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Don’t let the news overwhelm you — use this tool to stay engaged

When it feels like progress isn’t happening, a force field analysis can reveal where the status quo is shifting and point to other strategic leverage points.

Daniel Hunter May 10, 2025

This article is adapted from a Choose Democracy newsletter email.

If you try to track every piece of news, you may find it impossible to mentally survive the onslaught of these times. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have unleashed a barrage of civil rights rollbacks, weaponized institutions and passed off idiotic/dystopian spectacles as governance. The sheer velocity can numb the senses, tempting us to shut down, turn off the feed and retreat.

But you also cannot be good to the world (or yourself) if you keep your head down and pay attention to nothing. Withdrawal is understandable, even necessary at times — but permanent disengagement only cedes ground to the authoritarian momentum, while reinforcing our image of ourselves as powerless.

With that in mind, an important question emerges: How do we observe what’s happening without being crushed by its weight?

This is where the work of social psychologist Kurt Lewin becomes a powerful tool. Lewin — a Jewish intellectual who fled Nazi Germany — developed force field analysis to understand how power, behavior and transformation occur in real social systems.

He saw that any given situation is held in place by a dynamic equilibrium between forces pushing for change and those resisting it. To shift the status quo, you don’t necessarily need to move everything at once — you can focus strategically on specific forces or actors that influence the whole.

In activist training, I was taught force field analysis as follows: First you make a list of forces and organizations pushing towards the dreary authoritarian oligarchy-controlled vision. Then you make a list of forces pushing towards a reordered society that’s deeply democratic and where wealth is shared.

There’s a tension between these two forces. For example, on the authoritarianism side right now, Trump’s FBI ordered the arrest of a state judge for allegedly trying to prevent ICE from detaining a man in her courtroom or the arrest of New Jersey’s gubernatorial candidate Ras Baraka. On the democracy side, judges, lawyers and plaintiffs have defeated Trump 93 percent of the time in court because his orders are sloppy and patently illegal. What’s more, the Trump administration has quietly followed the judge’s orders most of the time.

Again, however, pushing in the authoritarian direction, the administration has been deporting people to an El Salvadoran prison in open defiance of the courts. Meanwhile, Trump’s cruelly-written ban on trans people in the military has been temporarily upheld by the Supreme Court.

Back on the democracy side, Harvard is standing up to Trump’s intimidation tactics — and a growing body of universities are organiz ing in resistance. It’s worth noting that Harvard initially wanted to make a deal but ended up veering toward resistance because of the administration’s recklessness.

While all authoritarians favor loyalty over competency, this regime is particularly extreme in its mistakes. And Trump is still fighting Harvard, and trying to take over now museums too. But again, new frontline resistance is appearing in the arts community and amongst librarians and museum leaders.

There can be an impulse to want to ask, on any given day, “Are we winning? Or are we losing?” Like a basketball game, many of us do a kind of score keeping about how many points we are down. But, just to continue with the sports analogy, our situation is more like soccer — where a lot of the game isn’t about immediate scoring but positioning, repositioning, quick advances and quick retreats. Progress may not always be visible or immediate, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

A Colombian elder — who has lived her whole life in the shadow of war — recently told me, “People in the U.S. are obsessed with winning, and it’s very unhealthy in moments like this. You keep wanting to know if it’s going well or not — and these times can’t be analyzed in headlines or moments. Sometimes it just is what it is. It’s losing and winning. The yardstick is measured in hearts, and the timeline is generations of work on people’s attitudes and views.”

Lewin’s brilliance was in recognizing that we don’t have to act on everything all at once just because we see the bigger picture of what’s happening. We can begin by identifying the different forces at play: forces for good, forces against and some forces that are mixed. Crucially, in his analysis, you then assess which of these forces can be strengthened or weakened.

This is where it’s helpful to get practical. Courage anywhere begets courage everywhere. Because Trump has picked a strategy of everywhere all at once — nearly every group has a chance to stand up and support each other to be more bold. We’re already seeing great examples of this, such as the hundreds of nonprofits signing on to support Harvard’s fight, the lawyers retaking their oaths to the Constitution in public, and the government workers resist ing unauthorized access by DOGE and continu ing their important work.

