Writers and Editors

From a speech 4-21-26 or thereabout (lightly edited, emphasis added), in Australia:

 

“We are dealing with the most corrupt, callous, and incompetent presidential administration in the history of the United States, period.

   

     He entered a war, got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu, entered a war that the American people do not want, putting at risk American service members, and among the many consequences of it, it includes jacking up the cost of gas so that on average Americans are paying at least $15 more to fill up their tank.

    Diesel costs 50% more, so that’s what fuels a semi, a truck, that otherwise delivers our food and our household items. And where do we think that cost is going to land? It’s on the consumer.

    Let’s understand that it is his feeble attempt to distract from the Epstein files.

    Let’s understand it is this insecure man's attempt to walk around as though he is strong and will use the force of America’s military against anyone.

 

“When I served as Vice President of the United States, I met with over 150 world leaders, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and kings. Many of them multiple times, and I formed relationships. I have spent countless hours in the Situation Room, in my West Wing office in the White House, and steps down the hall in the Oval Office.

     And I will tell you, this president is the first president of the United States of either party since World War II to abandon America’s responsibility to,

    one, nurture and protect our alliances, our friendships, and [not] to thumb his nose at them,

    and two, to dismiss the importance of upholding international rules and norms, such as sovereignty and territorial integrity.

    And the end result, because I know we have limited time, is this.

    What he has done is he has, one, made us unreliable in the eyes of our allies.

    And two, he has eroded whatever influence we had to be able to speak to certain issues, imperfect though we know we have been.”

                                                                         

Thanks for this resource to I fucking love Australia

• Use of Consumer AI Systems in Publishing: Statement and New Model Contract Clauses
---The Authors Guild Statement on Use of AI in Publishing and New Model Contract Clause (Authors Guild)

    We call on the publishing industry to enforce strict policies with their staffs. The Authors Guild recommends including the following clauses in publishing agreements to prevent objectionable uses.

 No Uploading Author’s Personal Information or Manuscript to Commercial AI

     Publisher shall not upload the Work or any of Author’s personal information to consumer-facing AI systems for purposes such as generating summaries, assessments, or marketing copy without written permission from the author or as otherwise agreed to hereunder; and when such permission is granted, it shall ensure that the manuscript is not used by third-party AI companies for training, such as by opting out of allowing training in user settings.

No Substantive Editing with AI

    Publisher agrees and warrants that it will not use AI to substantially edit a manuscript (excepting the use of basic spelling and grammar-checking applications).

---Authors Guild AI-Related Model Publishing Contract Clauses of the most massive infringements of copyrighted material in history.”

• This Is How Meta AI Staffers Deemed More Than 7 Million Books to Have No “Economic Value”

(Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair, 4-15-25)

    As more than a dozen lawsuits churn ahead, newly unsealed case files reveal the company’s stance: The pirated books Meta used to train its AI, including ones by Beverly Cleary, Jacqueline Woodson, and Andrew Sean Greer, are individually worthless.

• Publishers sue Meta, claiming it violated copyrights in training AI with their books
(Maegan Vazquez, Washington Post, 5-5-27)

    The plaintiffs allege that Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg “personally authorized and actively encouraged" copyright infringement.

    Author Scott Turow and the publishers named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — allege that Meta and Zuckerberg “illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles” and “downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet.”

     Meta then copied the stolen material many times over, the plaintiffs allege, to train the AI system — effectively engaging “in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted material in history."

     The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest in a string of lawsuits brought by publishers, authors, artists, photographers and news outlets aimed at forcing tech companies to compensate them for using their works to train their AI models. The plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit that the AI model's ability to quickly produce knockoffs and summaries of copyrighted books threatens the livelihoods of publishers and authors.

      The publishers' complaint states Meta distributed millions of copyrighted works without authorization and without compensating authors or publishers, claiming that Zuckerberg "personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement." They also claim that Meta removed copyright notices and copyright management information from the works used to train the AI model, known as Llama.
     Tuesday's lawsuit mirrors claims made against the company Anthropic, which was sued by authors over its use of their work to train its AI tools, such as its popular chatbot Claude.

     The Washington Post reported earlier this year that the AI company spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the models behind its products. Anthropic, Meta and other companies found ways to acquire books in bulk without the authors' knowledge, court filings allege, including by downloading pirated copies.

