Two Military Oaths

Many posts have discussed oaths of office.

Mark Hertling at The Bulwark:

Enlisted members swear to support and defend the Constitution, and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” And the UCMJ makes crystal clear that the service member’s obligation is to obey “lawful” orders, and that no enlisted member is permitted to carry out an unlawful order. But the enlisted oath is also intentionally anchored in obedience of the chain of command. The accountability lies one level up.

Which brings us to the officer oath—shorter in words, heavier in weight. Officers swear to “support and defend” the Constitution; to “bear true faith and allegiance” to it; and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties” of their office. They also affirm that they “take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.” What they do not swear to do is equally important: Officers make no promise to obey the president and the officers above them.

That omission is not an oversight. Officers give orders, evaluate legality, and act as the constitutional circuit breakers the Founders intended. They are expected—by law, by professional ethic, and by centuries of tradition—to exercise independent judgment when presented with a questionable directive. Officers are duty-bound to refuse an unlawful order. It is not optional. It is not situational. It is their job.

Posting Lies, Deleting Facts

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute."   -- George Orwell, 1984

A number of posts have discussed presidential documents, official data, and government websites.

Alexandra Banner at CNN:

Scientific information on the CDC's website was replaced this week with anti-vaccine talking points, including false claims that link autism and vaccines. It's the latest move by the Trump administration to alter longstanding US vaccine policy and cast doubt on vaccinations. "We are updating the CDC's website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science," Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said Thursday. But abundant evidence has shown that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. In a CNN interview, a former top CDC official called the website changes "a national embarrassment" that could leave parents confused.

Catherine Rampell at The Bulwark:

In August, Trump’s decision to fire Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner, grabbed headlines,2 but the top job is hardly the only hole this administration has blown in that agency. At the time of McEntarfer’s firing, a third of senior BLS leadership positions were already vacant. (That’s still the case, in fact.)

The rest of the agency has been swiss-cheesed too. Some regional field offices—such as the consumer price index offices in Buffalo, New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Provo, Utah—have been shuttered entirely. Meanwhile, post-COVID, the agency was already struggling with reduced survey-response rates, which have made its numbers noisier and more susceptible to big revisions. The administration’s response has been to disband the task force working to fix these problems.

The result is that federal data are being degraded—or deleted altogether. And deletion is especially common when statistical series measure issues that this administration would rather not track.

In September, for instance, the administration canceled a three-decade-old annual survey that measures how many Americans struggle to get enough food. A few months earlier, HHS eliminated the team that produces the poverty guidelines, which determine how we count the number of people in poverty and eligibility for benefits such as SNAP, Medicaid, Head Start, and childcare subsidies. But hey, if you never determine who’s eligible for benefits, maybe that means no one is.

Over the past ten months, I’ve been tracking similar cuts to federal data collection on substance abuse, natural disasters, children’s literacy, climate change, race, crime, immigration, gender identity and other issues. (My non-exhaustive, running list lives here; please send me examples I may have missed.)

Social Media Use 2025

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Jeffrey Gottfried and Eugenie Park at Pew:

YouTube and Facebook remain the most widely used online platforms. The vast majority of U.S. adults (84%) say they ever use YouTube. Most Americans (71%) also report using Facebook. These findings are according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,022 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 5-June 18, 2025.

Half of adults say they use Instagram, making it the only other platform in our survey used by at least 50% of Americans.

Smaller shares use the other sites and apps we asked about, such as TikTok (37%) and WhatsApp (32%). Somewhat fewer say the same of Reddit, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter).

This year we also asked about three platforms that are used by about one-in-ten or fewer U.S. adults: Threads, Bluesky, and Truth Social.

Center studies also find that YouTube is the most widely used online platform among U.S. teens, like it is among U.S. adults.

Pocket Rescissions

Previous posts have discussed budget cuts.

 Oriana González at NOTUS:

The Office of Management and Budget’s director, Russell Vought, is the mastermind behind the administration’s pocket rescissions strategy which involves a request from the president to withhold money already appropriated by Congress. But the request comes so late in the fiscal year that Congress doesn’t have enough time to act within the allotted timeframe. and the administration considers the money rescinded once the fiscal year ends.

