Starting Out: Peace Corps

One of the most consequential moments in John F. Kennedy’s candidacy for the Presidency was a spur-of-the-moment speech he gave in the early morning hours of October 14, 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He was worn out from campaigning and had intended to go to bed upon arriving, but then he was told that 10,000 students had been waiting patiently for him for hours, so he decided instead to go to the campus of the University of Michigan and deliver what became a life-changing speech for many in my generation.

He proposed creating a new national service for students, and the youthful crowd roared its approval. After he was elected, he made good on that proposal by forming the Peace Corps.

A few years later, I was a naive young man of 22 when I went to Afghanistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1969, having never been out of the country before, let alone halfway around the world.

But by then, thousands of young people just like me were answering Kennedy’s call to serve our country not by going to war but by spreading messages of peace.

We were idealistic and naive, yes, but those of us who were male were also trying to avoid the draft, which would have sent us to Vietnam to fight a war we vehemently opposed.

Like others in my generation, I was radicalized in college to the point I considered U.S. foreign policy the imperial arm of an expanding empire.

Living in Afghanistan proved to be a rude awakening about some of my assumptions. I saw up close how mean and brutal people could be to each other in a poor society, including tribal wars, murders, bribery and cruelty like in the “Lord of the Flies.”

I also saw beauty, generosity and tenderness -- the whole range of human behavior was on display every day amid widespread illiteracy and ignorance.

The poorest people on the planet would welcome me into their homes to share the one good meal they would have that entire week. Strangers went out of their way to help me when I got lost.

When I taught high school in Taloqan, many of my students spouted political beliefs shaped by the five booming radio signals that reached our remote town -- Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, and to a much lesser degree, Radio Kabul, the BBC and the Voice of America.

The brightest kids seemed attracted by socialist and communist ideas similar to the Marxist-Leninist thinking I was familiar with on campuses back home. At first I went along with their ideas about how U.S. imperialism was oppressing people in poor countries, but eventually, like any committed teacher, I began to challenge their assumptions, if only to get them to think more critically.

It was easy to see how Soviet and Chinese propaganda was distorting these young minds, and also how their views of America were affected by the worst of Hollywood. The stories they repeated about U.S. barbarism were overblown and simplistic.

U.S. troops had slaughtered innocents at My Lai, it was true, which was awful, but all armies do horrible things. Certainly no country had a monopoly on human rights abuses. Meanwhile, there were also many, many Americans like Peace Corps Volunteers who were opposed to the military and dispensing aid, food, clothes, medicine and education instead of guns and napalm.

But to be truthful, I more or less agreed with my students’ political analysis and wanted no part of the dark sides of U.S. policy, What I did wish to share were the better parts of our culture -- our beliefs in freedom, gender equality, and universal literacy.

Fewer than ten percent of the Afghans population could read or write. The infant mortality rate was the highest in the world. Women had little access to education, jobs or independent lives.

I knew my students needed a counterweight to what they were hearing on Radio Moscow, but the irony was not lost on me that here I was, an anti-war American, seemingly defending my country’s military as part of my role as a mentor.

Anyway, for Afghans in 1970, the problem wasn’t the threat of impending American intervention. The problem was that the Russians had troops massed right next door. And within a few years of my leaving Afghanistan, the Russians indeed invaded, bombing and strafing the country into submission, or so they thought at the time.

But that ended badly for the Soviets a decade later as they limped back to Moscow in retreat. Once they lost the Afghan war, the entire Soviet empire crumbled as well.

(I first published a version of this one five years ago.)

HEADLINES:

• Trump claims peace deal ‘approved’; Tehran says not so (Al Jazeera)

• Proposed Iran-U.S. deal would reopen Hormuz strait and lift oil sanctions, Iran state media says (CNBC)

• Trump Retracts Latest Threats of More Strikes (NYT)

• Iran’s Crude Production Slumped in May Under U.S. Blockade (WSJ)

• The new precision weapon: Is the West ready for cellular drones? (The Hill)

• Trump Picks New Intelligence Chief After Revolt Over Pulte (NYT)

• Why Trump keeps avoiding Senate confirmation for top government roles (CNN)

• World Bank cuts global growth outlook to 2.5%, warns of drop to 1.3% if war fallout spreads to markets (Reuters)

• Business (Economist)

• Trump has a new, surprising take on the higher cost of living: ‘I love the inflation’ (AP)

