And now, I return to the words I wrote when the grief was still too raw to shape into anything but this —

Inhale

I am holding my breath while sitting with the sting. Seven years ago you left us far too soon. The system failed you in more ways than one. And we are still trying to understand.

You were 30, couch-surfing, self-medicating, and then had a brain aneurysm, similar to your brother’s brain hemorrhage, except on the right-side. We were told you would need 24/7 acute nursing-care facility, but you didn’t have healthcare insurance. Knowing that the system wasn’t on your side, we immediately sought a Social Worker for Medi-Cal eligibility. Your father received proxy to act on your behalf.

I left for Bass Lake with your brothers and sister while your father stayed behind to make sure you were accepted into a facility. We believed that we were successful as you were covered by Medi-Cal, but that was just an illusion.

New staff came in for the weekend shift, and all of a sudden after only 5-days you were told that you were well-enough to go home. What home? You didn’t even have a home address. You were couch-surfing, code for being homeless. Your father protested but you — at the nurse’s request — removed his proxy to make your own necessary medical decisions. He was then escorted out of the hospital by security.

You were released from the hospital with no-one claiming responsibility;

you were released with no medications;

you were released with staples in your scalp;

you were released with no follow-up plan;

you were released without being able to properly chew your food;

you were released to make bed space;

you were deemed disposable.

Exhale

Christine, you had a heart of gold. You would have taken in every stray if you could. You couldn’t always take care of yourself, but you would move heaven and earth for an animal in need. That’s who you were. That’s who they released into nothing with staples in your scalp.

We knew you would not be able to advocate for your needs. The medical decision to release you without any support was not yours to carry, and yet, you carried it alone.

You couldn’t retrieve your prescription at the time of your release — the pharmacy was closed; you couldn’t schedule a follow-up appointment to have the staples removed — the paperwork was misleading; you didn’t understand the nature of your injury — no medical professional advised you. Cognitively you were unable to manage your own care.

None of the failure of the medical hospital to provide care was your fault. You had an aneurysm and were placed in a medically induced coma and three weeks later, with staples still in your scalp, you were gone.

Your death was preventable and that is why this wound will never close…why I have learned to just breathe through the pain.

That was seven years ago. What’s left of you comes back to me now as fire.

Inhale

You were cremated. My youngest daughter is still standing beside the fire —waiting to see if the system will reach for her too.

She was eleven when you died. That was the year she learned that the system abandons you. She's been watching ever since — learning what happens when someone stops being useful, stops being profitable, needs too much.

Graduating high school in 2025, my daughter planned a gap year, but then at her place of employment, she was written up for being too quiet, for not smiling, for not pretending she was busy during down-times. So she didn’t take the full gap year and started college 9 months earlier than anticipated.

She works in a restaurant. She’s always on time. But her shifts are capped at 5 hours and 45 minutes just under the hours for a paid lunch break. Instead, she gets 10 minutes.

More recently, she proclaimed that her manager “hates her” — she has availability to work 20 hours. They give her 10 to 15 hours and to avoid giving employees 20 hours of work her employer hires more individuals with part-time hours. Twenty hours or more per week would mean health insurance.

At eleven, she watched you get released into nothing. At eighteen, she's watching herself get scheduled into nothing. Same system. Same lesson. She just has her own name on the timesheet now.

Exhale

They’ll say it was complicated.

It wasn’t.

A young woman recovering from a brain aneurysm should never have been released into homelessness with staples still in her scalp. Somewhere between medicine and paperwork, between budgets and bed space, between responsibility and liability, you stopped being a patient and became disposable.

Seven years later, we’re still arguing over Medicaid, healthcare, housing, and who deserves help. Christine, you are the reason why those debates are never abstract to me. I’ve already buried one answer.

That’s what a disposable nation does. It doesn’t always kill with intent. Sometimes it simply decides you are no longer worth keeping alive.

Your ashes are scattered in places you loved. Some rest with your mother. Some are in a bracelet I wear against my skin. A tiny urn sits over the fireplace, where you stay warm with us. You are not gone. You are just…everywhere. Like love. Like grief. Like breath.

I keep breathing beside the fire. For Christine. For my youngest. For all the daughters this system has deemed disposable. Because as long as I breathe, the fire hasn't won.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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About this show: Rigged by Design connects the dots across many sectors including behavior, biology, environment, policy, and election integrity. Our conversations move between the micro and macro to the layer above macro to the exosystem. Threads that may seem disconnected are part of the same system. You don’t have to see a system for it to affect you, the individual. This isn’t red vs blue. It’s money versus everyone.

About this show: Rigged by Design connects the dots across many sectors including behavior, biology, environment, policy, and election integrity. Our conversations move between the micro and macro to the layer above macro to the exosystem. Threads that may seem disconnected are part of the same system. You don’t have to see a system for it to affect you, the individual. This isn’t red vs blue. It’s money versus everyone.

RIGGED BY DESIGN

Episode 26, Part 2 of 2 — Show Notes

Aired: June 25, 2026

I saved this part for now — the beginning of Disability Pride Month.

Part 2 begins with the departure of , CEO and Founder of Disability Community for Democracy, in order for to join the episode.

The conversation shifted to the lived experience of disability. Jason opened with his personal story a workplace injury in 2008 that led to multiple surgeries, chronic pain, and years of fighting the Social Security Administration for benefits he was entitled to. He described the indignity of being told he could still perform his old job despite doctors confirming he was permanently and totally disabled. His doctor finally wrote to the SSA:

Jason also shared the story of his sister, who was born with cerebral palsy. When her mother and grandparents passed away, Jason and his wife took her in. He spoke about the judgment they faced, the accusations that they only wanted control over her money, and the heartbreaking reality that people will throw family members away when it becomes inconvenient.

The conversation explored the concept of invisibility: how disability doesn’t have a look, how people are quick to judge, and how the stigma around disability is rooted in ableism, which is itself rooted in racism and eugenics. Nick, Jason, and I discussed the systemic dehumanization of disabled people, the myth of the “welfare queen,” and the reality that disabled people are treated as disposable.

Nick emphasized that being human is not about how productive you are. You have inherent value just because you exist. The group discussed the importance of coalition building and bridging gaps between communities, because everyone is at risk when the most marginalized are targeted.

As the episode drew to a close, the focus shifted to action. I stressed the importance of making three phone calls a day — ten minutes, three calls, using the scripts provided by Disability Community for Democracy and Sick of This Shit Publications. The scripts are generic, but they’re a starting point — personalization makes your message harder to dismiss. Even more suggestions can be found on Broadbanner: Say No to Crip Crow. The Capitol Switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. FaxZero is also available for faxing representatives.

The central concern remained the same: How can citizens push back when multiple crises are being used to overwhelm and exhaust the public?

What connected the entire discussion was the idea that the housing bill, the Olmstead memo, and the SAVE Act are not separate issues. They are part of the same strategy. Flood the zone with chaos. Hold housing hostage. Attack disability rights. Count on nobody being able to keep up. But the power of the people is greater than the people in power, and three phone calls a day can make a difference.

Many thanks to , , , , , and many others for tuning into Rigged by Design with and me.

Again, special thanks to Nieta Greene from CEO and Founder of Disability Community for Democracy, and Nick Paro of Sick of this Shit Publications, who in a joint effort are putting out a call to action opposing the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo dated June 18, 2026.

