More than 40% of people flagged by the Trump administration as suspected noncitizen voters in California arenβt on the stateβs current voter rolls, according to a new analysis filed in federal court Saturday, raising fresh questions about the Justice Departmentβs efforts to intervene in ballot counting days before the midterm elections.
Researchers with UCLAβs Voting Rights Project examined a list of 20,930 people identified by federal officials as potentially ineligible voters. They found that 8,880 names, or 42%, could not be matched to Californiaβs current voter file.
The analysis also identified at least 22 people who appear to be U.S. citizens, with researchers warning that the number of citizens included on the list could be considerably higher.
The findings were submitted in litigation brought by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which is challenging the administrationβs efforts to use federal immigration data to identify suspected noncitizen voters.
π¨ CHIRLA & the UCLA Voting Rights Project have filed a federal lawsuit to defend voting rights ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The case seeks equal treatment under the Constitution for all U.S. citizens, regardless of birthplace.
No second-class citizens. No second-class votes.
The Justice Department demanded that California election officials separate ballots associated with the listed individuals and withhold them from counting until their citizenship can be verified. Federal prosecutors have also warned election officials of potential criminal consequences for knowingly processing ballots cast by noncitizens.
California officials rejected the demands, questioning the listβs reliability and warning that separating ballots could disrupt an election already underway.
On Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administrationβs emergency request to force California to set aside the disputed ballots. The court concluded that the government had not demonstrated that such extraordinary intervention was legally justified.
A federal district judge had previously rejected the request, warning that it could disenfranchise eligible voters and create chaos in the election system.
The Justice Department maintains that its efforts are intended to prevent illegal voting, which is prohibited in federal elections. The administration has defended its data and argued that counting ballots from ineligible voters would undermine legitimate votes.
But the new analysis raises questions about whether the governmentβs list accurately identifies people who are registered to vote, much less whether they are ineligible.
The dispute comes as millions of Californians have already cast ballots ahead of Tuesdayβs midterm elections.
As David Kurtz has been chronicling for TPM in his daily newsletter, the Trump administration has started to undertake what much of America long expected: it is trying to intervene in the midterms to help Republicans retain control of Congress.
The Department of Justice sued Alaska on Friday, demanding that the state delay certification until an investigation can βdetermine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivanβ β a Republican on the ballot with the same name as the incumbent GOP senator β βwere meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.β Trump said he asked the DOJ to initiate the suit. Experts see the case as weak.
In California, the DOJ demanded that Los Angeles β and then every other county in the state β segregate ballots from a list of names it provided, claiming those people were noncitizens likely to cast ballots.
The lists appear to have considerable problems, as have previous administration effort to identify noncitizen voters. One countyβs list had only two alleged noncitizen voters, and the county clerk told the New York Times it appears neither had ever voted. Another county clerk told the Times that she had been sent the wrong list, with names only of people from a different county.
On Sunday, federal appeals court judges appeared skeptical of the Los Angeles effort, suggesting both that it was premature for the court to order the county to do as the DOJ wished, and that, even if the court had jurisdiction, the DOJ did not have a case on the merits.
This campaign has clear echoes of 2020 and early 2021, when the administration and allied lawyers went to court dozens of times seeking to throw out votes from various swing states. They used arguments that ranged from complaints about new, COVID-era election administration procedures to hare-brained conspiracy theories. Over and over, they lost.
But the legal campaign and the headlines it generated β along with a steady flow of ever-more out there conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric from the administration β created the appearance that, well, something must be off. Otherwise, how did all of these cases wind up in court? Whatβs everyone talking about? Regular Americans donβt have time to get to the bottom of it. The hubbub inspires doubt and creates chaos, which, for Trump, opens doors.
As TPM has chronicled through close examination of Trump alliesβ texts and legal memos from the period immediately after the 2020 election β many of which we published for the first time β this strategy was part of a carefully calculated campaign.
As January 6 approached, the goal was no longer for victory in lower-level federal courts, but for a kind of deus ex machina β for either Congress to throw out the votes from certain states and seat Trumpβs alternate slate of electors, or for the Supreme Court to step in and somehow invalidate the election without getting too deep into the specifics. Trumpβs lawyers planned for a congressional stalemate over the results of the election to begin, but not end, on January 6. All of the lawsuits ahead of Jan. 6, regardless of outcome, would βforce serious review in Congress of election fraud in various states,β one Trump lawyer wrote in December 2020, imagining an election that was still unresolved by January 20, 2021 β Inauguration Day.
The lawsuits initiated last week lay the groundwork to run this campaign again, this time with the full force of the federal government behind it. Even if the DOJ loses repeatedly in court β as looks likely, at least with these first two efforts β the appearance of still-unresolved questions tees up the argument that its premature to seat any new Democratic majority.
This is not to say this plan is likely to succeed. But its worth being clear-eyed about the road weβre heading down.
A Defeat for the Right in Brazil Inevitably Leads To Election Denial
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL β OCTOBER 25: Supporters of Presidential candidate and incumbent president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil celebrate with a hand gestures of an βLβ in honor of him after the results of the general election day on October 25, 2026 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images)
Brazilβs incumbent President Luiz InΓ‘cio Lula da Silva won reelection SundayΒ with 51.76% of the vote. Sen. FlΓ‘vio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president who attempted a Jan. 6-like autocoup, recieved 48.24%.
Immediately, Bolsonaro said he would not accept defeat. A Lula-appointed Supreme Court justice extended voting hours after bad weather and, Lula alleged, meddling by local officials prevented some voters from being able to reach the polls. Both candidates requested the extended hours, but Bolsonaroβs team later described it as a βjudicial coup.β βIt is impossible to recognize the election results, given the βcircumstances under which things unfolded,β Bolsonaro told journalists, saying he would seek to get the election annulled.
The fact that Lula won by 4 million votes means Bolsonaro is unlikely to succeed.
The U.S. State Department pushed hard for Bolsonaro to return to power, Reuters reports. In the months before βelection campaigning began, two top State Department officials βinstructed US diplomats in Brazil that it was US policy to restore βformer President Jair Bolsonaro as Brazilβs leader β even though he had been disqualified from office for plotting a coup in 2022, when he lost the presidential election to Lula,β Reuters reports.
Tabs
The right-wing strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic β often compared to Hungaryβs now-ousted leader Viktor OrbΓ‘n β has conceded defeat in a parliamentary election that followed years of student-led protests against his reign.
βCompanies with ties to President Donald Trump and his family are staffing up with lawyers and lobbyists, as Democrats threaten sweeping probes if they flip either chamber of Congress in the midterm elections,β Bloomberg Businessweek reports. That includes prediction market companies and crypto firms.
Woman of the Hour
Former U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attends a Shield of the Americas meeting in conjunction with the 81st session of the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly at U.N. Headquarters on September 22, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Itβs Kristi Noem, who, on October 16, put out what appears to be a fake press release, on fake letterhead to make it appear as if she was still involved in the Trump administration. βThe Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas role was always a six-month appointment,β it read. βSecretary Noem remains at the State Department as a Senior Advisor.β State Department sources told Politico and CBS the press release was not real, nor was the letterhead it was published on.