• At least five states are bowing out of Trump’s ‘Great American State Fair’ (CNN)

• Trump Officials Say ICE Won’t Raid World Cup Games, but Fans Are Worried (NYT)

• Why Trump and Putin can’t escape their mistakes (WP)

• Ukraine’s police chief has accused Russia of ‌recruiting teenage Ukrainian girls to kill Ukrainian military personnel, following the arrest of a 17-year-old suspected of murdering a serviceman on the instructions of a Russian operative. (Reuters)

• The War in Ukraine Has Now Gone On Longer Than World War I (NYT)

• El Niño Is Back. Here’s What It Could Mean for Hurricanes, Heat and Flooding (USNWR)

• All clear given at Pentagon following after ‘hazardous materials’ alert (Al Jazeera)

• Southern Baptists advance a formal ban on churches with women pastors (AP)

• Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails (Verge)

• Anthropic v. OpenAI: Behind the bitter battle for the future of AI (Reuters)

• For a Second Time, Trump Muses About Americans Sharing in A.I. Wealth (NYT)

• Taylor Swift Urges Travis Kelce To Whittle Down Trampolines On Registry To One (Onion)

 

No Regrets

Last night at Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks staged one of the most amazing comebacks in sports history to defeat the San Antonio Spurs. The place turned into a delirious “Garden Party,” which brought to mind an old pop song with that name.

***

I once started a screenplay with the words: “I have two kinds of regret. Regret for things that I did. And regret for things I didn’t do.”

Regrettably, I didn’t finish that project.

When I started publishing daily essays on Facebook at the beginning of the pandemic, the most common feedback I received was that my memories resonated with people. But those memories were only one part of what I was trying to achieve.

My past, like everyone else’s, was littered with successes and failures, wins and losses, darkness and light. In retrospect, good and bad seemed roughly in balance over my eight decades. You could say the two kinds of regret were also therefore in balance, I suppose.

Which brings me to the story behind Ricky Nelson’s plaintive yet defiant ballad “Garden Party.” The song recounts the night that the ‘60s pop star played before a packed house at Madison Square Garden while trying to make a comeback in 1972.

While he was on stage, Nelson thought the concert was turning into a disaster because the crowd seemed to be booing him off the stage whenever he tried to sing one of his new songs.

It later turned out that most of the booing was in fact directed at the security guards, who were roughing up some rowdy members of the crowd outside of the singer’s line of sight. But by the time Nelson learned about that, he’d already written and released “Garden Party.” (Lyrics below.)

His assumptions about the boos may have been flawed; nevertheless he had a hit on his hands.

The key line in his song is “If memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck.” 

That song turned out to be a very big hit, Nelson’s last in fact. Perhaps he regretted being wrong about the booing; or perhaps not. He died at age 45 in a plane crash on the way to a New Year’s Eve concert.

HEADLINES:

• U.S. Trades Fire With Iran for Second Day in Bid to ‘Negotiate With Bombs’ (WSJ)

• Three Indian sailors killed in US strike on oil tanker (BBC)

• Iran attacks Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan in retaliation for US strikes (Al Jazeera)

• Inflation Jumps as Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze (NYT)

• Trump presses on with plan to install Bill Pulte as acting intelligence chief (Guardian)

• Cue shutdown watchafter Republicans go it alone on ICE funding (Politico)

• What’s In—and Not In—the Immigration Enforcement Funding Bill Congress Passed (Time)

• The state of play in Maine (Silver Bulletin)

• San Francisco immigration court shuts down, striking at heart of historic advocacy (NPR)

• Trump officials lay out aggressive timeline to build triumphal arch (WP)

• The DOGE Bros Want Another Shot (Atlantic)

• Bill Gates tells Congress Jeffrey Epstein tried to use information about his infidelities to get close to him (CNN)

• America’s 250th birthday celebration is replacing history with toxic myth (Guardian)

• Trump’s Sharp Turn on China: Embracing It as a Peer Power (NYT)

• The Fault Lines in China’s Power (Foreign Affairs)

• Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 is a version of Mythos the public can access today (TechCrunch)

• AI’s productivity paradox (BI)

• Half of Americans fear that the rise of AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll ‌that also showed widespread angst at how widely the technology is being adopted. (Reuters)

• Amazon Employees Detail Inhumane Working Conditions On Bezos’ Human Chessboard (Onion)