Join us tomorrow for Episode 27 as we continue examining the systems, institutions, and stories that often receive less attention on Thursday, July 2, 2026 at 10:05 am PST / 1:05 pm EST.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

• Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999)

• DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo, June 18, 2026

• Sick of This Shit Publications — “A Call to Action: Say No to Crip Crow”

• Disability Community for Democracy

• Broadbanner: Say No to Crip Crow

• Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

• FaxZero: faxzero.com

  ---

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About this show: Rigged by Design connects the dots across many sectors including behavior, biology, environment, policy, and election integrity. Our conversations move between the micro and macro to the layer above macro to the exosystem. Threads that may seem disconnected are part of the same system. You don’t have to see a system for it to affect you, the individual. This isn’t red vs blue. It’s money versus everyone.

RIGGED BY DESIGN

Episode 26, Part 1 of 2 – Show Notes

Aired: June 25, 2026

, CEO and Founder of Disability Community for Democracy, joined Rigged by Design to discuss the recent DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo released June 18, 2026 — four days before the 27th anniversary of the Olmstead decision. The memo argues that federal disability laws don’t require states to provide community-based services, effectively giving states legal cover to re-institutionalize people with disabilities.

The conversation opened by examining the Olmstead decision itself — the 1999 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed unjustified segregation of people with disabilities constitutes discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Nieta shared her personal experience with institutionalization and explained why this memo is so deeply personal to the disability community.

A significant portion of the episode focused on the history of institutions and why this history matters now. Willowbrook was discussed: the overcrowding, filth, abuse, forced sterilizations, and eugenic ideology that defined these institutions. The conversation emphasized that these institutions were phased out precisely because they were horrific and deadly, and that the memo is an attempt to bring that era back. Let me be clear: this memo gives states a green light to strip disabled people of their homes, their families, and their autonomy.

During the episode, Nieta made referenced to “ugly laws,” local laws from the 1860s to 1974 that criminalized the existence of disabled people in public spaces. She described how these laws were used to hide disabled people away, and how the current memo echoes that same impulse to make disabled people invisible. And Stephen Miller — whose name appeared repeatedly throughout the livestream as the driving force behind the memo — reared his “ugly” head yet again. According to Bloomberg, Miller was the person behind the DOJ memo attacking Olmstead. As Nieta put it, the memo was written due to Miller’s influence, and his fingerprints are all over this attempt to roll back disability rights.

The discussion also connected the memo to the housing crisis. Nieta emphasized that the housing bill which passed with bipartisan support is directly tied to this fight because disabled people need accessible, affordable housing to live in their communities. Without housing, community integration is impossible. The memo threatens to gut the very foundation that allows disabled people to live independently, and the housing bill (ROAD Act) being held hostage only makes that worse.

A deliberate parallel to Jim Crow, the “Say No to Crip Crow” campaign frames the fight against segregation of disabled Americans as a civil rights struggle. The rallying cry of the disability rights movement — “nothing about us without us” — was central to the conversation. Nieta’s publication is also called Nothing About Us Without Us.

Questions of race, ableism, and intersectionality surfaced throughout the discussion. The conversation addressed how eugenics is rooted in racism and ableism, how disability rights are civil rights, and why the disability community must be centered in conversations about liberation.

joined the conversation midway through to discuss the joint action between Disability Community for Democracy and Sick of This Shit Publications. Nick and Nieta described their partnership and the scripts and templates they've created for viewers to contact their representatives, which can be found on Sick of this Shit Publication: A Call to Action - Say No to Crip Crow —by calling for the codification of the Olmstead decision into federal law.

Jason joined us to finish the discussion, which I've cut for Part 2 to be released over the weekend.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to Rigged by Design.

Special thanks to from CEO and Founder of Disability Community for Democracy, and of Sick of this Shit Publications, who in a joint effort are putting out a call to action opposing the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo dated June 18, 2026.

Join us next week for Episode 27 as we continue examining the systems, institutions, and stories that often receive less attention on Thursday, July 2, 2026 at 10:05 am PST / 1:05 pm EST.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

• Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999)

• DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo, June 18, 2026

• Sick of This Shit Publications — “A Call to Action: Say No to Crip Crow”

• Disability Community for Democracy

• Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

• FaxZero: faxzero.com

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Episode 25 — Show Notes

Aired: June 18, 2026

Episode 25 began with a question that emerged from a conversation between T and Zee last week:

That question became the foundation for the entire episode.

Joined by T from , the discussion explored a growing debate within election integrity circles about where investigators should focus their attention. While much public discussion centers on voting machines and tabulators, T argued that researchers may need to examine what happens after votes leave the precinct level and move through aggregation systems, election management software, reporting databases, and certification processes.

The conversation opened by examining the difference between tabulation and aggregation. Rather than focusing exclusively on whether individual voting machines function correctly, attention shifted toward the broader chain of custody that election data follows on election night. Viewers were introduced to the concept of election reporting systems, election management systems, vendor databases, and the layers that exist between casting a ballot and final certification.

One of the central themes of the episode was how research evolves when new information becomes available. T explained that her team originally believed irregularities could be explained through tabulation-level manipulation. Over time, however, their research led them toward what they describe as upstream systems. The discussion emphasized the importance of remaining willing to change conclusions when new evidence challenges previous assumptions. Rather than treating earlier findings as mistakes, the conversation framed them as part of an ongoing investigative process.

A significant portion of the episode focused on the team’s analysis of what they describe as vote banks and recurring data patterns appearing across multiple states. Florida, Michigan, and Georgia were discussed as examples where researchers identified numerical patterns they believe deserve additional scrutiny. The conversation explored how researchers look for repeated variables, matching totals, and unusual relationships within election data when attempting to understand whether reported outcomes align with expected voting behavior.

The discussion also highlighted the role of Election Truth Alliance (ETA) and other independent researchers. Rather than presenting competing explanations, the conversation emphasized that different groups may be examining different layers of the same election process. ETA’s statistical analyses of down-ballot anomalies and turnout patterns were discussed as important pieces of a larger puzzle, while T described her team’s focus on reporting systems, aggregation layers, and election-night data movement.

That distinction naturally led into a conversation about voter fraud versus election fraud. While voter fraud generally refers to actions taken by individual voters, the discussion focused on broader questions involving election administration, reporting systems, aggregation processes, and certification. Participants noted that public debate often collapses these concepts together, making it difficult to discuss systemic questions without immediately defaulting to discussions about individual voter behavior.

Attention then turned to other prominent voices in election integrity and election administration discussions. Investigative journalist Greg Palast was referenced for his long-running reporting on voter rolls, voter purges, and election administration issues. Dr. Walter Mebane’s statistical election analyses were also discussed as examples of researchers examining election data through different methodologies. T emphasized that her team’s work does not exist in a vacuum and that a growing number of journalists, statisticians, data analysts, attorneys, and citizen researchers are examining election systems from multiple perspectives. The conversation touched on the importance of bringing these discussions to larger audiences and platforms, including mainstream media outlets and public forums where broader scrutiny can occur.

To help viewers understand the complexity of modern election infrastructure, the livestream walked through a visual diagram showing how vote data travels on election night. The discussion moved step-by-step from ballots and precinct tabulators through county aggregation systems, election management software, vendor databases, reporting systems, state aggregation, and ultimately certification.

