Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 4/2/2025

Clearing | FFA Speakers | Multiple Women | Favorite Slug | TheTrentJames Video | Local Events | Heal Yourself | Village Newsletter | Zimmerer Property | Do Something | Pegged Pants | Yesterday's Catch | Regressive Tariffs | Elvis Fans | Dream Job | Official Language | SS Fairness | Tesla Protests | Barbara Marciano | Cruel World | Ordinary Life | Quentin Experience | Baby Graves | Places | Body Map | Officials Hiding | ICE Raid | Republican Victories | Lead Stories | USA-Mobile | Reporting Terror | Diner | Fascism USA? | Broccoli Bros | Modern China | Cholita

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FEW ISOLATED SHOWERS continue to diminish as a cold upper low progresses south. Clearing and drying will allow for some colder overnight lows. A sharp warmup with building high pressure can be expected for the end of the week, followed by some rain chances. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 42F under clear skies with .11" rainfall this Humpday morning on the coast. Clear skies & cool nights thru Saturday then another shot of light rain Sun - Mon. Will it dry out after that finally?, stay tuned weather fans.

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BETH SWEHLA:

Today was an awesome day! Mariluna and Zoe competed at the California State FFA Speaking Finals in Sacramento.

They are in the top 24, in the state, in their particular contest! Mariluna competed in the Spanish FFA Creed, El Credo.  Zoe competed in the Impromptu Speaking contest.

We are so proud of how they have represented AV FFA!

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MENDOCINO COUNTY'S UNBREAKABLE CIRCLE OF DELUSION

Galina Trefil:

Good news:

Over the last two weeks, multiple women have reached out to tell me that John attempted to abduct them during the 1990s. They recognize his photo.

Bad news:

Over the last two weeks, multiple women have reached out to tell me that John attempted to abduct them during the 1990s. They recognize his photo.

End result: I wasn't wrong. Survivors WILL come forward.

This is all FAR from over. It's just getting started.

What I tell these survivors is this: firstly, I'm so sorry. Secondly, if there was a police report, please contact the department about getting a copy of it. There may be important details on paper that your memory has filtered out. Enough reports can build an M.O. and timeline for John. Thirdly, thank you for your courage. Thank be to G-d that you did not get into that truck. Thank you for now reaching out to voice what happened. It is braver and harder than perhaps everyone acknowledges.

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Simon Dillon

Galina, just to let you know whilst I've recently had an insane amount of stuff I'm dealing with in my own life (though nothing as dramatic as this), I wanted to let you know - publicly - that I think you are 1) exceptionally brave, 2) brilliant, and 3) a hero, especially considering the inevitable counter attacks that have emerged from the woodwork. I can't even begin to comprehend the scale of the burden you've carried, and I'm pleased that other survivors are corroborating your story. From here in the UK, there really isn't much I can do but cheer you on. I'm praying for justice to prevail, and - this is crucial - for you to find peace and closure as well.

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LEAR ASSET MANAGEMENT RESURFACES

Posted by Trent James

This is the first part of a two part video relating to an incident that occurred on February 25th, 2025 in the city of Coeur d' Alene, Idaho, involving a woman by the name of Teresa Borrenpohl, who alleged her first amendment rights were violated and she was kidnapped when she was forcibly removed from a meeting at the local town hall by a security group named Lear Asset Management, which is owned and operated by Paul Trouette.

In this video I go over the incident, provide footage from the incident itself and conduct an interview with Paul Trouette about his experience with everything that transpired. The second part to this video will be uploaded in a couple of days and it involves an article that was written about Lear Asset Management stemming from this incident in Idaho and it involves the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office in Northern California. Since Lear Asset Management has done a lot of security work in the northern part of California over the years.

Idaho Woman Alleges Sheriff and Security Company Violated Her Rights

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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NO, THIS IS NOT SATIRE

Heal Yourself with Polyvagal Nerve Therapy Workshop

Restore Balance, Release Trauma, and Rewire for Resilience

Join us for an immersive Heal Yourself with Polyvagal Nerve Therapy Workshop designed to help you regulate your nervous system, release stored tension, and cultivate deep healing from within.

April 6, 2024

The Shala Mendocino

In this transformative workshop, you will: Understand the Polyvagal Theory and how it impacts your mind-body connection Learn techniques to activate the vagus nerve for deep relaxation and emotional resilience Experience guided breathwork, gentle movement, and self-regulation practices Discover how to shift from stress and overwhelm into safety, connection, and ease

This is an opportunity to heal from within, whether you are dealing with stress, trauma, or simply seeking greater balance and well-being.

Learn more here: https://justinelemos.com/events-39a3V/heal-yourself-with-polyvagal-nerve-therapy

Use the code SPRING25 for $30 off when you sign up today.

Justine Lemos justine@at1yoga.com

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ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: April 2025 Newsletter

Last Month's Gathering: There was a steady stream of folks with lots of Valley treasures; stunning jewelry, lots of pocket watches, rare corkscrews, vintage books, old prints and paintings, silver dollars and more!

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FROM THE ARCHIVE: The Man Who Can't Do Business

by Bruce Anderson (January 2012)

The shy, sandy-haired man doesn’t match the groans and apocalyptic comment his name elicits in the halls of local government. “Total psycho,” says a program administrator. “Most likely to go postal,” another official says. But in the wan winter sun of a rainless December, the man himself, speaking in a soft monotone that he punctuates with rueful chuckles, calmly and sequentially describes the events that he says “have pushed my back to the wall.”

The root of Mr. Tim Zimmerer’s difficulties arise from Mendocino County’s inexplicable re-zone of his busy acre in Redwood Valley, literal feet from the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad tracks and just across the street from Redwood Valley’s industrial park. The train, before it ceased service in 1967, once ran twice a day in both directions from Eureka to southern Marin County; it made regular stops at Zimmerer’s ancient barn fronting School Way. How his parcel came to be re-zoned as residential cannot be explained even by the people who did it, none of whom any longer work with the Mendocino County Department of Planning and Building.

What hasn't been lost is the arbitrariness of that decision because Zimmerer’s acre exists in a preponderantly industrial neighborhood, and always had existed in an industrial neighborhood until somehow the County decided Zimmerer's acre should be zoned residential.