President Donald Trump is urging Republicans across the country to vote early and by mail, even as his Justice Department escalates legal challenges to election procedures in multiple states less than two weeks before the midterms.
In a series of nearly identical Truth Social posts promoting Republican turnout, Trump encouraged voters to use virtually every available method of casting a ballot.
βWhether you VOTE early, absentee, by mail, or in-person, Republicans must SWAMP the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout!β he wrote.
The enthusiastic endorsement of mail voting comes from a president who has repeatedly attacked the practice as vulnerable to fraud and previously sought sweeping restrictions on mail ballots.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors sent letters Friday to election officials in at least 18 California counties, demanding that they identify and set aside ballots suspected of belonging to noncitizens within 48 hours.
βAny election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,β First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli warned.
The demands follow a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to prevent California from counting ballots associated with roughly 20,000 people the administration considers likely noncitizens. State officials dispute the reliability of the federal governmentβs data and warn that eligible voters could be disenfranchised.
Federal prosecutors have charged 28 people in California with illegally registering to vote, some of whom also allegedly cast ballots. Research has consistently found noncitizen voting to be extremely rare.
In Alaska, Trumpβs Justice Department filed a separate lawsuit seeking to block certification of the Senate race under certain circumstances if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. The dispute centers on another candidate named Daniel Sullivan, whom Republicans argue could confuse voters.
βIβm the one that said do it,β Trump told reporters Friday, acknowledging that he directed the lawsuit.
The California and Alaska cases involve different legal questions, but together underscore the administrationβs aggressive involvement in state election administration. For Republican voters, however, Trumpβs message remains straightforward: Use every available voting method to defeat Democrats.
In early August, election workers north of Spokane, Washington, went across the street to the post office to check for late mail-in ballots. It was three days after the primary and they were expecting no more than a few dozen.
Instead, their mailbox was brimming with envelopes β more than 500 of them, each a vote that wouldnβt count. The sight was βjarring,β said Auditor Lori Larsen, a Republican who oversees voting in Stevens County.
Across the region, other election officials were getting similar jolts. In the 11 predominately rural counties in eastern Washington, nearly 2,000 ballots came in late, compared to about 600 in 2022, the previous midterm primary.
But a ProPublica data analysis shows that delays resulting from the U.S. Postal Serviceβs cost-cutting measures have endangered the validity of ballots cast in rural areas, not only in Washington, but across the country.
Over the past three years, as mail volume continued to plummet and annual deficits ballooned, the Postal Service started consolidating the processing of first-class mail at larger regional plants instead of at smaller hubs closer to local post offices. Then, in a little-noted switch that mostly took effect after the 2024 election, the agency cut the frequency of mail pickups in half at many post offices 50 miles or more from these processing plants, from twice daily to once.
The changes often added a day or more to delivery time and, most importantly for ballots, pushed back postmarking, which doesnβt happen until mail reaches the regional centers.Β
In this yearβs primary, the effects of the cuts were clearest in five states that make detailed data on mail-in ballots available: Washington, California, Ohio, North Carolina and Oregon. All have or recently had grace periods allowing ballots to count if they come in after Election Day as long as theyβre postmarked by the deadline.
In these states, the number of ballots rejected for arriving late soared in counties affected by the service changes compared to 2022, ProPublicaβs analysis showed.Β
Rejection rates in counties where services were cut doubled or tripled from what they were four years ago, dwarfing any increases in counties where postal pickups remained as they were, our analysis showed. In urban Spokane, for example, the number of ballots rejected for being late actually dropped this year.
Across the five states, the delays have had the most substantial effect in areas that voted for Trump in 2024, ProPublicaβs analysis shows. In Washington, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said he sees the service changes directed by Republican appointees leading the Postal Service as a way to undermine mail-in voting.Β
βI donβt think they realized how much it was going to affect their voter base,β he said, adding that Washington has βa lot of rural Republican voters.β
Postal Service leaders say such delays are less likely in the Nov. 3 general election because of βextraordinary measuresβ the agency puts into place for these votes, when thereβs typically far more turnout. They have circulated a memo to the nationβs more than 30,000 post offices saying that for the 10 days before the election, managers should separate completed ballots from other first-class mail and deliver those intended for local election offices the day they come in.
At an Oct. 15 news conference, Postal Service leaders emphasized the agencyβs longstanding recommendation that voters mail ballots back at least a week before their statesβ deadlines, while defending the agencyβs ability to fast-track ballots through the system.Β
βWe work to identify and address issues quickly,β said Amber McReynolds, chair of the Postal Service board of governors, βso ballots can continue to move swiftly from election offices to voters and from voters back to election offices.β
Election consultants, researchers and former Postal Service officials told ProPublica that the guidance for the upcoming vote gave more detailed directions on how to expedite ballots. They said they hoped the agencyβs special measures would limit delays, but some said mistakes were likely.Β
βI donβt think we can say with any kind of conviction that there will be no ballots rejected,β said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer of the National Association of Election Officials. βIt isnβt a question of βif,β but a question of βhow many.ββ
A pilot program instituting the delivery changes in 18 regions before the 2024 election ran into problems. An audit by the Postal Serviceβs inspector general found that agency staff in these areas sometimes didnβt handle ballots correctly, mainly because instructions werenβt clearly communicated. (A Postal Service spokesperson said βlearnings from the pilotβ have been applied as the program has expanded.)
After this yearβs primary, reports by media outlets noted that mail-in ballot rejection rates were higher than in the past, but ProPublicaβs analysis shows these increases were directly connected to Postal Service changes. Research published in September by the Brookings Institution also found this connection, projecting that if the pattern held in the general election, tens of thousands of mail-in ballots could be rejected.
At least seven closely contested congressional districts β including Washingtonβs 3rd, Californiaβs 22nd and North Carolinaβs 11th β are in areas that were affected by service changes in the primary, ProPublica found.
Elena Patel, who conducted the Brookings analysis, said service changes may still imperil mail-in votes in the general election.
βI think there remain risks to ballots,β she said, adding that the Postal Serviceβs plan for the general election βdepends on flawless execution.β
Mail-in voting has become more popular over the last decade, with many states broadening access to it during the COVID-19 pandemic.Β
When Louis DeJoy was appointed postmaster general in spring 2020, he inherited an $81 billion operating deficit and rapidly took steps such as eliminating overtime to reduce costs, under pressure from Trump and others in his administration. (DeJoy did not respond to questions from ProPublica.)
The NAACP sued that August, alleging the measures could affect mail-in votes in that yearβs general election. Courts ordered DeJoy to reverse some of the cuts and the Postal Service agreed to implement special procedures to ensure ballots werenβt delayed. The Postal Service has continued following those procedures since.Β
Still, DeJoy went forward with a 10-year restructuring plan designed to save the agency billions. It ended evening pickups from some post offices, often in rural areas. Trucks serving these places travel long distances and at times were mostly empty. This part of the plan β called regional transportation optimization, or RTO β was projected to eventually save the Postal Service $4 billion a year.