In practical terms, the best strategy might be not focusing on Musk or Trump directly, but on amplifying local election protections, funding investigative journalism, or supporting tech workers organizing against misuse of platforms. You don’t need to tackle the entire regime to weaken its foundation. You need leverage points — clear, concrete places to act.

Using Lewin’s tool helps prevent burnout. It turns despair into direction. It gives structure to what might otherwise feel like flailing.

So, yes: These are hard days. But it’s not all bad or good — it’s a force field in motion. Even small acts, strategically placed, can shift the balance. We are not powerless — we are participants.

Transgender Soldiers Explain Why Trump’s Military Ban Is Bogus | The Daily Show

Following Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military, Jordan Klepper met with a panel of esteemed service members to discuss the president’s rejection of their qualifications, which stand in stark contrast to Trump’s own bone spur excuses

Trump has sat for only 12 ‘daily’ intelligence briefings since taking office

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946

The scarcity of the President’s Daily Briefings comes as he pursues high-stakes diplomacy with America’s friends and foes.

The low number of briefings this time around is troubling to many in and around the intelligence community, who were already concerned about Trump’s act-first-evaluate-after approach to governing. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

By Amy Mackinnon

05/09/2025 06:00 PM EDT

Updated: 05/10/2025 09:08 AM EDT

Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January, he has sat for just 12 presentations from intelligence officials of the President’s Daily Brief.

That’s a significant drop compared with Trump’s first term in office, according to a POLITICO analysis of his public schedule.

In much of his first term, Trump met with intel officials twice a week for the briefing, which provides the intelligence community’s summary of the most pressing national security challenges facing the nation.

The low number of briefings this time around is troubling to many in and around the intelligence community, who were already concerned about Trump’s act-first-evaluate-after approach to governing.

“It’s sadly clear that President Trump doesn’t value the expertise of and dangerous work performed by our intelligence professionals each and every day, and unfortunately, it leaves the American people increasingly vulnerable to threats we ought to see coming,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to POLITICO.

The sporadic pace of briefings comes as Trump has been working to broker an end to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and to jump-start nuclear talks with Iran — all while navigating increasing potential threats from adversaries such as Russia and China.

Each president is different in the manner and pace at which they receive their briefings, and Trump is not entirely out of step with some of his predecessors.

But with Trump, there is added concern as he is known not to read the accompanying briefing document, referred to as “the book,” that is put together by intelligence analysts in a highly labor-intensive process. This document is delivered in hard copy or on a tablet device to the president and his key advisers five days a week.

The briefings from senior intelligence officials are often a chance for the president to hear detailed assessments on global crises and to receive updates on highly classified covert operations overseas — along with blunt facts about the state of the world, regardless of policy implications or the president’s own views.

Trump received just two in-person PDB briefings per month in January, February and March, before settling into a more regular rhythm of once per week in April and May, according to the president’s daily schedule maintained by Faceba.se, a website that collates the president’s statements as well as his public calendar.

PDB presentations are typically tailored toward informing the president as he conducts high-stakes diplomacy, detailing what a foreign government may be thinking and what its intentions are, former intelligence officials said.

“The point of having an $80 billion intelligence service is to inform the president to avert a strategic surprise,” said a former CIA analyst who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

Trump’s top national security aides and Cabinet officials receive similar intelligence briefings and can ensure that critical information reaches the president’s ears.

Senior administration officials said Trump gets the information he needs through frequent communication with his intelligence chiefs.

“The president is constantly apprised of classified briefings and is regularly in touch with his national security team,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson. “The entire intelligence community actively informs President Trump in real time about critical national security developments.”

Ingle declined to comment on why Trump has received fewer daily PDB presentations compared to his first term..

Former intelligence officials argued that the PDB sessions are an opportunity for the president to hear from career intelligence officials who are skilled in imparting information regardless of whether it complements or contradicts the president’s foreign policy strategies.

They questioned whether other top advisers or Cabinet officials would be able — or willing — to relay these stark realities to the president.

And the circle of officials receiving the PDB may also be smaller than in Trump’s first term. CNN reported last month that the Trump administration has tightly restricted the number of people who have access to the intelligence report.