And how about that acre? Where one man sees beauty and utility, another sees a post-industrial jumble — a junkyard — which is how a County code enforcement officer has described the property. Zimmerer argues that what may look like junk to the Planning and Building Department is stored equipment he can either sell, rent or use himself when he works as a contractor specializing in water systems.

“The County tax collector,” Zimmerer indignantly points out, “sees it as money. They audit my taxes every year and charge me one percent on my equipment!”

The County apparently sees no contradiction in making money off Zimmerer's equipment while simultaneously fining him for keeping it on his property.

Zimmerer views his equipment as the means to earn a living, but says every time he tries to practice free enterprise on his acre the County soon appears to shut him down, red tag and fine him. And the fines are mounting while Zimmerer insists he’s the victim of “selective code enforcement. I can show you properties like mine all over the county, right in the middle of vineyards and all kinds of places, and the County leaves them alone.”

The complaints alleging that Mr. Z’s acre is unsightly don’t mention that it isn’t fully visible, and not really visible at all unless you know where to look for it from nearby and heavily traveled School Way. One wonders to whom it is unsightly? One also wonders why, when Zimmerer bought the place, which was then two-and-a-half acres (his daughter bought a piece of it for her home), that it hadn’t been noted that it contained at least 10 abandoned vehicles and some 25 boats but never had been abated. But when Zimmerer built a concealing berm and fence planted in berry bushes on his east side he was red-tagged for violating the County’s fence code. The County said the east barrier was a couple of feet too high.

Zimmerer wants to operate a feed and grain business out of his old barn. Historically, that’s what the barn was used for. Before he bought the property he says, “the County Building Department gave me an engineered drawing, wet-stamped that the County has approved a feed store here. I went to the Savings Bank and showed them what I wanted to do. The bank said it looked very good as a project.” And sold him a mortgage. Zimmerer says he even had someone fly over Redwood Valley to check the neighborhood for animals to see if a feed store was viable in the area. It was. Redwood Valley being semi-rural, and many of its residents keeping farm animals, a feed store would save them the long round-trip to Ukiah for feed and grain.

“But after we bought,” Zimmerer maintains, “the County claimed they’d changed the zoning to residential. I asked the planner if he’s ever seen residences with loading docks, three of them here. My mom’s stepdad used to drive the train. They used to bring feed in and offload it right here. Why the zoning change? I believe it was a direct attack on me. They even duped the tax collector. They had the land listed as industrial.”

And Zimmerer, a man of parts who also holds two contractor’s licenses, believes that the direct attack on his business plans coincided with his departure from the Sheriff’s Department. “I quit but I never really got over the five years I worked at the jail. My badge number was 2470. I bet they’ve gone through at least a hundred people since then.” He goes on to describe several traumatizing experiences he suffered working as a custodial officer, including one that occurred during a power failure when he was locked in a cell with an inmate.

From his harrowing work at the County Jail, Zimmerer applied for and received partial disability status. At his disability hearing Zimmerer was determined to be “63% disabled.” Although the precipitating event, he says, “was a willful safety violation” on the part of the Sheriff's Department for which the County was fined by the state's Occupational and Health Administration, “I have not received any service retirement-related disability,” Zimmerer continues to agitate “for what I am owed.” He is also convinced that the County is retaliating against him for filing a worker's compensation claim for his injury. The County does, however, pay for his doctor and medication.

Mr. Z is an unlikely cop. He seems much too gentle, unassertive. The harsh characterizations of him as a crazy guy seem not only unfair but untrue. “I went back to construction contracting but I found out my medical problems were more serious than I’d thought. I bought this place on the assumption I could do business here. The Bank of Mendocino would not have financed me if they didn’t think I could do business here.” Zimmerer ticks off a series of remnant but red-tagged enterprises. “They wouldn’t even let me create a wet area for my ducks, and I can’t sell the eggs from my chickens.”

A number of ducks are serenely paddling around an impressively deep but muddy pond that would normally be replenished by the winter rains that this year have not appeared. “It’s really a big pit,” Zimmerer explains. “I call it the Mother Ducker Pond. The County calls it ‘the duck pit.’ It’s a hole in the ground. I have 30 catfish my grandkids can fish for, and they can feed the ducks. And there’s two small sailboats and a sand beach. To support my chickens and ducks, I go to Sacramento to get natural rice that has fallen on the road. I feed the animals out of this, and I get it free, a thousand pounds or a pick-up load. When I spread it out here wild geese will land here.”

Not that anybody is likely to confuse the pond tableau with Palm Beach, but Zimmerer says his ten grandkids have a heckuva good time at Mother Ducker Pond. “It appears to them that there’s everything a small lake should have. I’ve had to move my fish twice and my ducks had to spend a summer in a Doughboy pool because the government want to fine me again for them, too.”

Not far from the summer playground for his grandkids, rests a bunker-like metal trailer designed by the military to survive airdrops and, once on the ground, safely endure frontal assaults. This impenetrably secure structure once served Zimmerer as the container for an indoor marijuana grow. “I was arrested for growing pot in it,” Zimmerer explains the uniquely secure combat headquarters. “Never made a dime off it. We hundred percent donated our pot. I have a 215 card and two doctor prescriptions.”

Supervisor Carre Brown, soon after she was elected, was startled one morning when Zimmerer appeared at her Potter Valley door when the supervisor came out of her house to go to work. Mrs. Brown invited Zimmerer in for coffee and, she recalls, they had an uneventful exchange of views.

“Carre Brown, my supervisor,” Zimmerer maintains, “is a very nice person, but as a supervisor she has no clue. I’m in competition with the Farm Bureau and she lobbies for them. I was doing very good selling my hay when they shut that down. I’m being treated like a criminal but I’m not a criminal. I’m 53-years-old and I’ve been married for more than 30 years. I have two daughters and lots of grandkids in this community, but I’ve always had to work on the road because, now, I can’t work out of my own property.”

Supervisor Brown says simply, “I feel for him and his family, but I can’t talk about the situation because there is pending legal action.”

Zimmerer, however, expresses a particular enmity for now retired code enforcement officer Jim McCleary. “He goes around snooping in people’s yards. He's told a lot of lies about me. He fined me six thousand dollars, which they put on my property tax bill. I can’t pay it. I don’t have the money.”

