On the bike path at dusk, I was almost home when a man wearing a salmon pink T-shirt rode toward me in the oncoming lane. Automatically, I scanned. Silver hair, older white guy, nice clothes and gear, intent eyes. He then left his lane, crossed the yellow line into my lane, our bikes nearly colliding as he leaned his torso and head toward me and made a loud, smacking sound with his mouth.

Smack smack—fast like cocking a gun. Directly in my face. And he was gone.

Fuck you! I wanted to scream. But I was alone on the path. Tall, athletic, he could easily turn and catch up with me, knock me off my bike, drag me into the woods. I rode as fast as I could. I did not hear the August insect song. All I could hear was my own heartbeat. My own silence. Felt small and powerless as I did the “right” thing—nothing. Kept looking back but saw only the darkening, tree-lined, empty path.

What could I report? A man riding into my lane, trying to intimidate me? He’d not spoken a word. He’d not broken a law.

What was he trying to do? What was his impulse to scare a stranger—a woman alone? It felt poisonous not to yell.

“FUCK. YOU!!!” I finally screamed, able to see a busy road just ahead. I’m sure he did not hear me.

If he’d done the same thing to a man, he might have gotten knocked over or chased down.

I’d just moved to Easthampton, Massachusetts, from a small Connecticut town near where a young man, walking, fatally stabbed a woman jogging along a downtown sidewalk. If the man who’d just passed me was capable of trying to scare a woman, what else was he capable of?

I rode until I found an officer patrolling an outdoor concert, a big white guy with a sweet face. I told him what had just happened, realizing it probably didn’t sound like much. “No, no witness,” I said.

“I’ll write it up when I get back to the station,” he assured me, smiling, but didn’t ask for my name or number. Didn’t take out a notepad or pen. We chatted enough for me to gather that he was new on the job. Still, he was an officer who didn’t think my experience important enough to jot down a few notes. I wasn’t surprised.

Later that afternoon, talking to a friend about the incident, I realized I needed to call it in. Realized it was my job to make sure the police had the info, whether they wanted it or not, just in case it could somehow help another woman. As a white woman, I experience the privilege of feeling I can call the police for any reason with confidence instead of fear. With a sigh but no hesitation, I called the police department’s business line. A female officer answered and took the report. “Once you were in a safe place,” she said, “you should have called 911 from the bike path. Immediately.” Her voice was soft but firm.

“Really?” I said after a brief, stunned silence. Instead of overreacting, I’d underestimated the seriousness of those few seconds. Of course I did. He hadn’t spoken vulgar words. He hadn’t touched me. The incident seemed bizarre, yet nothing “happened.” Still, in the #MeToo era, three years since America heard a man boast, “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything,” and then elected him president—the subtlety and weirdness of what had just happened still felt chilling.

Most days, most places, I’m aware of some men’s potential for violence against women, like an undercurrent that can become a riptide. This man made it visible—in secret. Just between the two of us. He acknowledged it, his face in my face for an instant, his eyes glinting. I felt the undertow.

On the first ride of the next season—after forgetting him all winter—I looked for that guy in every man I passed. Not because I was afraid. I looked for him because I was angry.

One day, I turned my bike around and followed his twin. Caught up with the guy, but as I passed, saw it wasn’t him. Someday, if I find him, I’ll call 911 while trailing him from a distance. For now, I ride on—ready to change the ending of this story.

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“It’s impossible not to react to this story. It is enraging. Chivas clearly understands the importance of her task. Kristene is an incredibly brave and winning narrator. The book promises to be a thorough and complete account of this crime and tragedy. Many themes play into the events and Chivas makes the reader understand just how and why something like this could happen. And the trial itself provides an active narrative framework. I have no criticism to offer.” Henry Holt & Company

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(This op-ed appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on 1/15/2026. There is a paywall, so if that link doesn’t work, here is an archival copy. The version below is updated, & I’ll continue to post significant updates at the end.)

ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot at Renee Nicole Good three times—about six seconds after her butch wife taunted him, calling him “big boy.”