LYRICS (“Garden Party” by Rick Nelson

I went to a garden party
To reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories
And play our songs again

When I got to the garden party
They all knew my name
But no one recognized me
I didn’t look the same

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself

People came from miles around
Everyone was there
Yoko brought her walrus
There was magic in the air

And over in the corner
Much to my surprise
Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan’s shoes
Wearing his disguise

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself

I played them all the old songs
I thought that’s why they came
No one heard the music
We didn’t look the same

I said hello to “Mary Lou”
She belongs to me
When I sang a song about a honky-tonk
It was time to leave

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself

Someone opened up a closet door
And out stepped Johnny B. Goode
Playing guitar like a ringing a bell
And lookin’ like he should

If you gotta play at garden parties
I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang
I’d rather drive a truck

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself

And it’s all right now, yeah
Learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself

Old People Walking

As I drove to my pharmacy one recent morning, I noticed that many of the pedestrians along my route were elderly people. I watched how they walked — some upright and spry, others stooped, heads down, shuffling, moving slowly.

Some used a cane or a walker. Some had a companion who helped them on their way.

As I parked my car and got out to walk into the pharmacy, I became one of them. Just another old person walking.

At the other end of life, in infancy, we watch for a baby’s first steps. This is universally celebrated as a big moment.

But a person’s last steps are never celebrated.

***

There is a role for old people in our society that is often overlooked, and that is what we see when we look out at the world around us.

We see not only what is there now but what used to be there. We remember what is gone and what has been replaced.

To a certain degree, we can see where things are going based on where they have been.

It’s context and we might be able to provide some.

But in the eyes of those much younger than us, we may have always been old — only old. So they may think we don’t know about the kinds of things that concern them. 

Heartbreak, for example, we may know a thing or two about that. Losing someone you love can lead to excruciating pain. We know about that.

We also know that better times will come, and that while you may never fully get over certain losses, the world has ways of making things right again.

Just wait and see.

HEADLINES:

• Trump says U.S. must ‘respond’ after Iran shoots down helicopter over Hormuz Strait (CNBC)

• U.S. Launches Strikes on Iran to Retaliate for Downed Helicopter (NYT)

• Netanyahu and Trump are at odds over the war they started together (AP)

• Five takeaways from the primaries in Maine and South Carolina (WP)

• Trump Previews Fall Strategy With Baseless Claims of California Vote Fraud (NYT)

• Who is Lesley Groff, Jeffrey Epstein’s former assistant being interviewed in House probe? (PBS)

• House Passes G.O.P.’s $70 Billion Immigration Bill (NYT)

• Americans’ morals hit a puritanical streak (Axios)

• Hilton Beats Steyer to Win Second Spot in California Governor Race (NYT)

• Trump to meet House speaker as pressure mounts over surveillance law deadline (Guardian)

• Platner Wins Maine Senate Primary After a Turbulent Stretch of His Bid (NYT)

• The real reason Bill Pulte was named director of national intelligence (The Hill)

• The spectre of gen Z socialism is haunting the world … according to the Economist (Guardian)

• More women getting shut out from senior positions in Trump’s second term (WP)

• Iran’s lakes are vanishing: Satellite images show a deepening water crisis (Al Jazeera)

• A Mayor, Her Boyfriend and China’s Mysterious Propaganda Machine (NYT)

• Risking little of their own money, the US president and his sons have added at least $2.3 billion to the family fortune from their main crypto ventures, while the investors they’ve wooed have taken a $2.3 billion hit. Read our special report. (Reuters)

• No set. No actors. No cameras. (BI)

• He’s the expert on deepfakes. Can this Berkeley professor keep up with AI? (SFC)

• Apple Has Another Go at A.I., but Don’t Call It a Reinvention (NYT)

• Doctors Warn Air Fryers Not A Substitute For Human Companionship (Onion)

 

Tic Tac Toe

Journalists get portrayed in movies all the time. Some films get it right, some don’t. 

“The Last Letter From Your Lover,” a 2021 film, gets it right, although you may never meet a journalist exactly like the character Ellie Haworth plays in the film.

If you spend a lot of time around young journalists, you notice certain characteristics. Young reporters typically don’t know yet what attracts them to particular types of stories, and that’s just as it should be.

Some come out of such a specific background that they almost embody it -- a place, a race, a culture, a gender, a religion, an emotional or intellectual environment. And at first they tend to want to that do stories that conform with that background.