And the County keeps piling on.

“I moved my mobile home eight hundred feet where I put it on a concrete pad,” Zimmerer says. “The County won't sign off on my home although everything is in the correct spots. They require you to get an engineered drawing to put in a fence post. I know a lot of people, One Percenters some of them, who have more red tags than Macy's. Do they go after these people? McCleary told me that this is called 'selective enforcement, and I chose you.' The County is always crying for money, and my feed store would provide two full-time jobs, but they laughed at me and won't give me a permit.”The new director of Planning and Building, Roger Mobley, who seems much more conciliatory than his predecessors, sums up the Zimmerer matter this way: “It’s gone past red tags into an order to abate, which is where we are now. We want to get people to comply without going to a more structured legal process, but we haven’t been able to do that so far. We feel there’s still a chance we can resolve it. I can tell you that at one point he did try to get it rezoned industrial but for some reason he never completed the process.

Mobley conceded that there “are a lot of these properties [in the County] and legal non-conforming uses can be allowed. I don’t think we’ve had a lot of complaints about that property, but we have had complaints.”

As it stands, Zimmerer has not gotten into voluntary compliance. The County continues to insist he is operating an unpermitted junk yard and placed liens against Zimmerer's property totaling just over ten thousand dollars that were cut roughly in half when Zimmerer appealed in June of 2010.

Representing the County is a pleasant, reasonable woman named Terry Gross of the Mendocino County Counsel’s office. She says of Zimmerer, “Although he’s not always the easiest person to deal with, he’s not unsympathetic. We are open to mediation.”

Zimmerer sees his situation as far more perilous. “They’re denying me a living. They’re trying to destroy me. I’m broke. I’m living off my SSI, which I try to supplement however I can. I can do a lot of different things, but I can’t be around people much.”

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AN APRIL 1 MEMORY

Editor:

It was April Fools’ Day, 1967, and I was sitting in high school concert band with a sousaphone wrapped over my shoulder. Rather than warming the group up with the standard two minutes of regimented scales and études, our band director, with a twinkle in his eye, laid down his baton and said: “Kids? Do something even if it’s wrong.” Within seconds, the flutes were trilling, bassoons bumbling, trumpets screeching, French horns crooning, trombones glissading, tubas oomping. The band room filled with discordant, shrill, uncontrolled, high-decibel chaos. Dang, it was fun and effective! In the end, we were certainly warmed up.

I am reminded of that long-ago “do something even if it’s wrong” direction as I observe the daily actions and orders from our current administration in Washington. They are proving to be all those descriptors from that April 1 in concert band. With the exception of fun or effective.

Dave Delgardo

Cloverdale

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BILL KIMBERLIN:

As high school boys in Boonville we wore Levi pants and as a point of honor, never washed them. This meant that when removed they would almost stand-up by themselves. Of course we had already had them "pegged" at a small Italian tailor shop near what is now called, "Railroad Square" in Santa Rosa.

Pegged meant that the pant legs were nearly form fitted to our legs. I imagine that the poor kids had their mothers do this, as I know one whose mother ironed his T-Shirts. That, I could not even image as it trumped us all.

This was a sign to me that maybe there was more to people than I realized. When I came to the Valley from Marin County, I wondered where all the houses with swimming pools were and why the mill workers were living in shacks.

I still wonder why those same children from those shacks still today write about how idyllic there childhoods were playing on the dirt roads outside the mill shacks. Apparently, not knowing you are poor can be a great equalizer.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, April 1, 2025

JASON CARLO, 41, Fort Bragg. Domestic violence court order violation, failure to appear.

JOSEPH CHRISTMAN, 39, Mendocino. DUI-any drug, addict driving a vehicle.

LAURA DOUGLAS, 49, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ISAAC GLAVIN, 30, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, public urination.

AARON MUDRICH, 41, Ukiah. Under influence.

KENNETH PARTRIDGE, 56, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger, probation revocation.

SEAN SEBRING, 55, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

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A READER WRITES: Isn’t it obvious that Trump’s across the board tariffs (as opposed to targeted protectionist tariffs) are just a backdoor way to shift the tax burden further from the wealthy and corporate to ordinary consumers in the most regressive way possible? All while convincing the dupes that it’s “good for America”?

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SOME EXCITING NEWS: I'm opening a new chapter in my life with a dream job!

by Dan Bacher

To all of my friends here, I have some big and exciting news to announce today.

Everybody knows how tough it is to make a living as a journalist now, with the consolidation of media outlets by big corporations and the reliance of the public on social media.

I'm going to make a major change in direction in my career. After much thought and consideration, I've decided to take a position as outreach director and communications specialist with the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural agricultural water district in the country.

The salary I will receive is six times the highest salary I've ever made as a journalist — and the water district will greatly benefit from my years of writing and experience as a journalist.

I will be publicizing the latest efforts by the Westlands Water District and the California Department of Water Resources to restore habitat on the Delta to benefit the Delta smelt, longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, spring-run Chinook salmon, Sacramento split tail, green sturgeon and other imperiled native species.

I will also be working with DWR, the Bureau of Reclamation, WWD and other water agencies and stakeholders on collaborative solutions to addressing water supply and ecosystem restoration in California.

It has been wonderful working with everybody all these years and I look forward to a bright future with Westlands, a water district that feeds the world with almonds, pistachios, walnuts, melons and other essential crops! Any time you’re on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, drop in and say hi to me in my new office!

Have a Happy April Fool’s Day!

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

"But when the Social Security checks stop coming, things will be different." Speaking of SS I don't know who's brainstorm it was but the new SS fairness act is gonna cost the system a fortune. Nearly all the retired cops and FF's I know just received huge retro checks and significant monthly increases in their SS benefits. The Feds paid out nearly a billion in retro just to MA retirees. We all get decent state pensions already. This money is just gravy. My monthly SS check went up nearly 600 bucks. Also my sisters, both life long teachers (who never worked in the private sector or paid a penny into the system) went from 0 per month SS to almost 1200 per month SS as they can now collect the spousal benefits. Might as well kill the system that much faster.