As a volunteer legal observer, Renee Good had trained to witness officials’ conduct. After dropping her 6-year-old son at school on a snowy winter morning, she and Becca Good showed up to help support and protect their more vulnerable neighbors from ICE.

Cellphone footage taken by ICE agent Ross shows his perspective as he circles their vehicle—momentarily blocking one of two lanes on a one-way street, as Renee waves several cars to pass. Ross records Renee’s friendly, smiling face through her open window. “Dude, I’m not mad at you,” she says without a hint of anger or attitude.

His masked reflection slides along the side of the car. Ross records the license plate, then Renee’s wife, who is following him with her cellphone out, recording him.

“Hey, show your face, big boy,” Becca says. “We don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. It will be the same plate when you come talk to us later,” she mocks casually, referring to reports that some ICE agents switch license plates—while revealing the two women are a couple.

If Jonathan Ross didn’t get it when Becca Good said “we,” he surely got it when she said “us.” “U.S. citizen. Former f- - -ing veteran,” Good adds. “You want to come at us? You want to come at us?”

If he didn’t get it the first two times she outed them, he surely got it by the third and fourth time. The camera swerves to show the ground as Ross switches the cellphone to his left hand, making it possible to draw his gun with his right hand.

“I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead,” Becca says, and tries to open the passenger side door.

Within maybe 6.71 seconds, Renee Good reverses her car, and Ross inexplicably moves in front of the SUV and fires directly into the driver’s side front windshield, then twice into Renee Good’s open passenger window as her car moves forward, turning away from him. His video shows her turning the wheel to her right, away from him—the last thing she did in her life.

“F- - -ing b- - - -,” he says, filming her SUV careening toward a parked car before crashing.

If you believe that had Becca Good not called Jonathan Ross “big boy,” her wife might still be alive, that suggests death is an inevitable punishment for mocking a man.

“I could have totally gotten you killed,” my wife said to me.

“I would have gotten myself killed,” I replied.

When I told friends, they said, “Right? Me f- - -ing too,” and “Oh, I would’ve gotten us all killed.”

As children, for better or worse, we learn the difference between sticks, stones, and words. But ICE agent Ross is apparently a man so vulnerable to a civilian’s defiant attitude that he murdered her wife. A ticking time bomb, being called “boy” by a butch woman seemingly enraged Ross beyond his professional capacity to manage a crisis.

Only little boys are called big boys.

Had Becca Good called him “big man,” we might be talking about a different outcome. But she infantilized him. And in doing so, she took down this tall, strong, masked man loaded with gear and guns. It appears his rage consumed him, so he stole her wife’s life—a mother of three, a poet, a person who had just smiled at him and said calmly, “I’m not mad at you.”

For those who cannot fathom that Jonathan Ross may have committed a hate crime, let’s go with that. Let’s admit that, regardless, being a white woman did not save her.

Renee Good was leveraging her white privilege, whether she used those words or not. At a time in United States history when ICE is kidnapping brown and Black folks from their homes, workplaces, schools, churches, or even while running errands, it is essential for us white folks not to look away.

We must take a stand, now. We must raise our voices, call our elected officials, and close our wallets because none of us is safe if we must depend on our whiteness. We must witness, document, and support our brown and Black neighbors because it doesn’t matter if they’re United States citizens with passports or not. The color of their skin determines the level of danger they are in.

If a neighbor is being detained or arrested, we can legally tell them their rights. They can ask, “Am I free to go?” They can say, “I wish to remain silent.” They can ask, “Am I under arrest?” They can state, “I do not consent.” And they can demand, “I want to speak to a lawyer.”

Regardless of what you think about ICE shooting a smiling white woman in an SUV with a dog in the backseat—shooting at her at least three times—surely, you’ve read the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller that ends: “Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.” Renee Good was the kind of woman who would have shown up and spoken out for you.

Margaret Atwood famously said, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Words are not what killed Renee Good. Fragile masculinity and hate took her life.

And the rest is history.