• Meta says copying books was 'fair use' in authors' AI lawsuit (Blake Brittain, Reuters, 3-25-25)
Fair use could be the deciding legal question in high-stakes copyright cases brought by authors, artists, news outlets and others against major technology companies over AI training.
   Attorneys for the authors did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A Meta spokesperson said that fair use is "vital" to its "transformational GenAI open source LLMs that are powering incredible innovation, productivity, and creativity."
    The authors sued Meta in 2023, arguing that it used pirated versions of their books to train Llama without their permission. Meta responded on Monday that its AI training was protected by the legal doctrine of fair use, which allows for the unauthorized use of copyrighted material under certain circumstances.
    Meta argued that its use was transformative, training Llama to "serve as a personal tutor on nearly any subject, assist with creative ideation, and help users to generate business reports, translate conversations, analyze data, write code, and compose poems or letters to friends."

    The case is Kadrey v. Meta Platforms Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-03417.

• Meta knew it used pirated books to train AI, authors say (Blake Brittain, Reuters, 9-1-25)
• License to Steal (Carson Hume, 4-27-25)

 

[Back to Top]

• From Indiana to Idaho, a Backlash Against A.I. Gathers Momentum

(Tripp Mickle, NY Times, 4-27-26)
   When Michael Grayston, an evangelical pastor in Austin, Texas, heard that a friend’s relationship with an artificial intelligence companion had nearly destroyed a marriage, he saw a moral danger that needed to be addressed.
   When Jack Gardner, a Boise, Idaho musician, discovered A.I. had made songs with copyrighted music, he and his wife, Cathryn, an elementary school band teacher, started a local group to call for A.I. legislation.
   When Bart and Amy Snyder, farmers in Wolcott, Ind., learned that a data center was going to be built 300 yards from their home, they worried it would drain local aquifers and started a campaign to unseat three county officials who had supported it.
   Though none of them had been politically active before, they became part of a growing national movement that pits the tech industry and its billionaires against a diverse coalition of parent groups, religious leaders, environmentalists and former Tea Party activists.
    They all worry that tech companies are more focused on cashing in on A.I. than how it may affect regular people. They also share a sense that all that money will flow into the hands of Silicon Valley’s ultrawealthy, while the middle and working classes shoulder the costs.
    They believe that people in Washington, especially President Trump, are protecting Silicon Valley rather than reeling it in. They want regulation — or at least a debate before A.I. becomes entrenched in American life.

• Doing data centers the not-dumb way

(David Roberts, Volts, 4-15-26)

Listen or read the transcript.

Why its stupid for tech companies to build their own behind-the-meter natural gas plants, how this approach is wrecking equipment and destabilizing the grid, and a better, smarter, faster path forward.

• Rethinking Load Growth: Assessing the Potential for Integration of Large Flexible Loads in US Power Systems

(Tyler Norris et al, Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Feb. 2025.) An important paper.

     A key solution to the United States' soaring electrical demand—driven by unprecedented electricity needs from data centers and their booming artificial intelligence workloads, alongside other consumers—is load flexibility. Flexibility allows large electricity users to temporarily reduce consumption during periods of grid stress by shifting workloads, utilizing on-site generation, or adjusting operations.

    By leveraging flexibility, new large loads can be interconnected more quickly while reducing the need for premature investment in additional power plants and transmission lines—offering a hedge against uncertainty in future electricity demand in light of the release of DeepSeek.
     This national-scale analysis provides a first-order estimate of how much new flexible load could be added across the 22 largest US balancing authorities, which collectively serve 95% of the grid. The study introduces a new concept—curtailment-enabled headroom—to describe how much additional load the grid can absorb using existing capacity, with only modest, short-duration reductions in usage. The findings highlight a significant opportunity: Nearly 100 GW of large new loads could be integrated with minimal impact, supporting economic growth while maintaining grid reliability and affordability.

• Data centers and your power bill

(Claire Brown, Climate Forward, NY Times, 2-19-26)

    Tech companies are investing billions of dollars to build energy-hungry data centers at a time when demand for electricity in the United States is already increasing. It has politicians thinking about rising utility bills, not least because voters tend to punish their elected representatives when bills spike. The White House proposed that tech companies help pay for new power plants added to the grid on their behalf.

   Proposed solutions:

   Make data centers build their own power plants.

   Ban data center construction.

• What Happens If Trump Seizes AI Companies

   (Matteo Wong and Lila Shroff, The Atlantic, 4-27-26)

   The administration could exert much greater control over the industry—but just how far would it go? What if nationalization actually happens?
    Full nationalization, an absolute takeover of the industry, would hollow out the commercial businesses of its three leading players: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

    Such a situation is, in all likelihood, not going to happen. For starters, it’s probably illegal. The Constitution generally prevents the government from seizing private property without paying, and the government is unlikely to easily produce the trillions of dollars that the industry is collectively worth.

     The top American AI labs might immediately lose a fair portion of their research staff as well, because of restrictions on foreigners who can work on the most crucial defense-related technologies.