Trump’s first term in office was marked by a high turnover in his national security team, a trend that looks set to continue. Last week, Trump ousted his national security adviser Mike Waltz, who had long been on thin ice with other administration officials.

“The advantage of an IC briefer is its somebody who is trained to tell the hard truths to the president,” said Larry Pfeiffer, who served as chief of staff to CIA Director Michael Hayden.

“They are going to be more inclined to provide him with more nuanced information — information that’s not been parsed through a policy perspective,” Pfeiffer said.

Presidents vary in how often they have received in-person briefings. George W. Bush saw briefers from the intelligence community almost every day and preferred hearing directly from analysts, while Obama was a studious reader of the PDB book itself.

Obama received in-person briefings 44 percent of the days he was in office during his first term, according to a 2012 analysis by the conservative research group the Government Accountability Institute, which would equate to multiple briefings a week. He was attacked by the conservative media and former Vice President Dick Cheney for not attending more.

Biden received one to two briefings a week, according to a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter and a former Biden White House official.

But Biden was known to regularly read the PDB briefing book, the former intelligence official said. A former official who served in Biden’s National Security Council said that the president would use the delivery of the book as an opportunity to gather his top national security aides and Cabinet officials to discuss its contents and foreign policy implications.

During his first term, Trump read little of his daily intelligence briefings, according to accounts from his former briefers and reports in the New York Times.

At the time, intelligence officials found Trump to be more responsive to graphics, maps and a more storified approach to recounting the intelligence, according to interviews with his briefers published in “Getting To Know The President,” a history of intelligence briefings of candidates and presidents-elect, authored by John Helgerson, a former senior CIA official.

Trump had a fraught relationship with the intelligence community during his first term. But the cadence of briefings almost three months into his second term represents a stark drop when compared to his first four years in office, and offers insight into how Trump might prioritize these briefings throughout the next four years.

In the first five weeks following his inauguration in 2017, Trump received an average of 2.5 briefings a week before settling into an average of two briefings a week in the latter half of his presidency, according to a detailed historical account published by the CIA’s own in-house academic research center.

Trump’s briefings during his first term were substantive, the former U.S. intelligence official said, noting that the president listened and was interactive during the presentations.

And during Trump’s first term, Vice President Mike Pence was an “assiduous, six-day-a-week reader,” of the PDB, Helgerson noted in his book.

A second former senior U.S intelligence official stressed that there are other avenues for Trump’s spy chiefs to get information to him, beyond his daily briefing, including standalone memos and articles based on the latest intelligence findings.

“It’s not the be all and end all,” they said, speaking of the PDB. The person also noted, as the White House did, that the president’s top advisers can also serve as a conduit for relaying information to the president.

A person familiar with how Trump takes his PDB briefings said that the president has received standalone briefings on global flashpoints on an ongoing basis separate from the PDB and that it would be incorrect to imply he wasn’t fully briefed. They were granted anonymity to discuss how Trump receives his intelligence.

“He’s calling people all day. If he wants an update on some of these things, he’ll call Ratcliffe, Rubio, Witkoff, Waltz, kind of in an ad-hoc fashion throughout the day, receiving this stuff,” said the person, who spoke before Waltz was removed from his position as national security adviser last week.

Asked for comment about the president’s briefing schedule, National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said “President Trump has multiple high-level, national security briefings every day. While the scope can range from a comprehensive presentation of global intelligence, to meeting with senior national security officials on an issue of immediate importance, the daily engagement of President Trump is prolific.”

Former intelligence officials argue that the in-person presentations from experienced briefers offer a further opportunity for the president to receive important context on the intelligence delivered, ask questions and relay any requests for additional information back to the intelligence agencies.

That feedback gives the country’s spy agencies an opportunity to learn more about the president’s needs and interests. “We learn too,” said a third former senior U.S. intelligence official.

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

Peace & Justice History for 5/11

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may11

Trump & Deportations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver discusses the recent deportations by the Trump administration, the conditions in the facility people are being sent to abroad, and why even Henry Winkler could be in danger of being expelled from the U.S. Yeah, even national treasure Henry Winkler.

Super Salmon!