Updates:

Lawyers representing Good’s family commissioned an independent autopsy and released its findings on Wednesday, ABC7 News reported. The Guardian reported: “The autopsy, described as preliminary, found three clear gunshot wounds on the 37-year-old’s body, two of which were not immediately life-threatening. One struck her left forearm, and another entered her body through her right breast, but missed major organs. A third shot struck her on the left side of her head near her temple then exited on the right side of her head, the New York Times reported.”

The fact that Good suffered a gunshot wound in her left forearm and left temple confirms that she was turning her steering wheel to the right and away from ICE agent Jonathan Ross when he shot her.

Shortly after the killing of Renee Good, ICE observer Patty O’Keefe describes agents threatening her, saying, “You guys got to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian b---- is dead.”

On a personal note, I was surprised to receive a personalized pass on this op-ed from the Washington Post saying, “Good luck and please stay safe.” Editors don’t have time to express concern for a writer’s safety. That really moved me.

Chivas Sandage is a native of Little Rock. A writer and poet, she lives in rural Texas and Connecticut with her wife. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Texas Observer, The Hartford Courant, and others. Currently, she’s working on a nonfiction book about violence against women, girls, and LGBTQ folks, forthcoming from the University of Texas Press.

One of the first things I learned is that you can speak publicly in mixed adult company about a shooting, a murder, and everyone stops talking, turns to face you. Utter the word “rape” and heads turn away, as if you’ve suddenly said something inappropriate, indelicate. Obscene.

There are so many David Stricklands in the world.

I receive a Google alert every time the name is referred to online. There is a David Strickland Street in Fort Worth, Texas. There is the young actor of Suddenly Susan fame who hanged himself in a hotel room. There is the Indigenous audio engineer who promotes the rise of Indigenous hip hop artists in Canada. Among the many David Stricklands, there is a judge, an attorney, a professor, an organist, a linebacker, a senior research physicist, a jail chaplain, and more.

For several years, whenever I received a new alert for the name, I felt the hot sting of adrenaline and cortisol rush through my body. Too many times, alerts brought news of the murder trial being significantly delayed, yet again. Or an appeal loomed. Or Strickland’s attorneys had talked to the local paper, stirring things up in the court of public opinion, claiming the real killer was on the streets while an innocent David Strickland served a life sentence without parole. Alerts arrived with links to headlines saying: “New Trial Sought” and “Could David Strickland be exonerated in 2012 Portland double shooting?” I had to remind myself that the man had already been found guilty and sentenced, based on evidence from his own gun and his own laptop—a threatening, racist, misogynist, hate-crime-of-a-letter that he addressed to Kristene Chapa’s father.

That brainless alert with no thought or feeling can suddenly announce a false alarm or an explosive report that changes everything.

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A Note to Readers: This poem appears in Vox Populi and is from the completed manuscript of my second collection, Summertime in America, which features two groups of poems about the Israel-Hamas war. These poems strive to fathom the lived experiences of Palestinian and Israeli women. They also hope to eclipse politics, amplify multiple perspectives, not traumatize in the telling, and speak to the unspeakable. Thank you for reading, and please consider leaving a comment!

He gave no reason for the stop.

On January 25, double-shooting survivor Kristene Chapa and her partner, Alondra (who goes by “Alo”), were driving to her South Texas hometown of Sinton for her niece’s softball game, already late. During the one-hour drive from Kingsville, they joked when they first passed a Border Patrol truck in the small town of Odom.

“One day, they’re going to pull us over, we joked, as we always do,” Kristene told me by phone.

“People of Hispanic/Latino culture,” Alo said, “joke around to make the best of the situation. And it has happened to me.” Both U.S. citizens, Kristene identifies as Hispanic and Alo as Mexican-American.

“But I didn’t think it would happen to us,” Kristene said.

When they got to the outskirts of Sinton, about a block from the junior high, “Well, what do ya know!” she said.

As Border Patrol pulled them over, Kristene realized she wasn’t carrying her ID. Starting to panic, she quickly dialed her mother who wasn’t able to pick up. A Texas State Trooper also pulled up behind them as backup.

Thankfully, Alo had thought to grab Kristene’s ID and keep it with her own.

“He didn’t even tell us why he pulled us over,” Kristene said.