    But consider another possibility—slightly less extreme, though still capable of remaking the industry as we know it. The government could regulate AI companies like it does utilities. Some corners of Silicon Valley itself seem to be at least partially open to it. Altman has described a future in which “intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people buy it from us on a meter.” For years, AI companies have insisted they need to be regulated—but only as they see fit.

     Should the federal government ever take AI regulation seriously, the utility route would be among the most aggressive approaches available. But, really, the AI industry would be getting what it asked for.

• Maine Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Paused New Data Centers

   (Jenna Russell, NY Times, 4-24-26)

Gov. Janet Mills said she rejected what would have been the nation’s first moratorium on data centers because it failed to exempt a project in a distressed mill town.

 

Do you know what data centers and LLMs are?

Why are so many huge data centers being built and why do they use so much energy?

     See images HERE (iStock, Getty Images)

 

DATA CENTERS are humongous buildings that take up a lot of previously beautiful open space.

They are big because they require both massive amounts of power and lots of cooling to manage the massive computation required.

See images HERE (same images, just in case you didn't look the first time).

 

LLMs are "large language models" that do our thinking for us superfast. They are called Large Language Models because their massive size enables them to understand and generate language in ways that smaller, earlier AI systems could not. (AI means "artificial intelligence.")

  

NVIDIA is a company that sells "GPUs" — graphics processing units — that power the large language model services that are behind the whole AI boom, either through "inference" (the process of creating an output from an AI model) or "training" (feeding data into the model to make its outputs better).

     GPUs are great for parallel processing — essentially spreading a task across multiple (thousands of) processor cores at the same time — which means that certain tasks run faster than they would on, say, a CPU (central processing unit). While not every task benefits from parallel processing, or from having several thousand cores available at the same time, the kind of math that underpins LLMs requires it.

 

The central processing unit (CPU) is the primary functional component — the brain — of a computer, the invisible manager inside the computer where data input is transformed into information output (what the human brain can understand). 

    Like the human brain, the CPU can multitask. It runs a computer's operating system, simultaneously regulating the computer's interactions. It stores and executes program instructions and apps (applications) through its vast networks of circuitry. It manages a variety of other computer operations.

 

 With Blackwell — the third generation of AI-specialized GPUs — came a problem, in that these things were so much more power-hungry that previous generations and required entirely new ways of building data centers, along with different cooling and servers to put in them, much of which was sold by NVIDIA.

While you could kind of build around your current data centers to put A100s and H100s into production, Blackwell was less cooperative and also ran much hotter.  NVIDIA's third-generation Blackwell GPUs require entirely new servers — and if you want to run lots of them, an entirely new data center, because they require so much more power and cooling. (I know this is a terrible paragraph and welcome editing from someone who knows what they're talking about.)

 

NVIDIA also makes the consumer graphics cards you can find in a gaming PC or gaming console, but 90% of NVIDIA's revenue now comes from selling either GPUs for LLMs, or the associated software and hardware to make it all run. 

 

CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a proprietary parallel computing platform and application programming interface (from API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for accelerated general-purpose processing, significantly broadening their utility in scientific and high-performance computing. CUDA was created by Nvidia starting in 2004 and was officially released in 2007. When it was first introduced, the name was an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture, but Nvidia later dropped the full name and now rarely uses it. CUDA is proprietary to NVIDIA, and while there are alternatives (both closed- and open-source), none of them have the same maturity and breadth.

 

Pair that with the fact that Nvidia's been focused on the data center market for longer than, say, AMD, its main competitor, and it's easy to understand why it makes so much money. There really isn't anyone who can do the same thing as NVIDIA, both in terms of software and hardware, and certainly not at the scale necessary to feed the hungry tech firms that demand these GPUs.

 

A FEW TERMS EXLAINED:

Like the human brain, the CPU experiences both short-term memory and long-term memory.

   With a computer, memory usually takes the form of short-term storage for the files most often accessed during recent computer use. When a piece of data first enters an operating system (OS), it's placed within that OS's random-access memory (RAM).  A CPU's standard operating memory stores only RAM data "in the moment," similar to a person's short-term memory, before periodically purging it from the computer's cache memory. 

   "Permanent storage involves read-only memory (ROM), which means data can be accessed but can't be acted upon or altered."

   "Secondary storage is akin to long-term memory in humans and involves the permanent or long-term retention of data by archiving it on secondary storage devices, such as hard drives. Output devices like hard drives offer permanent storage."

Open Source means a particular code is public, allowing anyone to view, modify, and distribute it.
Closed Source means the code is private and proprietary, with access restricted to the company that created it.

   

RESOURCES LEANED ON OR LIFTED FROM, ABOVE:

•  Phil Powell, IBM. What is a central processing unit (CPU)?

