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digiphile.bsky.social
Alexander Howard
@digiphile.bsky.social
19K followers 1.2K following 7.1K posts
Dad, writer, cyclist, citizen, cereal dilettante. Advocate for freedom of information, open governance, & democracy. Lover of the Oxford Comma, hater of hubris. Recovering journalist. Trying to move carefully, & fix things. https://civic-texts.ghost.io
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digiphile.bsky.social
Alexander Howard @digiphile.bsky.social · Jun 23
Good morning from DC 🥵

If we need to connect:
🤳 Signal: digiphile.97
💡📲 civic-texts.ghost.io
📧 alex@governing.digital
🐦 X.com/digiphile
🧵 threads.net/@digiphile
🐘 mastodon.social/@digiphile
📇 linkedin.com/in/alexanderbhoward
👍 facebook.com/alexhoward
📸 instagr.am/digiphile
🖥️ youtube.com/digiphile
Scan for Signal https://signal.me/#eu/fHRMT1WY3aPfBVNVm-_aoT_YBCTUoIbGO2tZ6x-mw4Ocz89wzTVLf4JuJBQjs0Fj
Reposted by Alexander Howard
malwarejake.bsky.social
Just wow. @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy came out swinging in this article. He's right though and that's the coolest part.
In 2026, countries that want to win the trade war have a unique historical possibility: They could repeal their “anticircumvention” laws, which make it illegal—a felony, in many cases—to modify devices and services without permission from their manufacturers. Over the past two decades, the office of the US Trade Representative–which is responsible for developing and coordinating US international trade, commodity, and direct investment policy—has pressured most of the world into adopting these laws, hamstringing foreign startups that might compete with Apple (by providing a jailbreaking kit that installs a third-party app store), or Google (by blocking tracking on Android devices), or Amazon (by converting Kindle and Audible files to formats that work on rival apps), or John Deere (by disabling the systems that block third-party repairs), or the Big Three automakers (by decoding the encrypted error messages mechanics need to service our cars). The rents that these digital locks help American companies extract run to hundreds of billions of dollars every single year. The world’s governments agreed to protect this racket in exchange for tariff-free access to American markets. Now that the US has reneged on its side of the bargain, these laws serve no useful purpose.
December 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
Historic malapropism by @AP.org: “A Defense Department official, who insisted on animosity to discuss details not made public,” claimed the U.S. worked with Nigerian government to carry out air strikes today.

TLDR: President Trump bombed another nation on Christmas, without Congress declaring war.
Trump says US struck Islamic State targets in Nigeria after group targeted Christians
President Donald Trump says he launched a “powerful and deadly" U.S. strike against Islamic State forces in Nigeria, after spending weeks accusing the government there of failing to rein in the persec...
apnews.com
December 26, 2025 at 1:45 AM
digiphile.bsky.social
Merry Christmas ☕️🎄🎁 to everyone celebrating this morning around the United States and the world. 🌎

May you and yours find peace, community, and kindness today.🕊️

Much love and light to everyone who’s missing family, wherever you are. May you be blessed by their memories.🌟
December 25, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
larryglickman.bsky.social
This is not a “duel,” which suggests both sides are equally culpable, but the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s ideological war on Harvard and higher education.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/u...
In Private Letters, Harvard and Trump Administration Escalate Duel
www.nytimes.com
December 25, 2025 at 11:49 AM
digiphile.bsky.social
“We can neither confirm nor deny any incidents with a ‘jolly old elf’ who engaged in unlawful surveillance & breaking & entering on hundreds of millions of Americans over the past two and a half centuries.” #Satire
Asking the FBI to Release the Santa Files
Podcast Episode · Disclosure · 12/16/2025 · 38m
podcasts.apple.com
December 25, 2025 at 1:42 AM
digiphile.bsky.social
Per @axios.com, @whitehouse-47.bsky.social took control of @TheJusticeDept & is using it like @RapidResponse47, further eroding public confidence in USG accounts as nonpartisan, trustworthy sources of info.
Congress should confirm & check partisan abuses of official accounts by taxpayer-funded staff
December 24, 2025 at 11:05 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
“Not everything Jeffrey Epstein got away with can or should be laid at Trump’s door. But Congress has passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, & Trump’s DOJ is violating it, flagrantly.”— @joycewhitevance.bsky.social
The Justice Department is supposed to be for the People— not for POTUS or Trump
Which Side Is DOJ on: The Epstein Files
With apologies for writing about such a serious topic as we enter the Christmas holidays, these developments seemed too important to ignore.
joycevance.substack.com
December 24, 2025 at 10:48 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
WSJ: “the ham-handed publication process” of the #EpsteinFiles “is sowing further doubts among the public” about the Trump administration’s “commitment to full transparency as well as its competence at handling the unwieldy & unprecedented task.” whatsnews.cmail19.com/t/d-l-girlrk...
DOJ Finds a Million More Epstein Files It Needs to Review
Officials seek emergency recruits to work through Christmas and warn they need a ‘few more weeks’ to check documents.
whatsnews.cmail19.com
December 24, 2025 at 10:40 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
“While cloud forest today is the most widely used term, in some regions, these ecosystems or special types of cloud forests are called mossy forest, elfin forest, montane thicket, and dwarf cloud forest.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_f...
Moss and lichen on a tree branch White-tailed deer 🦌 in snow Two people walking into the woods with snow falling
December 24, 2025 at 8:00 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
I’ve been dreaming of white Christmas. This morning, it’s looking increasingly likely that we will wake up to one tomorrow, with more snow to come. Yay. ⛄️🎄❄️
December 24, 2025 at 6:00 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
President Trump just asked Americans to tell him if we would like him to resign to take a job as the “full-time” MC at the Kennedy Honors.