Questions of transparency surfaced repeatedly throughout the discussion. Participants examined which parts of election systems receive routine scrutiny, which receive comparatively little attention, and what records would be necessary to independently evaluate concerns raised by researchers. Those questions naturally led into a discussion of Pennsylvania, which continues to occupy a central place in multiple election integrity investigations.

The conversation touched on chain-of-custody concerns, equipment testing questions, and legal actions filed by various organizations. Participants discussed why Pennsylvania remains at the center of ongoing election integrity investigations and public scrutiny surrounding the 2024 election cycle.

As the conversation moved toward solutions, attention shifted away from federal institutions and toward state-level action. Repeated emphasis was placed on contacting state attorneys general, secretaries of state, and state legislators. Participants argued that public pressure at the state level may be more effective than relying solely on federal investigations or national media coverage.

As the discussion drew to a close, it returned to a broader reflection on transparency, accountability, and public participation. Whether discussing election systems, reporting databases, certification processes, or state investigations, the central concern remained the same:

What connected the entire discussion was the idea that modern elections involve far more than ballots and voting machines alone. Between the voter and certification sits a complex chain of software, databases, reporting systems, vendors, and administrative processes. Understanding those systems, questioning them, and demanding transparency within them became the recurring theme throughout Episode 25.

Thank you to everyone who joined us live, participated in the chat, submitted questions, and helped keep the discussion moving despite technical difficulties throughout the broadcast.

Special thanks to T from for joining us once again and sharing her team’s research and perspective.

Join Jason and me next week for another episode of Rigged by Design as we continue examining the systems, institutions, and stories that often receive less attention.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

This Will Hold

To Don Lemon: The 2024 Election Was Stolen—It's NOT the Tabulators

Don Lemon…

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a month ago · 561 likes · 89 comments · This Will Hold

This Will Hold

She Won: Georgia Used a Fake County Vote Bank In the 2024 Election

Data Changed After Tabulation…

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a month ago · 3060 likes · 243 comments · This Will Hold

This Will Hold

Tech Whistleblower: The UAE Colluded With Elon Musk to Interfere In the 2024 Election

Vincent Reed didn’t go looking for any of this. He was brought in through a door that looked like opportunity, and by the time he saw what was behind it, leaving had become its own kind of danger…

Read more

a month ago · 2835 likes · 269 comments · This Will Hold

This Will Hold

She Won: Michigan Used a Fake County Vote Bank In the 2024 Election

This Substack is reader-supported. For fearless reporting and expert-backed research, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

Read more

3 months ago · 1908 likes · 217 comments · This Will Hold

This Will Hold

She Won: Over 2 Million Votes Removed from Florida's 2024 Election Results

This Substack is reader-supported. For fearless reporting and expert-backed research, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

Read more

3 months ago · 5089 likes · 412 comments · This Will Hold

Episode 24 — Show Notes

Aired: June 11, 2026

Episode 24 began with a question that emerged from a conversation earlier in the week:

That question became the foundation for the entire episode.

The introduction opened with the ongoing conflict involving Iran and the growing uncertainty surrounding military actions, funding, and official narratives. While headlines have largely moved on, questions remain about who is making decisions, where the money is coming from, and how much oversight the public actually has over actions taken in its name.

Next, attention shifted to Social Security and the accelerating timeline for trust fund depletion. We discussed projections that now place insolvency at the end of 2032, the potential impact on retirees and disabled Americans, and the long history of borrowing from the trust fund through government-issued IOUs. Along the way, we examined payroll tax caps, demographic explanations for shortfalls, gig work, and the growing concern that Americans have little meaningful influence over a system they have spent decades funding. At its core, the question remained simple: who controls the system when citizens cannot effectively challenge decisions affecting their own retirement?

Concerns about accountability then carried into a discussion about SpaceX’s planned IPO and the growing concentration of private economic power. We explored questions surrounding valuation, market influence, retirement investments, and whether ordinary Americans have any real ability to challenge decisions made by billionaires whose companies increasingly shape communications, technology, government contracts, and financial markets. What began as a conversation about SpaceX evolved into a broader examination of whether corporate power has become as difficult to challenge as government power.

Attention later turned toward representation, race, and political power. Questions about challenging elected officials evolved into a broader conversation about lived experience, privilege, systemic discrimination, and the different barriers people face when trying to make their voices heard. Stories involving interracial families, racism, and unequal treatment illustrated that many communities have spent generations fighting for recognition, rights, and accountability from institutions that were never designed to serve everyone equally. These examples reinforced the episode’s central theme: the struggle to challenge power is not new, but some Americans have always faced steeper obstacles than others.

Later in the episode, election transparency became the focus through the Election Truth Alliance analysis of the Kentucky Republican primary involving Thomas Massie. We discussed turnout patterns, enthusiasm gaps, district-level statistical analysis, and the importance of verification rather than simply accepting assurances that election systems functioned properly. Particular attention was given to questions surrounding unusually high turnout, mirrored voting patterns, and the distinction between trust and verification. Throughout that discussion, the underlying issue remained the same: how can ordinary citizens independently verify election outcomes?

Broader concerns about election administration, voter rolls, hand counts, and public confidence in election systems followed. We examined President Trump’s suggestion that USPS ballot delivery could be tied to states turning over voter rolls and discussed what it means when access to election infrastructure becomes concentrated in fewer hands. At that point, the issue was not simply ballots or voter rolls, but power itself and who controls it.

Closing segments of the episode focused on AI centralization and the possibility of increasingly interconnected government databases. We explored reports that benefit systems, identity systems, and administrative databases may be moving toward greater integration. While often presented as efficiency, much of the conversation centered on accountability. If centralized systems deny benefits, flag records, or make decisions affecting people’s lives, what mechanisms remain for citizens to challenge those decisions?

Despite covering Social Security, SpaceX, race, election transparency, voter rolls, and AI centralization, the episode ultimately returned to the same question posed at the beginning.

How do ordinary citizens challenge institutions once those institutions become powerful enough to stop listening?

What connected each topic throughout the episode was not politics, technology, elections, or even Social Security itself, but the growing concentration of decision-making power inside systems that are increasingly difficult for ordinary citizens to challenge. Whether the discussion centered on Social Security, election administration, billionaire-owned infrastructure, or interconnected databases, the same concern emerged repeatedly: accountability becomes harder to achieve when the institutions making decisions are larger, more centralized, and more insulated from public pressure.

Thank you , , , , , and and everyone else for tuning into Rigged by Design with Jason and me. Join us for our next live video with our special guest T from on Thursday, June 18, 2026 at 10:05 am PST / 1:05 pm EST.

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This is Part 2: how that manufactured emergency is being weaponized to shift control of your benefits into algorithmic systems influenced by billionaire tech infrastructure.

June 7, 2026

The first time I called, I waited on hold until I couldn’t anymore and hung up. The second time, the same. It wasn’t until the third attempt — 2 hours and 15 minutes on hold — that I finally reached a live representative. They asked me a long series of questions, and only at the end did I realize what was actually happening. That call was not to file anything. It was only to schedule a telephone appointment for the following week to file.

The following week, on that telephone appointment, I encountered a Social Security employee who confidently applied rules that do not exist for DAC (disabled adult child) qualification. Just because bureaucratic systems drift, and when they drift, families pay for it.