• The Hater's Guide to Nvidia (Edward Zitron, Where's Your Ed At, 11-24-25)
• Large Language Models (LLMs) From Dummies  (YouTube, Pablo Cingolani, Part 1: "Attention")

• LLMs EXPLAINED in 60 seconds (YouTube, @ShawhinTalebi) If you've heard of ChatGPT, you've heard of large language models. But LLMs are not necessarily chatbots. LLMs are word predictors.

What key resources are missing?  Please let me know.

 

Feel free to comment and to link to articles that explain how all this works and what the main problems and suggested solutions are.

Should we let data centers take up so much visible space?

Can we stop their encroachment on our national green space?

I've tried here taking a stab at identifying major problems, the big picture, with these data centers.

I am no expert. I just know this is a looming, escalating problem and that we need to be informed about it.

I welcome links to excellent explanations and information that help clarify what's going on and how to wrestle with it rationally and nationally.

      -- Pat McNees, Writers and Editors website

 

(assembled by Pat McNees, originally published as Being Trans in America, on her ComfortDying.com website)

 

In three sections:

Being trans in America (Washington Post/KFF survey and series)

Whistleblower in a small gender clinic

More information, articles (including information about being genetically intersex)

 

BEING TRANS IN AMERICA    

 

• ***Resources for Evidence-Based Reporting on Transgender Communities

   This excellent huge collection is curated by The Open Notebook and the Trans Journalists Association. Many of the issues that affect transgender people—such as gender-affirming medical care, educational policy, sports participation, military service, gender-motivated hate crime, and workplace discrimination—involve scientific evidence, context, and data. These issues also tend to be politicized and mired in misinformation and prejudice.

   Be informed, not ignorant. Learn the science behind gender identity and biology. 

  biThat important page is FULL of links to useful articles,  including these:

---Trans People in the U.S.: Identities, Demographics, and Wellbeing (KFF)
---KFF / The Washington Post Trans Survey
---Casey Parks and Washington Post Pollsters Depict Trans Life in the U.S.

    (Darren Incorvaia, Open Notebook, 10-3-23) Interview with the reporters behind the survey.

 

• Transgender People (UCLA Williams Institute, School of Law)

    "An estimated 2.8 million people ages 13 and older in the U.S. identify as transgender. We study discrimination and bias against transgender people and other gender minorities and examine how these experiences affect their health and socioeconomic well-being."

• Transgender People and Transgender Rights (Office of the High Commissioner, United Nations Human Rights)

 

• Trans Journalists Association. 
• The Trans Journalists Association’s Stylebook and Coverage Guide

• The excellent Washington Post/KFF survey and series (3-24-23)

     (Casey Parks, Emily Guskin, Scott Clement, Annys Shin, Fenit Nirappil, Hannah Natanson, Tara Bahrampour, Laura Meckler, Anne Branigin)

    "Many of the issues that affect transgender people—such as gender-affirming medical care, educational policy, sports participation, military service, gender-motivated hate crime, and workplace discrimination—involve scientific evidence, context, and data. These same issues also tend to be politicized and mired in misinformation. Journalists have a responsibility to ensure their reporting reflects the weight of scientific evidence, includes the perspectives of trustworthy experts, and interrogates claims made by public officials.

     "Journalists covering transgender communities have a responsibility to ensure their reporting reflects the weight of scientific evidence, includes the perspectives of trustworthy experts, and interrogates claims made by public officials. On this page, you'll find advice gathered by the Trans Journalists Association (TJA) and The Open Notebook for covering trans issues that have science at their core."

---Media Guide: Covering the Intersex Community We’ve all seen the headlines. A female athlete is tested and discovers she has XY chromosomes or unusually high levels of testosterone. Some of these athletes are intersex, but they just didn’t know it. So what does this mean?
    Some intersex characteristics are Read More 

Some of the characters we "love to hate" are compelling villains or antagonists who drive plotlines, evoke strong negative emotions, and are often compelling to watch because of their vivid acting or dramatic ruthlessness.

Who else would you add? Which characters do you hate?

TV & Movie Antagonists
Joffrey Baratheon & Ramsay Bolton (Game of Thrones): Their pure malice and cruelty make them villains fans love to loathe.
Homelander (The Boys): His blend of immense power and severe psychopathy creates intense tension.
Hannibal Lecter (Hannibal): His charm and refined evil are both unsettling and captivating.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice): Her snobbery and meddling provide a perfect foil for the heroine.  Read More 

---

Tips from a recent Authors Guild discussion 

 

    “Recently, a book club asked me to do a zoom author talk,” said Margie Goldsmith in a recent online Authors Guild discussion. “They were all on one screen and I was on the other. They asked questions and I answered. They'd all read the book. I had my copy next to me, so I could hold it up if I was making a point in which that made sense."

