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cbabe

cbabe's Journal
cbabe's Journal
March 25, 2025

Pentagon email ordered staff not to use Signal week before bombshell war plans report

https://www.rawstory.com/pete-hegseth-signal/

Pentagon email ordered staff not to use Signal week before bombshell war plans report

Travis Gettys
March 25, 2025 1:39PM ET

Pentagon employees were notified as recently as a week ago not to use Signal for government communications due to security risks.

NPR's Tom Bowman reported Tuesday that all agency employees received an email a week before warning about vulnerabilities in the encrypted app, which was used by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other leading national security officials to discuss war plans on March 15, with a journalist added to the group chat by national security adviser Mike Waltz, perhaps unknowingly.

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March 24, 2025

New Mexico passes bill to provide 'turquoise' safety alert when Indigenous people go missing

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/new-mexico-turquoise-alert-1.7490125

New Mexico passes bill to provide 'turquoise' safety alert when Indigenous people go missing

Bill is in response to high rates of disappearances and killings

The Associated Press · Posted: Mar 21, 2025 12:56 PM PDT | Last Updated: March 21

A bill that would create a "turquoise" safety alert system for missing Native Americans in New Mexico has been endorsed by the state legislature.

A vote of the state Senate without opposition Thursday sent the rapid response initiative to New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who supports the proposal.

The bill responds to a troubling number of disappearances and killings in Indian Country and would allow law enforcement to quickly share information about Native Americans who go missing.



California, Washington and Colorado have similar alert systems, according to the New Mexico Department of Indian Affairs. Arizona lawmakers are considering their own alert system as the brutal death of San Carlos Apache teenager Emily Pike reverberates through Native American communities.

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March 24, 2025

One man's viral airport dance inspires routines around the world

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/one-man-viral-airport-dance-181019711.html

One man’s viral airport dance inspires routines around the world

Hannah Sampson, (c) 2025 , The Washington Post
Sat, March 22, 2025 at 11:10 AM PDT
5 min read



Barbie Smith Simons, a retired project manager from Madison, Wisconsin, watched McGrath’s original video “over and over” after she first saw it. Her feed kept delivering more.

“They were all really good dancers,” said Simons, 60, who is not a trained dancer. “And I was like, well, I want to do it.”

Coming home from a trip in February, she took her shot at Denver International Airport. With her sister recording and her smile wide, she whipped her carry-on around dramatically and tossed a shoe onto the carpet before hopping in a circle on one foot and launching into a cartwheel.

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(Maybe someone can find and post dance links?)
March 24, 2025

Another disappeared by ice: Green Card Holder Who Has Been in US for 50 Years Detained by ICE

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/content/ar-AA1BsQhU

Green Card Holder Who Has Been in US for 50 Years Detained by ICE

Story by Mandy Taheri

Lewelyn Dixon, a green card holder who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines five decades ago, is being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Washington state, her niece Emily Cristobal told Newsweek via email on Saturday.


Trump has said that most detentions and deportations would target individuals with criminal records. However, in recent weeks, there have been multiple reports of people with valid documentation and no criminal convictions being detained for deportation.

What To Know

Cristobal told Newsweek that her 64-year-old aunt, who she calls "Aunty Lyn," was "first detained by Customs Border Patrol on February 28 and was being held at SEA-TAC [Seattle-Tacoma International] airport." She was returning from a trip to the Philippines. Dixon immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines when she was 14.


On March 2, Dixon was "transferred to the Northwest ICE Detention Facility." The Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), which is privately owned by the GEO Group, holds over 1,500 detainees, and has been open since 2004.



A spokesperson for University of Washington Medicine told Newsweek: "We can confirm that Lewelyn Dixon is currently employed by the University of Washington. We do not have further detailed information at this time."



Cristobal said Dixon's earliest scheduled hearing is set for July 17 at 2:30 p.m.

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(Geo group making the bucks.)



March 22, 2025

Missing Native women erased: activists reel as Trump administration removes crucial missing Indigenous peoples report

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/trump-missing-murdered-indigenous-peoples-report-removed

A slap in the face’: activists reel as Trump administration removes crucial missing Indigenous peoples report.
The Not Invisible Act Commission’s resource was historic for Native Americans. It’s now been scrubbed from federal websites

Adria R Walker
Thu 20 Mar 2025 13.27 EDT

One such page is the Not Invisible Act Commission’s final report from November 2023. The Not Invisible Act Commission was mandated by bipartisan legislation and signed into law by Trump himself. The report was a collaboration between the justice department and the interior department to address, document and respond to the missing and murdered Indigenous peoples (MMIP) crisis, in which Indigenous communities experience disproportionate rates of abduction, assault and murder. Accurate statistics about the MMIP and missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) crises can be limited and dated, but, as of 2019, homicide was the third most common cause of death for Indigenous girls aged 15 to 19 and Indigenous women aged 20 to 24.

