Judd Legum Profile picture
I write Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism. | judd@popular.info | Signal/Text: 202-599-7124 | DMs open
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May 20 7 tweets 3 min read
1. @Verizon's CEO @hansvestberg said the company was "fiercely committed to diversity and inclusion across all spectrums because it makes us and the world better."

THAT WAS A LIE.

The company abruptly ended all its DEI efforts last week in exchange for the Trump administration approving a merger.Image
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2. In a letter to FCC chair Brendan Carr, Verizon said it was "ending its DEI-related policies…effective immediately."

The company said it would eliminate all positions related to DEI, scrub DEI from its website, and end "workplace diversity goals"

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May 19 6 tweets 2 min read
1. The "big beautiful bill" that Republicans advanced late last night is a massive transfer of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest

The bottom 20% of earners will see their income DECLINE BY 10%

The top 0.1% will get a GIGANTIC WINDFALL Image 2. BEAUTIFUL for millionaires and billionaires.

UGLY for anyone making $51,000 or less.

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May 14 8 tweets 2 min read
1. In 2018, many CEOs boycotted Saudi Arabia's investment conference in protest of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Since then, US intel concluded the murder was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince MBS

Yesterday, many of those SAME CEOs traveled to Saudi Arabia to lunch with Trump and MBS

Let's name names

🧵 2. In 2018, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: "I'm very troubled by the reports... about Jamal Khashoggi...unless a substantially different set of facts emerges, I won't be attending"

Since then, the facts have gotten worse

Yesterday, Khosrowshahi broke bread w/MBS

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May 13 7 tweets 2 min read
1. Qatar is bribing Trump with a $400 million luxury plane that he can use as Air Force One and take with him after he leaves office

Qatar is not acting out of altruism

It wants policy concessions to bolster its economy and national security

Trump is exploiting those needs to line his pockets

🧵 2. Qatar is the 2nd-largest purchaser of US military equipment

Trump toured the Qatari plane in February

In March, the admin approved the sale of $2 billion in military equipment, including 8 Predator drones

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May 12 9 tweets 3 min read
1. We've been told there's a federal budget crisis that necessitates gutting the social safety net and slashing funding for medical research and national parks

Meanwhile, Trump's budget includes a record $1 TRILLION in military spending

Who benefits?

Military contractors like @elonmusk

Let's dig in 2. Trump is proposing a $1.01 trillion military budget — $119 billion more than this year — alongside a $259 billion cut to non-military spending.

Starve the poor, feed the Pentagon.

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May 5 4 tweets 1 min read
1. Trump says imposing tariffs on nearly every nation on earth is essential to force companies to make investments in the US instead of abroad

But since January, the Trump Organization has announced new multi-billion $ development deals in the UAE, Qatar, India, and Vietnam

And NONE in the US 2. In Qatar, the Trump Organization is partnering directly with the government. This violates Trump's own, extremely weak, ethics agreement he released before returning to the White House.

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May 1 7 tweets 2 min read
1. Next school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about Trump's debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud.

The lesson will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum.Image 2. The new curriculum requires students to "analyze contemporary turning points of 21st-century American society. One task: "Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information."

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Apr 29 7 tweets 2 min read
1. Clay Jackson, a Texas lawyer, provided basic legal advice to an immigrant family fearing deportation

Then, two officers visited him at his home, accusing him of "obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation"

Then, after speaking publicly, he was fired from his job at a Fortune 500 company

🧵 2. A gas station attendant asked Jackson to talk to an immigrant family fearing deportation. He agreed and met w/them for an hour

Two days later, two plain-clothes officers came to his home and accused him of obstructing an immigration investigation

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Apr 23 10 tweets 3 min read
1. Jose Hermosillo is US citizen who was wrongly jailed in an immigration detention facility for 10 days

The administration says he "turned himself in" to the Border Patrol and told them he was a Mexican who crossed the border illegally.

I interviewed Hermosillo.

He says the government is lying.Image 2. @DHSgov said, "Hermosillo's arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions"

DHS also released what purports to be a transcript of Hermosillo's conversation w/Border Patrol

Hermosillo said this conversation was fabricated.

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Apr 21 7 tweets 2 min read
1. There has been a lot of attention, rightly, on the Trump administration disappearing immigrants to El Salvador

But something that has gotten much less attention is the Trump administration WRONGFULLY DETAINING US CITIZENS they "suspect" are undocumented immigrants. Image 2. 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a US citizen, was visiting Tucson when he passed by the Border Patrol headquarters, and "an agent arrested him for illegally entering the country."

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Apr 16 7 tweets 2 min read
1. Truth Social, Trump's social platform, announced an audacious scheme yesterday to profit from Trump's tariffs

It will offer actively-managed INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS composed of stocks in companies that benefit from Trump's policies

It's a jaw-dropping conflict of interest Image 2. Trump's tariff announcements have had massive impacts on stock prices.

His reciprocal tariffs tanked the market. When he paused them, the market rebounded.