The agency announced the national rollout of the RTO plan in 2024, but DeJoy agreed to pause it leading up to that yearβs November election, leaving only about 4,000 ZIP codes in the pilot project affected by the service changes.
In January 2025, the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the Postal Service, warned that moving forward with the plan would be disruptive to rural communities and might not save as much money as expected. The Postal Service rolled out the reductions anyway, extending the changes to almost 20,000 ZIP codes to date. Officials said they expect the system to be fully implemented within two years.
This January, the agency put out a statement saying the transportation cuts would mean it took longer for mail, including ballots, to be postmarked and delivered. But the Postal Service didnβt specify which voters would be affected by the slowdowns and which wouldnβt.
Though the delay from RTO is often only a day, mail can be delayed longer if itβs deposited in a mailbox after the daily pickup time, or just before Sunday or a holiday.
A Postal Service spokesperson said the agency told election officials that RTO would change schedules and reemphasized the need for voters to get their ballots in the mail at least a week ahead of time. Election officials in Washington said the Postal Service wasnβt direct enough about the fact that the changes would lead to delays in delivering and postmarking ballots.
βWhat they said was, βWe are going to change the way we do postmarks,ββ said Hobbs, Washingtonβs secretary of state. βThat was it.β
Patel, the Brookings analyst and a former Postal Regulatory Commission employee, said that more direct communication to voters could have helped change their behavior. βThatβs the part that I think has not been super transparent about the whole process,β she said.
Many of the areas that saw a spike in late ballots were in Western states, which were the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of expanded mail-in voting.
In 2004, Washington became the second state to start conducting all-mail elections, in which every eligible voter automatically receives a mail-in ballot. Most residents vote by putting their ballots in drop boxes. Still, in 2024, about 33% put them in the mail.
In the 30 mostly rural Washington counties most affected by RTO, the percentage of ballots postmarked late more than tripled compared to the 2022 primary, ProPublica found.
In Garfield County, in southeastern Washington, 19 ballots β nearly 1 in 10 cast β had late postmarks this year. In 2022, only a single ballot was postmarked late. In Pend Oreille County, in northeast Washington along the Idaho panhandle, 6% of ballots were rejected for arriving late, compared to 1% in the 2022 primary.
βIt was pretty awful telling people we couldnβt count their votes,β said Marianne Nichols, Pend Oreilleβs longtime auditor. βThey were quite upset because they felt like, βWhy? This was in the mailbox on election day, the post office picked it up and had it.β They felt like it should have counted.β
In Stevens County, the percentage of ballots rejected for having a late postmark jumped to 8%, from 1% in 2022.
Steve Hutkins, a retired professor who analyzes the effect of Postal Service changes on Savethepostoffice.com, also found that places in Washington with RTO had more ballot rejections during local elections earlier this year for school board and other measures. The patterns βset off the alarm bells,β he said.
Stuart Holmes, the stateβs director of elections, said he reached out to Postal Service officials to find out what had happened, but got few answers and no specifics on delays related to RTO, which were a βtotal surprise,β he said.
Election officials in California and Oregon also reported thousands more ballots rejected for arriving late during their primaries. Counties affected by RTO, including Kern County, California, had substantially higher rates of ballots rejected for mail-related reasons, ProPublica found.
Kern Countyβs assistant registrar of voters, Laura Cantu, said election officials are urging rural voters to use drop boxes to cast their ballots in the general election.
The expansion of RTO had a similar effect in North Carolina and Ohio, where the rates of late ballots were about twice as high in counties affected by the restructuring as rates in counties that werenβt. Since 2022, these states have also eliminated grace periods in which ballots postmarked by Election Day could count even if they arrived later. Voters unused to the tighter deadlines also could have contributed to an increase in late ballots.
ProPublica didnβt find any association between RTO and higher rates of late ballots in Wisconsin, even though clerks reported delays involving mail-in ballots cast in its state election, held this spring. (Other Postal Service changes may have contributed to the delays.)Β
Wisconsinβs data does not distinguish ballots sent by mail from those cast in drop boxes or in person, making it impossible to definitively measure rejection rates just for ballots returned by mail. Election researchers said Wisconsinβs deadline for mail ballots, which must come into election offices by 8 p.m. on Election Day, also probably had an effect.Β
βIf you know that you donβt have a grace period, it probably affects voter behavior,β said Patel, the Brookings researcher.Β
Recent Postal Service audits have found that RTO-related changes had saved the agency about $2.8 billion by the end of fiscal year 2025 β less money than expected β and are slowing down all first-class mail, not just ballots. Residents of rural areas are waiting longer for everything from prescriptions to bills, a report published in September by the Postal Serviceβs inspector general said.
A Postal Service spokesperson still defended the plan, both for financial reasons and to adjust to the changing marketplace. βThese savings are both significant and necessary,β he said.
In the lead-up to Nov. 3, the agencyβs plan is to route ballots meant for local election offices to a nearby postal facility or directly to their destination. They shouldnβt go to regional plants, which the Postal Service says should minimize delays.
Larsen, the Stevens County auditor, is encouraging Washington voters to deposit their ballots in drop boxes rather than relying on the mail. Since the primary, sheβs increased the number of red, white and blue drop boxes that sit outside government buildings from seven to 12. Near each box, thereβs a large sign encouraging people to take selfies when they vote and send the photos to Larsen.Β
In prior years, Larsen said, she avoided telling voters how or when to vote, concerned they might regret choices they made if critical information later emerged about the candidates. Thatβs no longer uppermost in her mind.
βNow we are more concerned that we get your ballot,β she said.
Earlier this month, during a campaign rally in Nebraska, Donald Trump said that losing Los Angeles in a potential attack from Iran would be βa small price to pay.β To many Californians, the idea that a president would write off a city of millions sounded unthinkable. To the Tongva, the indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin, it sounded familiar.
Tongva displacement began with Spanish settlement in the 1770s, and was codified in the 1840s and 50s when the U.S. acquired California and failed to ratify 18 different treaties that promised reservation lands, livestock and education. But if California Indian treaties were rendered purposeless, Trumpβs words arenβt so random. βThere is debate on what Trump meant when he said Iran can take out Los Angeles and San Diego and as in all his . . .Β speeches, it becomes the listenersβ responsibility to decipher truth from lies,β Tongva tribal elder Tina Calderon told Salon. βBut I believe calling out two cities that he heavily targeted with ICE and who are against his attacks on [the] environment and Peoples was quite intentional.β
Calderonβs words are striking. They also name a pattern. Trump didnβt select two cities arbitrarily; he picked the places that denied his fascist will outright. Deciding whose homelands are sacrificed has always been a political choice, and Native Californians have been on the butt end of it for a long time.Β
What happened to Native Californians was also a harbinger, not a footnote. Their land and water βΒ under Spain, Mexico and the United States β became a small price to pay for the stateβs growth.