Pharmaceutical Pollution Is Shifting the Balance of Ocean Ecosystems

April 15, 2025 Written by Matthew Russell

In rivers and oceans across the globe, fish are behaving strangely. Some swim faster than they should. Others take risks they’d normally avoid. Many abandon the social structures that once protected them. These shifts are not random. They point to an invisible threat flowing just beneath the surface: pharmaceutical pollution.

Drugs designed for human anxiety, pain, and insomnia are entering the world’s water systems through sewage, manufacturing waste, and improper disposal. Once there, they don’t vanish. They linger, affect wildlife, and disrupt entire ecosystems.

Bold Fish, Bigger Risks

Juvenile salmon migrating from Sweden’s River Dal to the Baltic Sea have become an unexpected case study. Researchers implanted hundreds of these fish with tiny slow-release doses of clobazam, an anti-anxiety drug commonly prescribed to humans. Tracking tags revealed something remarkable: salmon exposed to the drug completed their journey faster and in greater numbers than their drug-free peers.

According to Jack Brand, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, these medicated salmon passed through hydropower dams two to three times faster than untreated fish, likely because they were less hesitant around the turbines, NPR reports.

This boldness might sound like a survival advantage. But in ecosystems, risk-taking has consequences. When predators lurk or conditions shift, impulsive behavior can turn deadly.

Anti-anxiety drugs are altering fish behavior in the wild.

A Global Cocktail of Contaminants

The scope of contamination is staggering. Almost 1,000 pharmaceutical compounds have been detected in waterways around the world—including Antarctica. A Cary Institute report found that up to 80% of streams in the U.S. alone are polluted with pharmaceuticals and personal care products.

These compounds are potent by design. Many target receptors in the human brain, and those same receptors are found in fish and other species. Drugs like benzodiazepines, used to treat anxiety in people, also alter the stress response in fish. As a result, animals become less risk-averse, change their migration timing, or fail to form protective schools—shifts that can affect survival.

Drugged salmon are taking dangerous risks during migration.

From Lab to Wild

Previous experiments hinted at these effects. In labs, fish exposed to psychoactive drugs became more isolated and less cautious. But the new field studies from Sweden show that these behavioral changes persist—and even intensify—in the wild.

A follow-up experiment revealed that drugged salmon formed looser groups, even when a predator was nearby. The tighter a school, the safer its members. Disrupted shoaling behavior means more fish swimming solo—making them easier prey.

Michael Bertram, an ecologist leading the study, described the salmon’s altered behavior as a form of “unnatural selection,” The New York Times reports. If bolder fish survive migration but die later in predator-rich waters, the long-term outcome could be population decline, not resilience.

Predator-prey dynamics are being disrupted by pharmaceutical waste.

The Long Tail of Human Medicine

Human waste isn’t the only path these drugs take to the water. Wastewater from hospitals, improper drug disposal, and runoff from pharmaceutical manufacturing sites all contribute. Deutsche Welle reports that some wastewater treatment plants near manufacturing facilities have drug levels 1,000 times higher than others.

Yet most treatment plants are not equipped to filter out pharmaceuticals. Some drugs pass through the system unchanged. Others break into byproducts that are just as toxic.

Unknowns Beneath the Surface

Despite years of research, the full ecological impact of pharmaceutical pollution is unknown. Scientists have documented effects on hundreds of species, including reproductive issues and behavioral disruptions. A Cary Institute investigation described how certain antidepressants alter fish breeding cycles, while hormones from birth control pills can cause male fish to develop female egg cells.

As compounds accumulate in fish, they climb up the food chain. Birds, mammals, and even humans may be exposed through drinking water or consumption of contaminated seafood.

Solutions and Setbacks

There are potential fixes. Advanced treatment technologies like ozonation and membrane filtration can help. But they’re expensive and rare. Designing drugs that biodegrade safely—an approach known as green chemistry—is promising, though slow to implement.

Policy change is another lever. Currently, pharmaceutical companies are responsible for testing their own products for environmental safety. Critics argue that these reviews are insufficient and underregulated.

Improved drug disposal practices, public education, and cross-agency coordination could all make a difference. But as things stand, no pharmaceuticals are currently regulated under the EPA’s primary drinking water standards, Cary Institute reports.

