‘Vindictive commissar’s list’: Alarm as Trump admin appears to build Jewish registry
A Washington Post columnist accused President Donald Trump’s administration of building registries of certain groups of people Tuesday – and declared that she doesn’t “want to appear on one of Trump’s ‘lists.’”
Catherine Rampell’s warning came after “faculty and staff at Barnard College received unsolicited texts asking them whether they were Jewish.”
According to the Post, the employees were “stunned by the messages, which many initially dismissed as spam.” However, the message came from the Trump administration.
“Barnard, which is affiliated with Columbia University, had agreed to share faculty members’ private contact info to aid in President Donald Trump’s pseudo-crusade against antisemitism,” Rampell said.
News of the ‘list’ came out the same week as National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a “disease registry” of people with autism. The information would be compiled without the awareness or consent of those with the condition.
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Rampell slammed the administration, calling the lists “the latest examples of the White House’s abuse of confidential data.”
She added that the moves are alarming and akin to “the 1940s, when the U.S. government collected the names of Japanese Americans for internment. Likewise, in the 1950s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee catalogued communists.”
The condemnation continued, calling the moves an abuse of federal data. Rampell is also concerned with what is being deleted. Including “statistical records, including demographic data on transgender Americans.”
Recognizing government will always need to collect some sort of data, Rampell wrote, “Ultimately, the government must be able to collect and integrate high-quality data — to administer social programs efficiently, help the economy function and understand the reality we live in so voters can hold public officials accountable. None of this is possible if Americans fear ending up on some vindictive commissar’s ‘list.’”