The Border Patrol officer asked where they were going, coming from, and if they’d driven by a “checkpoint” in Kingsville, which they hadn’t. He asked why they were in Sinton and they told him—for a softball game. He continued, repeating questions.

“You’re going to a baseball game?” he asked.

“No, softball,” they restated.

Alo was driving her black SUV. He asked if they had anyone in the back. She said no and rolled down the rear windows.

After more questions, finally, he let them go.

Anyone who’s not brown or Black likely doesn’t experience the intense fear of unjust treatment that an ordinary traffic stop can provoke, much less being stopped by Border Control and State Police, at the same moment, in these uncertain times.

Kristene noted that he looked Hispanic. She felt lucky he wasn’t hostile.

“I’ve never been racially profiled but Alo is used to it. She’s from Chicago. She was just annoyed. I was upset. Later, sitting in the stands watching my niece’s game, I became very upset. My mom, sitting next to me, tried to calm me down. I was in shock because he stopped us so close to home. I didn’t think it would happen to me, not so close to home.”

Border Control has jurisdiction within 100 miles of the Mexico/U.S. border. Sinton is about 150 miles away.

“You wouldn’t think it could happen here,” Kristene once said to me about being assaulted and shot less than 20 miles from her home.

Since the shooting, Kristene cannot use her left arm and hand, cannot drive anymore, and so she doesn’t always carry ID.

On June 22, 2012, she had just graduated from Sinton High where she was an MVP pitcher for the softball team. She was on a date at a scenic overlook with her girlfriend, nineteen-year-old Mollie Olgin, when David Strickland, a 27-year-old white man from a wealthy Portland, Texas family, sexually assaulted and then shot the girls in the back of the head at point-blank range. Mollie died at the scene. Kristene survived a brain injury that left her with paralysis on her left side, vision and hearing loss, debilitating migraines, and severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Strickland is serving a life sentence without parole.

Kristene has worked hard to create a new life without Mollie. Today, she is studying at Texas A&M University-Kingsville to become a speech therapist. Alo is studying to become a physical therapist. They are engaged.

While Kristene and her partner joke about being racially profiled, and she knew ICE had begun detaining and deporting people, she had still felt safe as a citizen. But watching her niece play on the field where she’d pitched for the Sinton Lady Pirates, her old stomping ground, she felt “shaken—like after a car accident.”

And she felt a migraine coming on. It hit hard. Kristene and Alo left early.

“Because of the migraine, I couldn’t stay and enjoy being with my family,” she texted. “If I am detained, are these officers equipped to deal with my medical needs? I have PTSD. I can have anxiety and panic attacks. They don’t know I have limited mobility on my left side. How will they cuff me? And I can’t just jump into a police vehicle.”

Thankfully, the agent who stopped Kristene and Alo “stayed professional while doing his job,” Alo wrote to me. “He was straightforward with no hostility. The way things are right now, we need more agents like him. Agents who will conduct operations without escalating situations and becoming hostile. Agents who show some humanity. People who are stopped, detained, or deported will have questions, will feel scared and intimidated, suffer anxiety, and some have medical conditions. Whether or not they’re citizens, you can’t hate them for also wanting what you inherited. I understand both sides because I am a product of both sides. At the end of the day, both sides are human.”

Since the shooting, Kristene has defiantly refused to identify as a victim. Nine months after the 2012 attack, she managed to throw the opening pitch for her old team’s new season. But she also knows a lot about what it means to live with fear—day in and day out—and what it does to a person. From the moment she gained consciousness in the hospital after the attack, she was terrified the gunman would return to kill her, to kill Mollie. She asked for an officer to guard Mollie’s hospital room. Her family hadn’t yet told her Mollie was dead—Kristene was fighting for her life.

For a long time, the only men Kristene felt comfortable around were family members and the detectives working on her case.

Nearly two years after the shooting, the gunman still at large, Kristene endured the terror of being followed one night by a man driving a black sedan. Her mother recorded the license plate. Tricia, her older sister, pulled into a police station to lose him.

