This week at Unbreaking, October 23
We caught up on what’s been happening in data security, immigration, and medical research funding, along with what’s happened in the federal workforce since the government shutdown began October 1. Here’s where things stand.
Data security
The administration is amassing yet more data on people living in the US, including sensitive personal information. It also fired and reassigned staff who protect data under federal control. A key dimension in the data-siphoning operation is whether and how sensitive data held by states is shared with federal agencies, the subject of several lawsuits we’re tracking in the Data Security timeline.
- SNAP data: In a suit filed by 22 states, a federal judge told the USDA to stop demanding sensitive data about SNAP beneficiaries as a condition for federal funds. So far, 27 states have already shared data for over 15.7 million beneficiaries.
- Voter data: In two states, voters are suing to block election authorities from giving their data to the administration. Nebraska officials agreed to hold off on sharing voter registration data with the Department of Justice until a lawsuit seeking to prevent the data release is settled. In South Carolina, a judge declined to block the state from giving voter information to the DOJ while the commission sorts out data safeguards.
- Unemployment claims data: The Department of Labor is proposing to take over unemployment insurance claims — currently handled by states — creating yet another consolidated national data store of sensitive personal and financial information.
- Student and faculty data: In California, two major data-extortion battles are underway at universities. After the Trump administration handed UCLA a billion-dollar fine and froze its research funding, it offered a settlement requiring the school to hand over data on its students, staff, and faculty and to accept a slew of measures ensuring ideological compliance. The American Association of University Professors and faculty and staff unions sued in response, claiming multiple constitutional violations. Faculty members in the California State University system also sued to keep schools from sharing their personal information without offering the chance to challenge the disclosures.
And finally, the administration has cut staffing at CISA, the government’s main cybersecurity agency, by reassigning staff to assist ICE and CBP and conducting a mass layoff during the shutdown. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) demanded answers this week about how many CISA workers are left.
Equality at work
President Trump is making good on his pre-shutdown promise to use the interruption in government funding to permanently fire federal workers. On October 10, the administration confirmed in a court filing that it had laid off about 4,200 people (though an unknown number have been rehired). And on October 15, the administration renewed many of the hiring restrictions first put into place on Inauguration Day and specified that agencies can only hire with official approval from Trump’s political appointees.
Since January 20, 289,000 federal layoffs have been attributed to the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative. Federal job losses now vastly exceed every other kind of job loss this year. And as a cost-saving measure, this isn’t working as promised. Federal spending is up 6.2%, or $379 billion.
Legal opposition continues, though — a federal judge in California has issued a temporary restraining order against the layoffs. For more on this, check out our Equality at Work explainer. We’ve also updated our timeline to reflect the latest.
Immigration
The Trump administration’s anonymous, unaccountable, and often brutal ad-hoc federal police force is now being supplemented with 35,000 troops deployed inside the US, 14,500 federal law enforcement officers diverted to assist ICE, and an expanding network of state and local enforcers who usually focus on tasks like environmental protection and lottery oversight.
Large-scale ICE operations have escalated across the country over the past two weeks, with yesterday’s raid in New York’s Chinatown drawing immediate protests, a steady stream of stories coming out of Chicago and Los Angeles, and local news reporting that the administration plans to target the San Francisco Bay Area next. ProPublica found that federal officers targeting immigrants and protestors have arrested more than 170 US citizens, and that many citizens received the same inhumane treatment and disregard for due process that DHS usually reserves for immigrants.
We’re tracking several major cases opposing the administration’s use of the National Guard. A federal judge extended an order blocking the Guard’s deployment in Chicago yesterday, an appeal is underway over troops in Los Angeles, and the status of Oregon’s legal challenge to Guard deployments in Portland is unclear. Legal scholar Steve Vladeck has an up-to-date explanation of where all three cases stand.
And this week in “absurd authoritarianism remains both authoritarian and absurd,” the comedian who was arrested while wearing a giraffe onesie and singing a version of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” to ICE officers in Portland has been released. See this and more on our Immigration timeline.
Medical research funding
Since our last update, the government shutdown’s effects have come into focus. NIH staff remain indefinitely furloughed, which means that new grant applications aren’t being processed, grant review panels are postponed, and existing grantholders may not be able to withdraw funds, worsening existing funding uncertainties. The administration has also used the shutdown to fire more Department of Health and Human Services workers, including 1,300 CDC employees, more than half of whom were invited back in the following week’s chaos. The effect of these shutdown layoffs on the NIH remains unclear.
The administration’s offer of priority access to funding to nine elite universities in exchange for guarantees of ideological compliance has failed: seven universities have rejected the deal. Brown University president Christina Paxson expressed concern that the agreement would “restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance,” and Virginia Senate leaders criticized the deal as “political extortion”. The administration has now offered the same deal to all colleges and universities in the US, and a White House spokesperson threatened future funding for all schools that refuse it.
Our Medical Research Funding timeline includes these events and many, many more.
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