Carving out an exemption for consumer electronics imported from China boosted Apple stock

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Apr 15 10 tweets 3 min read
1. The North Carolina Supreme Court just TOSSED 260 BALLOTS in a razor-close election for a seat on the same court

The ballots were invalidated based on a claim by the Republican candidate that all of the voters were "never residents" of North Carolina

But that claim is false

We have receipts

🧾🧾🧾 2. Josiah Young was born & raised in North Carolina

The 20-year-old attended college in NC and runs a photography business in the state.

His ballot was invalidated based on the false claim he has never lived in NC

"My residence is in Jackson County. It's really not that hard to figure that out"

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Apr 14 9 tweets 3 min read
1. The Trump administration claims that a program to protect rural Alabamans from raw sewage is racist so it is canceling the program as part of its crackdown on "DEI"

According to a press release, this is about treating "every individual with dignity and respect."

🤔 Image 2. In 2021, the DOJ launched an investigation into the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH). The investigation found that the ADPH "engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with raw sewage" in Lowndes County.

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Apr 7 7 tweets 2 min read
1. We contacted the 100 largest American companies and asked a simple question:

Do you support the tariffs announced by President Trump on April 2?

These are tariffs that have already destroyed trillions of shareholder value

NOT ONE COMPANY WOULD ANSWER THE QUESTION 2. Microsoft said it had "nothing to share." NVIDIA "decline[d] to comment." Citi “decline[d] to comment.” Eli Lilly and Gilead referred us "to PhARMA for industry perspective." The rest of the companies did not respond at all.

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Apr 1 11 tweets 4 min read
1. An internal Trump doc claims that having a Michael Jordan "Jumpman" tattoo and wearing "high-end urban street wear" makes you a likely member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang.

This kind of "evidence" is used to justify summary deportations to a Salvadoran prison Image 2. The "ALIEN ENEMY VALIDATION GUIDE" creates a point system to determine whether a Venezuelan over 14 years of age is a TDA member. Anyone scoring eight points or higher "are validated as members of TDA."

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Mar 31 10 tweets 4 min read
1. The Social Security Administration and DOGE are GASLIGHTING AMERICANS.

They are telling millions of beneficiaries that reports they were closing SSA field offices were fake news. Actually, these closures were PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED and LEASES WERE CANCELED.

🧵 Image 2. In Campbellsville, KY, for example, the owner of a 12,750-sq-ft office building leased to the SSA for a field office was informed by the GSA that the entire lease was being terminated.

The SSA lease was also listed as terminated on the DOGE website

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Mar 26 6 tweets 2 min read
1. NEW

Trump has installed a DOGE operative as the new Chief Information Officer of the Social Security Administration in an apparent effort to evade a federal court order blocking DOGE affiliates from accessing databases containing the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.Image 2. Popular Information obtained an internal memorandum from Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek announcing Scott Coulter, a DOGE operative previously assigned to NASA and the SSA, as the SSA's new CIO.

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Mar 20 10 tweets 3 min read
1. EXCLUSIVE

On Wednesday, the Social Security Administration secretly enacted a new policy to require 75K more people to visit field offices every week

"The havoc and destruction they’re causing is no doubt going to break the agency and hurt the public," an SSA source saidImage 2. Each year, the SSA automatically issues millions of Social Security numbers and cards to non-citizens granted work authorizations as part of an agreement between the SSA and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

The agreement is known as Enumeration Beyond Entry (EBE)
Mar 18 6 tweets 2 min read
1. As a candidate, Trump promised to protect access to the abortion pill.

Trump said that he staked out his position in a "long and hard campaign" and was "strongly against" restricting access.

Trump emphasized that he would stand by his "commitment."

Things have changed.

🧵Image 2. Trump claimed during the campaign that the "Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill." While SCOTUS dismissed a case challenging the abortion pill's legality, it did so only for technical reasons.

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Mar 17 10 tweets 3 min read
1. EXCLUSIVE

An internal Social Security Administration memo, dated March 13, lays out a plan to sabotage the agency.

The memo itself predicts "service disruption," "operational strain," and "budget shortfalls" will result.

Follow this thread for details. Image 2. The memo, authored by Acting Deputy SSA Commissioner Doris Diaz, purports to be motivated by a desire to mitigate "fraud risks."

Elon Musk has pushed several false claims about the nature and scope of Social Security fraud.

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Mar 13 4 tweets 16 min read
1. So @DataRepublican, who has been promoted repeatedly by @elonmusk, published this post claiming that methodology of the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker is flawed.

She claims in the post below that she could not find a single contract that ended in 2024 where the outlay was less than the "Potential Contract Value." Not one.

She does not have any idea what she is doing. In this thread I will provide 75 links to contracts that ended in 2024 where the outlay is less than the "Potential Contract Value," totalling $57 billion.

This is a small subset of such contracts, from only three agencies. Moreover, the broader point is that canceling an option to extend or expand a contract does not save any money. The government holds these options and could simply not exercise the options. As this thread demonstrates, it frequently does not.

@DataRepublican, I look forward to your corrections and apology. 2. All of these contracts ended in 2024 with unexercised options of $1 million or more:

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