Letters from an American - April 11, 2025

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

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April 11th, 2025. On April 4th, Trump fired head of U.S. Cyber Command, or Cybercom, and director of the National Security Agency, or NSA, General Timothy Hoff, apparently on the recommendation of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is pitching her new opposition research firm to vet candidates for jobs in Trump's administration. Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in Newsweek yesterday that the position Hoff held is one of the most sensitive and powerful jobs in America.

Kendall writes that NSA and cybercom oversee the world's most sophisticated tools and techniques to penetrate computer systems, monitor communications around the globe, and if national security requires it, attack those systems. US law drastically curtailed how those tools can be used in the US and against American citizens and businesses. Will a Trump loyalist follow those laws? Kendall writes, every American should view this development with alarm. Just after 2 a.m. Eastern Time this morning, the Senate confirmed retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan Cain,

who goes by the nickname Raisin, for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 60 to 25. U.S. law requires the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, or the Commander of a unified or specified combatant command. Although Cain has 34 years of military experience, he did not serve in any of the required positions. The law provides that the president can waive the requirement if the president determines such action is necessary in

the national interest and he has apparently done so for Cain. The politicization of the US military by filling it with Trump loyalists is now, as Kendall writes, indisputable. The politicization of data is also indisputable. Billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGEE, claims to be saving Americans money, but the Wall Street Journal reported today that effort has been largely a failure, despite today's announcement of devastating cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that monitors our weather. But what Doggie is really doing is burrowing into Americans' data.

The first people to be targeted by that data collection appear to be undocumented immigrants. Jason Kobler of 404 Media reported on Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has been using a database that enables officials to search for people by filtering for hundreds of different, highly specific categories, including scars or tattoos, bankruptcy filings, social security number, hair color, and race. The system, called Investigative Case Management, or ICM, was created by billionaire Peter Thiel's software company Palantir, which in 2022 signed a $95.9 million contract with the government to develop ICM.

Three Trump officials told Sophia Kai of Politico that doggy staffers embedded in agencies across the government are expanding government cooperation with immigration officials using the information they're gleaning from government databases to facilitate deportation. On Tuesday, doggy software engineer E Aram Moghadasi sent the first 6,300 names of individuals whose temporary legal status had just been cancelled. On the list, which Moghadasi said covered those on the terror watch list or with FBI criminal records, were eight minors, including one 13-year-old. The Social Security Administration worked with the administration to get those people to self-deport by adding them to the agency's death master file.

That file is supposed to track people whose death means they should no longer receive benefits. Adding to it people the administration wants to erase is financial murder. Former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O'Malley told Alexandra Berzon, Hamid Aliaziz, Nicholas Nehomaz, Ryan Mack, and Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times. Those people will not be able to use credit cards or banks. On Tuesday, Acting Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, Commissioner Melanie Krauss resigned after the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security agreed

to share sensitive taxpayer data with immigration authorities. Undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes, in part to demonstrate their commitment to citizenship, and the government has promised immigrants that it would not use that information for immigration enforcement. Until now, the IRS has protected sensitive taxpayer information. Renee Marsh and Marshall Cohen of CNN note that multiple senior career IRS officials refused to sign the data sharing agreement with DHS, which will enable HHS officials to ask the IRS for names and addresses of people they suspect are undocumented because of grave concerns about its legality. Ultimately, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant signed the agreement with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Krauss was only one of several senior career officials leaving the IRS, raising concerns among

those staying that there is no longer a defense against the potential unlawful use of taxpayer data by the Trump administration. Makena Kelly of Wired reported today that for the past three days, doggy staffers have been working with representatives from Palantir and career engineers from the IRS in a giant hackathon. Their goal is to build a system that will be able to access all IRS records, including names, addresses, job data, and Social Security numbers, that can then be compared with data from other agencies. But the administration's attempt to automate deportation is riddled with errors. Last night the government sent threatening emails to US citizens, green card holders and even a

Canadian in Canada terminating your parole and giving them seven days to leave the US. One Massachusetts-born immigration lawyer asked on social media does anyone know if you can get Italian citizenship through great-grandparents? The government is not keen to correct its errors. On March 15, the government rendered to prison in El Salvador a legal U.S. resident, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom the courts had ordered the U.S. not to send to El Salvador, where his life was in danger. The government has admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because

of administrative error, but now claims without evidence that he is a member of the MS-13 gang and that his return to the U.S. would threaten the public. Abrego Garcia says he is not a gang member and notes that he has never been charged with a crime. On April 4th, U.S. District Court Judge Paul O'Shenes ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 1159 p.m. on April 7th. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9-0 decision yesterday, saying the government must facilitate Abrego Garcia's release, but asked the district court to clarify what

it meant by effectuate, noting that it must give due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. The Supreme Court also ordered that the government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospects of further steps. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained what happened next. Judge Sheenis ordered the government to file an update by 9.30 a.m. today, explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do.

She planned an in-person hearing at 1 p.m. The administration made it clear it did not intend to comply. It answered that the judge had not given them enough time to answer, and suggested that it would delay over the Supreme Court's instruction that Sheenis must show deference to the president's ability to conduct foreign affairs. Sheenis gave the government until 1130 and said she would still hold the hearing. The government submitted its filing at about 1215 saying that Abrego Garcia is in the custody of a foreign sovereign. But at the one o'clock hearing, as Anna Bauer of Lawfare reported,

the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and that the government had done nothing to get him back. Ensign said he might have answers by next Tuesday. Sheenis says they will have to give an update tomorrow. A Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently warned if the administration can take non-citizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.

Indeed, both President Trump and White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt have proposed that very thing. Tonight Trump signed a memorandum to the Secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security calling for a military mission for sealing the southern border of the United States and repelling invasions. The memorandum creates a military buffer zone along the border so that any migrant crossing would be trespassing on a US military base. This would allow active-duty soldiers to hold migrants until ICE agents take them. By April 20th,

the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security are supposed to report to the President whether they think he should invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to enable him to use the military to aid in mass deportations. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.