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TESLA TAKEDOWN

Anti-Elon protests from 7 cities, and the Elon fans who showed up as well

I love Activism, Uncensored because it captures the passion, the sincerity, and the crazy. This video by News2Share’s Ford Fischer and his colleagues Ed Fabry, Paul Mulholland, David Decker, and Jake Lee Green does all of that. It also captures the whole story of Saturday’s Tesla Takedown protests across the country by including the many counterprotesters who showed up. You wouldn’t know that from the legacy media’s reporting on the protests.

Of course, it made for some tense moments. It also produced some surprises, like when a pro-Elon guy in St. Petersburg, Fla., was walking on a sidewalk among anti-Elon protesters. He was told to “go away.” An anti-Elon protester then said:

“He’s a got a legal right to be on a sidewalk just like we do. We’re all Americans here. Some have different opinions than others. They think there’s is right. We think ours is right.”

Ford and his crew captured protests from seven cities — Columbus, New York, Washington, D.C., Tampa, St. Petersburg, San Diego and Encinitas, Calif.

— Greg Collard

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Rocky Marciano on his wife Barbara: "Barbara’s the only one who really knows me, the guy behind the gloves. I’m out there training, fighting, traveling, and she’s back home keeping everything together—our little girl, the house, all of it. People think being champ is about knocking guys out, but it’s her putting up with me that makes it work. She don’t complain, just smiles and says, ‘Go win, Rock.’ I’d be lost without that. She’s tougher than any fighter I ever faced."

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EITHER OR

To the Editor,

I was drafted into the Army in 1967, a 19-year-old boy from Brooklyn, as green as they come. I grew up really fast the next year when I was deployed to Vietnam, and in each and every letter I sent home to my family, I put this on the outside of the envelope in large capital letters: I.A.C.W.B. (“It’s a cruel world, baby.”)

Though I became cynical in how I viewed the war effort, I made it back in one piece, and I consider myself to this day to be a very lucky man.

What President Trump and Elon Musk are doing to the veterans is an abomination. Mr. Trump has made it clear that he views people risking their lives serving the nation in the military as losers. And now, in a miserable attempt to trim wasteful government fat, he is putting veterans at even greater risk.

I’m all for eliminating government waste, but why target Veterans Affairs? How about turning your trimming knife to the Pentagon and the bloated defense budget, which grows every year?

If I want to lose weight, I can do it one of two ways: I can limit eating fattening foods and cut calories so that the weight comes off without putting my health at risk.

Or I can cut off my legs.

Len DiSesa

Dresher, Pennsylvania

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CALIFORNIA TO SPEND $239 MILLION TO TURN SAN QUENTIN INTO SCANDINAVIAN-STYLE REHAB CENTER

by Nora Mishanec

California officials have envisioned a host of sweeping changes for San Quentin State Prison as they attempt to remake the facility into a Scandinavian-style rehabilitation center complete with a farmers market, a podcast production studio and a self-service grocery store.

The renovations are expected to cost California taxpayers $239 million, according to state officials. Construction was on track to finish in January 2026, officials said, with the first incarcerated people set to begin using the revamped facility within months of completion early next year.

The overhaul of what Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office has called California’s “most notorious prison” was set in motion shortly after Newsom was elected in 2018. He declared a moratorium on executions, began dismantling Death Row and ordered officials to begin the slow process of transferring San Quentin prisoners to other state facilities. In 2023, he announced plans to turn the entire prison into a Nordic-style center for preparing incarcerated people to reenter life outside prison.

The Newsom administration hired the Danish architecture firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen to help reimagine the maximum-security prison with influences from the Scandinavian incarceration system, where many prisoners live in detention centers designed to approximate life outside prison. Over the past several decades Nordic countries including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have successfully reduced prison populations and recidivism by focusing jail time on preparing incarcerated people for their release back into society.

Architects envisioned a campus where prisoners will have access to so-called normalizing spaces like the self-service grocery store, a café and food trucks staffed by other incarcerated people.

An advisory council that included criminal justice experts and prison reform advocates made dozens of recommendations for the overhaul. Among the suggestions was the idea to “make good nutrition foundational to the San Quentin experience,” through gardening and access to a farmers market with external vendors.

Newsom declined to comment and referred questions to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Pioneered in Norway in the 1990s, the Nordic incarceration model rejected punishment in favor of rehabilitation through work and education. Under this model, San Quentin’s population will shrink by about a third from 3,400 to about 2,400 as prisoners are transferred elsewhere. Those who remain will receive their own rooms with no bunk beds.

“The holistic initiative leverages international, data-backed best practices to improve the well-being of those who live and work at state prisons,” Todd Javernick, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in an email.

But some victims’ advocates and family members of people affected by crime sharply criticized Newsom’s plan, saying any funding spent to transform San Quentin would be better spent on helping victims heal. Criticism has also flowed in from family members of people incarcerated there, who said they fear their loved ones will be moved to facilities in other parts of the state that are far away from spouses and children.

The Newsom administration is hoping the renovated San Quentin will serve as a model for other correctional facilities in the state and country. They’ve dubbed the effort the California Model, with the aim of making prison life less punitive and more humane.

“The initiative’s goal is creating safer communities and a better life for all Californians, by breaking cycles of crime for the incarcerated population, while improving workplace conditions for institution staff,” Javernick said.

In preparation for the overhaul, San Quentin’s security level was reduced from maximum to medium, meaning it will host prisoners deemed to have fewer behavioral issues and who pose a lower escape risk. California prisons have four security levels.

According to the administration, emptying Death Row will also save taxpayers money. The average prisoner in San Quentin costs the state around $60,000 a year, and those on Death Row cost twice that in additional security costs.

Construction on the new facilities is underway and includes three new buildings that will house podcast and television production studios, classrooms for learning to code, a large multipurpose gathering space, a cafe and a store.

(SF Chronicle)

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PLACES

by Oscar Mandel

After running five minutes I lie on the grass panting And listen angry to my heart.

.

I want to call down the well of my body,

“Organs, organs! Do you hear me? Discipline!"

Lord, to be dependent on a pancreas!

.

If it turns off I'm dead.

Do I choose to die? Not much! Yet this fat machinery dares run me.

.

Salivating with indignation

I demand to be pure spirit,

I want to boss this heart, these kidneys, this tripe.

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Did you, Plato, yes or no call them slaves?