Weeks later, Kristene learned that a black sedan had delivered a letter addressed to her father, Mr. Hilario Chapa, and written from the perspective of a hit man hired to kill her.

Authorities asked Kristine to leave the area and go into hiding.

That letter led investigators to David Strickland. On June 20, 2014, Strickland was arrested, charged, and held in San Patricio County jail, a half mile from Kristene’s house.

When she returned home from hiding, despite the extreme unlikeliness of his escape, she knew he could walk from the jail to her bedroom window in ten minutes, or run it in a couple of minutes. The stuff of nightmares. Kristene also knew the black sedan that delivered the threatening letter could be the black sedan that followed her. And before his arrest, Strickland drove a black sedan.

Kristene also lived with the possibility that a jury might find him innocent. If he wasn’t the gunman, then her attacker was still at large. If he was the gunman, as she is certain—she remembers his weak voice, his height close to hers, and thinking she could take him if he didn’t have a gun—the possibility of his release terrified her.

During Strickland’s murder trial two years later, forensic evidence revealed the letter was written on his computer, and the full text of that letter was made public for the first time. While the case was not tried as a hate crime, Strickland’s letter not only threatened Kristene’s life but called her a “Mexican bitch” and brazenly stated, “Who gives a fuck, two lesbians die, sounds like the righteous fury of god is all I say.”

The letter proved he’d committed a hate crime, while also constituting a second crime—hate speech used as a threat against his victim’s life, causing her to go into hiding after he’d raped and shot her and killed her girlfriend. Why had officials claimed they had no evidence of a hate crime?

After his sentencing, he was moved to another prison. Three and a half years passed before Strickland’s appeal was denied and Kristene could trust he would not be released. Trust that she could begin to live without terror every day, every night, as she had for five and a half years of her young life.

But when she was stopped by Border Control, Kristene experienced a new kind of terror that her citizenship alone does not quell. She can’t be deported but if stopped by a more aggressive, power hungry officer, she could be detained—even while carrying ID—for the crime of being brown. It’s already happened in California to legal residents, in New Jersey to a US military veteran, and in Virginia to a Trump supporter on his way to work, among others.

Racial profiling strips U.S. citizens of their right to peaceably move through their day from home to school or work or softball game. If you’re brown, going to a grocery store, school, church, hospital, restaurant, or government office can be a trap.

Sending your kid in a school bus to attend a game can result in your child being questioned by Border Patrol and asked for documents. Why would any parent give a high school student their most valuable documents to lose or have stolen?

In Texas, my friend and neighbor, a well-dressed elder Hispanic gentleman who owns ten acres, a citizen born in Galveston, has hesitated recently to take his daily walks. When he does, he now carries his wallet, even if it’s a short walk from his property at the end of our long, winding, rural road.

Racial profiling terrorizes innocent people—but especially the most vulnerable among us. While Kristene Chapa is a target because of the color of her skin, she’s also gay in South Texas. And of course, every woman is a target. Her body, her words, her very existence.

To be certain, as long as you can prove your citizenship, brown residents of the U.S. should have nothing to fear. But with this new regime, uncertainty is the one thing we can all count on. Telling someone not to be afraid is easy. You never know what someone has endured, even if you think you know them. Some folks are more vulnerable—physically, psychologically, emotionally—because of what they’ve endured. And all it takes is one unstable officer to lose control.

George Floyd died because one man in control lost control.

“Some people say, ‘Oh that doesn’t happen here,’ but it’s happening,” Kristene says in another call. “There are ICE raids in Corpus (Christi). It is happening so close to home. When we were leaving the softball game, my mom asked Alo to say a Mexican prayer over me. It’s for when your spirit gets really scared.”

A note to readers: On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, Kristene Chapa’s parents lost their home and personal belongings in the Welder fire in Sinton, Texas. This family has been through so much, too much... Please share this link to their gofundme campaign: https://gofund.me/4b2dd987. Contributions of any amount make a difference and will help Kristene’s parents in this critical time, as they face the challenges of building a new handicap accessible home.

by Chivas Sandage Special to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

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Dear Republican readers, billionaire Elon Musk just grabbed every U.S. citizen and business by the wallet. Regardless of how or even whether you voted, he has access to all of your personal information—your banking accounts, taxes, and social security number are compromised—like those of everyone else in America.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls this “the largest data breach in human history.”