The Trump White House had so far used pocket rescissions once, when it withheld nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid in August. The Supreme Court allowed the move, effectively greenlighting Vought’s strategy for the near future.

But in July, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the 12 so-called “cardinals,” quietly added a provision to the fiscal 2026 bill for the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Subcommittee — which funds the agencies most impacted by Trump’s two rescissions requests — that would have addressed pocket rescissions.

The clause, Sec. 7065, would have given Congress an extra 45 days to consider rescissions requests submitted late in the fiscal year.

After the bill text was released, Vought reached out to Díaz-Balart, explaining that the White House was concerned about the provision, one senior White House official told NOTUS. The official said that after Vought relayed the issue, Díaz-Balart removed the provision.

The White House did more than just reach out to Díaz-Balart. Republican appropriators started receiving pressure from the White House to not support the bill if the provision remained, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Expatriation 2025

Many posts have discussed citizenship and expatriation.

Benedict Vigers and Julie Ray at Gallup:

For the second straight year, about one in five Americans say they would like to leave the U.S. and move permanently to another country if they could. This heightened desire to migrate is driven primarily by younger women.

In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups.

The percentage of younger women wanting to move to another country first rose decisively in 2016, the final year of President Barack Obama's second term. That year, Gallup surveyed the U.S. in June and July, after both parties’ presumptive nominees were set for the November election, which Donald Trump went on to win. Desire to migrate continued to climb afterward, hitting 44% in President Joe Biden’s last year in office and remaining near that level in 2025. This suggests a broader shift in opinion among younger women, rather than a solely partisan one.

Trump and the GAO

 Previous posts have discussed the congressional lobotomy including  the shrinkage of GAO.

Trump wants to replace the head of the Government Accountability Office.  Not so fast, writes Kevin R. Kosar at The Washington Examiner:

Republican senators have been willing to deep-six Trump appointees, particularly to low-profile positions. Trump has withdrawn a record high of 48 nominations this year. In recent weeks, they have forced the withdrawal of nominees to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Export-Import Bank, and the Office of Special Counsel. They also appear to be rejecting Trump’s proposed ambassador to Kuwait.

Many, if not most, senators value GAO’s work. Unlike, say, communications from lobbyists, interest groups, and their political parties, GAO reports and opinions are factually-based. The agency does not get more money or rewards from helping a legislator understand why fraudsters can rip off the federal SNAP food program. GAO’s value would be greatly diminished if senators approved a new comptroller general who viewed himself as the president’s advocate and defender.

Nor does it appear likely that Trump could circumvent the Senate and install an acting head of GAO. The law empowers the GAO deputy director to take over the top position when Dodaro’s term ends, and it requires Congress to form a commission headed by the majority and minority leaders of both chambers to propose potential nominees for the president’s consideration.

And not to be forgotten is that Congress rebuffed Trump the last time he attempted this maneuver. This spring, his acting appointees were turned away from the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office, with the support of both Senate and House GOP leaders.

SNAP Demographics

Many Americans, including Republicans, depend on federal services and assistance.

 Drew DeSilver at Pew:

The most comprehensive data source we have is the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, although its most recent data is from 2023. That year, nearly 23 million SNAP recipients (65%) were adults, and 12.4 million (35%) were children.

Non-Hispanic White people accounted for 44.2% of adult SNAP recipients and 24.8% of child recipients in 2023. Nearly 27% of adult recipients and almost a third of child recipients (32.3%) were Black. Hispanics, who can be of any race, accounted for 24.2% of adult recipients and 40.7% of child recipients.

The vast majority of both adult and child recipients were born in the United States – 81.1% and 96.9%, respectively.

Among adult recipients, 54.1% had a high school diploma or less education. And despite the program’s work requirements, 61% said they had not been employed at all that year.

The Census Bureau also looked at households where at least one person received SNAP benefits. More than six-in-ten of these households (63.1%) reported having no children in 2023; almost a third (32.7%) said they lived alone. Among all SNAP-receiving households, 39% were in the South, the highest share of any region.