What happened to Native Californians was also a harbinger, not a footnote. Their land and water βΒ under Spain, Mexico and the United States β became a small price to pay for the stateβs growth. That habit isnβt restricted to Trumpβs party. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, condemned the presidentβs remark, but he has vetoed bills that would have protected tribesβ sacred sites and given them a say over the stateβs water.
However dangerous to the nation, Trump is undeniably talented at getting his many grudges to materialize one way or another. His threats have a way of actually becoming policy. When he pontificated about calling Canada the 51st state, tariffs followed. Los Angeles had already learned this lesson firsthand. In June 2025, after Angelenos protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, Trump sent federalized National Guard forces into the city. So when he names L.A. as expendable, Calderon is right to not simply treat it as a slip of the tongue.
For Native Californians, being a nominal sacrifice for the state is a part of history. βItβs a small price to pay, but the price has already been paid there, and Native people are still there, feeling the impacts of that,β Jolie Varela, NΓΌΓΌmΓΌ Huupi and Yokuts tribal member and founder of Indigenous Women Hike, told Salon.Β
Varela lives in PayahuunadΓΌ, the Owens Valley, in the Eastern Sierra, more than 200 miles north of Los Angeles. In 1913, the city began draining the valleyβs water through the newly built L.A. Aqueduct. When she drives through the desert to reach her hikes, Varela is reminded each time by the landscape that her homeland was not always so arid, and that this historic transgression benefits Los Angeles to this day. βWhen you turn on your water, and when you wash your hair in the shower, you can thank a Paiute for that water,β she said.
βLos Angeles could not exist the way that it does without stolen water,β AnMarie Mendoza, a Tongva citizen and University of California, Los Angeles doctoral researcher, told Salon. Her response to Trumpβs insertion of L.A. and San Diego into the Iran war was trenchant: βIt aligns with the settler colonial realities of thinking that all of the homelands in this country are expendable.βΒ
That is the through-line: a city, a state and a country that objectify Native homelands, treating them as expendable and raw material. Trumpβs remark only extended that logic to include everyone else in Los Angeles.Β
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Powerβs (LADWP) desiccation of Owens Valley has had long-term symbolic and physical impacts. The valleyβs original name was PayahuunadΓΌ, which means βthe place where water flows,β Varela said. βIt makes me think of, specifically here in PayahuunadΓΌ, my elder who had to breathe in the dust that was created from the LADWP draining Patsiata, and the reservations here.β She noted that LADWP controls over 95% of the valley floor, leaving almost no land available for the Paiute, whoβve called it home for over 15,000 years, in the past 300 years. βTheft is still ongoing,β says Varela.
L.A. didnβt just take water a century ago. It still holds the land, the water rights and the future of the NΓΌΓΌmΓΌ community, and it raises the question: Why arenβt Angelinos asking where they get their water?
Ignorance about California water is nonpartisan. Agriculture uses most of the stateβs developed water, and wealthy growers like the Resnicks are in control of much larger water rights than any tribe. Yet during the 2025 fires, a Fox News host blamed Native Americans for the regionβs wildfires in 2025. The scapegoating wasnβt just happening on the right: A former L.A. resident who is Iranian-American and a Democrat told Salon that during the 2025 fires, friends reposted claims blaming Native communities for water shortages. βWell-meaning liberals are so quick to punch down on Natives,β he said. He shares concern over the ill-informed framing of Native people as responsible for extreme water use in the state. βItβs so untrue and also racist to blame lack of water on Indigenous people . . .Β No one was talking about the Resnicks and their water rights for all their agricultural land, or all the data centers.βΒ
The Iranian-American diaspora in L.A. has lauded Trumpβs attacks on Iran. Salonβs source in the community attributes this to a nostalgia among former Persian oligarchs residing in Beverly Hills, which is known colloquially as Tehrangeles. βFunny how quickly a foreign place can feel like home to immigrants . . . but obviously all that comes at a cost that typically other people have to bear.βΒ
Asked how the Iranian community in L.A. might view the Native response to Trumpβs remarks, he said: βItβs not their L.A. Itβs the other L.A.β
In Sylmar, a suburban neighborhood in north Los Angeles that borders the Angeles and San Gabriel National Forests, Varela walked with Mendoza along the L.A. aqueduct. She recalled something others see as banal but that, to her, means something else: βI saw water flowing down into the street, and [thought] βThatβs our water, and we canβt water on certain days, and we have limitations here, but yet Iβm here in a wealthy neighborhood in Tovaangar, hundreds of miles away, and our water is flowing into the streets.ββ The image is a mise en abyme, a scene within a scene; water that should sustain NΓΌΓΌmΓΌ community is flagrantly wasted on a lawn in a city that has never had to think about where it comes from.
Mendoza echoed Varela, saying Paiute (NΓΌΓΌmΓΌ) people were βmy first water teachersβ and βwater is a living relative.βΒ
This is a lesson that politicians like Newsom, whose 2019 apology for California Native genocide was followed by abject inaction, have still failed to grasp. Earlier this month, heΒ killed a water bill that would have given Native tribes a larger role in the stateβs water policies. Although there have been small, token land returns, California Native nations still hold less than 1% of the stateβs land. βNewsom is a hypocrite,β Varela said.
Native peoples carry a long collective memory, and Newsomβs quickly growing record of attacks on California Native tribal sovereignty could become an albatross that wonβt be forgotten if he decides to run for president in 2028, as is widely expected. At an estimated national population of 9.7 million, Native Americans represent roughly 3% of the country and could swing key states like Arizona and New Mexico in a competitive primary and general election.Β Β
Mendoza, though, sees no partisan refuge: βWhether it be red or blue, they all know how to discriminate against Native people.β
Thatβs really what makes Trumpβs remark so revealing. He said out loud what Sacramento has practiced surreptitiously for generations: that some Californians, and their land and water, are a fair price for everyone else. The difference is that for once, the people being written off were everyone else.Β
Californians should be upset by Trumpβs comments. But they should not be confused by what it obscures. This is a chance to ask whoβs already been written off in a Los Angeles the president considers expendable βΒ and to learn from California Native tribes how they survived it.
Earlier this month, the California coast was hit by a Kelvin wave, a deep ocean wave that can raise sea levels, but to most people, it wasnβt immediately visible. Named after Lord Kelvin, the mathematician who discovered them in the late 19th century, these waves donβt roll and crash along the shore like a tsunami or hurricane. They are slow-moving, mostly flat, waves of warm water that can stretch thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean.
βItβs like an enormous bathtub sloshing around,β Mark Cane, professor emeritus of earth and climate sciences at Columbia University, told NPR on Monday. Kelvin waves are totally natural, forming throughout the year from warming ocean water and usually not impacting coastlines by a noticeable amount. But this yearβs record-shattering El NiΓ±o climate pattern threatens to make Kelvin waves a little more intense throughout the winter, potentially inundating hundreds of thousands of Californians with up to two feet of elevated sea level, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today. He called it βpretty significant.βΒ
Itβs not just more Kelvin waves headed for California. The state predicts the colder seasons will bring extra powerful storms that risk bringing damage and floods. In September, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide emergency declaration in preparation for the unpredictable conditions.Β
The Trump administrationβs response to this is essentially to say βdonβt expect help.β On Tuesday, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton told state officials to prepare to pay out of pocket for disasters without federal assistance. βEvery state must have the appropriate financial reservesβ and other abilities βto ensure that recovery efforts can start immediately and not necessarily be held up simply because of the federal [disaster] declaration process,β Hamilton said, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by Politico. He added that βA future that I hope we would shoot for is one where we wouldnβt require as many disasters because the capability of states is so high and so substantial,β referring to presidential authorizations of disaster aid.