 

     "I think of it as a podcast but with many people asking the questions. It saves money and HOURS of travel time and money." (Margie’s most recent publication: Becoming a Badass: From Fearful to Fierce).

 

     Giving author talks on Zoom has also worked for Joyce Yarrow, “especially when they are interactive and presented by a book club or organization that brings the audience."

 

    "One advantage is being able to show visuals during my talks—for example photos I took in Spain that inspired scenes in the novel Zahara and the Lost Books of Light ."

 

    “For one book release I co-produced an online show via Zoom with musicians and poets from different countries sharing work relating to the theme of the book. It was great fun and many copies were sold. A few people told me it was the best book release they'd been to because of the international flavor and variety."

 

    "If you use your imagination to expand the medium beyond talking heads, good things can happen. For example, Zoom can be set up so whoever is talking occupies the center of the screen, making interactions with audience members more intimate. Of course, other attendees need to be muted for this to work."

 

    Thriller writer Debbie Burke offered excellent advice: 

 

    “I often do zoom talks to writing groups,” she said. “Even though I have only a free Zoom account with a 40-minute time limit, I go through the group's hosts who have professional accounts without limitations. They give me access as a co-host so I can share the screen for Read More 

• "He was always a bully. Now he's dangerous."

  (Mary Trump tells all on Uncle Donald Trump, 51-minute video, The Telegraph, YouTube, 5 -23-25)

    Mary Trump, daughter of Fred Trump Jr. (Donald’s older brother), offers a rare, insider perspective on the deeply dysfunctional Trump family dynamic. She describes a toxic, misogynistic household where, as she puts it, “cruelty was currency.” Her insights shed light on the psychological forces that have shaped Donald Trump’s personality, leadership style, and political strategy.
     Labelling her uncle a “narcissist” and “the world’s most dangerous man,” Mary Trump delves into the lasting impact of generational trauma, emotional neglect, and the ruthless ambition that defines the Trump family legacy.

• Trump Revels in Threats to Commit War Crimes in Iran

   (Edward Wong, NY Times, 4-5-26)

    President Trump has said he will bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” threatening to destroy power plants, bridges and more.

     Such destruction would cause widespread suffering among civilians and, in most, cases would be considered a war crime under international law. No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes, experts say. Until this administration, American leaders had insisted they were trying to follow international law in war. The Trump administration’s language and actions could have far-reaching consequences. Within Iran, it is likely to galvanize opposition to the United States, including among some ordinary Iranians who have protested their own government. On Thursday night, after a day of public criticism by legal experts over the bridge strike, Mr. Trump doubled down, writing online that the U.S. military “hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants

• Trump made up injury to dodge Vietnam service, his former lawyer testifies

    (Leo Shane III, Pentagon and Congress, Military Times, 2-27-19)
    President Donald Trump acknowledged to advisors that he made up a fake injury to avoid military service, because “I wasn’t going to Vietnam,” his former lawyer told lawmakers during testimony on Wednesday.
   Michael Cohen, who also worked as a fixer for Trump before his election, said he was tasked with tamping down criticism of the military deferment as the presidential candidate simultaneously mocked Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, for being regarded as a military hero.

    “I like people who weren’t captured," Trump said during a July 2015 interview.
   “Mr. Trump claimed (his medical deferment) was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery,” Cohen told members of the House Oversight Committee. “He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.
   “He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I'm stupid, I wasn't going to Vietnam.’”

• Trump Says He Would Have Won the Vietnam War 'Very Quickly' if He Were President After Avoiding the Draft 5 Times

(Rachel McRady, People, 4-21-26)

   Trump said he would have shortened the 19-year war while calling into CNBC's Squawk Box on Tuesday, April 21.

   A 2018 report questioned the legitimacy of Trump's medical exemption from the Vietnam War draft (for heel spurs).

• 1979 Is the Year That Explains Donald Trump (Jonathan Lemire and Isabel Ruehl, The Atlantic, 4-8-26)

    And pretty much all of the 1980s do too.

    "Trump has lived his whole life like it’s the 1980s. He embraces the big-bigger-biggest ethos of the decade, with its gold-plated style and “greed is good” mantra. His views have been shaped by the brash era in which excess was the norm and ostentatious displays of wealth and power were celebrated in pop culture and in Trump’s Manhattan. (The pink-marbled lobby of his Trump Tower skyscraper looks just as it did when it opened in 1983.) It was also a moment when New York City was defined by extreme wealth stratification and racial unrest, a time of high crime and corruption. To this day, Trump’s touchstones almost seem preserved in amber from that decade: Sylvester Stallone, George Steinbrenner, Hulk Hogan, the musical Cats. This was an era of over-the-top displays of patriotism and even jingoism; the phrase Let’s make America great again was in. (It’s true—Ronald Reagan got there first.) This was when Trump became a celebrity, when he still had youth on his side. In his mind, at least, he hasn’t left."

