NEWS: Hegseth Purges Black and Female Officers, Trump DOJ Dropped 23,000 Criminal Cases
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Here’s what you may have missed:
NBC, Hegseth Has Intervened in Military Promotions for More Than a Dozen Senior Officers
Hegseth has blocked or delayed promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four military branches. When Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George asked to meet with Hegseth to discuss his blocking of Army promotions, seemingly targeted for their race or gender, Hegseth refused. George was fired Thursday, two years before his term was set to end. “If there are no open allegations or investigations, what was the reason they were removed from the list?” one official said. “They have all deployed and done their jobs, and all are combat-tested.”
Why this matters: The defense secretary is purging combat-tested officers from promotion lists based on race and gender and firing the general who tried to discuss it with him. A retired senior officer warned this signals to the officer corps that careers can be ended “with the stroke of a pen.” A bigoted pen.
ProPublica, Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration
In the first six months after Pam Bondi became attorney general, the DOJ declined to prosecute more than 23,000 criminal cases. The dropped cases included terrorism, drug trafficking, white-collar fraud, union corruption, and environmental crimes, many of which the administration had previously claimed as enforcement priorities. In one instance, prosecutors were ordered to review every case older than two years and close it within 10 days, a directive no former DOJ attorney ProPublica spoke with could recall ever seeing before. In another, a counternarcotics prosecutor who spent years building fentanyl cases against major Chinese and Indian suppliers was told to abandon that work. The DOJ also dropped more anti-bribery cases in six months than the previous three administrations combined, and closed cases targeting a nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse and a mortgage lender accused of defrauding the FHA.
Why this matters: The DOJ exists to enforce the law regardless of politics. Closing 23,000 cases in six months, while prosecuting the administration’s preferred enemies and protecting preferred industries, is corrupt.
The New Republic, How to Reclaim America From the Scammers and Frauds
Writer Matt Ford argues that Trump’s presidency has transformed the U.S. into a huckster’s paradise, protecting and rewarding the same predatory industries that harm ordinary Americans while gutting the agencies designed to stop them. The Labor Department has moved to open Americans’ 401(k) retirement savings to crypto. Insiders are using betting markets to trade on knowledge of war plans. Ford writes the next Democratic administration must treat fraud elimination as a governing mandate: ban crypto from the regulated financial system, reinstate limits on sports betting, shutter prediction markets, and rebuild the consumer protection infrastructure Trump has dismantled.
Why this matters: The regulatory agencies meant to protect ordinary people are being hollowed out to facilitate economy-wide wealth extraction.
The Guardian, AI Got the Blame for the Iran School Bombing. The Truth Is Far More Worrying
On February 28, U.S. forces struck a primary school in Minab, Iran, killing 175 people, mostly girls aged seven to twelve. The fault for the horrific error lay not with an AI tool, but with an outdated Palantir database that still treated the school as a military building. The strike ran through Palantir’s Maven Smart System, a targeting platform based on a plain-English database. Claude, the Anthropic chatbot, played no role in target selection. It was added to Maven years after the core system was operational. Congress, the press, and commentators fixated on the AI angle anyway, asking whether Claude hallucinated or could be trusted, while the question of how the database error persisted for a decade went largely unasked.
Why this matters: Framing a mass-casualty strike on a girls’ school as an AI malfunction obscures the human decisions behind it, like leaving databases unchecked and starting a war without congressional authorization. That said…the story below remains imperative to our understanding of how little AI should be trusted.
The Guardian, Number of AI Chatbots Ignoring Human Instructions Increasing, Study Says
A UK study tracked nearly 700 real-world cases of AI models deceiving users, evading safeguards, and acting against explicit instructions. The study noted a fivefold increase in such behaviors since October 2025. In one instance, an AI deleted hundreds of emails without permission. In another, an AI platform spawned a secondary AI agent to circumvent a coding restriction. A former government AI expert who led the study warned that models currently deployed in military and critical infrastructure contexts could cause catastrophic harm if “scheming” behavior scales alongside capability.
Why this matters: AI systems are being embedded in high-stakes government and military infrastructure faster than oversight mechanisms can track their behavior. The evidence shows those systems are already acting against human instruction.
404 Media, How Thomson Reuters Powers ICE and Palantir
Thomson Reuters has long sold personal data to ICE through its CLEAR product—names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, household members, and details on someone’s ethnicity. Documents obtained by 404 Media indicate that data now feeds into Palantir’s ELITE system, which generates deportation target lists and “confidence scores” on individuals’ current addresses. The revelation comes after more than 200 Thomson Reuters employees signed a letter to company leadership expressing alarm about the company’s ICE and DHS contracts.
