Part of our constitutional crisis is that Republicans are stopping Congress from playing its fundamental oversight role.

@Erie.bsky.social accepting the EFF Award: “Speaking up is hard and it's scary. But it will only get harder and scarier from here. The best time to do it was yesterday. The second-best time is today. These are not choices we will always have.”

BREAKING: Social Security Administration chief data officer and whistle-blower Charles Borges has resigned after bombshell report that SSA put highly-sensitive data at risk. He sent out an email to colleagues moments ago. Here is the text of his email shared with me:

🦊 I wrote about the administration’s “national design studio,” and how its shoddy construction isn’t a mistake. It’s a clear signal of priorities, and ones we need to actively, urgently rebuke. ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/a-noti...

Great summary by Rachael Dietkus. America by Design, Harm by Default. www.linkedin.com/pulse/americ...

They specifically uploaded the 'NUMIDENT' file. This record includes your name, social security number, your birth date, your birth place, your parents' names and social security numbers, gender, and immigration status. The security threat is profound.

Our democracy is not a brand. Our country is not a retail store. At 18F, our inspiration was (and is) the American people.

Folks in our community have asked us to comment on “America by Design”—but a site like this largely speaks for itself.

The entire Social Security database, dumped on a random cloud server: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...

This WaPo piece about the Airbnb/DOGE guy who is now the head of design in government ignores that: *DOGE fired the actual talented design people in government, including Social Security! *IRS had a beautifully designed tax filing system that DOGE killed *USDS already did online passport renewals

been at the eric adams scavenger hunt all day. mostly we were in a crawlspace under a house in howard beach learning “how to out-hustle the rats.” not sure what this does for the campaign

Trump fired all of the designers in 18F, the US Digital Service, and elsewhere in government. Now he is calling for improved government design. www.nextgov.com/digital-gove...

Zohran’s citibike numbers make me feel like we need to start demanding bike share stats from our politicians in the same way we demand tax returns

Displaced federal worker to lawyer pipeline

Portland Japanese Garden. Highly recommend for others who are laid off and really stressed out.

Your Amazon Prime reminder that half of Amazon warehouse workers struggle with food & housing costs. A third have had to rely on government assistance like SNAP, which is about to get cut. If Bezos can spend $50M on a wedding, Amazon can afford to treat its workers with dignity. #amazon

lol sure lots of rich New Yorkers are suddenly gonna jump ship to an uninsurable hellscape state whose highest point is *half* the height of NYC's 89th tallest building

This week, I’m honoring the State Dept foreign and civil servants whose service was cut short. No one can take away their impact.. in every flag they stood beside, the rooms where diplomacy took shape, and the global ties they built. We will feel this loss for years. Images from my last visit.

Moving scene - tears, hugs, and cheers - inside the State Dept HQ last night, as diplomats gathered in the lobby to clap out their laid off colleagues, some of which have served for decades 👇🏻

Gutting government services kills people www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

Two days after deadly Texas floods, the agency struggled to answer calls from survivors because of call center contracts that weren’t extended. This is so horrifying I made a bar graph www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

Please no one ever redesign the 1970 logo for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

it’s really weird to be in that category of people whose careers are specifically being targeted for destruction by the government right now, I’ll tell you what watching the rest of the job market and economy continuing to largely shamble on while your entire network is screaming/running/in flames

This is insane: do they really believe that being on Medicaid means being unemployed? Only 3% of those receiving Medicaid are in the category of able-bodied and long-term unemployed.

You know what works better than thoughts and prayers? A functioning government.

One month of growth in our makeshift Brooklyn sidewalk planter. 🪴

-A living wage -Guaranteed healthcare -The right to join a union -The right to vote -The right to choose when, how, and with whom you start a family -The right for you and your family to live free from gun violence These are the foundations of real freedom.

If you’re an official who insists on using social media as a primary source for vital disaster info, then I believe it’s malpractice to not at least duplicate those messages on multiple platforms in 2025 - including those that people under 40 actually use, like TikTok.

Congestion pricing by the # ‘s 6 months in: * 67k fewer drivers entering zone daily * Delays in Holland Tunnel down 65% * Traffic deaths down 32% so far in 2025 * $500m projected this year for MTA capital improvements * B’way attendance +12% * Subway ridership +7% So yes this program is a SUCCESS.

I am grieving the barbarism that is going to unfurl from all this. People are going to die. Livelihoods gone. All to feed a corrupt kleptocracy. I see every day up close how different it is from the first time around. There are no guardrails. A disaster. I’m sorry we have to live through this.

it’s worth making this more explicit: The NYT is suggesting Zohran lied by checking off both “Asian” & “African”, because (in their view) someone of Indian descent born & raised in Africa isn’t “truly” African. Which was also how Idi Amin justified expelling Zohran’s father & thousands of others.

New York City had free college tuition at all CUNY schools for 130 years

17 million.

There's a lesson here.

Come work with me, supporting in-house technology and security to help a vital non-profit investigative newsroom work more safely and effectively using technology. This is one of those roles where you can truly make a difference. job-boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/j...

The GOP bill would take healthcare from 17 million people. Big numbers can be hard to understand - 17 million is the same as the *entire* population of: Wyoming Vermont Alaska North Dakota South Dakota Delaware Rhode Island Montana Maine New Hampshire Hawaii West Virginia Idaho Nebraska COMBINED

Upper Manhattan about to call private security on the rest of the city lol

i thought i couldn't love @hellgatenyc.com more, and then i tuned in to the election night livestream

Harriet Tubman #quilt by my Mom, Vera P. Hall, who makes quilts celebrating Black people who fought for their own freedom. This seems to be the crowd favorite of the “We Didn’t Wait for Freedom” series. Happy #Juneteenth #quilting

I don't think I've ever felt more like burning it all down than I have while witnessing the elite project to turn Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander into scary, incompetent monsters while turning an actual incompetent monster, Andrew Cuomo, into a merely complicated fellow who just made an oopsie.

When it comes to handling sensitive systems and data, we believe government officials should follow best practice and the law—and we said so. (Text in🧵)

(FYI: The guides and blog posts that @bluesky.sboots.ca mentions in this story are still available to the public: you can find them at guides.18f.org and blog.18f.org)

We have some news to share with you. 🥄 Today we took legal action to challenge our termination, filing an appeal with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. We did this because we believe the elimination of 18F violated safeguards that exist to protect a nonpartisan civil service.

We love to see it.

Whether you get your forecast from an app on your phone, a website or a meteorologist on TV, most of the underlying information comes from the federal government. By @rhersher.bsky.social

Toured the UN today and stood before some powerful reminders of what humanity is capable of, despite being faced with destruction.

New, from me: The DOGE project was sold as tech disruptors who would revolutionize government. To try to understand why DOGE has failed, I point to lessons that other technologists who worked in government learned, but DOGE ignored. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-doge-...

Please check in with your fed friends. It's kinda stressful here You’re fired You’re rehired You’re refired You’re staying but your team is fired Your team is staying but your funding’s cut You’re moving across the country, maybe Restraining order 🛑 Restraining order against the restraining order 🔙

Ystrdy I was a critic for architecture studio reviews at Princeton. A 🇵🇸 student designed a gorgeous addition — a refugee welcome center — to an unassuming public library bldg. The student’s entire family was there to celebrate her work. Her project was made all the more powerful by the context ❤️