But anyone who goes into journalism and develops to any significant degree knows that while his or her background matters a great deal, it is hardly the end of the story. It’s more like the beginning. We need to learn how to do stories despite our backgrounds as much as because of them.

I remember conversations I had with my late friend Raul Ramirez, a long-time news executive at KQED, the NPR/PBS affiliate in San Francisco, while he was dying of cancer. He wanted to establish a fund that would support diversity in journalism at San Francisco State University in his final days, and he did.

I promised him I would help supervise the journalists that got internships via that fund as long as I could, and I am still doing that 13 years later.

What Raul meant about diversity was in no way confined to representations of only certain ethnic or racial groups, sexual orientations, political perspectives or any of the other categories that divide us one from another.

In the movies and in popular imagination, reporters rarely appear as nuanced as the people Raul wanted to help break into our business. In film, we often are portrayed as heroes (”All the President’s Men”), irritants (”Maid in Manhattan”), or naive idealists (”Almost Famous”).

And there are many others: “The Post,” “True Story,” “Official Secrets,” etc. 

What I like about the part played by Felicity Jones in “Last Letter...” is she is just an everyday person who makes mistakes, questions the stupid rules she encounters, and never gives up on her investigation. When at one point in the film she reaches an apparent dead-end in the trail, an older man and former reporter himself says bluntly: “Well, you’re a journalist. Try again.”

She takes his advice and makes the breakthrough that allows the film to reach its resolution. 

In the process, she finds out a lot about herself and also about something she didn’t know she was searching for -- how to love and be loved.

That’s about as perfect a conclusion as a journalist (or anyone in Hollywood) can hope to achieve. 

(I first published a version of this essay when the film was released in 2021.)

***

I doubt that anyone dislikes the slow-motion vote-counting process in California more than I do, but Trump’s claim that election results are rigged out here are absurd. If anything, the state takes so much extra precaution to count every vote cast and to verify that each ballot is authentic that the chances for fraud are greatly reduced.

But Trump labels any vote total not to his liking as fraudulent, so we are routinely subjected his outbursts in these matters. In reality, tampering with the vote would be very difficult in such a system.

As far as the actual vote totals in last week’s primary election is concerned, 83% has now been counted. The Democrat Beceera is roughly two million votes ahead of the Republican Hilton, who is roughly two million votes ahead of the Democrat Steyer.

By percentage of the overall vote, that breaks down to 27.7 (Becerra), 25.1 (Hilton) and 22.4 (Steyer).

Sort of like Tic Tac Toe.

HEADLINES:

• What Maine Voters Are Saying About Platner on the Eve of the Primary (NYT)

• In a changing GOP, a Republican blasted Big Agriculture and beat a Trump-backed candidate (WP)

• Democrat Secures Second L.A. Mayor Spot and Ends Spencer Pratt’s Run (NYT)

• U.S. military helicopter goes down near Strait of Hormuz, two crew members rescued (NBC)

• Consumers alter spending habits as gas prices strain their budgets (AP)

• After trading missile fire, Israel and Iran pull back — for now (NPR)

• Trump Struggled to Rein In Netanyahu’s Strikes on Iran (WSJ)

• Satellite images show destruction of the US-Israel war on Iran (Al Jazeera)

• China is helping to cushion global oil prices below $100 — but analysts warn it won’t last (CNBC)

• China’s Xi Jinping calls for strengthened ‘strategic cooperation’ with North Korea in rare summit with Kim Jong Un (CNN)

• What Xi and Kim Want From Their Summit in North Korea (WSJ)

• In Russia, Rage Is Boiling Over (NYT)

• Iran’s national soccer team arrived in Tijuana ahead of three World Cup matches in the United States, amid tensions that have turned the world’s biggest sporting event into a soft-power contest between the warring countries. (Reuters)

• Why Britain and America Can’t Stop Firing Their Leaders (Politico Mag)

• Trump weighs buying another territory after Greenland fiasco: report (Independent)

• Hail Is Changing, And Scientists Warn It Could Become More Dangerous (ScienceAlert)

• The AI boom is gobbling up power faster than ever (BI)

• Have a Thorny Medical Question? Your Doctor May Be Using A.I. for That (NYT)

• Meta Deletes Face-Recognition System From Its Smart Glasses App After WIRED Report (Wired)

• Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence (Verge)

• Humanoid robot with embodied intelligence to run convenience store 24/7 in Hong Kong (IE)

• Trump Claims He Never Promised A Livable Country (Onion)

Iranian Roadhouse Blues

(California Governor’s Race Update: Yesterday at this time, 71% of the vote had been counted; today it’s at 72%. The state may be setting a new record for the word “slow.”Becerra has 27.2% of the votes, Hilton 25.9% and Steyer 21.5%.) 