Why this matters: A major media company is selling the data behind mass deportation raids, including ethnicity information, while telling employees it prohibits using CLEAR to target undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes. The documents suggest otherwise.
KFF, Deaths and Health Care Issues in ICE Detention Centers Under the Second Trump Administration
Forty-six people have died in ICE custody since January 2025, more than in any comparable period in over two decades. Thirty-two of those deaths involved people with existing medical conditions whose health deteriorated in custody. In one case, an El Paso County medical examiner ruled a death a homicide due to enforcement officers’ actions; ICE reported it as a suicide. Human beings in detention are facing denial of prescribed medications, measles outbreaks, and inadequate prenatal treatment for pregnant women. Courts have ordered ICE to improve conditions, restore oversight offices, and allow congressional inspections. The Trump administration is appealing these orders.
Why this matters: People are dying in government custody at a record pace, with little oversight and mounting evidence that ICE is not meeting its own health and safety standards. Accountability requires the kind of rigorous, data-driven documentation this report provides.
Mother Jones, Punished for Protesting, Talking to Press, and Having a Toothache: More Dilley Horror Stories
Sworn declarations from detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the nation’s only family detention facility, describe systematic retaliation against families who protest, file grievances, or speak to the press or congressional visitors. In one instance, a 2-year-old with a visibly infected, green-rooted tooth went untreated for over 20 days while staff threatened to separate her from her mother for crying. Detainees described being locked in rooms during congressional visits to prevent contact with lawmakers, receiving better food only when reporters or politicians were present, and having calls with reporters cut mid-conversation.
Why this matters: You have a heart and your government is doing awful things in your name.
NBC, ICE Agents Will Be Stationed Outside Marine Corps Graduation Events in South Carolina
ICE agents will be stationed at access points to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island during graduation events this week to conduct “immigration status inquiries” on recruit family members. A DHS spokesperson said ICE would not be making arrests. It is not clear whether the arrangement will extend to future graduations or other bases.
Why this matters: Stationing immigration agents at a military graduation turns a patriotic rite of passage into an immigration enforcement checkpoint. It signals that no setting, including one honoring those who serve, is off-limits.
The Wayfinder, Foreign Disinformation is the ‘New Warfare’ and Democracies are ‘Sitting Ducks,’ Says UK Parliament
The UK Parliament released a report declaring foreign disinformation “the new warfare” and calling open democracies “sitting ducks.” Disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz, who testified before the Committee, writes that Russia has upgraded from troll farms to industrial-scale operations—a network of over 1,100 automated accounts responsible for 11 million posts in a year. Russia is also making coordinated effort to pump Kremlin narratives into AI training data. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has gutted the U.S. government’s foreign interference response and maligned the researchers tracking it. The Committee recommended the UK treat disinformation as a core national security threat, even as members of Parliament face potential U.S. visa restrictions for doing so.
Why this matters: Foreign adversaries are running information warfare at industrial scale while the U.S. has deliberately dismantled its defenses. The fight to preserve a shared reality is now being led by our allies, at risk of American retaliation for taking it seriously.
Public Notice, Tucker Carlson Is Not Your Friend
Some progressives and leftists have been approvingly sharing Tucker Carlson clips of his Israel and Trump criticism on social media. Carlson’s new attacks aren’t rooted in human rights principles, but rather his racist worldview. Carlson has relentlessly promoted the White nationalist Great Replacement Theory for years. He’s platforming Holocaust deniers and has a documented history of racist and anti-democratic rhetoric.
Why this matters: Elevating bad-faith actors because they occasionally land on the right side of an issue is how societies lose moral clarity. Carlson’s record and motivations make clear that he’s still a morally reprehensible propagandist.
Techdirt, Brendan Carr Tries To ‘Ban’ All Foreign Routers In Lazy, Legally Dubious Shakedown
FCC chair Brendan Carr announced that foreign-made routers, essentially every router currently on the market, would effectively be banned from sale in the U.S., unless manufacturers obtain “conditional approval” from DHS. The stated justification is cybersecurity, but writer Karl Bode notes that the biggest recent U.S. cybersecurity breach, China’s Salt Typhoon hack, exploited deregulated domestic telecom networks, not foreign routers. Meanwhile, Trump administration has simultaneously gutted the agencies responsible for investigating such incidents. The “conditional approval” process creates an obvious shakedown structure wherein manufacturers must seek case-by-case exemptions from a corrupt administration.