• My Uncle Is Responsible for 210,000 Deaths and Is Now "Willfully Getting People Sick"

    (Mary Trump interview, Democracy Now, 10-7-20)

    Note the date: 2020, when Covid was becoming a national epidemic. When Trump was underestimating its dangers.

    As President Trump compares the deadly COVID-19 outbreak to the flu despite being hospitalized for the virus, we speak to his only niece, Mary Trump, about his increasingly erratic behavior in the final weeks of the election season and how his family views illness as a weakness.

    "To be treated for something is to admit that you need the treatment, and I don't see him having any self-awareness," she says. "Clearly the people closest to him don't care about his well-being. If they did, he'd still be at Walter Reed."

    Mary Trump is a clinical psychologist. She overcame Trump's legal threats and published the now best-selling book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

---

Enacted in the years after 9/11, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows intelligence agencies to collect emails, calls, and messages from foreigners abroad, but in practice it also sweeps in Americans’ communications, when they interact with those targets. 

    The FBI and other government agencies can then search Americans’ communications without a warrant.

 

Now Congress is approaching a deadline to decide whether and how to renew or reform this law.

 Write a letter to Congress to stop warrantless spying on Americans.

 

"Reform Section 702: End mass warrantless surveillance"

    The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act program allows the government to spy on Americans’ communications without a warrant. It’s been abused in the past to target journalists, peaceful protesters, elected officials, and others.

     The coalition urging reform of this act is generally aligned behind:

   Do not reauthorize FISA unless the backdoor search and data broker loopholes are closed

---Congress Must Close Data Broker Loophole by Prohibiting Government Purchases of Americans’ Sensitive Data (Brennan Center for Justice)

    A two-pager compiled by the Brennan Center illustrating why Congress must close the data broker loophole by prohibiting government purchases of Americans’ sensitive data.

---Your data is everywhere. The government is buying it without a warrant

     (Jude Joffe-Block, Morning Edition, NPR, 3-25-26)
    A whole industry of data brokers buys up vast quantities of electronic information from cell phone apps and web browsers and sells it to advertisers who use that data to target ads.

    The same industry also sells that data, including bulk cell phone location data, to police departments and federal government agencies in ways that can reveal intimate details about Americans without a warrant.
    Now, privacy advocates say that the best chance for Congress to close the well-known loophole around the Fourth Amendment that allows for that sort of governmental snooping is coming up in just a few weeks.
    That's when Congress is expected to take up reauthorization of what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire on April 20.
    Last week, some 130 civil society organizations signed on to a letter urging members of Congress to include closing the data broker loophole in FISA 702 reauthorization, citing the "unprecedented expansion of warrantless mass surveillance that is sweeping up the private information of communities across America" and the potential for the loophole to be used "to supercharge AI-powered surveillance."
     At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Federal Bureau of Investigations director Kash Patel if he would commit to not buying Americans' location data, which is usually obtained from cell phones. Patel declined to do so, instead saying the FBI "uses all tools" and "we do purchase commercially available information that's consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us."
    A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on which commercial data the FBI purchases.

---ICE has spun a massive surveillance web. We talked to people caught in it (Kat Lonsdorf, Jude Joffe-Block, Meg Anderson, NPR, 3-4-26)
    To understand how federal agents are using various Department of Homeland Security surveillance tools in real time, NPR collected dozens of accounts — through interviews and court documents — describing confrontations with federal immigration officers in recent months.
     Activists and journalists spoke of tactics they felt were intimidating: agents photographing their faces or license plates; calling them by name; or leading them to their homes. Immigration lawyers told NPR their clients had been subjected to facial recognition technology. One ICE agent, testifying under oath, spoke of an app that showed the likely home addresses of people targeted for deportation.

• Warrantless Surveillance Under Section 702 of FISA (ACLU)

     Section 702 is set to expire at the end of 2023.

     We call on Congress to significantly reform the law, or allow it to sunset.

     Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. government engages in mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans’ and foreigners’ phone calls, text messages, emails, and other electronic communications.

    Information collected under the law without a warrant can be used to prosecute and imprison people, even for crimes that have nothing to do with national security. Given our nation’s history of abusing its surveillance authorities, and the secrecy surrounding the program, we should be concerned that Section 702 is and will be used to disproportionately target disfavored groups, whether minority communities, political activists, or even journalists.