The Cost of Inaction

The salmon darting through Swedish dams may seem like a scientific curiosity. But they are just one visible indicator of a much larger, invisible crisis. Every flushed pill, every untreated discharge, adds to a global experiment with no control group and no reset button.

What happens in rivers doesn’t stay there. It shapes the ocean, the land, and the web of life that connects them all.

Click and help us keep our oceans clean! (Note from A: this is a simple free Greater Good organization click-to-donate; the easily ignored ads help pay for cleaning the ocean. I’ll never know whether you click or not, I just wanted to let you know what it is.)

“Queer History 101: The Day They Burned Our History”

by Wendy

(Language alert)

When books burn, humans follow – a warning we cannot afford to ignore Read on Substack

When I tell you that fascists don’t start with violence—they start with books—I’m not speaking in fucking hypotheticals. On May 6th, 1933, while the ink was barely dry on Hitler’s chancellorship, young Nazis stormed the Institute of Sexual Research. They ransacked the place that night, and then four days later, they took more than 20,000 books from the Institute’s library to Berlin’s Bebelplatz Square and burned them.

They didn’t just burn paper. They burned hope. They burned sanctuary. They burned the world’s first transgender clinic and decades of groundbreaking research that might have spared generations of queer people unimaginable suffering.

The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic | Scientific American

I’m not being dramatic when I say this is one of the most gut-wrenching episodes in queer history. The visceral image of Magnus Hirschfeld—a gay Jewish doctor and pioneering advocate for gay and transgender rights—watching on television as his life’s work went up in flames should haunt us all. Because make no mistake: these weren’t military operations. These were everyday people, your neighbors, your classmates, who decided certain knowledge was too dangerous to exist.

A Haven of Revolutionary Care

The Institute for Sexual Research wasn’t just ahead of its time—it was blazing the trail for a future we’re still fighting to reach nearly a century later. Opened in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, this non-profit institution provided care that modern transphobes claim is “experimental” today, despite the fact that Hirschfeld was performing these procedures over a hundred years ago.

Initially hesitant about gender-affirming surgeries, Hirschfeld changed his mind when he recognized a simple truth: this was life-saving care that prevented suicide. Think about that—while most of the world was still living in willful ignorance, this man understood that people would rather die than live in bodies that betrayed them. The Institute provided facial feminization and masculinization surgeries, hair removal, and complex gender reassignment procedures when most doctors wouldn’t even recognize trans people as human.

It’s hard to wrap your mind around just how revolutionary this place was. Hirschfeld recognized that gender identity and sexual orientation were entirely separate entities—a concept some people still struggle with a century later. He coined the terms “transsexual” and “transvestite,” creating language for experiences that had been silenced for millennia. The Institute was staffed with every specialist imaginable—psychologists, gynecologists, radiologists, lawyers, general practitioners—providing low-cost or free care to those whom society had abandoned.

History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Does Rhyme

My friend (and my Editor-in-Chief) thepoetmiranda saw the dark echoes of history when one of Trump’s first orders was for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control to start scrubbing medical literature related to healthcare for transgender Americans from government databases (an erasure policy that has spread beyond healthcare to all historical references of transgender people—even on the Stonewall National Memorial website). She wrote the poem linked below, which is a fucking must read:

thepoetmiranda

“Don’t Remember Me for My Resilience” a poem by Miranda

Intro Trump started attacking transgender rights on day 1. By the second week of his administration, his operatives were purging all trans data and resources from government websites—the largest purge…

3 months ago · 36 likes · 10 comments · thepoetmiranda

More Than Medical Care—A Community

Hirschfeld’s clinic wasn’t just a clinic. It was a fucking sanctuary. Hirschfeld and his partner Karl Giese lived in the building, creating a warm, plush space filled with life. They hosted costume parties where queer people could express themselves freely. They recommended local bars and venues where LGBTQ+ folks could find community instead of isolation.

When trans women struggled to find employment after transitioning, Hirschfeld hired five of his own patients to work at the clinic. He fought for the repeal of Paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality, and even secured legal identification passes for his trans female patients with a “transvestite” gender marker to prevent them from being arrested for crossdressing.

Instead of the torturous conversion therapy that was common practice, the Institute taught “adaptation therapy,” instructing queer people how to navigate a hostile world while staying true to themselves. Their motto was “Through science to justice”—a radical notion that education and understanding were the path to equality.