My son is trying to transfer from SSI to DAC under his stepfather’s record. DAC does not require proving ongoing financial support. That is not the rule, and yet I have had to explain that more than once. I had to push back against a standard that was never part of the law.

Three calls. Two abandonments. Two hours and fifteen minutes on hold just to schedule a phone appointment. Then a second battle to correct a rule that does not exist. And we are the ones who knew enough to push back.

The Letter That Never Came

I waited for the denial letter. A denial letter triggers a 60 day appeal clock. It is the only door into the hearing room.

The letter never came.

Instead, I received an application summary statement dated February 9, 2026 confirming we spoke. That is all. Not a denial. Not an approval. Not even a request for more documentation. Just bureaucratic proof that I had existed in their system long enough to leave a footprint.

No denial letter means no appeal clock. No appeal clock means no hearing. No hearing means no recourse.

This is the ghost denial. It leaves no paper trail. It triggers no oversight. It simply erases you.

When a human misapplies eligibility criteria, the idea of encoding that confusion into software should terrify you.

Most people in this position would give up. Not because they are wrong. Because the system is exhausting by design. Every extra form, every documentation loop, every misinterpretation requires time, energy, and literacy most people juggling disability, caregiving, and poverty simply do not have. Exhaustion is not a side effect. It is the filter.

For decades, that filter was enforced by bureaucracy. Long hold times. Missing paperwork. Confusing instructions. Staff shortages. Human error.

Now a new layer is being added.

It isn’t replacing the bureaucracy. It’s being built on top of it.

And it’s called artificial intelligence.

HeaRT and the Digitization of Denial

In March 2025, the Social Security Administration completed the nationwide rollout of its AI-powered HeaRT (Hearing Recording and Transcriptions) system, affecting roughly 500,000 customers annually. It was sold as transcription efficiency, as due process enhancement, as modernization.

Once hearings become searchable and machine-readable, they stop being conversations and start becoming inputs. Those inputs get modeled, categorized, and flagged long before a claimant ever sits in front of a decision maker.

If the above sounds abstract, Medicare is running the beta test right now.

The Beta Test: WISeR and the Financial Incentive to Deny

Beginning in January 2026, traditional Medicare launched a six-year pilot program called WISeR (Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction) across six states: Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.

The program introduces AI-assisted prior authorization for fourteen categories of procedures. Contractors help review flagged treatments, and those contractors are paid a percentage of what Medicare would have spent on denied care.

The financial incentive is not subtle. The more denials, the greater the savings.

Evidence cited in the rollout indicates that AI-assisted systems produce higher denial rates than human-only review.

This is not a hypothetical slippery slope, but already operational.

Supporters like Dr. Oz have praised it as cost-saving innovation. Critics have asked the question that should haunt every American:

The answer…whatever billionaire tech oligarch trained the algorithm and controls the data.

The Data Pipeline: DOGE, Musk, and the Circumvention of Oversight

This is unfolding in a context that should alarm anyone paying attention.

In 2025, DOGE (Domestic Oversight and Government Efficiency agency) gained access to Social Security and other federal databases. A federal appeals court later expanded that access.

Around the same time, SSA’s Chief Data Officer resigned, citing circumvention of oversight mechanisms. There was no immediate public reckoning about what data was accessed, copied, or retained.

Then, in January 2026, senators formally demanded answers from the Social Security Administration after court filings revealed the agency could not fully account for what personal data DOGE accessed or where that data currently resides.

Let that sink in.

The federal agency responsible for protecting Americans’ most sensitive financial records could not clearly explain what had been accessed or where that information may have gone.

Elon Musk was embedded in DOGE’s early infrastructure. While he demos popcorn-serving robots at Tesla diners, he has never testified under oath about DOGE’s access to Social Security data. The public is still missing something far more important than another product launch: a clear accounting of what information was accessed, where it went, and what safeguards were in place once DOGE obtained it.

The man who can livestream product demos and tweet market-moving statements somehow cannot find time to clarify his relationship to the most sensitive financial data of every working American.

That silence matters because AI systems are only as neutral as the data and incentives that shape them.

The Training Data Scandal: Encoding Austerity Into Algorithms

AI systems are trained on historical records; decades of approval patterns, denial patterns, cost pressures, and budget constraints. If those patterns reflect austerity, the model will replicate austerity. If those datasets were accessed or influenced during a period of weakened oversight, we deserve to know exactly how.

The same government that looted $2.7 trillion from Social Security is now training AI systems on decades of denial culture and budget tightening. These algorithms aren’t neutral arbiters but they’re digital enforcement mechanisms for an austerity agenda that was never voted on.

Meanwhile, the numbers tell a tragic story:

• In 2024, 62% of disability claims were denied at the initial level, with only about 51% approved at the hearing stage.

• Disability applications dropped by roughly 7% in fiscal year 2025, representing approximately 163,000 fewer applications over ten months.

Americans did not suddenly become healthier. They became discouraged by misinformation and AI bureaucracy.

Attorneys now advise clients to submit exhaustive documentation specifically to prevent AI-based denials. Claimants are no longer simply proving disability — they are navigating algorithmic thresholds designed to say no.

When Bureaucratic Drift Gets Encoded

But what happens when that same confusion becomes a coded variable in an automated screening system?

The correction process becomes slower. More opaque. More exhausting.

A denial letter arrives and the appeal clock starts. Or no letter arrives at all, as in my case. No appeal clock. No hearing. No recourse. The burden shifts entirely onto the family to untangle what the machine misread.

Most people would give up.

And when they do, the denial stands. The budget reflects savings. The system reports efficiency.

If the SSA denies your initial claim, you have exactly 60 days to file an appeal. For this part of the process, legal experts say you really need an attorney.

Think about that. The system is so rigged against you that professional legal help has become mandatory just to access benefits you paid for.

The algorithm does not need to be correct. It only needs to be exhausting.

Commissioner Bisignano’s Vision: Corporate Process Engineering

Remember that SSA anniversary email from Part 1? Commissioner Frank Bisignano praising Trump’s “vision” and promising “extraordinary customer service” through “enhanced process engineering”?

Process engineering.

That’s bureaucratic speak for:

We’re turning human suffering into data points and optimizing for rejection.

Bisignano came from the private sector — First Data Corporation, where his job was maximizing profit margins and minimizing payouts. Now he’s applying that same mentality to Social Security, with AI as his primary weapon.

The “extraordinary customer service” means:

• Automated transcriptions that miss context and nuance,

• AI flags that predetermine your case based on algorithmic bias,

• Virtual hearings where human connection is replaced by digital efficiency,

• Appeals processes designed to exhaust you into submission, and

• Ghost denials that leave no door to knock on.

When Private Platforms Control Public Benefits

Part 1 documented the theft of reserves and the manufactured scarcity now projected toward 2034.

Part 2 shows the mechanism that enforces that scarcity.

When benefit determinations move into that architecture, they are no longer simply administrative judgments. They become software outputs shaped by cost containment and opaque data pipelines.

You are being robbed twice.

First, your payroll contributions were siphoned for decades to mask federal deficits. Second, your personal data is being folded into systems that narrow your access to what remains.

They stole the reserves. Now they are programming the rationing.