On February 2^nd, Richardson reported that Musk’s computers are running the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems. Musk’s crew of six kids aged 19-24, one still in college, who have little or no experience in government, were granted full access to the nation’s checkbook.

That’s our checkbook—funded by our taxes. That’s our money.

Musk, according to his own tweets, is deciding which scheduled payments to make or proclaim illegal or stop. His ring includes one young man who wrote, "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool" and “Normalize Indian hate” on social media. Not too smart. Almost cost him his job. And yeah, he’s in control of our sensitive unencrypted data.

But you did not elect Musk. No one did. This is one thing we all have in common. Maybe we have much in common. More than we want to admit.

President Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of the Treasury gave Musk, who has zero legal authority, control over $6 trillion annually—and our lives. What exactly is at risk? Your family’s privacy and safety, social security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, tax refunds, grants for farmers, and, if you work for the government, your paycheck.

“Payments that are critical for the economy and national security” are at stake says Senator Elizabeth Warren in her letter to Trump’s new Secretary of the Treasury. She went on to explain that the consequences of Musk’s reckless coup with kids at the helm “also puts the country at greater risk of defaulting on our debt, which could trigger a global financial crisis.”

When Musk took over USAID computers—with the stated intent to destroy the agency that costs 1% of our budget and keeps us safe by giving the U.S. powerful leverage when negotiating with other countries—he and his boys gained access to the State Department’s intelligence. Let that sink in.

“If you stop those payments, you kill those institutions. That’s how you start a depression. Things cascade,” Richardson explains. “Once it’s destroyed it’s too late. We must stop it from happening.”

And you can. If you’re a Republican living in a red state—even if you didn’t or don’t vote—you can help stop what’s happening by calling your Republican representatives, including the Governor. Just call 202-224-3121, follow the prompts, and say you want this to stop. It takes two minutes.

Your representatives will listen to you because their careers and futures depend on you. And Republicans in blue states need you to speak up on their behalf, as only you hold real power over this administration.

Encourage every red-state Republican you know to call their representatives and demand this unelected billionaire from South Africa be removed from power.

This is not a red or blue issue—this is about saving the US economy from a free fall.

A relative in a red state said he’d heard Musk has “read-only” access—a dangerous lie. But even if it were true, “read-only” access is all that’s needed to compromise every American citizen and business.

I sent him a list of first sources as the news began to break over the weekend. It was hard to click send—I don’t want to alienate this guy I love and respect. He’s conservative and Christian—I’m progressive as Jesus. If the bible’s red letters, Christ’s words, connect us, surely, we have in common what’s most important.

“Thanks for passing this along. Yes, the world is crazy,” he replied.

This is a constitutional crisis. It’s up to each of us to share critical facts and their sources with friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors. Regardless of Americans’ differences in opinion, none of us voted for President Musk.

Yes, the world is crazy, and our country is in danger. We need each other, even or especially if we see things differently. What divides us is what divides the not-so-United States of America. Maybe person to person, friend to friend, cousin to cousin, brother to sister, we can find our way, talk our way, together, to become the reunited states of America.

Chivas Sandage is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. She lives in San Marcos, Texas, and Goshen, Connecticut. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Texas Observer, The Hartford Courant, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and others. Currently, she’s at work on a nonfiction book about violence against women, girls, queer folks, and people of color, forthcoming from the University of Texas Press.

SOURCES: A list of first sources that were available to the public

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Heather Richardson, February 1, 2025, Letters from an American (excerpt)

"Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them."

NY Times, February 1, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon- v-doge-federal-payments-system.html

Washington Post, February 1, 2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/01/elon-musk-treasury-payments-system/

Heather Richardson, February 2, 2025, Facebook Live video

https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/590837890530283

She begins at 1:21 with background info (what happened before the weekend). At 6:55 she dives into Musk's takeover of the Treasury.

