This week at Unbreaking, December 4
This week, we’re looking at the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to seize, share, and weaponize US residents’ data and to simultaneously weaken its own data security practices and rules. We’re also tracking the latest efforts to circumvent expert judgement and control of medical research funding.
Reuters reported last week that DOGE has disbanded; other reports clarify that Elon Musk–affiliated tech workers are still embedded across federal agencies and leading data pooling and destruction of data safeguards.
Members of the Senate Banking Committee have called attention to a dramatic erosion of cybersecurity at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, linking the decline directly to DOGE’s mass firings and stop-work orders. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission voted 2–1 to eliminate its own cybersecurity rules for telecommunications companies. These requirements were established after China-backed Salt Typhoon hacks at Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen Technologies compromised data from US intelligence operations last year.
The Trump administration’s efforts to exploit private data remain unpopular with both regular folks and legal professionals: The University of Pennsylvania has objected to (and refused to comply with) a subpoena demanding contact information for Jewish community members — ostensibly to investigate antisemitism — to the point that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the university last month. And federal judges ruled against both the administration’s attempt to obtain trans patients’ names and medical records from a hospital and its agreement forcing the IRS to share taxpayer addresses with ICE.
Finally, new details emerged on the surveillance and data-sharing apparatus being used to target immigrants and dissidents. The AP reports that Border Patrol is collecting driving data and sharing it with local police, who use pretexts (like driving five mph over the speed limit) to stop, search, and detain people whose travel patterns Border Patrol deems “suspicious.” We’re tracking these developments and many more on our Data Security timeline.
With the end of the federal shutdown, the administration has resumed its attempt to seize control of medical research funding but has changed tactics: Defunding the NIH has proven politically unpopular, so efforts are shifting to directing the distribution of federal dollars. The latest such move is a change to the NIH’s grantmaking process, where long-established grant-ranking formulas based on peer review will no longer be used. This has sparked concerns over a lack of transparency in funding decisions, especially following a September memo instructing NIH staffers to consider political priorities over peer review scores.
And in academic news, Northwestern is the latest university to ransom its frozen grant funding by agreeing to pay a financial penalty and make political concessions to the administration. The settlement includes a $75 million fine (the second-highest to date) as well as restrictions on the rights to protest and to administer transgender healthcare at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. In response to this and other attacks on academic freedom, the American Association of University Professors released a report documenting federal and state attacks on faculty governance and filed to form a PAC to increase its political influence. You can follow these legal challenges and much more in our Medical Research Funding explainer and timeline.
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