California officials are taking Hamilton at his word. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported the state is βramping up resources to help communities across the state prepare for potentially devastating storms and flooding spurred by a record ongoing El NiΓ±o.β
βThey swore an oath to serve this country and protect the American people. Now theyβre abandoning FEMAβs mission and telling Americans in states across the country to fend for themselves,β Newsom said in a press release. βWhen disaster strikes, Americans help one another regardless of politics.β
The Trump administrationβs Justice Department has escalated its pre-midterm crusade against California, using the myth of widespread noncitizen voting as its justification for novel and bizarre adventures to try to undercut trust in elections ahead of the midterms.
Just last week, the DOJ sent a letter to election officials in Los Angeles demanding election administrators take a series of actions after claiming it found thousands of noncitizens who were registered to vote in the state. DOJ officials laid out a list of steps they wanted local election administrators to take to ensure that these people, who it alleged were βlikely noncitizen voters,β didnβt receive mail-in ballots or have their votes counted.
Since then, the Justice Department has also sued the state of California and threatened investigations and the potential prosecution of any election worker in the state who might knowingly process ballots from noncitizen voters. The DOJ has previously issued similar warnings to election officials across the nation.
Noncitizens voting in federal election is vanishingly rare and there is no evidence to show that it has impacted the outcome of any federal election. But President Trump and his allies roll out the conspiracy theory that it is widespread anytime he loses, or thinks heβs about to lose, an election, as TPM has reported for years.
On Monday, federal law enforcement arrested 11 people and charged 28 people residing in California, accusing them of making false statements and submitting fraudulent voter registrations. Each of the people charged have legal status in the U.S. but are not U.S. citizens, the DOJ said. The Justice Department is calling the sweep of arrests βOperation Protect the Vote.β The DOJ in an online statement accused California election officials of not properly maintaining the stateβs voter rolls and ignoring its wild claims that there are some 20,000 noncitizens registered in the state.
My colleague David Kurtz got into the DOJβs potentially unfounded accusations in Morning Memo a bit more last week, which you can catch up on here. There are plenty of reason to be suspicious of the DOJβs claim that it has found tens of thousands of noncitizens on Californiaβs voter rolls. The DOJ has been trying to force states to hand over their voter lists and/or to run their voter rolls through a faulty federal database that has a poor track record with finding eligible voters to be ineligible. Courts across the nation have blocked the DOJβs campaign to seize voting records from states.
California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters on Monday that there is not a widespread issue with voter fraud in California and described the DOJβs arrests as βa drop in the bucketβ of the stateβs 23 million registered voters.
βThey provided no β no basis, fact, evidence, substantiation, backing for that allegation, all they provided was a list of people and nothing about why theyβre purportedly ineligible,β Bonta said, referencing the DOJβs claims that itβs identified 20,000 noncitizens on Californiaβs voter rolls.
βIf they have such information we would be happy to review it, but theyβve provided none. And what words theyβre using are very important,β Bonta continued. βTheyβre not saying that βwe have conclusive proof,β theyβre not saying βwe know,β theyβre not even saying βwe think we know.β Theyβre saying βwe believe itβs likely.'β
Bonta then brought up the last time that the Justice Department claimed to have found tens of thousands of noncitizen voters in Nevada earlier this year. Those claims fizzled out entirely.
βWe are not impressed by their case, we are not impressed by their position. Our north start is the law and the facts and they have neither on their side,β he said. βWe believe their case is meritless and weβll make our position very clear in court.β
The Trump administration is ramping up its efforts to flush out noncitizen voters with next monthβs midterm elections approximately two weeks away. On Monday, the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against more than two dozen green card holders in California, accusing them of illegally registering to vote or casting fraudulent ballots. The 28 defendants are lawful permanent residents with legal status in the country but are not citizens permitted to vote.
Noncitizen voting is incredibly uncommon, according to data on the issue, and has not been shown to influence the results of races. Not only does the practice create a paper trail, it carries steep penalties. βFederal law prohibits non-U.S. citizens from registering and voting in Federal elections; violators are removable and face up to five years in prison,β Citizenship and Immigration Services acknowledged in an October 2024 letter. βThe evidence is clear that these laws are working as intended β it is extremely uncommon for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections.β
That hasnβt stopped members of the Trump administration from upholding the recent DOJ arrests, dubbed Operation Protect the Vote, as evidence of cheating in the midterms. βThis causes real damage to real elections and real damage to American citizens,β Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, said during a Los Angeles news conference.
The arrests come less than a week after the DOJ sued California and sent officials a list on an USB drive and a handwritten password, demanding to know who on the list was a citizen or not with only a 48-hour window to respond. Dean Logan, the Los Angeles county clerk and recorder, told The Guardian his office refused to review the list, in part because they didnβt consider the USB drive to be secure. βThe Department of Justice has not provided the underlying evidence, source, or methodology supporting its assertions that individuals identified in its records are ineligible to vote,β Logan said in a statement.Β
βIf the regime truly believed California had an illegal voting problem β no such problem exists β they would have taken this action a long time ago, not as Californians are literally casting votes,β State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat, posted on X. βThis is all a political stunt to trick people into voting for Prop 39 (which will make it harder for citizens to vote) and to lay groundwork for a coup on January 3 by refusing to seat House Democrats based on bogus βvoter fraudβ claims.β
Prop 39, also known as the βVoter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative,β is basically a voter ID law. If passed, it would,Β among other things, require voters to present a government-issued ID for in-person voting or provide the last four digits of a government-issued ID designated during voter registration for mail-in voting.
Claims of voter fraud and noncitizen voting are not new to the Trump administration. It was a strategy that Donald Trump explored in his 2024 presidential campaign, but it was largely dropped once he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris and it became unnecessary to use. David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. βYou can absolutely bet if Trump loses, he will claim there was widespread noncitizen voting without any evidence whatsoever,β Becker told NPR in September 2024. βAnd that is going to incite anger and potentially violence.β
At a Monday night rally in Nebraska, President Donald Trump spoke about the Iran war and record-high oil prices, both of which are outraging voters and promise to be deciding factors in the November midterm elections. First the president downplayed the high costs, saying they are βartificialβ and βa little bit high.β Then Trump said that by attacking Iran, he was promoting peace.
