New underpinnings
I posited a few posts back that the new theme of this blog is going to be philanthropy under fascism. I wasn't joking. What follows is a random set of thoughts about 1) "evidence" of this frame, examples. What I need to get to is 2) ways in which the frame helps make sense of the attacks, 3) ways in which the frame isn't useful, and 4) ways in which it might help efforts to anticipate what's coming next.
There's likely to be a lot of posts like this coming up - I've got to think this through as publicly as possible for it to make any sense to me. Please join in the conversation.
So the Johnson rule (keeping politics off of religious pulpits) is dead and gone. Expect massive exploitation of this by fundamentalist groups for both influence and dark money maneuvering.
BTW - the timing of this announcement and the sense that the issue was just dropped into the world as a fete accompli, despite being an issue that would, in any other administration, be viewed as a major policy concern by the sector - makes me think this is one more way in which the 2026 elections are being subverted before our very eyes.
The continuation of tax exempt status is being asked as an existential question.
We know the IRS is now sharing data with Homeland Security. We know Palantir now has access to all of the data across government departments, regardless of whether they bother to respect any legal firewalls required between data sets. We know they've just put $100s billion into a national police infrastructure focused on deporting everyone who is not White and Christian.
We SHOULD understand by now - see the above paragraph - that the continued use of commercial AI tools and data generation is one way this growing surveillance system will entangle civil society. The government-funded, corporate-built surveillance system aimed at everyone will use its money, its influence, and its control of the digital infrastructure to observe, co-opt, threaten all of its data sources (e.g. users).
The tech-fascist driven movement for autocracy has become very visible in two ways - it seems to be rising in influence and awareness of its influence seems to be on the rise. Agree/disagree? Does it matter?
When they gut the rule of law from the inside out.
Theda Skocpol lays out the evil "workaround" Stephen Miller seems to have identified and implemented.
Everything I'm learning from this group: https://democratic-erosion.org/
AI has been unleashed on people in the U.S. - without evidence of accuracy, and with no regulatory regimes to resist its discriminatory effects - in education, healthcare, across the federal government's massive data sets to eliminate funding and jobs, and as a replacement for entire stretches of professional career ladders. Government investment in surveillance technology will make the last few years' worth of AI hype look puny. It's hard to make the case that this Administration will place any limits on the indiscriminate use of AI as a mechanism against "waste, fraud, and abuse" and to justify continued cuts to the federal workforce at the same time more errors will occur and more people will suffer.
This is what my head does on the rare days that it can think at all. Because of my health, it's taken me days to write this down; it will be days before I can think about this again. If you see any patterns in the above, disagree with the frame, have other resources, have any good news to share or otherwise want to engage about this, feel free to reply in the comments. This has to be a conversation, I can't do this by myself.