 

      What’s Wrong With Section 702

      Section 702 allows warrantless surveillance of people inside and outside the U.S.

      Despite the fact that the law is not supposed to be used to target Americans, the government has been doing just that for years. Information collected under Section 702 could be used against you, and you likely wouldn’t know. Section 702 is used to examine communications flowing in and out of the U.S. in bulk. Surveillance programs have been abused by the intelligence agencies.
      

• Wikimedia v. NSA - Challenge to Upstream Surveillance

     The ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international Internet communications. At issue is the NSA’s “Upstream” surveillance, through which the U.S. government systematically monitors private emails, messages, and other data flowing into and out of the country on the Internet’s central arteries.

     The ACLU’s lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and eight legal, human rights, and media organizations, which together engage in trillions of sensitive communications and have been harmed by Upstream surveillance.

 

• Amnesty v. Clapper - Challenge to FISA Amendments Act (updated 2-26-15)

     The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted by Congress after the abuses of the 1960s and 70s, regulates the government’s conduct of intelligence surveillance inside the United States.

    It generally requires the government to seek warrants before monitoring Americans’ communications. In 2001, however, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to launch a warrantless wiretapping program, and in 2008 Congress ratified and expanded that program, giving the NSA almost unchecked power to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and emails. In February 2013, the Supreme Court dismissed the ACLU's lawsuit challenging the law.

[Back to Top]

updated 5-1-26

• Trump posts image of himself appearing to be Jesus (Julia Manchester, The Hill, April 13, 2026) He posted it late Sunday on his Truth Social account amid his war of words with Pope Leo XIV, who he criticized The image shows Trump in what appears to be religious garb with his hand on a sick man’s head. In the image, he’s surrounded by his followers, an American flag, eagles and the Statue of Liberty, along with other figures in the sky.

    

• Joel Webbon, founder of Right Response Ministries and senior pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown:

"I genuinely believe Trump is currently demon possessed."

(Alternately seeing his presidency as a potentially killer real estate deal.)

• Donald Trump has no idea just how close he is bringing us to economic ruin

(Independent UK, 5-1-26)

   As shelves empty and medicines run out, the US president seems happy to bask in the thin adulation offered for his botched Iran intervention like a frog in a pot of water coming to the boil.Trump says the US has ‘already won’ the war in Iran but he wants to win by a ‘bigger margin.’

• Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why ( Mary Ziegler, Politico, 4-25-26)

     Contraception was politically untouchable — until now. Millions of Americans who receive federally-backed family planning services are likely to feel the impact of such a policy shift. And there is real political risk as well. Birth control remains overwhelmingly popular in the United States: Only 8 percent of Americans say using contraception is morally wrong. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control--encouraging a high birthrate and advocating for having more children.
     Attacking contraception may strike Republicans as an alternative way to placate the social conservative base. After all, anti-abortion groups have long framed certain birth control methods like emergency contraceptives and the pill as abortifacients, an argument that helped secure a win in the Supreme Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), a challenge to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
     Attacking contraception may strike Republicans as an alternative way to placate the social conservative base. After all, anti-abortion groups have long framed certain birth control methods like emergency contraceptives and the pill as abortifacients, an argument that helped secure a win in the Supreme Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), a challenge to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

• Fear and Loathing in Trump's Washington (Robert Reich, 4-26-26)

    "Trump has brought a grim hostility to the jobs of doing the public’s work and reporting on those who do the public’s work. This was the first White House Correspondents dinner he agreed to attend, and by all accounts he was prepared to give the media pure hell in his remarks. And then hell erupted in the form of another crazed gunman.

    "There is a close relationship between Trump and violence — not just the attempts on his life but also the violence he’s unleashed on the world, the violence his ICE and Border Patrol agents have caused inside America, the violence he has incited among his followers. (A few of last night’s attendees were in Congress on January 6, 2021 when Trump’s thugs attacked the U.S. Capitol.)               

"Trump’s violence has resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. That is no justification for last night’s attack, of course, but it is part of what he has wrought in America. He has changed the script in Washington."

• Heather Cox Richardson on Trump's deteriorating state: (Letters to an American, 4-14-26)

   On Sunday night, President Donald J. Trump appeared to melt down on social media. In The Atlantic today, Tom Nichols noted that Trump’s “emotional state seems to be fraying: This weekend, he attacked Pope Leo XIV, presented himself as Jesus Christ, and then jabbed at his phone until dawn.” Nichols notes that after Trump attacked the Pope and portrayed himself as Jesus, he posted an AI version of a Trump Tower on the moon.

