The Signal chat seems to be evidence of a war crime, right?
Given the lack of urgency and predictable civilian deaths, does the Signal chat not constitute a war crime!? Does this leaked conversation provide the proof?
Posts in: DC
We’re getting snowed but I don’t mean the weather.
Tuesday’s rally outside the Treasury Department building, along 15th Street NW between F and G.
Yesterday outside the Department of Labor
The blowback is going to come in all forms
A neighbor, whose org is largely funded by USAID, shared that they laid-off 70% of their staff and they who remain are there to close-up shop. The web site is reduced to a splash page. They helped farmers farm better and more sustainably, adopting new technology and adapting to new environments, enabled locally-controlled economic development and community banking, implemented clean water and sanitation programs, and facilitated medical services capacity building.
USAID shutdown reportedly styming anti-human trafficking direct service efforts
I worked for nearly a decade with the organization that currently runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. I do not know the current specific details, but I believe it and am saddened by this news. I and my team supported some efforts to engage with some of the international partners alluded to if not mentioned in this reporting. I have all kinds of feelings about the space (and Polaris's unfortunate support for some very flawed legislation in the US), and I do not have an uncritical view of USAID, but it pains me to understand the many ways people just trying to help people are being crippled, seized-up and disrupted.
I’ve kind of been at a loss, frozen and watching the horror show. Keeping a link log of the wretched developments but not publishing it. So far there are just my trite-and-sometimes cathartic reactions on social spaces. Not sure I have anything useful to add. Girding myself.
Snow day!
Alternative Capitol Hill sledding location at Eastern High School with the U.S. Capitol locked-down for election certification.
I hear the ghost of Ed Sullivan: “We have a very big shew today!”
50F
This is the first 50f morning for me this year that sustained long enough for me to be awake, not have immediate intervening responsibilities, such that I can meet it on the stoop with coffee in hand. If I controlled the global thermostat every morning should be 50f, but… never mind seasons—2 decades of notable climate shifts means there will be many fewer of these in my life at this latitude than I’d have assumed.