Then why does that heart keep thumping

When I shout “At ease”?

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When you bring flowers to my grave

it won't occur to you, needless to say,

how degrading it is to be dead —

forced to accept “a loving tribute”

from my betters, you, mournful, erect.

You'll think, no doubt, “how grateful he would be

if he could speak,” and hell I retch

thinking of me down there

mouth shut and mousy meek

six feet under a stupid violet.

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DEMOCRACY IN THE DARK: How California Lawmakers Are Trying To Shield Themselves From Public View

by Sameea Kamal & Yue Stella Yu

At town halls across the nation, including in California, residents have confronted their members of Congress face-to-face to voice their fears and frustrations over Trump administration policies, from cuts to overseas aid to Medicare.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in the state Legislature have introduced about a dozen proposals that would make it harder to confront your local officials at public meetings and would shield more information from the public eye, according to an analysis of CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

The bills follow a streak of California officials’ attempts to shroud themselves in secrecy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently sent burner phones to major California business leaders with his number preprogrammed — paid for by his nonprofit, allowing him to communicate with executives without having to disclose the content publicly. Lawmakers and government employees signed non-disclosure agreements preventing them from sharing details about taxpayer-funded renovations to the state Capitol. The Legislature refused to say whether federal search warrants and subpoenas were served to lawmakers.

The largely Democratic efforts have raised alarms among ethics advocates and an outcry from some Republican lawmakers, such as Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego, who has introduced two bills to require lawmakers and government agencies to disclose more to the public, not less.

He announced them during National Sunshine Week, an annual campaign to promote government transparency that the Legislature quit observing eight years ago.

“It is the one time throughout the year where we pause and we ask the question: Are decisions in government being made in the public light? Can the people know what’s going on?” DeMaio said.

Looking Decision-Makers In The Eye

Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican from Roseville, has contended that interacting with constituents in-person makes a difference: There’s nothing more thrilling for a local elected official than having constituents exercise their right to yell and scream at you, he said in 2023 opposing a proposal that allows neighborhood councils in Los Angeles to meet remotely until 2026.

“It’s just much more impactful,” he said. “It’s like the difference between a text message and a phone call. Text messages are useful for quick communication of something, but not for something more complicated.”

Nonetheless that proposal was signed into law — one of many over the past few years that have increasingly allowed state and local officials to participate remotely. This year, various legislators are pushing at least six different measures that aim to make them permanent.

Since the pandemic, California has relaxed its once-strict rules that required officials to be physically present at public meetings. Instead they’ve carved out more exceptions so that advisory board members can meet remotely, and public officials can avoid disclosing their whereabouts when they appear virtually.

Supporters of these efforts say they “modernize” the state’s open meetings rules, arguing that allowing members more remote access boosts public participation, cuts costs, protects officials’ privacy and grants more flexibility in emergencies.

Under the relaxed guidelines, 41 state boards reported increased attendance among board members, according to a June 2021 report by the Little Hoover Commission, a state oversight agency that focuses on government efficiency.

But good government advocates argue that it shields officials from their constituents.

“Public officials must be accountable: They should be required to attend in person, ensuring that the public can see them, speak to them directly, hold them responsible for decisions that impact their communities,” Dora Rose, deputy director of the League of Women Voters of California, told legislators at a recent hearing.

One of this year’s pending bills is SB 707 by Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles who last year opposed an effort to let local advisory boards meet remotely. This year she’s proposing an overarching measure that would include exemptions for different groups.

Durazo told CalMatters she was compelled by testimony from groups who had to cancel meetings because they couldn’t gather enough members in person.

Her bill would also require city and county governments to provide a call-in option to all public meetings. But during a recent hearing, representatives of city officials argued that would hamstring local governments’ ability to manage “Zoom bombing,” where participants disrupt meetings with “hate speech.”

Keeping Donors Secret

The California Fair Political Practices Commission — the state agency policing ethics and campaign finance violations — is sponsoring AB755 to give officials more time to disclose funds they raised for other groups.

Those funds are called “behested payments,” typically donations to a nonprofit or government agency that come at a politician’s behest. Critics say the donations allow special interests to curry favor with politicians. Since 2011, state officials have reported raising more than $505 million in behested payments, with Newsom single-handedly raising more than $200 million from corporations in 2020.

Current law requires elected officials to disclose these payments within 30 days once they raise more than $5,000 from the same donor within a year. But violations are commonplace: Six out of eight of California’s constitutional officers have reported their payments late, including Newsom, who was fined $13,000 for failing to disclose $14 million on time.

The legislation introduced by Assemblymember Mike Fong, a Democrat from Alhambra, would give lawmakers up to roughly 120 days to disclose the payments, making it harder for voters to know who is influencing their lawmakers in real time. Commission spokesperson Shery Yang told CalMatters the current filing period is too short and extending it “improves efficiency.”

After meeting the initial $5,000 threshold for disclosure, officials would be allowed to receive up to $999 from that same donor without ever disclosing it.

A related bill — SB 760 by Sen. Ben Allen, an El Segundo Democrat — would let elected officials stop reporting funds they raised for others on TV or radio, or even in speeches like private fundraisers, as long as they don’t benefit financially from those payments. Allen said the change is needed so officials aren’t afraid to name specific groups to donate to, especially after a disaster like the Los Angeles fires.

Also seeking to relax the state’s campaign ethics rules is SB 300 by Sen. Steve Padilla, a Chula Vista Democrat. Public officials wouldn’t have to recuse themselves if they are making policies that would boost the membership of organizations they’re part of, such as unions or chambers of commerce.

Other proposed legislation would also reduce the amount of information disclosed to the public.

AB 950 by Lakewood Democrat José Solache would allow campaigns to stop disclosing their top funders on printed ads and refer to a website instead.

AB 359 by San Bernardino Democrat James Ramos would allow the state campaign finance commission to stop reporting on its enforcement of local ethics rules.

Little Left To Hide On Public Records

‘What they want is carte blanche authority to police in secret.’

While the state’s public records laws already are riddled with exemptions, politicians are still trying to create more.

Perhaps the biggest exception the Legislature created is for itself. In 1975, it wrote its own rules that vastly restrict what it must release to the public, shielding notes to members or staff, records of complaints or investigations, and anything else it deems not in the public’s interest to know.