The Day Knowledge Became Dangerous

When the Nazi youth and the German Student Union piled the contents of the Institute in the square on May 10th, 1933, they topped it with Hirschfeld’s bust before setting it ablaze. This wasn’t random destruction—it was a deliberate erasure of knowledge they deemed threatening. This happened just three months after Hitler was named Chancellor. It wasn’t soldiers who did this; it was civilians, ordinary Germans who had been convinced that minorities were the root cause of inflation and social problems.

Anyone who wasn’t white, cisgender, and Christian was deemed immoral and dangerous to German youth and the “traditional family.” Sound familiar? It should, because we’re hearing the same bullshit rhetoric recycled today by people who would burn books all over again if given half a chance.

Hirschfeld, who was out of the country, watched the destruction on television. He never returned to Germany and died of a stroke in 1935, his life’s work reduced to ashes. The loss was immeasurable—not just papers and books, but decades of research that could have advanced trans healthcare by generations.

The Brutal Reality of Lost Knowledge

We lost so much ancestral knowledge about our community in this one raid. The world’s first transgender clinic—gone. Groundbreaking research on gender identity—gone. Records of successful gender-affirming surgeries—gone. Resources for queer people to find community—gone. All of it, up in smoke because knowledge in the wrong hands threatened the status quo.

The memorial for this event bears the quote, “Where they burn books, in the end, they will burn humans, too”—a line from Hirschfeld’s own library that would prove prophetic. The Nazis began with books but ended with concentration camps where thousands of queer people wore pink triangles to their deaths.

Practical Tools for Preserving Our History

Document and digitize queer history in multiple locations and formats
Support LGBTQ+ archives financially and through volunteer work
Learn and share the stories of pioneers like Magnus Hirschfeld
Recognize warning signs when marginalized communities are blamed for societal problems
Protect trans healthcare by understanding its long history and scientific basis

Community Connection

The story of the Institute’s destruction isn’t ancient history—it’s a warning. When you hear politicians targeting trans healthcare, when you see books about queer experiences being banned from libraries, when you witness the demonization of drag performances, remember the Institute. Remember what happens when fear and ignorance are weaponized against knowledge.

Today, organizations like the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation continue his legacy, but the threat remains. Every time a state bans gender-affirming care, every time a library removes LGBTQ+ books, every time a transgender person is denied basic dignity, we’re watching echoes of that burning pile in Berlin.

Conclusion

Knowledge is a form of rebellion, and the facts and history you carry in your mind can never be taken away from you. Education and queer joy are our greatest protections right now, just as they were in Hirschfeld’s time.

When we learn about the Institute for Sexual Research, we’re not just studying history—we’re resurrecting knowledge that fascists tried to erase. When we speak the names of Magnus Hirschfeld and his patients, we’re undoing their work of erasure. Every time we share these stories, we’re rebuilding what they tried to destroy.

The memorial’s warning echoes across time: “Where they burn books, in the end, they will burn humans, too.” We must never forget this. We must never allow it to happen again.

Because our history isn’t just about the past—it’s about fucking surviving the present and building a future where institutes like Hirschfeld’s aren’t revolutionary; they’re just how we treat each other.

References:

Hirschfield, M. 1912 “Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den Erotischen Verkleidungstrieb”
Hirschfield, M. 1920 “Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes”
Hirschfield, M. 2017 (Reprint) “Berlin’s Third Sex”

Anonymous Is Still At Work-

GlobalX, Airline for Trump’s Deportations, Hacked

Joseph Cox, Jason Koebler ·May 5, 2025 at 1:39 PM

Hackers say they have obtained what they say are passenger lists for GlobalX flights from January to this month. The data appear to include people who have been deported.

Hackers have targeted GlobalX Air, one of the main airlines the Trump administration is using as part of its deportation efforts, and stolen what they say are flight records and passenger manifests of all of its flights, including those for deportation, 404 Media has learned.

The data, which the hackers contacted 404 Media and other journalists about unprompted, could provide granular insight into who exactly has been deported on GlobalX flights, when, and to where, with GlobalX being the charter company that facilitated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador.

“Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge’s order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” a defacement message posted to GlobalX’s website reads. Anonymous, well-known for its use of the Guy Fawkes mask, is an umbrella some hackers operate under when performing what they see as hacktivism.

The hacker says the data includes flight records and passenger lists. The hacker sent 404 Media a copy of the data, which is sorted into folders dated everyday from January 19 through May 1.

404 Media cross-checked known information about ICE deportation flights that come from official and confirmable sources with information contained on the flight manifests and flight details obtained by the hacker. Information about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s flight is in the hacked data.

For example, the hackers obtained what appears to be detailed flight information about GlobalX flights 6143, 6145, and 6122 that left from Harlingen, Texas’s Valley International Airport on March 15. These flights are at the center of a class-action lawsuit filed by five pseudonymous Venezuelan men against the Trump administration (which eventually went to the Supreme Court) and which took off during and immediately following a court proceeding in which their lawyers were trying to get a restraining order to prevent the flights from taking off.

During a District Court proceeding in Washington D.C., the federal government argued that it had no flight information to share with the court: “the Government surprisingly represented that it still had no flight details to share,” during the hearing, the judge’s opinion in that case reads. “When pressed, Government counsel stated that the ‘operational details’ he had learned during the recess ‘raised potential national security issues,’ so they could not be shared while the public and press listened.”

“Although the Government has refused to provide the particular details, all evidence suggests that during the short window that the Court was adjourned, two removal flights took off from Harlingen—one around 5:25 pm and the other at about 5:45 pm,” court records say, noting that these were GlobalX flights 6143 and 6145; a third referenced flight left immediately following the hearing. These details closely match the timing of the flights and other details in the hacked data.

Also included in the data is a record mentioning the name Heymar Padilla Moyetones, a 24-year-old woman who was flown from Texas to Honduras, then from Honduras to El Salvador by mistake, and then was returned to Texas. The data obtained by the hackers says that GlobalX flew her from Valley International Airport in Texas to Honduras on March 15 on Flight 6143, then was flown from Comayagua International Airport in Honduras to El Salvador International on flight 6144 later that day. She then was flown directly from El Salvador International back to Valley International Airport in Texas on March 15. The information in the hacked data lines up with what Moyetones told NBC.

404 Media was also able to cross-check the names on larger published lists of people who have previously been reported to be deported, finding their names in the hacked data with the specific flights that they were purportedly on.

404 Media is not publishing the full list of passengers at this time as we work to verify which passengers were specifically on deportation flights and to protect peoples’ privacy because the manifests contain personally sensitive information like passport details. We will continue to analyze the data for information in the public interest and explore what we’re able to publish.

Neither GlobalX nor ICE responded to requests for comment.

The Trump administration contracts with a company called CSI Aviation as part of its deportation flights. On February 28, ICE posted a notice saying it would award $128 million to the company for its work. In turn, CSI Aviation subcontracts some of its work to GlobalX, which said it expects to make $65 million per year from the deal. In 2024, 74 percent of ICE’s more than 1,500 removal flights were on GlobalX plans, the Project on Government Oversight reported in March.

ProPublica previously reported on what it is like for flight attendants working on GlobalX, also known as Global Crossing Airlines. Sources in that piece said they were worried what would happen in an emergency, in part because the passengers were shackled.

“They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” ProPublica quoted one flight attendant as saying. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”

The hacker told 404 Media they managed to find a token belonging to a GlobalX developer. They then used that to find access and secret keys for GlobalX’s AWS instances which contained the data. They said they also sent a copy of the defacement message to GlobalX’s employees, and then deleted company data. 404 Media does not know the identity of the hacker, and the hacker said they sent the data to other journalists

The hacker said they also sent the message to GlobalX pilots and crew members through the company’s NAVBLUE account. NAVBLUE is a flight operations platform made by Airbus which pilots use for flight planning, among other things.

404 Media was unable to verify whether pilots or crew members received this message. But the hacker provided screenshots which appear to show them logged into the platform. They also provided a screenshot purporting to show access to GlobalX’s GitHub.

The website defacement quotes a May 1 ruling from US District Judge Fernando Rodriguez which said that the president unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act and blocked the administration from deporting more alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process.

The defacement adds: “You lose again Donnie.” (snip)