The Bigger Picture: Manufacture Consent for Privatization

This AI implementation is the final stage of manufacturing consent for privatization being sold as the “solution” to the Social Security crisis.

Americans are getting systematically rejected by AI algorithms. Soon, the oligarchy will step in with the solution: private accounts, market-based investments, corporate management of your retirement funds.

Of course, the same corporations building the AI denial systems will be the ones profiting from privatization. The same oligarchs with access to your data will be managing your retirement accounts.

What This Means: The Quiet Collapse

Social Security will not collapse in one dramatic headline. It will constrict quietly, one flagged claim at a time, until exhaustion does what legislation could not.

⸻

Part 3 Preview: The Privatization Trap

Coming Next: How the 2026 midterm elections are being used to ram through complete Social Security privatization with the same oligarchs who stole your data now positioning to manage your retirement accounts.

The shell game is entering its final phase. And your silence is their victory.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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Episode 23 — Show Notes

Aired: June 4, 2026

Episode 23 opened with a discussion about instability, both personal and political. After sharing the challenges of dealing with a family medical emergency involving cluster seizures, we shifted into the episode’s central theme: how instability that once would have dominated public attention now disappears almost immediately. The conversation began with the recent shooting near the White House during Memorial Day weekend and the broader question of why repeated incidents of political violence seem to vanish from public discussion within days. We explored how constant crisis cycles, media fragmentation, and public exhaustion create an environment where extraordinary events increasingly feel routine.

From there, we moved into Congress’s attempt to reassert its constitutional authority over war powers. The House passed a War Powers Resolution regarding Iran by a vote of 215-208, following a similar effort in the Senate. Rather than focusing solely on the conflict itself, the discussion centered on what happens when Congress formally votes to limit military action while questions remain about whether those limits will ultimately be respected. We connected this to what has become a recurring theme on Rigged by Design: the “two-week cycle” of escalating rhetoric, delayed decisions, shifting timelines, and permanent uncertainty. Iran, Cuba speculation, military posturing, and repeated emergency narratives all pointed toward a larger concern that crisis itself is becoming a governing strategy rather than a temporary condition.

The conversation then expanded into questions of wealth, power, and accountability. We discussed the growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else, the influence of billionaires over political systems, and the ways economic inequality increasingly shapes public policy. The discussion touched on healthcare, housing, homelessness, technological innovation, and how financial incentives often determine political priorities more than public need. Several examples were raised to illustrate how government spending decisions frequently reveal priorities that differ sharply from the daily concerns of ordinary Americans.

We also examined recent reporting that National Park Service revenues are being redirected toward projects and events in Washington, D.C., including July Fourth celebrations, while maintenance backlogs continue to grow. The broader point was not the individual expenditure itself but what spending choices reveal about institutional priorities. Throughout the episode, we returned repeatedly to the idea that following the money often provides a clearer picture of power than following political rhetoric.

The final portion of the episode focused on elections, voter confidence, and local civic engagement. Drawing from firsthand experience serving as a poll worker during San Francisco’s primary election, observations included strong voter interest in national politics, confusion about voting requirements, widespread use of ballot drop boxes rather than the postal system, and turnout levels that exceeded expectations for a local primary. The discussion also highlighted the availability of education ballots for eligible non-citizen parents in local school board races and the reality that no such voters appeared at the polling location observed. More broadly, we discussed public trust in elections, transparency, hand-counted paper ballots, precinct-level accountability, and the importance of state and local engagement in preserving democratic systems.

Episode 23 ultimately returned to a simple question: what happens when crisis becomes permanent? White House violence, war powers disputes, economic inequality, election concerns, infrastructure spending, and international tensions may appear disconnected on the surface. Yet viewed together, they reveal a common pattern. Instability no longer feels like an interruption to normal life. Increasingly, it feels like the environment itself.

Thank you , , , , and everyone else who joined us despite our technical difficulties and second livestream launch. Join us next Thursday for another episode of Rigged by Design as we continue examining the stories, patterns, and systems operating beneath the headlines.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

This episode along with others can be found on Apple Podcast.

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Episode 22 — Show Notes

Aired: May 21, 2026

Episode 22 opened with the idea that power has shifted underneath government into infrastructure: AI systems, data systems, communications platforms, predictive analytics, surveillance, and privately controlled technology. We began with the Ashley St. Clair TikTok video and the broader conversation surrounding Musk, AmericaPAC, satellites, and “real-time election data.” While the claims remain allegations rather than forensic proof, we discussed why references to stored evidence, predictive systems, and election-related technology deserve scrutiny instead of immediate dismissal. The conversation centered on the distinction between “voter fraud” and potential election/data/system fraud, which often gets blurred or intentionally collapsed in mainstream discussion.

From there, we moved into the Kentucky Massie/Gallrein primary as a live example of why opaque election infrastructure continues triggering distrust. We discussed the unusual turnout surge in a midterm primary, the timing of absentee/mail-in ballots, Trump’s still-underwater approval rating even in Kentucky, the low visible enthusiasm for the Trump-backed challenger, and the role predictive systems and betting markets like Polymarket may play in shaping public perception before results are finalized. The larger point was not that this proves fraud, but that anomalies tied to privately controlled systems deserve verification, especially when billionaire-backed political infrastructure, AI systems, proprietary tabulators, and behavioral analytics increasingly overlap inside modern elections.

The episode closed by returning to privatization and normalization. We connected AI-generated propaganda, algorithmic rage-bait, proprietary voting systems, private election vendors, media amplification pipelines, and surveillance-style infrastructure to a broader question: how can public trust survive when the systems shaping, transmitting, counting, and narrating elections are increasingly hidden from view? The focus remained on local and state-level action: pressuring attorneys general and election officials, demanding paper ballots, hand counts, transparency, open-source systems, and real public verification. Because once the infrastructure itself becomes opaque, every anomaly becomes magnified. Humans built systems too complicated for the public to meaningfully audit, then act shocked when trust collapses.

Thank you , , , and many others for tuning into Rigged by Design with Jason and me. Join us for our next live video in the app on Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 10:05 a.m. PST / 1:05 p.m. EST.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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Episode 20 — Show Notes

Aired: May 7, 2026

Twenty episodes into Rigged by Design, the pattern is no longer just difficult to explain away. The instability itself has become the environment people are expected to function inside. Every week brings another crisis, another escalation timeline, another distraction cycle, and another expansion of power quietly moving underneath it all.

This episode centered on the growing disconnect between the scale of what is happening and the complete lack of coherent public explanation surrounding it. The administration’s messaging around Iran continued shifting in real time — from warnings against escalation, to vague military timelines, to peace negotiations, to officials openly suggesting a return to essentially the same geopolitical position that existed before military action began. Meanwhile, billions continue being spent with no clearly defined endpoint, objective, or public understanding of what success is even supposed to look like.

At the same time, the domestic machinery of surveillance and enforcement continues expanding with remarkably little public attention. Congress quietly extended Section 702 surveillance powers again, first through a short-term extension and then through a longer 45-day extension that now stretches into mid-June. Temporary emergency powers continue functioning as semi-permanent infrastructure, normalized through repetition and public exhaustion rather than meaningful public debate. The discussion also returned to how surveillance powers introduced after 9/11 continue operating under the language of “national security” more than two decades later, while increasingly overlapping with political speech, online activity, and growing public fears around retaliation and selective enforcement.