βItβs a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,β Trump said to applause. βThey can take out a city. Let them take let it let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. Thatβs this is a very small price to pay and itβs going to be over with very soon. Itβs essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long. You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. Let me tell you.β
The New York Times reported βIt was not immediately clear what Mr. Trump meant,β but to others, the message was clearly about inciting violence on an American city. Politicians, especially in California, erupted in outrage, at least on social media. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria posted on X that βSan Diego is not collateral damage β¦ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.β Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described Trumpβs comments as βdangerous,β posting on X that βIn the face of irresponsible threats, as Angelenos, we know how to stand together and protect our city.β
California Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed Bass, posting on X that Trumpβs comments could be βtreasonousβ and claimed he is βdirecting the State Threat Assessment Center to actively monitor the situation in the event that foreign actors interpret the Presidentβs remarks as an invitation to target California.β All three are Democrats but at least one Republican shared the sentiment that Trumpβs speech wasnβt harmless.
βAs a Navy veteran, I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war,β Jim Desmond, a Republican congressional nominee in a San Diego metro district, posted on X. βOur job is to keep Americans safe, stand up to our enemies, and make sure a threat like that never becomes reality. No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.β
But on Tuesday, the White House said this was all just a big misunderstanding and the president actually wants to prevent Tehran from taking out a city. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted on X that βThe media freakout over President Trumpβs comments is not rooted in reality. He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadnβt been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.β
Also on Tuesday, it was reported that most families of the six soldiers killed in the deadliest attack of the Iran war would not be attending a major White House event for Gold Star families hosted by Trump.
Object permanence: Warren on taxing the rich and class warfare; Psychology v reproducibility; Copyright troll sentenced for beating Uber driver; "Halloween Moon"; Enshittification of solar.
Bonta sold us out to Trump's oligarchs (permalink)
Well, fuck. California Attorney General Rob Bonta just surrendered to the Trump-aligned Ellison billionaires who want to take over and destroy Warners, merging it with the chudded out husk they've made of Paramount, leaving these two colossal, corrupt, useless assholes to control Warners, Paramount and Tiktok:
In announcing the settlement, Bonta's office touted a long list of concessions the AG had wrung from the Ellisons before greenlighting this indefensible, illegal and dangerous merger. Every! single! one! of these concessions is meaningless bullshit. Bonta just handed the American movie and TV sector to two of the most odious creeps to draw breath, surrendering without firing a shot.
For a breakdown of how fucking useless this settlement is, read (who else?) Matt Stoller, whose piece breaking it down is titled "Happy Oligarch Day!"
The first thing Stoller points out is that every one of the "commitments" in the settlement only matter if Bonta's office enforces them. Bonta's office will never have as much leverage over Warnermount as it has today, when the company is paying a $7m/day "ticking fee" while the merger is stalled (thanks to an injunction secured by the Hollywood unions, whom Bonta has just royally fucked, because they can't afford to litigate this case without the AG office's backing). So even if any of these conditions meant anything (which they do not), they won't be enforced. If Bonta can't bring Warnermount to heel today, when they have to pay $7m/day for so long as they're crosswise with him, how will he ever get them to do shit?
He.
Will.
Not.
But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter! Because the Ellisons have given Bonta nothing. Take the guarantee that Warnermount "will make 30 films" for the next two years, and 32 films thereafter. That's what's been announced, but when former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya dug into the actual wording, he discovered they are only committing to distributing 30 films, and to making 15 films, which they are allowed to co-produce with other studios. They made 18 movies last year. Under the terms of this deal, they have "committed" to making fewer movies than they make today:
They've committed to not selling the Warner lot. For five years. But they are allowed to move it out of LA, which is something my neighbors in Burbank are doubtless delighted to learn. After that, they can move it to whatever state offers them the biggest sweetheart tax deal and the weakest union protections.
They are prohibited from gouging the theater chains and putting them out of business to promote their streaming business. For three years. After that, they can let 'er rip.
Then there's the "editorial board" that will oversee the Ellisons' management of CNN and MSNBC, nominally to keep it from getting the CBS treatment and going 24/7 Great Replacement/Haitians eating dogs/Charlie Kirk funeral pyrotechnics spectaculars. Guess who chooses the members of the editorial board? The Ellisons. As Stoller writes, "itβs downright comical [that] they demanded that David Ellison not corrupt CNN by having David Ellison appoint a board ensuring that David Ellison not do that."
But you can ignore everything you've just read, because the settlement includes a clause that says they don't have to do any of the things it says they have to do. This is the "force majeure" clause, which is not like a normal force majeure clause (which allows the parties to back out of their commitment in case of war, wildfires, etc). This force majeure clause lets Warnermount tear up the entire agreement if there's a strike or a recession.
So: if (when) the Hollywood unions go on strike over this betrayal (which they absolutely should do), the agreement becomes null. And if (when) the AI bubble bursts and there's a massive recession, the agreement becomes null. And if (when) Trump's War on Oil plunges the US into Jimmy Carter-style oil economic tsunami, the agreement becomes null.
As Stoller points out, 12 State Attorneys General signed this piece of shit. Every one of them is a lawyer, and every one of them has a staff of lawyers. None of the glaring, catastrophic, utterly disqualifying defects in this "settlement" can possibly be a surprise to them. These Democrat warriors surrendered to Trump's oligarchs, giving them everything, including control over the American film and TV industry for so long as it limps along. They just assumed you wouldn't notice.
Stoller says he's "in a strangely good mood" about this because of all the political capital it took to get this over the line (unlike, say, Disney-Fox, which sailed through with nary a hitch), saying that it indicates that the public is fed up with monopolies. He's right, they are fed up with monopolies. Everyday Americans, Democrats and Republicans, are telling pollsters they'd back a politician who campaigned on shattering monopoly power:
So this leaves us to wonder why Bonta (who talked tough in public about this merger and insisted he would never settle for this kind of weaksauce) stabbed the state, the country, Hollywood workers, and the American public in the back like this? Stoller's theory is that Bonta was isolated by "Democratic insiders" who wouldn't back his play.
OK, fine. As Stoller writes, there's no ambiguity here, this is just straight up corruption, oligarch pals of the President getting to roll up and gut the industry's globally important, culturally essential media sector. The "teachers' pets" of the Democratic Party have once again sold out working people in a bid to be liked by the rich and powerful.
This will fuel (more) distrust of America's political class, a distrust that has been repeatedly earned over decades and especially in this decade. Our leaders are "malevolent liars." It's been true for a very long time, but we can no longer pretend otherwise. Perhaps Stoller's right and this means we'll finally get some real change. I hope so. But for now, I'm just furious.
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
βOnce Is Enemy Action,β a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 508 (17556 total).
"The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work β excluding any serialized fiction β is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Object permanence: RIP Wau Holland; Diebold voting machines suck; How to steal an RFID-locked car; Pirates are big spenders; You can't fight enshittification.
Upcoming appearances: Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
The stupidest imaginable excuses for surveillance pricing (permalink)
With "surveillance pricing," businesses have finally found something AI can do way, way, way better than people: price gouging.
As the name suggests, "surveillance pricing" is the practice of charging every customer a different price for every transaction, based on the massive surveillance dossiers that Big Tech companies and data-brokers have assembled on everyone in the world. Congress hasn't updated federal consumer privacy law since 1988 (when they passed a law banning the disclosure of VHS rentals), so pretty much any form of consumer surveillance is fair game.