If you wish to petition him, you can call the (currently unlisted) White House comment phone line (202-456-1111) or use the online form: whitehouse.gov/contact/
December 23, 2025 at 8:41 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
Records disclosed on Monday by The United States Department of Justice after Congress mandated more transparency for the #EpsteinFiles include a 2020 email from a prosecutor stating President Donald J. Trump was a passenger at least 8 times in the 1990s.
December 23, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
upshot.nytimes.com
On DOGE’s watch, federal spending did not go down at all. It went up. But is still led to cuts that closed offices, canceled programs and deprived people of food, medicine and other aid.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...
How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?
www.nytimes.com
December 23, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
brendannyhan.bsky.social
"the researchers found that withdrawing support for rapidly advancing mRNA vaccine technology could result in over 49,000 preventable deaths annually among patients diagnosed with four major cancers"
yalesph.bsky.social Yale School of Public Health @yalesph.bsky.social · 3d
A new report from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have devastating health and economic consequences for the nation.
New report sounds alarm on health fallout from mRNA vaccine funding cuts
A new report from the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have
ysph.yale.edu
December 23, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
bubbaprog.xyz
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5
December 23, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
ninajankowicz.com
“If the truth of the operation does not match the narrative of the ‘worst of the worst,’ it’s going to be killed," said a DHS official.
drewharwell.com Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 3d
New: We obtained thousands of internal chat messages from the ICE team creating viral videos of raids and "EPIC takedowns."

A scramble to satisfy the White House and "feed the beast" spawned a new "propaganda" machine, current and former officials told us.

"It's a war!"

wapo.st/4s6YnC5
‘It’s a war’: Inside ICE’s media machine
Thousands of internal ICE messages show how its public affairs team has coordinated with the White House to satisfy Trump administration demands for viral arrest videos
wapo.st
December 23, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Even BILL CLINTON is saying he doesn’t care if the full release of the files implicates Bill Clinton. Amazing.
zenofdesign.com Damion Schubert @zenofdesign.com · 3d
Bill Clinton releasing a statement saying 'release the Epstein files, you cowards' was not on my bingo list.
December 23, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
adamserwer.bsky.social
The right, along the Roberts Court, is trying to nullify the Reconstruction amendments guaranteeing equality under the law, in order to restore the Antebellum Constitution, which envisions “liberty” as an eternal aristocracy of race and class (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
When the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson asked why “we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes,” he was identifying no mere contradiction, but liberty as it was imagined by men who owned other human beings as property. Slaveholders such as John Calhoun saw slavery as inseparable from their own freedom, and they worried that the false doctrine of abolitionism would eliminate that freedom away. “Already it has taken possession of the pulpit, of the schools, and, to a considerable extent, of the press; those great instruments by which the mind of the rising generation will be formed,” Calhoun said. (It seems the “woke mind virus” was telling lies about the great and benevolent institution of American slavery as far back as two centuries ago.) Defending slavery, however, required invasive uses of power, such as banning antislavery literature and returning escaped Black people to bondage. Many white Americans in the 19th century began to understand that the “Slave Power” curtailed their freedoms as well. And this is what many people forget: Systems of domination rarely spread their blessings widely. The Redemption-era revocation of Black freedoms didn’t result in prosperity for white people writ large, but a Gilded Age in which the upper classes gained unfathomable wealth and economic crises left millions destitute. The nation may have held on to white supremacy, but it also got low wages, a threadbare welfare state, and a society dominated by the rich. Everyone else was too divided by race and class to challenge them.
December 22, 2025 at 1:11 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
Corporate Democrats are inaccurate in describing progressives as “far-left,” @mkraju.bsky.social: As you know, there are no elected Communists (far-left) in Congress.