The episode also examined the growing instability surrounding election structures themselves. Louisiana’s congressional maps and election processes were thrown into uncertainty following recent court rulings tied to redistricting and Voting Rights Act protections. As maps shift, elections pause, and district battles intensify ahead of 2026, the larger question becomes unavoidable: what does it mean when election structures themselves remain in flux while the public is simultaneously told to simply “wait for the next election”? The conversation also explored broader concerns surrounding aggressive gerrymandering, election administration, and continued attacks on mail-in voting systems.

The discussion repeatedly returned to how systemic pressure increasingly falls on ordinary people while political and corporate systems continue protecting themselves. Personal examples involving caregiving, IHSS work, Social Security limitations, rising costs of living, and economic instability highlighted the widening disconnect between how policy decisions are made and how people are actually expected to survive underneath them. As grocery prices continue rising and corporate profits remain protected, the burden increasingly shifts onto families already operating in survival mode.

Throughout the episode, another recurring pattern continued surfacing — major scandals disappearing through exhaustion cycles rather than resolution. Epstein faded once again from mainstream attention, not because questions were answered or accountability was achieved, but because the public cycle moved on. The same dynamic applies broadly across political corruption, retaliation, surveillance expansion, selective enforcement, and institutional failures. The discussion also examined growing concerns surrounding DOJ retaliation, political intimidation, attacks on critics and journalists, and the broader normalization of authoritarian-style governance.

ICE expansion also came up in the closing section, when an audience member asked for the location of California’s newest detention facility. The facility is the Central Valley Annex in McFarland, Kern County, a 700-bed ICE detention center operated by GEO Group. Its location matters. This is not happening in a highly visible civic space where the public can easily monitor conditions or organize around what is taking place. It is being placed in what was described on-air as “out of nowhere land,” raising the concern that detention infrastructure pushed away from public visibility becomes easier to normalize while privatized profiteering and abuse continue with limited scrutiny.

The conversation ultimately returned to the larger framework that has increasingly defined Rigged by Design itself: different headlines, same pattern. Crisis fragments public attention. Fragmented attention weakens scrutiny. And while the public struggles to keep pace with shifting narratives, systems of surveillance, enforcement, detention, privatization, and political power continue expanding underneath the confusion.

At some point, instability stops feeling temporary and starts functioning as governance itself.

Thank you , , and many others for tuning into Rigged by Design with and me. Join us for our next live video in the app on Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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How the People Force Accountability When Congress Won’t

Frodo, my green-cheek conure, is perched on the wall ledge again. Watching. Tracking. He’s got that look, hesitant and determined. He is “vultched” right before he launches, hunched like a vulture, wings close to his body and angular, making sure it’s safe.

It’s not safe. The Supreme Court made damn sure of that.

Part 4A laid out the receipts. Thomas on a billionaire’s yacht. Alito on a hedge fund’s fishing trip. Gorsuch hiding a real estate sale. Sotomayor’s staff squeezing colleges. Kavanaugh’s 83 complaints that vanished into thin air. And Roberts, $10 million plus in household commissions from law firms grinning at him from the counsel table.

I also laid out why Congress won’t impeach: the class alignment, the donor entanglement, the freeze.

But there’s a darker pattern underneath all of it, one that connects every ruling, every refusal to act, every expansion of presidential power.

They refused to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the insurrection clause that should have barred him from the ballot. They granted him presidential immunity so sweeping that a 34 count convicted felon became legally untouchable. They dismantled every regulatory agency that could constrain executive overreach. They legalized racial gerrymandering to secure his congressional majority. They greenlit ICE racial profiling to enable his deportation machine.

And now they’ve gone further. On April 29, the Court struck down a Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, gutting what remains of the Voting Rights Act’s protection against racial vote dilution. The dissent didn’t mince words. Justice Kagan warned the decision could render those protections “all but a dead letter.” This follows the same pattern of stripping enforcement, rewriting the rules, and then pretending the outcome is neutral.

Every single ruling paved the road for an authoritarian’s rule.

This wasn’t nine justices acting independently. This was the judicial branch of a coordinated authoritarian project. And when Congress refuses to impeach the Court that enabled a coup, the constitutional remedy doesn’t disappear.

It transfers to us.

published “The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I’m Filing for His Disbarment Today” calling for Roberts’s disbarment. He wrote,

He included a letter that can be sent to a State Attorney General, a concrete ten minute action.1 That’s a start. His piece gives you a letter template to send. One person, one justice, ten minutes.

My poll at the end of 4A asked a different question: do the people need their own mechanism to remove a captured Court?

100 percent of you said yes.

Part 4A was the evidence.

Part 4B is the verdict and the action plan.

The Supreme Court didn’t just protect itself from accountability. It protected Trump big time.

The Demographic Panic (Unsanitized)

In Part 4A, I wrote about my experience in diversity training showing that by 2032, people of color would become the majority in the United States. After stating that, the silence that followed was eerie. Already three decades ago, these same men were calculating how to stop a demographic majority from becoming political power.

I didn’t tell you what I really thought while I watched them.

Here it is.

White men in charge are a scared flock of “limp dicks,” dependent on a system that props them up (not Viagra, though that’s covered by insurance). Originally I wrote “pussies” but didn’t want to lessen the strength of a pussy. Power that has to be maintained by stripping rights from others isn’t strength. It’s proof they can’t hold it any other way.

They’re scared of women, immigrants, and people of color. Scared of becoming what they’ve always made others: disposable.

So they’re doing everything to make sure the demographic majority never becomes political power. Rigged maps. Stolen elections. A Court that legalized racial gerrymandering. An ICE regime that can detain people based on how they look. And a Congress that sits on its hands because the donor class pays for silence.

saw where this was headed. In her essay How the Supreme Court Is Digging Its Own Grave, she warned:

She was right. And now the question isn’t whether the Court is captured. It’s what we do about it.

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The Nine Mechanisms

I’m not here to sell ten minute miracles. I’m here to give a ladder. Start where you are. These are real mechanisms, not fantasies. They have historical precedent. This is how the people force impeachment when Congress refuses.

1. State Non-Cooperation With Illegitimate Rulings

States can refuse to enforce Supreme Court rulings derived from corruption or violations of the “good behavior” clause.

Precedent already exists:

• California refuses cooperation with certain ICE demands

• States resisted Dobbs enforcement through sanctuary policies

• States routinely slow walk federal mandates they deem unconstitutional

This doesn’t remove a justice directly, but it makes their decisions unenforceable. A Court with no enforceability is already halfway impeached. When states openly refuse compliance, the Court’s legitimacy collapses in practice.

2. Multi-State Good Behavior Commissions

States can form compacts to:

• Investigate judicial corruption

• Hold public hearings with sworn testimony

• Document constitutional violations

• Issue formal “bad behavior” findings

These findings become ammunition that forces Congress into action. One state’s complaint gets ignored. A coordinated evidentiary record from fifteen states backed by public hearings becomes politically impossible to dismiss.

The strategy: Target swing state senators and vulnerable House members with constituent pressure backed by official state findings. Make impeachment refusal more expensive than impeachment action.

3. Primary Challenges: Making Impeachment Refusal Electorally Fatal

Most states can’t recall members of Congress, but primaries are a weapon.