This year — after a 2018 law forced police agencies to be more transparent about their records — Downey Democratic Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco wants to roll some of that back. Her bill would give law enforcement agencies more leeway to keep some information private, such as the ranks, names and photos of officers who work undercover, are part of a state or federal task force, or who received death threats in the last decade due to their work.

“I just want to protect these undercover officers so that they can continue doing their work and keeping our communities safe,” she told CalMatters.

Tiffany Bailey, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the legislation undermines the progress made on police transparency. Police agencies already have ways to redact information, she said, but law enforcement agencies must explain why.

“What they want is carte blanche authority to police in secret, to shield from the public eye really egregious police misconduct, like sexually assaulting civilians and serious uses of force,” Bailey said.

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said California already lags behind other, more conservative states in what is released.

“There’s all kinds of qualifications and exemptions and opportunities to put sand in the gears and delay disclosure, and it’s still a pretty limited set of documents you get,” he said.

Often, local and state agencies have only released records when a court forced them to do so..

Loy’s group is also concerned about a proposal from Long Beach Democrat Josh Lowenthal that would make it a misdemeanor for someone to “knowingly” post an elected or appointed official’s home address or telephone number, if they intend the posting to cause harm.

Lowenthal declined an interview with CalMatters, but said in a statement that elected and appointed officials have faced harassment or violence in recent years and this would “allow them to limit the proliferation of their information.”

Loy countered that the bill, while still in its early stages, is overly broad.

“There are controversies over whether someone is a resident of the jurisdiction that they are elected to represent, and the press and public have a right to know the relevant information,” he said.

Let The Sunshine Peek In?

There are a few glimmers of hope for public access, though.

Under Democratic Assemblymember Avelino Valencia’s proposed AB 1029, elected officials would have to report if they own cryptocurrency.

DeMaio, the San Diego Republican, is also reintroducing an idea to create an independent office to help people fight public records denials. Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2023, saying it was unnecessary and costly.

Currently, the only way to appeal a rejected Public Records Act request is to sue — something not everyone can afford to do.

“Let a neutral third party determine whether a document is so sensitive that the public interest would be benefited by keeping it a secret,” DeMaio said.

He also introduced a bill to make the Legislature follow the same California records act as other public agencies and touted his Rocklin Republican colleague Joe Patterson’s AB 1370, which would prohibit state lawmakers from entering into most non-disclosure agreements related to their decision-making, such as the Capitol renovation project.

“There is no justification for an elected official signing an NDA with a special interest, full stop,” he said.

(CalMatters.org)

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DARKNESS DESCENDING

Trump celebrated two huge victories for his MAGA agenda after the Republicans held two Congressional seats in Florida in special elections.

On the eve of the president's much-touted 'Liberation Day' on Wednesday, where the Republican is expected to announce broad tariff policies that will surely impact global markets that are already roiling, Trump has received good news.

Republicans Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis are projected to win the races for Florida's 1st and 6th Congressional Districts Tuesday evening.

Trump was thrilled with the news in a post to Truth Social shortly after they'd been declared winners.

'Both Florida house seats have been won, big, by the Republican candidate. the Trump endorsement, as always, proved far greater than the Democrats forces of evil. Congratulations to America!!!'

He singled out Fine for defeating Josh Weil, who had what Trump called a 'cash avalanche.'

Weil spent nearly $8 million more on the race than the incumbent Republican Fine.

The wins mean Trump's agenda will more easily flow through the House of Representatives, which the GOP currently controls by a razor-thin margin of just a few votes.

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LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT

‘Big Psychological Boost’ for Democrats in String of Elections

Cory Booker Condemns Trump’s Policies in Longest Senate Speech on Record

Trump Is Set to Unveil Expansive Global Tariffs

U.S. Says Deportation of Maryland Man Was an ‘Administrative Error’

Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for Mangione, Bondi Says

U.N. Accuses Israel of Killing 15 Rescue Workers in Gaza

Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65

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REPORTING ON TERROR

by Saliha Bayrak

Ordinarily, the American security apparatus needs to work hard to explain to us who we’re supposed to fear and why. In 2014, an Islamic militant organization gained power throughout Syria and Iraq that was so cruel and so shockingly violent that the U.S. found its familiar task of threat construction simplified. “Western prisoners in orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuits, surrounded by rifle-wielding men in black,” became the “indelible” image of ISIS, wrote Rozina Ali in her 2021 Drift essay “The ISIS Beat.” The phenomenon quickly led to a media frenzy. Commentators speculated freely about ISIS’s plans, and stoked fears about the spread of “radicalization.”

Ali described how one French journalist posed as “a Muslim convert interested in marrying an ISIS fighter” in order to write an expose on the group, adapting sting tactics used by the FBI. The New York Times was forced to retract core claims made on its “Caliphate” podcast, which sought to explain ISIS as an ideological force. Things got out of hand, to say the least.

Just when ISIS seemed to be fading from our collective memory, a 42-year-old Army veteran killed fourteen people on New Year’s Day in New Orleans by driving his truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street. The attacker’s black-and-white ISIS flag quickly made headlines. Once again, the media switched into overdrive theorizing about how “radicalism” spreads domestically. Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations, told NPR that the attack highlighted the appeal of ISIS “to people susceptible or amenable to radicalization and recruitment.” On ABC, Congressman Michael McCaul urged Trump administration officials to “pay attention to social media and connect the dots before these events happen,” and JP Morrell, now New Orleans’ City Council president, went on PBS to plead with tech companies to develop systems to flag “if someone says, ‘I’ve been radicalized by ISIS’.”

The media’s drive to slot bewildering violence into a neat narrative gives rise to sloppily reported stories. Years after the “Caliphate” scandal, journalists and critics have challenged the veracity of the Times’s report on sexual violence allegedly committed by Hamas on October 7. Anat Schwartz, one of three bylines on the story, admitted that she had struggled to find direct evidence of sexual violence during her research. The Intercept reported that Schwartz, who had no prior investigative experience, had liked a post on X that advocated for the establishment of “a narrative according to which Hamas is ISIS,” because this is “a familiar, contemporary sentiment that scares Westerners.”