***

When I first visited Tehran many decades ago, I was struck by the friendly, casual sophistication of the Iranians I encountered, as well as their good-natured tolerance of my broken Farsi.

Later on, after my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in neighboring Afghanistan, the urbanites of Iran’s largest city easily discerned that my Farsi had deteriorated (in their eyes) into the country bumpkin dialect known as Dari spoken by the Afghans.

Every Iranian I met in the big city seemed well-educated and well-informed about life in the U.S.

Back in the U.S.A., one of the first stories I wrote for our new magazine SunDance in San Francisco got me in touch with Iranian dissident students attending college here and protesting against the corrupt leader of their country, Shah Reza Pahlavi.

The Iranian leader was planning a visit to the U.S. and the students were making secret plans to embarrass him with protests. I made connections through my Peace Corps network and attended one of their planning meetings.

Everybody wore masks, hoping to avoid being identified by the Shah’s dreaded imperial police, SAVAK, which was known to have infiltrated some of the student groups in order to disrupt their actions.

And while in my piece for SunDance I was careful not to name any of my Iranian sources, I did name an American source who had witnessed some of the Shah’s authoritarian tactics when he had been a teacher at Tehran University.

That was a serious journalistic error, because the man thought he had been speaking with me off the record, though I didn’t find that out until some 20 years later.

On that occasion, I was just settling in for what was supposed to be a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, when the maitre d’ came over to reintroduce himself.

“Remember me? I’m Steve and I was working in an Iranian rug store when you quoted me in your article in SunDance. I lost my job because of your article. The owners fired me out of fear of SAVAK,” he said.

I was mortified and deeply embarrassed. Talk about a buzzkill.

“Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—.” My face turned bright red.

He just grinned. “Don’t feel too bad about it. ‘Cause it’s all worked out for both of us. I’ve followed your career at Rolling Stone and so on; and as for me, I’ve got my dream job here at Chez Panisse.”

At that point, the night got a whole lot better.

My source, Steve Crumley, passed away in 2023.

HEADLINES:

• Iran and Israel Halt Exchanges of Fire (WSJ)

• Iran and Israel Exchange Strikes for First Time Since April Cease-Fire (NYT)

• Powerful earthquake hits Philippines, killing at least 15 (Al Jazeera)

• Trump doesn’t rule out giving Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police payouts from the ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (NBC)

• How Trump’s DOJ Burned Its Most Important Asset (Bulwark)

• Flu Vaccines Should Not Be This Hard (Atlantic)

• First came Congress. Now a national redistricting battle may turn to statehouses and city councils (AP)

• The three things Democrats must do to regain rural America’s trust (Guardian)

• Trump walks out of ‘Meet the Press’ interview when challenged over false claims (WP)

• Warner: Pulte a ‘national security risk’ (Politico)

• Political dynasties carry new baggage as voters vilify the elite (WP)

• Erdogan and Putin, the End of an Unlikely Partnership (NYT)

• Ukraine Is Not Losing. Russia Is Not Winning. (Atlantic)

• Israel strikes Beirut’s southern suburbs days after US-supported ceasefire deal (AP)

• Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’ (Guardian)

• Bumblebees have tiny brains but they can solve problems like chimps and elephants (NPR)

• OpenAI Announces Unnerving New ChatGPT Feature Named ‘Lockdown Mode’ (Gizmodo)

• Why most politicians are not calling for data center bans despite voters’ anger (WP)

• Why isn’t the U.S. better at soccer? (Solver Bulletin)

• The AI that can actually simplify your life (BI)

• Sorry, I’m Not Available. Talk to the A.I. Version of Me. (NYT)

• Department Of Labor Cracks Down On People Getting Paid For Work (Onion)

 

Living on Turtle Time

On a warm afternoon, I broke up and turned over the soil in one of our garden boxes, then saturated it with water from the garden hose and smoothed the surface over until it was flat again.