Why this matters: The U.S. government is dismantling our ability to conduct cybersecurity oversight in the same breath that it’s demanding foreign companies seek its approval to sell routers in America…for security reasons. Doing corruption in the name of national security is a defining feature of this administration.
See: ProPublica, Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate
CNET, I Downloaded (and Deleted) the White House App So You Don’t Have To. It’s a Hot Mess
The Trump administration launched an official White House app promising “unparalleled access.” But security researchers found serious privacy and security failures. The Android version tracks user location every 4.5 minutes and shares that data with a third-party server. A YouTube embed code in the app was traced to a personal GitHub account, meaning a single account compromise could affect every user. The Apple version says it doesn’t collect location data, yet the underlying code included GPS tracking capability. One cybersecurity firm that audited the app wrote that startups with three employees have shipped apps with better security protections.
Why this matters: A government app that misrepresents its data collection practices and relies on unsecured third-party infrastructure is less an access tool than a surveillance mechanism.
NBC, Father of Service Member Killed in Iran War Said He Never Told Pete Hegseth to ‘Finish’ the Job
After meeting privately with families of service members killed in the Iran war, Defense Secretary Hegseth told reporters that “family after family” urged him to “finish this” and “not stop until the job is done.” Charles Simmons, whose 28-year-old son Tyler was among those killed, told NBC News that was not what he and Hegseth discussed. Simmons said he told Hegseth he hoped the decisions being made were “necessary” and that he said nothing “along those lines” about continuing the war. A public official present at Trump’s earlier March 7 Dover meeting with a separate set of families similarly told NBC News they did not hear any family member tell Trump to “finish the job,” contradicting Trump’s claim that “every single one” said it.
Why this matters: Putting words in the mouths of grieving Gold Star families to justify an unauthorized war is reprehensible propaganda. Our defense secretary used the deaths of service members as a rhetorical prop.
PBS NewsHour / AP, Hegseth Says He Will Allow Troops to Take Personal Weapons onto Military Bases
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing base commanders to approve service members’ requests to carry personal firearms on military installations. Hegseth cited recent shootings at Fort Stewart and Holloman Air Force Base as justification, but a gun violence prevention organization’s senior counsel noted that Defense Department leaders and military brass have long opposed relaxing these rules. She also pointed out that most active duty service members who die by suicide do so with a personally owned weapon, and warned the policy will increase gun violence on installations.
Why this matters: The man overseeing a shooting war in the Middle East is spending his time loosening gun rules on domestic military bases, against the advice of the military’s own leadership, while the suicide crisis among service members continues to worsen.
ProPublica, Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump
Since Trump returned to office, the VA has lost around 500 psychologists and psychiatrists and nearly 700 social workers who mostly quit, citing crushing caseloads and ethical concerns about the administration’s policies. In one instance, a therapist in Arizona described individual sessions cut to as little as 16 minutes, with some replaced by online group sessions of up to 35 veterans. More than half of VA hospitals and clinics reported individual therapy wait times for new patients exceeding the agency’s own 20-day goal as of early February.
Why this matters: Veterans were promised better care. Instead, their healthcare system is hemorrhaging the specialists they need most. Accountability journalism like Pro Publica’s is essential. As their reporting notes: “Following inquiries from ProPublica, VA officials reached out to…veterans interviewed for this story to offer additional assistance with their mental health care. The calls left several frustrated, saying it shouldn’t take questions from the media for them to get help from the VA.”
More Than Just Parks, BREAKING: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service
The Trump administration announced it is relocating U.S. Forest Service headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah and closing all ten regional offices. They are also consolidating more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states into a single location in Fort Collins, Colorado. The new structure replaces regional foresters with fifteen political appointees called “state directors” embedded in state capitals. When the Bureau of Land Management was similarly relocated under Trump’s first term, 87% of Washington-based staff left the agency rather than relocate, a precedent the author argues was the intended outcome.
Why this matters: Relocating a 193-million-acre public lands agency, while destroying its independent science program and replacing career professionals with political appointees, is a gift to the mining industry. Our environment and our ability to enjoy public lands is deteriorated.
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"Framing a mass-casualty strike on a girls’ school as an AI malfunction **obscures the human decisions behind it**, like leaving databases unchecked and starting a war without congressional authorization. That said…the story below remains imperative to our understanding of how little AI should be trusted."