A coordinated impeachment campaign targets:

• Vulnerable senators in tight races (2026, 2028)

• House members in swing districts

• Members of House Judiciary Committee

• Leadership figures blocking impeachment votes

The message: Impeach corrupt justices or face a primary challenge exposing donor ties. When voters know who funds their representatives, they can act.

The goal isn’t all of Congress. The goal is 5 to 7 vulnerable senators and 15 to 20 House members who decide their political survival depends on impeachment.

4. Targeted Ballot Initiatives at State Level

States can place on their ballots:

• Resolutions demanding congressional action on impeachment

• Constitutional amendments requiring Congress to act within a specific timeframe

• State ethics triggers tied to federal judicial misconduct

These initiatives don’t remove justices directly. They weaponize public mandate. When California, New York, Illinois, and ten other states pass ballot measures with 60 percent plus support demanding impeachment, that becomes a political weapon Congress can’t ignore.

California could launch this tomorrow and shift the national conversation overnight.

5. Strategic Litigation: “Bad Behavior = No Authority”

Lawyers can file cases in multiple circuits arguing that decisions issued by justices in violation of “good behavior” are void. They lack constitutional authority.

If even a few federal courts accept this framing, it creates a cascading legitimacy crisis. Lower courts start questioning whether they’re bound by SCOTUS rulings issued by compromised justices. The Court’s institutional authority begins to fracture from within the judiciary itself.

This is the sleeper tactic. Courts hate being told their authority is void, but they hate public collapse of judicial legitimacy even more. Force them to choose.

6. General Strike Focused on Judicial Corruption

Americans don’t strike easily, but pressure is building and we’re close to that point. A coordinated general strike aimed at removing corrupt justices puts pressure where it actually matters and turns it into real leverage. Focus on sectors where disruption forces attention:

• Ports and shipping

• Trucking and logistics

• Airports

• Healthcare (non emergency)

• Universities

• Public transit

When the economy stops moving, the donor class that protects the Court suddenly has a material interest in resolution. Congress pays attention when their donors demand it.

Historical precedent: The 1946 general strike wave forced Truman’s hand on labor protections. Economic pressure works when it threatens the people who actually control Congress.

7. Public Tribunals and Formal Removal Dockets

Build what Congress refuses to build:

• Public hearings with expert testimony

• Sworn affidavits documenting ethics violations

• Compiled evidence chains

• Constitutional analyses from legal scholars

• Whistleblower testimony from Court staff

• Full removal dockets with charges, evidence, and legal basis

Present Congress with a complete prosecutorial case and make ignoring it a political liability. This is accountability infrastructure built from the ground up.

When the people create the evidentiary record Congress should have created, refusing to act becomes an active choice to protect corruption. That’s a weapon in primary campaigns and ballot initiatives.

8. Mass Non-Compliance Movements

A Supreme Court ruling only holds if the public complies, institutions obey, and states enforce it. When thousands, then millions, refuse to comply with rulings from an illegitimate Court, those decisions collapse in practice even if they remain on paper. Law is a social contract, and when the Court violates that contract, the people are no longer bound to uphold it. Non-compliance isn’t lawlessness. It’s the constitutional response to institutional betrayal.

9. The Narrative War

The Court survives on public belief in its legitimacy. That belief doesn’t hold up once the evidence is laid out.

The evidence is already documented:

• Decades of corruption across Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Roberts, and others

• The demographic panic driving their rulings

• The class solidarity protecting them

• The coup infrastructure they enabled

• The specific rulings that paved Trump’s return

When public legitimacy collapses, every other mechanism becomes more powerful. States feel emboldened to resist. Lawyers file “bad behavior” suits. Primary challengers gain traction. The narrative shift makes the impossible suddenly possible.

The Warning: Article V Convention

Originally, I was exploring Article V as a mechanism that gives states the power to call a constitutional convention. On paper, this sounds like a democratic tool. However, according to Common Cause, mega-donors, corporations, and radical far right actors are already pushing calls for an Article V convention in states across the country. They want to rewrite the Constitution for their own benefit. Frighteningly, they are just a few states away from succeeding.

Article V provides no guidelines for how a convention would work, who would control it, or how to prevent a “runaway convention.” Delegates could write amendments that revoke any of our most cherished rights, including the First Amendment. The Convention of States movement, backed by conservative donors and organizations like ALEC, has been making steady progress. To date, 19 states have passed resolutions calling for a convention. In another seven states, one of the two houses in the state legislature has passed similar resolutions. They need 34 states to force Congress to act.

Critics on both the left and the right have raised alarms. The Idaho GOP passed a resolution opposing an Article V convention, with its chairwoman calling it “a Pandora’s Box we might never be able to close.” The Nation magazine warns that the Convention of States movement is “charting a course for a constitutional crisis” and that their proposed “one state, one vote” structure would give disproportionate power to smaller, whiter states, enabling a minority of Americans to amend the Constitution.

This mechanism is not a solution we can use. It’s a warning. Stopping their convention has to be a priority before we can even think about using Article V for anything else.

How They Work Together

None of these mechanisms work alone. Congress can ignore one pressure point but can't ignore nine applied simultaneously.

Following is what coordinated action looks like.

The Verdict

Frodo isn’t the nervous bird he was after a year in the cage. He’s faster now and more direct, and when he takes off, he doesn’t hesitate.

When the room shifts, even slightly, he doesn’t panic. He looks, decides, and goes straight to the one place he trusts, landing clean without wobbling or second-guessing himself. That’s what this moment requires, not waiting, not asking permission, and not pretending the system will correct itself.

The Supreme Court enabled a convicted felon to seize the presidency by dismantling every constitutional barrier in his path, and in doing so they made themselves untouchable. Congress refuses to act because it is entangled in the same system, so the remedy doesn’t disappear. It transfers to the people, not as revolution, but as constitutional duty.

The floor isn’t safe because they made sure of that, but we don’t need it when we can fly. Part 4A proved the Court is captured, and Part 4B lays out what comes next. The only branch left is us.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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Support is never expected but always appreciated. Subscriptions and Buy Me a Coffee help keep this work independent and accessible. All core reporting remains free — support simply helps me keep digging.

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Sources

Substack Pieces:

• Christopher Armitage, “The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I’m Filing for His Disbarment Today.” (Apr. 22, 2026):

The Existentialist Republic

The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I'm Filing for His Disbarment Today.

Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, Chief Justice John Roberts mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court. He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years. He failed to recuse from more t…

Read more

3 months ago · 15922 likes · 1020 comments · Christopher Armitage

• Joyce Strong, “How the Supreme Court Is Digging Its Own Grave” (Nov. 9, 2025):

USA Today, “Supreme Court sides against Black voters in blow to landmark civil rights law” (Apr. 29, 2026): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/04/29/supreme-court-ruling-voting-rights-act/84383560007/

State Non-Cooperation Precedents:

• California Values Act (SB 54) limiting state cooperation with ICE: https://oag.ca.gov/immigrant/california-values-act

• Post-Dobbs sanctuary policies: Guttmacher Institute tracking: https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy

Primary Challenge Strategy:

• Justice Democrats, proven primary model: https://justicedemocrats.com/news/

• Brand New Congress organizing framework: https://brandnewcongress.org/ (site was inaccessible at time of publication)

General Strike Historical Precedents:

• Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (2020 edition): https://www.jeremybrecher.org/strike/

• Labor Notes, “How to Strike and Win”: https://labornotes.org/

Judicial Legitimacy Research:

• Gibson, James L., and Gregory A. Caldeira. 2011. “Has Legal Realism Damaged the Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court?” Law & Society Review 45(1): 195–219. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2011.00432.x.