This is where the AI comes in. One thing AI is indisputably great for is multivariate statistical analysis. You can feed an AI "behavioral data" (information about where you go, what you do, what you buy, who you talk to and what you say) about all of your customers and ask it to cluster them according to their shared traits. Then you can direct the AI to automatically run a series of small experiments to discover the maximum markup each group will stomach under which circumstances.
This works without you having to direct the AI to rip off certain groups of people β it will simply find the most vulnerable people and rip them off the most. If you're hiring in an industry that practices a lot of tacit racial discrimination, a system like this can figure out on its own that people of color typically accept lower wages because there are fewer employers bidding for their labor, and recommend lowball salary offers, all without you ever typing "please be racist" into your AI prompt.
This works so well that Google has announced that it is their plan for making a profit off of AI, after losing hundreds of billions of dollars on chatbots:
In the before times, marketers and demographers had to dream up demographic categories based on limited data and run focus groups to figure out how to maximize revenue from each market segment. Now an AI can segment the data to any degree you choose, and continuously, automatically experiment on each segment to find their weak spots.
It's "theory-free." You don't have to discover why a group is willing to pay more under a given set of circumstances, you merely have to observe and weaponize this fact. You don't have to know why one group of purchasers consistently accept higher prices between 6AM and 8AM β you can just automatically jack up prices on them without knowing or caring that you're gouging parents of young children who are re-ordering essential supplies while trying to get their kids to school in the morning.
I thought up that example. I don't know if it's really happening. But here's something that really is happening: ecommerce sites charge parents of newborns extra when they order thermometers in the middle of the night. I'm not saying that anyone ever sat down and said, "Parents with sick children will pay whatever we charge for a thermometer at 2AM." They didn't have to: this is the kind of thing an automated system can do without any human intervention:
The goal of surveillance pricing is to shift all the "consumer surplus" (the difference between the highest price you're willing to pay and the price you actually pay) to companies. It's a form of cod-Marxism where you are gouged according to your ability (to pay) and charged according to the desperation of your need:
The problems of surveillance pricing are well documented. Under Biden, the FTC did a landmark study on the practice, developing a rich factual record that documents the role surveillance pricing plays in the affordability crisis:
Companies are already using this technology to rip you off, and they're slavering for the chance to do more of it. Instacart was recently caught marking up some shoppers' items by as much as a third:
The problem is that as much as companies love this, shoppers hate it. Last summer, Delta announced that it was going to surveillance price every seat on every flight, only to face such a massive backlash that they had to make another announcement bemoaning the fact that we'd all misunderstood their (unambiguous and extremely damning) announcement and they were actually going to do no such thing:
One thing the Mamdani campaign impressed upon every politician in the country is that people are pissed about affordability and they will support anyone who stands up for the public against AI-equipped price gougers. The problem of course is that those price gougers are highly organized and have deep treasuries (stuffed with money they stole from us). With surveillance pricing, politicians face a familiar conundrum: if they do the thing that's popular with voters, they'll enrage donors.
One way to cut this knot is to enact legislation that seems to address the problem, but stuff it with so many loopholes that it does nothing. This lets you declare yourself the people's champion without doing anything to protect them from the donors who prey on your voters. That's the approach they took in Maryland:
But in California, they're actually doing something about surveillance pricing. AB-2564 is a smart, well-written bill that bans surveillance pricing. It contains an easily evaluated test for surveillance pricing and carves out legitimate reasons for offering different prices for the same purchase (for example, when it costs more to deliver the product or service):
Now we're in for the hard yards of turning this bill into a law. That's where California's cities come in. When municipal governments pass resolutions supporting a state bill, it makes it much easier to get that bill through the state legislature (and conversely, without support from major cities, it's that much easier to kill the bill before it becomes law).
A few days ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was on the verge of passing a resolution in support of AB-2564. Now, that vote is stalled, thanks to a letter sent by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, an organization that has been pissing in San Franciscans' faces and telling them it was raining since 1850:
The Chamber's letter is β to use a technical term β flaming garbage. It raises the most spurious objections imaginable, claims about the bill's language that are belied by its plain, easily understood text. These objections are demolished in a letter the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent to the Supervisors:
In the letter, EFF explains that claims that surveillance pricing will lower prices are overblown and not borne out by evidence. But more importantly β as EFF points out β privacy is a human right, and the idea that you should have to give up your privacy to get a fair price is just a fancy way of saying that privacy should be the exclusive preserve of people who can afford to pay more:
EFF's letter goes on to address the Chamber's objections. Far from creating uncertainty about which conduct the bill addresses, AB-2564 crisply defines surveillance pricing as:
a customized price for a good for a specific consumer or group of consumers based, in whole or in part, on personally identifiable information collected through electronic surveillance.
The Chamber raises other tired objections, falsely claiming that banning surveillance pricing will end common discounting strategies like offering seniors cheaper movie tickets, or giving cheaper rates to retain customers who call to cancel their service. EFF replies by pointing out that all the Chamber's concerns are covered by the three comprehensive carve-outs in the bill: the ability to charge higher rates when it costs more to service a given customer; offering discounts to retain customers who want to cancel their service; and finally, discounts for criteria anyone can meet (like an "early bird special"), for membership in a broadly defined group (like "seniors"), or for participation in a loyalty program.
The San Francisco Supervisors could have figured out at a glance that the Chamber was bullshitting them. All it takes is a cursory read of the statute. But now they don't even have to do that: EFF has painstakingly debullshittified the Chamber's FUD.
Surveillance pricing is grossly offensive. When a company charges me $0.50 for a product that it charges you $1 for, they're essentially saying that your dollars are worth half as much as mine are. Companies shouldn't be able to reach into your wallet or your bank account and chop your money in half:
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work β excluding any serialized fiction β is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Data brokers are a cancer. There's a direct line from the unrestricted collection, retention and processing of our data to a host of evils, from deepfake porn to phishing scams; from racial discrimination in hiring to ICE roundups of migrants; from targeted election interference to identity theft:
Why do data brokers exist? Because we let them. Congress hasn't passed a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when they made it illegal for video stores to disclose your VHS rentals. All other acts of consumer surveillance are legal. Data brokers spy on us for the same reason your dog licks its balls: because they can, and we don't stop them:
Getting rid of data brokers wouldn't solve all our problems, but it sure would go a long way to solving many of them. Rather than legally requiring platforms to spy on kids (to exclude them from being targeted by platforms' algorithms), we could prohibit platforms from spying on anyone, including kids, meaning kids couldn't be identified (much less targeted) by algorithms or ads:
Data brokers produce mountains of raw material used for every form of scam and torture. It's data brokers who power the gig economy's "algorithmic wage discrimination" system, where nurses and other workers are offered less pay based on how much credit card debt they're carrying:
So the feds (both Congress and the executive branch) have surrendered, and that leaves states alone on the battlefield fighting the privacy wars alone. State legislatures have taken some big steps, but β crucially β they've stopped short of banning data brokers from operating within their borders. Having taken a ban on data brokers off the table, states are left with complex, often unworkable "compromises" that go nowhere.
