In The Washington Post

In recent weeks, Homeland Security’s requests shifted, according to the former senior Social Security official. Immigration agents began meeting with DOGE representatives at the agency to discuss how they could achieve their larger goal of pushing out tens of thousands of migrants that ICE was struggling to apprehend and deport, the official said.

That request soon morphed into the idea of placing immigrants into the deaths database, the official said.

Leland Dudek — the acting commissioner who was elevated from a low-level position after displaying public loyalty to DOGE — had qualms about the task, according to two people with knowledge of his thinking. He thought it was illegal, the people said.

Then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem intervened — and Dudek agreed to move forward.

On Monday, according to four people familiar with the matter, Dudek signed two memorandums with Noem allowing the database action. Dudek declined to comment on the episode.

The next day, 6,100 mostly Hispanic names and their attached Social Security numbers were added to the Death Master File, according to records reviewed by The Post.

The White House told The Post that the roughly 6,000 immigrants all have links to either terrorist activity or criminal records. The official did not provide evidence of the alleged crimes or terrorist ties but said some are included on an FBI terror watch list.

The immigrants added to the death database include a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old and two 16-year-olds — as well as one person in their 80s and a handful in their 70s, according to records obtained by The Post.

In part, Ms. Conway acknowledged, she had avoided the spotlight intentionally, living in “stealth mode” for fear that her gender identity would wreck her career. It had already cost her her job once, when she was fired from IBM in 1968 after confiding to managers that she was planning to undergo gender-confirmation surgery, a then-novel procedure that she had to travel to Mexico to receive.

“In many jurisdictions, I could have been arrested and charged as a sex offender — or, worse yet, institutionalized and forced to undergo electroshock therapy in a mental hospital,” she wrote in a 2013 essay for HuffPost.

“Evading those fates, I completed my transition and began building a career in a secret new identity, starting at the bottom of the ladder as a contract programmer. Even then, any ‘outing’ could have led to media exposure, and I’d have become unemployable, out on the streets for good.”

“I covered my past for over 30 years,” she added, “always looking over my shoulder, as if a foreign spy in my own country.”

By 2000, she had decided to begin telling her story — including discussing her early research contributions at IBM, which had been lost to history because they were credited under her long-discarded birth name. She started speaking to reporters, including for a nearly 8,000-word cover story in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and created a personal website where she aimed to offer “information, encouragement and hope” to others who had transitioned or were in the process of doing so.

In bigger cities, Amazon has its own distribution network, which takes some of the pressure off the post office. But in rural areas, where carriers drive miles of lonely routes in their personal vehicles, the arrangement has caused problems.

In the mountains of Colorado, biologists in Crested Butte are struggling with the delay of time-sensitive samples, the Denver Post reported in September, while mail carriers in Carbondale say they are overwhelmed by Amazon packages. Other Minnesota towns including Brainerd and La Porte have been hit hard by Amazon in the past, carriers said. And in Maine, carriers organized a symbolic strike in protest of the Amazon onslaught a year ago — though a postal audit found that the delays were caused by staffing issues, not prioritizing packages.

In Bemidji, the mayor has complained to local members of Congress, who say their ability to control the post office is limited. Last week, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) sent a letter to DeJoy to ask about reports that “Amazon is interfering with timely deliveries and stretching the agency’s already-overburdened workers too thin.”

“As Postmaster General, you are responsible for ensuring that the Postal Service meets its service standards, and it is clear right now that things are not working as they should,” said the letter, a copy of which was shared with The Washington Post. “Entering into contracts that your system cannot support is a breach of your responsibilities.”

On Monday, Hearst — whose magazine titles include Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Town & Country — sent staffers an email announcing the new restrictions, which were detailed in an internal document that employees were encouraged to sign.

“We should be careful to consider the impact that a controversial statement on a hot-button issue may have on Hearst’s reputation,” the policy reads, according to a copy of the text of the document shared with The Washington Post.

[…] 

While violations could result in “termination,” according to the document, the policy doesn’t include examples of what qualifies as rule-breaking material. However, it does warn that posts about even seemingly “apolitical” or local topics could be contentious enough to be a problem.

“Many social movements are politically charged, and apolitical events and movements can quickly become controversial and political,” the policy reads. “Even local community organizations can become politicized.”