The legacy of the “ISIS beat” can be seen in negligent and paranoid reporting that ignores the local contexts of militant groups, failing to interrogate why extreme ideologies might resonate with people who have been subjected to brutal dictators and oppressive imperial rule. It helps fuel forever wars abroad, as Ali acutely described in her Drift essay, and it also actively manufactures consent for domestic surveillance. On Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order directing officials to identify nations with “deficient” screening processes and then collect “relevant” information on citizens from these countries already residing in the U.S. — monitoring them for “hostile attitudes” and support of designated “foreign terrorist organizations” (which include ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah without distinction).

On March 8, federal immigration agents detained Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, despite his legal status. A wave of other detentions and deportations, justified in many cases by baseless allegations of support for “terrorism,” has followed. “My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza,” Khalil wrote from a detention facility in Louisiana. The war on terror has long had civil liberties in its sights, but now that it has metastasized into a full-scale war on dissent, the time has come to reassess the terrorism beat and the media’s role in creating the environment of fear that the Trump administration is currently exploiting.

Sincerely,

Saliha Bayrak, Associate Editor

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FASCISM IN THE UNITED STATES?

by Michael Slager

Many Americans felt anxious and fearful about the Trump administration long before it assumed power in January. Three months after Trump’s inauguration, that disquiet is no longer simply fueled by recommendations from Project 2025; many of its suggestions have been born out in real-world ways.

Shuttering life-saving programs abroad, firing federal workers without cause, arresting lawful migrants for protesting, and effacing people’s gender identities are just some of the administration’s activities. Many of the president’s Executive Orders are patently illegal and downright cruel.

Things may become much worse.

The word fascism comes up a lot in connection to the current executive, and naturally so do the names Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

In contrast to Germans and Italians of the 1920s and 1930s, it should be obvious that we face far fewer obstacles to oppose encroaching authoritarianism and can do so at less risk to ourselves. Evoking the images of Hitler and Mussolini might create a kind of social paralysis, one that conjures up deep-seated fear that there is nothing one can do to confront an increasingly repressive government.

It is important to consider some of the conditions in Germany and Italy that led to and bolstered those dictatorships and compare them to twenty-first century American politics. The differences are illuminating and oddly heartening.

No Threats from the Left

Conservative political elites in Germany — with the support of high-ranking military figures and powerful businessmen — installed Hitler as Reich Chancellor. He did not enjoy majority support among the population. In Italy, the threat of widespread violence and the backing of rightwing figures propelled Mussolini to power. Italian King Victor Emannuel III signed off on Mussolini’s premiership. Why did they do that? Because they were fending off the growing influence of leftist parties, as well as the social instability and conflict that resulted from political impasses.

By the “Left,” I mean the aggregate of socialist and communist parties in Germany and Italy. They collectively had many seats in their respective parliaments (the communist party had fewer than the socialist-inspired ones in Germany, though). Socialist and communist party membership in those two countries numbered in the hundreds of thousands. It’s difficult to imagine it today, but during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, socialism was a real force.

To win concessions from their governments, leftists often successfully shut down or took over factories, public transport, and garbage collection. In the German state of Bavaria, they even started a revolution. In Italy, ordinary workers sometimes took effective control of many of the factories in the country’s industrial north.

The ultra conservative right and upper middle classes in those countries were terrified that their privileges would be taken away, so they sought strongmen who headed paramilitary organizations to stop the leftward drift. Mussolini and Hitler fit the bill. They had the manpower, organization, and notoriety to put a lid on developments and quieten society.

By contrast, the United States has no political left in positions of power. Only about 15,000 people belong to the organization Communist Party USA. They have not run a presidential candidate in many years. Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America stands at about 90,000 people according to its website. In a country of over 340 million, that’s not a remotely threatening number. They don’t have any seats in Congress.

Despite what he calls himself, Senator Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. He is a Social Democrat. In fact, he’s a New Deal FDR Democrat. Of course, he is situated to the left of Trump and his allies in the US Congress, but Bernie is not calling for the abolition of private property or outlawing corporations.

As author and political analyst Gregory Harms has argued in his book No Politics, No Religion?, the center is the left edge of the viable political spectrum in the United States. That was simply not the case in Germany and Italy in the first thirty years of the twentieth century.

In other words, there is no serious leftist threat whatsoever to the interests of the big business community or other dominant institutions either from inside the government or from the streets. There is therefore no motive to silently nod at a strongman to make unlawful arrests, disappear citizens, order extrajudicial executions, or build a network of forced labor camps.

Rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans are two factions of a business party oligarchy. With some exceptions, they generally take the same money from the same people. They are already the establishment and happy with conditions as they stand, even though the Democrats are a bit less happy these days in the wake of a lost election.

It is highly probable that if President Trump starts costing Wall Street money because, for example, he makes good on his campaign promise to deport an incredibly inexpensive and highly exploitable labor force, or if he attempts to control the military establishment for his own political ends, the show will be over. They will tolerate his reality show-style shenanigans only so far.

Lack of Loyalty in Military Circles

Speaking of the military, Hitler and Mussolini had direct control of their military forces for a long time. Generals and enlisted personnel swore loyalty to Hitler. In Italy, the armed forces swore an oath to the king, but Mussolini was effectively in command. Here, members of the US military swear fealty to the US Constitution.

More importantly, after it lost the first world war, the German military had a serious axe to grind. It wanted to regain its power and prestige after the Treaty of Versailles, which stipulated severe reductions to its size. Hitler endorsed a massive rebuilding of Germany’s army, navy, and air force. Many Germans, including the military establishment, viewed those efforts as ways to amend what they viewed as a set of dishonorable and insulting restrictions on their power and influence.

The US military, however, is in no such comparable position. Far from it. It is the most powerful, well-funded, and technologically equipped military in the world; it needs no radical, outlier advocate. Both establishment political parties, despite their other disputes, usually agree on funding the US military to extravagant and unnecessary degrees.

Also, Hitler and Mussolini were highly decorated war veterans, and that played well among many career military personnel, as well as the paramilitary organizations that they led.

By contrast, Trump was not inducted into the army during the Vietnam War because of bone spurs. Furthermore, his negative remarks about martial sacrifice and his antipathy to being photographed with injured veterans have not gone over well. Consequently, Trump is not popular in military circles, at least if the polling data can be believed. It’s important to note that many high-ranking officers dislike him very much and have said so publicly.