Next, using a chopstick, I’ll create 1/4” furrows in the moist soil, into which I’ll set some cucumber seeds.

Yes, I’m resuming my Quixotic quest to grow crops that elude the garden thief that stole our tomato plants. That mystery remains unsolved.

But assuming that it is a small mammal, I’ll cover my new plants with protective wire cloches and hope for the best.

This will require patience.

***

Something else that requires patience is the California Governor’s race, which is much like watching a competition between turtles. It took days for the Democrat Beceera to pull ahead of the Republican Hilton, but he has finally done so and will apparently slowly pull further out there in the lead from here on out.

But they stop a lot.

Meanwhile, the third turtle in the race, Steyer, is ever so gradually sneaking up behind Hilton, but he’s never going to catch him.

Only two turtles can advance to the fall election, so that ballot will feature a rerun (or should we say a rewalk?) between Beceera and Hilton. Counting the ballots will go slowly, like on turtle time.

Because they stop a lot.

HEADLINES:

• More Republicans are breaking with Trump. Is it conscience or politics? (Guardian)

• The Congresswoman Who Got Trump’s Name Off the Kennedy Center (Atlantic)

• Pentagon Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel (NYT)

• Graham Platner’s troubles grow in Maine, and Democrats are increasingly nervous (The Hill)

• Graham Platner: The Personal is Not Political (Journal of the Plague Years)

• At least 12 shot near Ohio festival, gunmen still at large (NBC)

• Tehran targets Gulf neighbors after US attack on Iranian military sites (CNN)

• Trump undercuts Netanyahu at a critical moment (Reuters)

• Tehran says US ‘lacks will’ for stability after latest clash (Al Jazeera)

• U.S. mortgage rates are staying high – and the Federal Reserve can do little about it (PBS)

• Pope Leo, After Taking on Trump and A.I., Prepares for New Duels in Spain (NYT)

• Ebola outbreak in Central Africa could reach 20,000 cases without strong public health measures (AP)

• Voters in this city handed the tech industry its worst defeat yet in data center backlash (WP)

• AI is going to drink even more water (Reuters)

• Americans hate rising prices. AI is making it worse. (WP)

• Revenge of the AI bubble (Axios)

• 4 surprising ways AI is making your life more expensive (WP)

• Mom Disappointed Kids Not Coming Home For National Donut Day (Onion)

Trump's Anti-Immigrant Plan Exposed

(California Governor Update: Becerra is in front with 26.78%, followed by Hilton with 26.35% and Steyer with 21.35% of the votes counted. According to the AP, only 68% of the total votes have been counted.)

Among its many bad moves, perhaps the most shameful is the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants.

Now, thanks to a former Social Security Administration executive, Jeremiah Schofield, we know that DOGE officials had planned to classify 2.7 million living people as dead, which was intended to intimidate immigrants into leaving.

The plan included some U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Schofield revealed the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). It offers the most detailed account yet of how officials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

According to the Washington Post, “Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.”

Social Security carried out a smaller version of the plan last year, marking 6,100 immigrants as dead.

HEADLINES:

• DOGE officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, according to a whistleblower. (WP)

• US Senate passes $70bn ICE funding bill: What comes next? (Al Jazeera)

• DOJ could still pay Jan. 6 rioters even without ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (NBC)

• Graham Platner Faces Accusations Of ‘Toxic’ Relationships And Disturbing Behavior—Days After Sexting Scandal (Forbes)

• Democrats are increasingly frustrated with Graham Platner in Maine Senate race (WP)

• Judge Says Trump Officials Must Restart Asylum and Immigration Processing (NYT)

• Trump’s Name Is Disappearing From More Than Just the Kennedy Center (Atlantic)

• Trump’s Iran war messaging is not winning over Americans – or their representatives (Guardian)

• Why can’t California count? (Silver Bulletin)

• What to know about the deal between Israel and Lebanon extending their shaky ceasefire (AP)

• The US economy added 172,000 jobs last month, extending the labor market rebound (CNN)

• America’s Farms Depend More Than Ever on a Troubled Visa Program (NYT)

• AI Agents Now Generate More Web Traffic Than Humans (CNET)

• Anthropic says the world should have option to ‘pause’ on AI (Guardian)

• Can These Ads Make You Love A.I.? (NYT)

• Zeus Lands Cameo Role As Trojan Soldier In ‘The Odyssey’ (Onion)