The Not Invisible Act Commission’s final report was a culmination of seven in-person field hearings held across the country and a one-day virtual national hearing. Nearly 600 people attended the hearings and 260 people, including survivors, victims, family members, advocates and law enforcement gave testimony to the commission. As a result of those hearings, the commission issued its final report of recommendations to address the crisis.

Having a resource like the Not Invisible Act Commission’s final report provided Indigenous people and governments, as well as federal, state and local branches of the US government, with data and suggestions on how to reduce the crises. The act itself was historic, not only because it shed light on an issue that Indian Country has faced for decades, but also because it was the first bill that was introduced and passed by four Indigenous US congressional members.

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March 21, 2025

Naked Kennedy Center Staffer Rips 'Villainous Liar' Trump and 'Nazi Wannabe' Musk

https://www.commondreams.org/news/tavish-forsyth

Naked Kennedy Center Staffer Rips 'Villainous Liar' Trump and 'Nazi Wannabe' Musk

"I have called Trump out on his bullshit and dare him to fire me for being unapologetically queer, and critical, for showing up everyday in my best red lip and woke gender ideology that says don't fuck with me."

BRETT WILKINS
Mar 20, 2025
"Walk away or fight?"

That's what one program director at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. asked in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's bigoted attacks on racial, religious, and sexual minorities—and the artist literally bared all of himself while mulling the question.

"Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center, and that's a place where I work. He has banned drag performers from its stages. And as the saying goes, 'we're all born naked and the rest is drag," Tavish Forsyth, the associate artistic lead for the Kennedy Center's Opera Institute, said in a YouTube video, wearing nothing but an 8-bit rainbow-striped heart digitally superimposed over his groin.


Calling Trump a "villainous liar," Forsyth asked: "Does staying make me a collaborator or somehow complicit in a hostile government takeover that is systematically targeting the rights, livelihood and liberty of poor people, queer people, Black, brown people, people of color, immigrants, Muslims, victims in war-torn countries, ethnic cleansing, women... Gosh when I put it like that, it seems kind of obvious: Fuck Donald Trump and fuck the Kennedy Center. But, on the other hand, is staying holding the line and living to fight another day?"

Forsyth called Trump's move to install himself as the head of Kennedy Center's board "surprising, because he seemed so busy draining dams, damning alliances, siding with killers, endorsing genocide, erasing trans and queer people from history, deporting people who have every right to live in a land of immigrants—a stolen land—and doing everything in his goddam power to seem like a big tough man while Nazi wannabe [Elon] Musk, systematically erodes the government while selling Cybertrucks to the next generation of American war criminals."

"And now that I've said all this shit, people will name me radical, crazy, Antifa, terrorist, pot-smoking, faggot, hippie, whatever the fuck," Forsyth continued. "I also fear that I make myself unemployable. To which I also say, 'Fuck it!' If I'm unemployable, then let it be because I chose to be unrulable. Let it be because I choose me, my beloved family, and stand in solidarity with communities that equally deserve to be free."

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(oh theatre people. So dramatic. .. nice.)



March 19, 2025

Jackie Robinson erased: Article on Jackie Robinson's military career removed from defense department website

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/mar/19/jackie-robinson-article-removed-department-defense

Article on Jackie Robinson’s military career removed from defense department website

Guardian sport
Wed 19 Mar 2025 08.26 EDT

An article history detailing Jackie Robinson’s military career has seemingly been taken down on the Department of Defense’s website as a purge of articles considered to be related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) continues.

Robinson, who Donald Trump last month described as helping “drive our country forward to greatness”, is widely considered a national hero in the US. He broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when he suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers; he went on to be elected to his sport’s Hall of Fame. Robinson also served in the US Army during the second world war. However, on Tuesday night ESPN’S Jeff Passan noted a page detailing Robinson’s army career had been taken down and “dei” added to the URL.



Defense department spokesperson Sean Parnell has defended the removals. “I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this – that anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is, is frankly, incorrect,” Parnell said.

Robinson had a striking military career. After a successful battle to train as an officer, Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1943 and assigned to a tank regiment. However, in 1944 the driver of an army bus ordered Robinson to sit at the back, a directive Robinson refused. Robinson was court martialed and acquitted, then served as an athletics coach before being honorably discharged in November 1944.

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March 19, 2025

Medgar Evers erased: Trump once hailed WWII vet Medgar Evers as a 'great American hero.'

https://mississippitoday.org/2025/03/17/wwii-vet-medgar-evers-erased-from-arlington-cemetery-website/

Trump once hailed WWII vet Medgar Evers as a ‘great American hero.’ Now the U.S. Army has erased him from a section on the Arlington National Cemetery website
Avatar photo
by Jerry Mitchell
March 17, 2025

World War II veteran Medgar Evers, whom President Trump called “a great American hero,” has been erased from the Arlington National Cemetery website, which featured a section honoring Black Americans who fought in the nation’s wars.

The U.S. Army purged the section that had lauded the late Army sergeant and civil rights leader, who was assassinated by a white supremacist in Jackson in 1963. The decision to erase Evers came after an executive order by Trump to eliminate all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programs.

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