of water to come to a boil on a small propane stove outside her wood-framed roundhouse.
To make meals, she relies mostly on canned goods because unrefrigerated produce rots quickly in the Arizona heat.
It’s a struggle to stay warm at night,
because she refuses to use her coal-powered heater after its fumes killed her two dogs.
 A fierce battle for electric power is being waged across the nation,
and Nez is one of thousands of people who have wound up on the losing end.
Amid a boom in data centers,
the energy-intensive warehouses that run supercomputers for Big Tech companies,
Arizona is racing to increase electricity production.
In February, the state utility board approved an 8 percent rate hike to bolster power infrastructure throughout the state,
where data centers are popping up faster than almost anywhere in the United States.
But it rejected a plan to bring electricity to parts of the Navajo Nation land,
concluding that electric customers should not be asked to foot the nearly $4 million bill.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/23/arizona-data-centers-navajo-power-aps-srp/

2024-09-08 14:45:50 UTC

#Florida is reportedly 💥sending police officers to the homes of people who signed a #petition supporting an #abortion #rights ballot #initiative.
Florida Governor #Ron #DeSantis’s administration has begun ❌investigating thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November.
The amendment would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.
Petition organizers collected about 100,000 more signatures than they needed, surpassing the 900,000 that are required by the state and ensuring that their policy would be on the ballot.
Now the Department of State’s spokesperson Ryan Ash claims that his agency has “uncovered evidence of illegal conduct with fraudulent petitions.”
Supervisors in Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach, Osceola, Alachua, and Broward counties have been requested to gather around 36,000 signatures for state review, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
One supervisor with 16 years of experience told the Times that the state’s request was entirely unprecedented.
Not only had the state requested signatures that had already been verified, but they did so for a validated petition, not a rejected petition, which are typically the basis of fraud investigations.
https://newrepublic.com/post/185704/florida-police-state-abortion-ballot-initiative

2024-08-23 22:26:21 UTC

Utah's Republican-dominated legislature voted on Wednesday to place a constitutional amendment on the general election ballot that would
❌explicitly allow lawmakers to amend or repeal voter-approved initiatives
―including a 2018 measure that could put an end to partisan gerrymandering.
https://www.the-downballot.com/p/morning-digest-the-utah-gop-wants