Heather Richardson, February 2, 2025, Letters from an American

For the big picture: "Billionaire Elon Musk’s team yesterday took control of the Treasury’s payment system, thus essentially gaining access to the checkbook with which the United States handles about $6 trillion annually and to all the financial information of Americans and American businesses with it. Apparently, it did not stop there."

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s February 2, 2025 letter to Scott Bessent, the newly appointed Secretary of the Treasury (yes, this long link works)

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.warren.senate.gov%2Fimo%2Fmedia%2Fdoc%2Ffinal_-_rm_warren_letter_to_bessent_re_treasury_payment_system.pdf%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1J9_HJCgtQuoZ5GCW6J5VpRtL3dn9_ivQQsrW-F9d_23GbEw81vVMBvVE_aem_RnHtgvXQzpUUtEp59Hty4Q&h=AT2gzp08SyjoOoJieiYE775UxWB-OAIdHHh_eG6mhSj1OIVmiY0HrCVUaKKOGpZ40CwJQPH8IhcGu_H33hTPz7AkbTMgqfnYCg0q8k1b8XEpsroYVrceDWv6G6QnJNR29g&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT32lsnUrFcIle1wvCnssby0SrUM-ekNob9tuJgkGfX3FWB57oDsCpFhek3RN8mW44DroEb7P0xf3nnGAYKc7OqbdQNGpPhHls_8qUVE9uVmhI7lADd6pYNaNrJf8mCGVRLEbf-yiTb8BdH_aUkAlr8yzyLmon-nuBE9IWjEA0ppAw

NY Times, February 3, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/warren-bessent-treasury-musk-doge.html

I woke too early this morning and could not fall back asleep—I lay there thinking about the Electoral College. Thinking about how only 44,000 swing state votes delivered President Biden’s win in 2020.

As this election nears and polls show Harris and Trump nearly tied in battleground states, our freedom and lives are in danger.  

I’m terrified of Project 2025’s “colorblind” proposals and biblical definition of marriage intended to unravel numerous protections for people of color, Indigenous Americans, and LGBTQ folks like me.

Their blueprints—Project 2025, Agenda 47, and the GOP Platform—detail how my wife would lose her government job after devoting her entire career to public service. We’d lose our health insurance. The federal government would no longer recognize our marriage. My adult daughter would lose her ACA health insurance. She’d lose control over her own body. Our parents would lose their Social Security and Medicare.

What scares you? What are you afraid to lose? And what can you and your family do without? Overtime pay, Medicaid, or veteran’s disability benefits? A healthy stock market?

What does it even mean to dismantle the Departments of Education, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, and the FBI?

Imagine the next big storm without the National Weather Service. Imagine life without the FCC or public media outlets like NPR? Cancel Big Bird? Cancel the free press?

We’re surrounded by people we care about who’d also be directly affected by the policies of an authoritarian president and administration. Regardless of their race, imagine a son who’s away at college arrested for attending a peaceful protest or a daughter losing access to birth control.

If one’s spouse is an educator, they could be fired for accurately teaching American history, or even charged with a crime for talking about an LGBTQ book, as all things transgender could be classified as pornography, and pornography would be criminalized.

Regardless of what we believe about climate change, we’re already experiencing the effects of worsening and more frequent—even unprecedented—flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, and heat waves. We don’t want our insurance rates or personal risk to increase. And while we can no longer prevent the climate-related suffering our children and grandchildren will face when we’re gone, we want to reduce it.

We must reduce their future suffering.

One way to turn election anxiety into action is to talk about it. Earlier this week, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published my op-ed calling for white women to talk to other white folks, especially moderate and conservative white women, about “issues we care about and have in common—even if it makes us and/or them uncomfortable.” Judging from a letter to the editor, some of the comments, and all of the downvotes, my essay made some white folks uncomfortable.

Even if only a few white women in Arkansas read it and decide to “silently” vote Democratic, it’s worth it. My grandmother from Little Rock always took pride in quietly canceling my grandfather’s vote.

Whether Harris or Trump wins in November, we’ll look back at this moment in history for the rest of our lives. Now is the time to reach out, to have those conversations.