It’s difficult to unleash the US military on its own population when, in addition to a lack of legal obligation to the president as a person, most armed services personnel do not think well of Mr. Trump.

No Interest in Cultivating Mass Popular Support

Improving the material quality of life for citizens was a priority for both fascist regimes for a variety of reasons, not least of which was to increase the dictators’ personal popularity and bolster fascist ideology.

Importantly, Hitler kept and developed educational and healthcare reforms that had been instituted many years before he came to power. Starting in the late nineteenth century, free public education had been the norm. Under the Weimar Republic — the post-World War I government that preceded Hitler — universal health care was available to the German population. Backtracking on or defunding entitlements would have been politically unwise.

As a relatively recent example shows, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s efforts to defund public services for the British population did not go over well. Once people have important benefits, they are not keen to see them taken away, and they remember when politicians attempt to dismantle them. It’s important to recall that in Britain the reaction to Thatcher’s death was often celebratory. Sometimes, people have longer memories than is comfortable for the political establishment.

By contrast, the Trump administration offers comparatively little or nothing. It just abolished the Department of Education and supports greater school privatization. They want to gut public education by “school choice” or “vouchers.” That translates to less access and greater rationing of education by wealth. Both the later and former problems already exist, but Trump’s decisions will likely make them worse.

Trump and the GOP also want to get rid of what’s left of the Affordable Care Act. The Republican budget (not the reconciliation, keep-the-government-running bill that just passed), calls for steep cuts to entities that administer Medicaid and SNAP. Tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations are likely coming soon.

In other words, Trump and the GOP are not interested in providing people with much at all. In fact, they want to reduce already-existing benefits while further enriching the wealthy. How far they can or will go with that is anybody’s guess. The larger point is that this is not the behavior of a government that wants to cultivate mass popular appeal.

In their first several years in power, Hitler and Mussolini’s popularity skyrocketed partially because of greater domestic social support, more public infrastructure programs, and dramatic gains in employment. Trump’s popularity is already declining. It may get a lot worse as his hodgepodge of cuts starts to negatively affect more people.

Trump himself has said many times that he will never receive much more political support than he already has. The polling numbers show he is correct; it’s usually been 60 percent against him and 40 percent of various flavors of favorable. That means he neither requires fealty to himself nor to the party from the direction of the entire population.

Hitler and Mussolini required mass expressions of support, and that always requires coercion. It is impossible for unanimity of feeling among 10 people, much less millions.

Trump’s lack of interest in compelling everyone to love him (he seems to enjoy any attention, good or bad) and no subsequent requirement for public displays of North Korea-style adoration of Dear Leader mean there is no need for physical coercion and knocks on the door at 3:00 am to take away a disobedient neighbor.

Make no mistake. Trump is an authoritarian figure. He loves strongmen, but he does not demand absolute loyalty from all and that spells a different hardwiring than a Hitler or a Mussolini.

We should remember that we are not helpless prisoners of fate or trapped in a cyclical history. The numerous civil liberties we still possess suggest constructive ways forward to deal with the many problems we face.

(Michael Slager is an English teacher at Loyola University Chicago.)

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CHINA

by Howard French

A year and a half ago I arrived in China after a long Covid-induced absence and reached my hotel in a big central-western city in the early evening, seriously disoriented by the long flights from the US and the drastic change in time zones. I was hungry, but to my dismay I discovered that the restaurant in the hotel did not serve dinner, and I had no money in my account in the Chinese phone app WeChat. Without electronic cash I couldn't order food, so I would have to wander out and search groggily for a place to eat that would accept paper money.

Eager to avoid this, I asked a friend if she could help me find a good delivery meal and order it for me. I’d pay her back later, of course. And I made a choice from among the many links she sent. I asked her if I should wait for it in the lobby, and she said no, it will come straight to your room.

After 30 minutes there was a ring at my door, but there was no one in the dim hallway. At knee height, though, there was a round-bodied white robot with blue trim, vaguely R2-D2-like in appearance. It spoke in a robot's voice, and on the top of its flat head scrolled a message with my name telling me to press a button to accept delivery of its payload.

Once I did, a door on its torso slid open, revealing the packaged and still-steaming meal. “Your transaction is complete, please rate my service,” the robot said.

There are innumerable ways in which today's China can serve up tastes of what feels like the future, even to this somewhat jaded long-time visitor. It radically transformed itself when I lived there between 2003 and 2008, possibly the period of fastest modernization any country has ever experienced.

But the China of 2008 has been transformed anew since I left. There have been enormous physical upgrades, including a nationwide extension of a high-speed rail network whose 28,000 miles of track make a mockery of America's halting efforts to modernize Amtrak.

During that recent visit, I traveled on equally majestic new highways in spiffy Chinese electric vehicles from companies with names like Build Your Dreams that have become global EV brands.

The most striking changes, though, relate to virtual technology and automation, and they are better glimpsed through my startling experience with the robot.

China has become an almost entirely cashless society. WeChat, which was launched by a company called Tencent in 2011, has become so all-encompassing that it is challenging to describe it to an American. It is the Chinese consumer's rough equivalent of WhatsApp. But for hundreds of millions of them, it also serves as their bank, their travel agent, and their platform for an immense variety of e-commerce transactions. WeChat is perhaps best thought of as an operating system that sits atop a phone's own operating system, whether Android or Apple, because many users start their days within its capacious universe of apps and never leave it. People book rideshares and doctors' appointments on it, use it to pay their bills and taxes, engage with their local government, play games, conduct business meetings, buy stocks, transfer money, reserve train and airline travel, share documents, live-stream entertainment, and yes, arrange food delivery.

WeChat is only the most ubiquitous app in China's booming world of online services. It is the most consequential, though, for a darker reason: its all-purpose indispensability has made it an ultraconvenient clearinghouse of data on people's behavior for a government that accepts few bounds on the monitoring of the population. Elon Musk has stated his interest in turning X, the former Twitter, into a WeChat-like, all-in-one platform that supports financial and commercial operations. Critics cite this as a motive in the recent elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would supervise such a company and the banking and data privacy rules that would govern it.

(New York Review of Books)

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