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I’m still recovering from staying up till midnight for Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl [ [link removed] ] drop, but here’s the real playlist they don’t want you to hear: the glitz of tough talk on stage, the rot behind the curtain, and the same cronies cashing out.
Let’s hit play. ☕️ Covfefe: (Olivia’s Version)
1. FBI Dumps Hate Trackers, Extremists Cheer
In just one week, FBI Director Kash Patel cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), two organizations that for decades have done the painstaking work of tracking white supremacists, antisemitic groups, and far-right militias. The SPLC mapped hate groups across the country. The ADL trained police to recognize extremist symbols and warned when movements were spreading. Their data has saved lives.
This isn’t theoretical. Hate crimes are surging. Political violence is no longer a “what if”; it’s here. White nationalist groups are openly recruiting. Antisemitism hit record highs last year. Walking away from the very groups with the most profound expertise in monitoring these networks doesn’t make the threat disappear. It just blinds us to it.
🚨 FBI severs ties with ADL & SPLC: Axios [ [link removed] ]
2. Hackers Say Thank You, Washington
The government shutdown isn’t just about missed paychecks and shuttered offices; it also compromises America’s cyber defenses during active attacks. At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the agency responsible for protecting critical infrastructure, 65% of the workforce is currently furloughed. Insiders say investigations into two major hacks this week, a mass extortion campaign tied to an Oracle database breach and a leak of Red Hat coding data, are running on fumes. “Instead of three people working on something, it’s down to just one,” one staffer said.
Additionally, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 has expired. For ten years, it protected companies that shared threat data with the government. Without it, lawyers will now second-guess disclosures, slowing down the very pipeline of real-time intelligence that helps stop attacks before they spread. “This is a very litigious society,” one expert warned. “Companies will think twice before speaking up.” And while Washington stumbles, new threats continue to emerge. Security researchers flagged a dangerous new Android trojan, Klopatra [ [link removed] ], disguised as a VPN/IPTV app. Once installed, it hijacks accessibility permissions to drain bank accounts, steal crypto, and even operate phones with the screen off. It has already been upgraded dozens of times and has been installed on thousands of devices.
The picture is clear: a shutdown-weakened CISA, an expired threat-sharing law, and malware evolving in real time. Insiders at the agency say it’s only “a matter of time before something major happens.”
💻 Shutdown leaves U.S. exposed to cyberattacks: Forbes [ [link removed] ]
3. Big Brother Writes Your Out-of-Office
At the Education Department, furloughed staff found their auto-replies rewritten with partisan language blaming Democrats for the shutdown. Here’s the creepy part, when employees tried to fix them, the language switched back. Need to file a complaint? The Inspector General’s site is offline thanks to the shutdown.
If this had happened while I was still in government, I would have been freaking out. Hello, Hatch Act anyone? This is a plot straight out of Orwell. Speaking of Orwell, I hope you caught my recent interview with filmmaker Raoul Peck [ [link removed] ], which aired earlier this week. More on that soon…
🖥️ Federal Government auto-replies turned into propaganda: AP News [ [link removed] ]
4. Afghan Women’s Last Hope Goes Dark
First, the Taliban ordered universities to pull 140 books written by women—erasing their voices from the curriculum alongside bans on human rights, gender studies, and even midwifery. Now, they’ve gone further: a nationwide internet shutdown has severed Afghan women’s last lifeline to the outside world. Online classes cut mid-exam. Teachers forced to shut down courses. Students left staring into the void. “Our last hope was online learning. Now that dream has been destroyed,” one young woman said.
As someone who spent time in Afghanistan and went out of my way to know the incredible women there—brilliant, determined, hopeful—this hurts my soul. And let’s be clear: people who want control ban books. Hitler’s Germany burned them. Stalin’s USSR censored them. Mao’s China destroyed them. Now the Taliban are doing the same. Has anyone noticed extremists banning books elsewhere [ [link removed] ]? The playbook doesn’t change, and it’s always a warning sign.
📚 Taliban bans books & shuts down internet for women: BBC [ [link removed] ]
5. Trump’s Argentina Bailout: Billionaire Wins, Taxpayers Lose
This one made my stomach turn.
While government workers are furloughed, wondering when they’ll see their next paycheck, and while mothers brace for losing WIC benefits [ [link removed] ] to feed their children, the Trump administration just pushed through a $20 billion bailout for Argentina that enriches one man: hedge fund billionaire Rob Citrone, a longtime friend of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Here’s the part that’s hard to swallow: we’re told there’s no money for Medicare, Medicaid, or programs that keep families afloat. No money for food, housing, or disaster relief preparation. Yet somehow, billions appear overnight to bail out a foreign economy in a way that lines a billionaire’s pockets. That’s not fiscal responsibility, it’s government for sale. Russ Vought [ [link removed] ] and the Project 2025 crew are salivating to slash what’s left of the safety net—health care, nutrition, education, while Trump rewards cronies and billionaires abroad. It’s not “America First.” It’s Billionaires First. And every American should be asking: whose side are they really on? Our foreign policy now: punish allies and grandstand abroad, but open the vault for cronies. Talk tough, act corrupt.
💸 Trump’s Argentina bailout enriches billionaire pal: Popular Information Substack [ [link removed] ]
🎶 One Thing for Your Soul: The Showgirl Era
If you’ve followed me for a while, you already know I’m a Swiftie. (After all, I was literally warned during Trump 1.0 that I’d get fired if I kept playing Taylor Swift [ [link removed] ] in my office.) In honor of Taylor’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, I want to give a shoutout to Frank. He’s 95, lives at Remington Heights in Omaha, Nebraska and recently started the community’s first Taylor Swift fan club after an occupational therapist introduced him to her music. Now the retirement home is buzzing with senior Swifties in orange, wearing buttons, and blasting Taylor tracks together.
For Frank, it’s more than music; it’s about filling the loneliness after losing his wife, finding joy again, and building a community around something that makes people smile. His dream? To hug Taylor Swift if she ever visits (with Kelce’s permission, of course). Until then, he and his friends are shaking it off and proving you’re never too old to find new joy.
✨ Never too old to be a Swiftie: SAN [ [link removed] ]
Curtain down, espresso up. Until next time,
-Olivia
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