This is where DROP comes in. DROP stands for "Delete Request and Opt-out Platform," and it's a new phase of California's privacy regime that kicks off next month. Under DROP, you fill in some paperwork and then the state requires every data brokerage operating in California to delete your data, as well as any inferences they've made about you based on that data:
Implementing DROP is nowhere near as good as banning data brokers. The idea that data brokers should be able to collect, retain and process your data unless you tell them not to implies that everyone starts off wanting to be spied on, and therefore data brokers should assume that unless they hear otherwise, we're delighted to be the subject of commercial surveillance. This is an incredibly stupid supposition, contradicted by all available evidence. For example, when Apple offered iPhone owners a one-click option to block Facebook from spying on them, 96% of iPhone owners clicked the button:
Indeed, given this fact, one wonders why Apple bothers with the "don't spy on me" button at all. Why not have a "do spy on me" button that is unchecked by default, and leave users to dig through their settings to find the option to opt in to being surveilled? Of course, then it would make the fact that Apple spies on its customers and uses the data to target ads (with no way to opt out) a little awkward:
In the absence of a ban on surveillance without explicit, opt-in consent, we are left with the bizarre fiction that most of us want to be spied on, a fiction that pervades the DROP process, making the entire procedure nearly impossible to complete.
To start the DROP process, you are recommended to create a Login.gov ID. This is an incredibly invasive process that involves photographing multiple pieces of ID and taking several selfies using special apps and webpages that hijack your device's camera and processor in a bid to prevent bad actors from spoofing the process. There's a plausible reason for this rigmarole: Login.gov is the authentication system for multiple federal, state and local IT systems in the US, so a fake or stolen Login.gov ID could be used to access your IRS, Social Security, and other very sensitive accounts.
The corollary of this is the promise of Login.gov: once you create your ID (a lengthy, multi-stage process) you won't have to jump through lots of painful bureaucratic hoops to access a wide variety of government services.
DROP didn't get the memo.
After you log in to DROP via Login.gov, you are sent a text message β to the phone number in your Login.gov profile β with a link to access a "secure" website that takes over your camera to let you take a "secure" photo of the front and back of your California driver's license or your US passport.
Note that these are the same credentials you have to supply to get the Login.gov ID that you've just used to get to this step in the process. In other words, in order to get to the stage where they ask you to photograph your driver's license, you have to have already photographed and validated your driver's license.
Once you complete this (pointless, redundant) step, you're directed back to your computer, where the process continues. Here, you must fill in all kinds of biographical detail, as well as specialized pieces of information, including your car's VIN. This is a piece of information that most people don't have β but which the California DMV does have and could auto-feed into the system, given that you've repeatedly affirmatively identified yourself to the service.
You also have to provide your mobile advertising identifier, a long, unique number that you may or may not be able to extract from your phone, depending on the model and the OS version. If you can't get it that way, you can install an app like AAID, which comes with a long list of β you guessed it β permissions to extract, store and process your private information.
Here's the thing: the whole point of a mobile ad identifier is that apps can access it (this is how they identify and track you). That step, where the system made you switch to your phone and use your camera to photograph your driver's license? That step could have automatically pulled this data off your device. That's the whole fucking point of this exercise: that web-pages and apps can request your mobile ad identifier.
Instead, DROP wants users to dig through their phone's deepest settings and/or install an app to retrieve a 32-digit number, which they then must key into a webform on their computer or in a different app on their phone.
Once you've done this, you must fill in another page of biographical information, including information that you've already provided to Login.gov and information you've already filled in on previous screens.
On this screen, you must also verify your phone number by sending yourself a text and then pasting in a unique number the system sends to you. But remember how this whole thing started? The first step is that you authenticate with Login.gov, which sends a text to your phone so you can take a (redundant) picture of your driver's license. There is no way you could get this far in the process unless you controlled the phone number you've just "verified" with the system.
Next, you must verify your email address, by receiving an email with a unique code in it and keying or pasting that into the webform, too. Again, remember how this process started: with you logging in with Login.gov, using your email address, which the system has already treated as verified since the very start of this (very) long and (very) complicated process.
This whole thing is terrible, and it is predicated on the absurd premise that Californians have to be defended from the threat of strangers who pretend to be them in order to sneakily opt them out of surveillance. DROP requires stronger authentication than any other US government system I've ever interacted with. I file my tax returns with fewer authentication steps. I renew my car's DMV registration with fewer authentication steps. I became a US citizen with fewer authentication steps.
This is either a system with no coherent threat model, or (far more probably), its threat model is that people will use it. This is California's answer to "a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'":
It's especially instructive to compare this process to the steps you have to take in order to "opt in" to having a data broker open a file on you and stuff it full of your sensitive, personal information, which is then sold to all comers:
Step one: Exist.
Step two: There is no step two.
It's also instructive to compare this process to the steps a data broker has to take to spy on you and sell your data:
Step one: Exist.
Step two: There is no step two.
Though there are many obvious ways this could be made better, I want to stress here that you shouldn't have to do this at all. It's entirely backwards. The process for not being spied on should look like this:
Step one: Exist.
Step two: There is no step two.
If anyone is going to be forced to jump through hoops to participate in the mass collection and catastrophic mishandling of private data, it should be the data brokers, not the people they spy on.
This kind of malicious compliance is the inevitable outcome of a process that starts by taking the obvious best measure off the table. The answer to the problem of data brokers is banning data brokers, not creating a demented hairball of form-filling that maintains the fiction that data broker surveillance is consensual.
In its own way, this process reminds me of the whole "carbon credit" fiasco. The answer to too many carbon emissions is to democratically decide to ban certain kinds of carbon emissions. But that would require states to do things, rather than simply "nudging" a process that is guided by "the market." So we end up with these junk "credits" that companies manufacture by promising not to log forests, many of which are already wildlife preserves and/or subsequently burn down:
The best critique of this whole thing came in 2021 from the Climate Ad Project, who produced a short video in which people were allowed to kill one another provided they purchased "murder offsets":
In a state of nature, murder exists. We, as a society, have decided this is bad. Rather than creating "incentives" not to murder, we just banned murder. Admittedly, we still get some murders, but when these happen, we don't treat it as "a mispricing of the anti-murder incentive" β we treat it as a crime.
The commercial surveillance industry may not be a criminal enterprise (yet), but it is the source of a torrent of crime, a flood of crime, a tsunami of crime. Every piece of your information that a data broker possesses exposes you to the risk of being victimized by a criminal. For this reason, I strongly believe that you should go through the tedious, performatively difficult DROP process:
But let's not pretend that this is good β or even adequate. There is no demand for being spied on. There is no basis for taking such enormous care in making sure people aren't maliciously removed from surveillance databases. If these databases exist at all (they should not), then we should make spies go through all this paperwork, to prove that you do want to be spied on, and unless they manage it, then spying on us should be treated as the crime it is.
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work β excluding any serialized fiction β is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Login