[The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published this op-ed on September 30, 2024.]

Dear white women, we are a problem. Or, as Taylor Swift sings, “It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.”

In 2016, we helped white men elect a proud sexual predator who befriends tyrants and aspires to be one. Days later, political scientist Jane Junn wrote, “The elephant in the room is white and female, and she has been standing there since 1952.” In 2020, white women turned out in even larger numbers—53% of us voted with 57% of white men to reelect the racist, misogynist, wannabe dictator.

In stark contrast, thankfully, 87% of Black men and 95% of Black women voted for Joe Biden and democracy. Black women organizers and voters of color saved us from ourselves.

We are the nation’s largest voting bloc. And we turn out at high levels. However, during the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s—when the formerly conservative Democratic Party began supporting civil rights legislation—whites fled to the Republican Party. Since, the majority of white women have voted Republican in all but two elections.

Hi. It’s us. We’re a problem—it’s us.

The Supreme Court’s radical July 1 ruling gave presidents broad immunity, elevated the court’s power, and turned this election into an existential choice between democracy and fascism. Add Project 2025, Agenda 47, and the GOP Platform to the equation: The fate of our freedom and country depends heavily on us.

Polls suggest Vice President Kamala Harris can win—narrowly—in November. But in 2016, we learned just how misleading polls can be, especially in key swing states. How polls can lead us into four years of hell when we’d felt so confident that the arc of the moral universe was bending toward justice. How most of us endangered all of us.   

On July 25, I attended “White Women: Answer the Call, believed to be the largest Zoom meeting in history, inspired by Win with Black Women. Pink and Megan Rapinoe, among many others, helped us raise over $11 million for Kamala. Near the beginning, author and queer activist Glennon Doyle shared her first thought when she saw the ad for the call: “Wait, are we admitting that we’re white now?”

Zoom broke.

When it recovered, Doyle urged us to speak out against the white patriarchy from which we have benefited in countless ways. “If we learned anything from 2016, silent support is not support,” she said. “Our silence will not protect us. It never did.”

Nor will our whiteness protect us from an authoritarian Republican government and military. Project 2025 is our very own “Handmaid’s Tale.” We must stand with women of color and vote on the right side of history—in the best interest of all women, all people, our children and grandchildren, and the planet.

Certainly, since Harris announced her candidacy, many white women who weren’t politically active have begun working to get out the Democratic vote: donating, writing postcards, knocking on doors, putting up yard signs, buying billboards, and much more. But the white women for Harris movement is in its infancy, we have only days to save our nation, and polls show the candidates neck and neck. 

One significant thing we can do every day until the election is talk with other white folks in our lives and communities—especially moderate and conservative women. We can bring up issues we care about and have in common—even if it makes us and/or them uncomfortable. And it will, Doyle stresses. Fighting fascism is uncomfortable. But we can use our privilege for good.

A woman named Sarah, a fellow southerner, said to me on a family member’s Facebook page, “I’m appalled that you as an American citizen, much less a white woman, are okay with someone like Harris running our country.”

Incredulous, I stared at this stranger’s words, knowing I could not ignore them. Knowing I wanted to keep things civil. “Hi, Sarah. What do you mean by “much less a white woman?” I replied.

“You’re trying to call out the race and gender card and I find it pathetic. Have the day you deserve, Hunny,” she answered.

“They are your words. I don’t know what they mean,” I responded. “You are friends with two family members I deeply respect, so I assume only the best about you. May you have a better rest of your day, and I mean that sincerely.”

Sarah did not respond but her words, “much less a white woman,” haunt me.

The Supreme Court ruled against freedom, ruled against democracy, paving the way for a GOP dictator to wield unlimited control over our bodies and lives. We have an opportunity to save ourselves and our country. The land of the free. Home of the brave.

Hi. Let’s not be the problem. It’s up to us.

Chivas Sandage is a native of Little Rock. She lives in San Marcos, Texas, and Goshen, Connecticut. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Texas Observer, The Hartford Courant, The Rumpus, and more. Currently, she’s at work on a nonfiction book about violence against women for the University of Texas Press.