    You can read, listen, or subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson's posts here:
---https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

• Trump’s Bizarre Behavior Has a Clinical Name: Disinhibition (Colby Hall, Yahoo News, 1-20-26)
   In the wee hours, Trump posted private messages from confused European leaders, publicly criticized the United Kingdom’s national security posture, and shared a fabricated image depicting the United States in control of Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, and Cuba. This was the sitting president of the United States conducting foreign policy online, overnight, as allies scrambled to contain diplomatic fallout from his threats to “take” Greenland.

• Donald Trump's 'dark reason' for unhinged behaviour as chilling warning issued (Julia Banim and Niamh Kirk, Mirror UK, 1-24-26)

   POTUS's mental capacity was questioned yet again earlier this week following an extremely awkward speech at the Board of Peace Forum in Davos after he mixed up the countries of Iceland and Greenland, the very country he has so openly expressed wanting "right title and ownership" over. Said the Mirror's US Editor, Christopher Bucktin, "He presents it as if it were an underperforming golf resort he might snap up at auction, a frozen land waiting for the Trump logo."

   

• Trump’s growing volatility is putting the world on edge (Stephen Collinson, CNN, 2-29-26)

     Trump’s fixation with his legacy and his manic efforts to plaster his name everywhere took another twist last week, when it was reported he wanted Dulles International Airport and New York City’s Penn Station renamed after him. The impression of a president concentrating on his own, often erratic goals while being indifferent to the plight of ordinary voters is growing. Trump recently took fresh aim at elections, with America’s top intelligence official Tulsi Gabbard traveling to Georgia to search for evidence to prove his false obsession about fraud in 2020. He raised new concerns last week that he’ll try to fix November’s midterms by demanding the nationalization of voting.

• Reaction to Trump’s Racist Post Shows He Is Not Always Immune to Politics (New York Times, 2-7-26)

    Every once in a while, Mr. Trump runs smack into whatever boundary remains and is forced to pull back, offering a glimpse into the country’s tolerance for his behavior. The chaotic White House response to a racist video clip of the Obamas that Mr. Trump posted online was one moment where the administration realized that its usual reactions to criticism — laugh it off, double down, move on — would not work. And while Mr. Trump does not, as a rule, acknowledge wrongdoing — and did not in this case, either — he deleted the clip in the face of widespread outrage in what amounted to a remarkable climbdown.

• Trump’s second term has been rife with bizarre moments – here are seven

    (The Guardian, 1-23-26)

   From derailing meetings by telling fictional stories about serial killers to Davos, the president has left people confused and concerned.

 
• ‘The president is unhinged’: Trump’s online behavior grows increasingly odd (Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian, 10-5-25)
The US president’s recent behavior is strange to many, from reposting a false AI video of himself to confusing comments during press conferences It wasn’t the only situation where Trump’s behavior has seemed unusual. Last weekend Trump reposted to Truth Social an AI-generated fake video which promoted “med bed hospitals”. Trump has reposted AI content before, but the difference was that this video showed an AI version of himself speaking.
    “Every American will soon receive their own med bed card,” the AI rendering of Trump, apparently seated in the Oval Office, said. “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.”
     Setting aside the fact that the idea of “med beds” is a rightwing conspiracy theory – one version of the theory posits that the government and/or a group of wealthy Americans have access to medical bed-like devices that can cure almost every illness, but are withholding the technology – Trump’s post prompted a number of questions.

    Did Trump, 79, believe that the video really showed him announcing med bed hospitals? Does the president think he gave a speech about med beds at the White House? Does he believe that his government is about to send "med bed cards" to every US citizen?

   The post was ultimately deleted, but it remains baffling, and the White House's response did little to allay the confusion.

• Hundreds of Thousands of Anonymous Deportees

   (Caitlin Dickerson, The Atlantic, 11-9-25)

   Amid the president’s fast-moving deportation campaign, the stories of most people being swept up are missed.

 
• They Came to the U.S. Legally. Then Trump Stripped Their Status Away.

   (video, 41 min., Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, ProPublica,12-10-25)

“Status: Venezuelan,” a new documentary from ProPublica filmmaker Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, follows a family trying to hold on to their legal status as the second Trump administration targets Venezuelans amid an immigration crackdown.

 

Early signs of trouble, and yet he was re-elected:
• Unthinkable: 50 Moments That Define an Improbable Presidency (Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief, The Atlantic)

• The Deplorable Trump List (American Federation of Teachers, 2016)  The ten worst things about the Donald, proving he's unfit to be president.
• President Trump’s worst offenses (Citizens for Ethics, 10-19-2020) Some of the most consequential categories and instances of corruption we have seen from this president and his administration during his first term.
• Chronicling Trump’s 10 worst abuses of power (CNN, 1-24-21)