Rep. AOC, Sen. Sanders, & Mayor-Elect Mamdani are center-left, globally.

In European politics, social democrats, in a Green Party.
‘They’re attacking their own’: DC Democrats irked by surge of left-wing challengers with House majority on the line | CNN Politics
When Rep. Dan Goldman first ran for Congress in 2022, he was cheered on the left as the party’s top lawyer during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
www.cnn.com
December 21, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
aclu.org
Reclassifying marijuana is a welcome step toward aligning federal policy with science, evidence, and the reality of its legalization in many states.

We still need to fully legalize marijuana nationwide and to get justice for the communities harmed by the disastrous war on drugs.
Trump signs executive order fast-tracking reclassification of marijuana
The order does not legalize marijuana, but reclassification would allow the FDA to study it for medical purposes.
www.nbcnews.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
normative.bsky.social
I spent some 15 years arguing against the post-9/11 expansion of surveillance authorities. I was routinely told I was paranoid because robust layers of checks guaranteed the political abuses of the Hoover era could never happen again.
willoremus.com Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 7d
Since 9/11, federal agents have gained broad powers to surveil Americans in the name of counterterrorism, including via FBI "assessments" that come w/ little oversight & allow agents to cast a wide net as they try to build cases for further investigation. Now they're explicitly targeting the left.
The federal government has broad powers to surveil individuals and groups for terrorism investigations, especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The FBI and its partner agencies have many commercial tools, from facial recognition software to license plate and mobile phone location tracking databases to drones that record high-definition video. They are also able to conduct wiretaps, hack into phones remotely and conduct undercover investigations with approval. Government agencies are sharing more data with each other than in years past. The Post has reported that more IRS information has been made available to immigration authorities, though that has been challenged in court, and DHS has sought information from health and transport agencies as well. Bondi’s memo, which implements a strategy laid out by the president in September, has drawn strong criticism from some scholars, lawmakers and former officials. They say it gives the Justice Department a broad remit to surveil and interrogate progressive political activists, anti-ICE protesters, non-Christians, feminists, the LGBTQ community and others. “It’s a pretty damn dangerous document,” said former FBI agent Michael Feinberg, who is now a senior editor at Lawfare, of Bondi’s memorandum. “It’s dangerous in the sense that it is directed at a specific ideology, namely the left, without offering much evidence as to why that is necessary. And it’s also dangerous in the sense that it’s ignoring the lion’s share of nihilistic violent extremists.”
December 19, 2025 at 12:49 AM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
willoremus.com
Trump's DOJ has been ordered to embark on a sweeping crackdown on "left-wing domestic terrorism." Civil liberties experts warn it could lead to a level of politicized FBI surveillance of Americans not seen since the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO.

Our story today: wapo.st/3L9lpr4 (gift link)
Trump administration prepares sweeping crackdown on leftist networks
The Justice Department’s program to root out violent “Antifa” extremism is raising First Amendment concerns.
wapo.st
December 18, 2025 at 4:51 PM
digiphile.bsky.social
After many years of absence, they’re rebuilding the classic carousel on the National Mall, just in time for our nation’s 250th birthday. It’s a jewel of American history, heritage, culture, & art that closed in March 2020 & left a void since. Glad to see rebirth.
www.smithsonian.com/carousel/#:~....
Photo of the construction site for the carousel on the national Mall in Washington DC
December 19, 2025 at 12:37 AM
digiphile.bsky.social
10+ mile hike in Rock Creek Park & all the way back to the Hill. The dogs loved it. I need a hot shower & ibuprofen. Walking out stress & grief outside helps, especially in balmy weather. Proud I didn’t fall down fording a mostly frozen creek. Glad I saw our Capitol city decked out for the holidays.
December 18, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by Alexander Howard
jeisinger.bsky.social
NEW: Humanitarian officials staged a last-minute plea to Trump officials at their fancy hotel to re-start food aid $ for a huge refugee camp in Kenya.

The Trumpers blew it off and babies starved.

@annamaria.bsky.social & Brett Murphy

www.propublica.org/article/keny...
December 17, 2025 at 12:36 PM