• Pew Research, Supreme Court approval ratings (historical): https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/

Organizations Already Doing This Work:

• Demand Justice (Court reform): https://demandjustice.org/

• Common Cause (ethics enforcement): https://www.commoncause.org/

• Indivisible (primary organizing): https://indivisible.org/

Article V Convention Warning:

• Common Cause, “The Dangerous Path of the Article V Convention”:
  https://www.commoncause.org/issues/stopping-an-article-v-convention/

• Congressional Research Service, “The Article V Convention to Propose Constitutional Amendments” (2016):
  https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R42589.pdf

• Idaho Republican Party, “Resolution Opposing an Article V Convention of States” (July 2022). Dorothy Moon, Chairwoman, quoted in the Idaho Capital Sun:
  https://idahocapitalsun.com/2022/07/15/idaho-gop-passes-resolution-opposing-article-v-convention-of-states/

• The Nation, “The Far-Right Push for a Constitutional Convention” (John Nichols, 2023):
  https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/convention-of-states-article-v/

Episode 16 — Show Notes
Aired: April 23, 2026

Due to CNN’s reporting on what’s now being referred to as “Rape Academy,” this episode pivoted early from the original topic, because there are moments where what’s in front of you is too significant to ignore. What’s being exposed is not fringe behavior sitting on the edges of society. It is happening at a scale that should force a reckoning, yet somehow it isn’t.

We’re talking about networks of men openly sharing tactics on how to drug women, how to sexually exploit them, how to record it, and how to profit from it. Not hidden in the way people like to imagine these things exist, but normalized within spaces that continue to operate without meaningful disruption.

Inside ICE detention centers, reports of sexual abuse involving women and children continue to surface. These are not new allegations. They have been documented, raised, dismissed, buried, and then repeated over years. The pattern is not subtle, and it is not isolated. Sexual abuse is an act of violence — point blank. Stripping it down to anything less is a deliberate minimization of what is actually happening.

During the same period as the CNN report, platforms continue to elevate and normalize the very culture that feeds this — rape culture. You now have figures like Andrew Tate not pushed to the margins, but given space, visibility, and in many cases, monetization. The manosphere isn’t some abstract corner of the internet anymore. It is being absorbed into mainstream platforms and treated as just another perspective.

So the episode starts here, not because it is comfortable, but because it is necessary. Because ignoring it is not neutrality, it is participation in the silence that allows it to continue. At some point, you have to sit with what is being allowed to exist in plain sight and stop asking whether it’s real, and start asking why it is still being allowed to happen.

As Congress reconvenes, the question of priorities becomes unavoidable. While systemic abuse, exploitation, and violence continue in plain sight, the focus shifts to symbolic actions and procedural movement, creating the appearance of governance without addressing the substance of what is unfolding. Surveillance expands, policies move forward, and power consolidates, yet the issues that demand confrontation remain largely untouched. What is addressed, what is delayed, and what is ignored altogether reflects a system that manages narrative as much as it manages policy.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into into Rigged by Design with Jason and me.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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Episode 15 — Show Notes

Aired: April 10, 2026

Opening — Accountability Before Narrative

The episode opened with a direct correction from the prior broadcast. A claim that U.S. oil reserves would last two years was revised to a more accurate estimate of roughly 90 to 125 days. The previous episode was intentionally withheld until that correction could be made on record. That decision reflects a core principle behind the show. If something is wrong, it is addressed publicly before moving forward. In a media environment where narratives are often adjusted without acknowledgment, the act of correction becomes part of the argument itself. Verification still matters, even when systems around it do not operate that way.

Segment 1 — The Two-Week Cycle and Manufactured Time

A midweek announcement of a two-week pause in bombing Iran did not land as new information, but as repetition. The language, the timing, and the structure mirrored a pattern used repeatedly over time. Policies, infrastructure, and decisions are always just two weeks away. The deadline never resolves. It simply resets. Within hours of the announcement, activity on the ground contradicted the pause, reinforcing that the timeline itself is not the point. The point is maintaining attention without closure. This pattern creates a controlled sense of anticipation, where the public is kept waiting rather than informed. The result is not confusion by accident, but a steady manipulation of how time is experienced politically.

Segment 2 — Market Movement Behind the Messaging

Attention shifted from the announcement itself to what surrounded it. A public statement highlighting a defense company’s capabilities coincided with a noticeable movement in its stock trajectory. This raised a more important question than the statement itself. Who positioned themselves before the message was made public? The pattern is familiar. Instability suppresses value, insiders move early, and public narratives drive recovery. While the public reacts to headlines, others respond to timing. The broader implication is that moments framed as crisis often operate simultaneously as financial opportunity, with the benefits flowing in one direction while the costs are distributed across everyone else.

Segment 3 — When the System Hits the Grocery Store

The conversation moved from macro systems into daily life, grounding the discussion in rising costs. Food, utilities, and basic goods have increased at a rate that no longer feels temporary. What was once explained as supply chain disruption now reflects something more permanent. Margins have expanded and are not being reversed. The system does not correct itself once pressure subsides. It recalibrates at a higher baseline. In response, behavior begins to shift. Gardening, food independence, and small acts of self-sufficiency are not lifestyle choices in this context. They are adaptations. When people begin finding ways around a system rather than within it, that signals a deeper loss of trust.

Segment 4 — Gaslighting as a System

Gaslighting was identified not as a one-off tactic, but as a layered system operating at different speeds. In its faster form, it replaces observable reality outright. Numbers are revised, narratives are flipped, and contradictions are presented as fact in real time. In its slower form, it works through repetition and subtle shifts, gradually altering what was said and what was meant. The repeated two-week cycle fits into this slower layer, where each iteration slightly rewrites the previous one. Over time, the ability to compare past and present weakens. The goal is not necessarily belief, but disorientation. Once people can no longer anchor themselves to what actually happened, accountability becomes almost impossible to enforce.

Segment 5 — Political Shift and Generational Pressure

The discussion challenged the idea that political responsibility rests solely with older generations. Younger voters are not only present but actively shaping the direction of conversations, particularly around healthcare, corruption, and financial influence in politics. As more voters enter the system, expectations are shifting toward candidates who operate without apology. Traditional funding structures are being rejected in favor of direct, transparent positioning. This shift is less about ideology and more about threshold. A growing segment of voters is no longer willing to accept incremental change when structural issues remain unresolved.

Segment 6 — “Fake Counts” and the Limits of Certification

A warning about potential manipulation of vote counts introduced a contradiction that cannot easily be ignored. Language like fake counts does not exist alongside full confidence in electoral systems without tension. At the same time, efforts to verify results continue to be blocked under the premise that certification finalizes the process. This creates a closed loop where outcomes are declared valid, but cannot be independently confirmed. The distinction becomes critical. Certification is procedural. Verification is evidentiary. When one replaces the other, trust is no longer built on proof, but on acceptance.

Segment 7 — Social Security and the Manufactured Crisis

The conversation returned to structural imbalance within Social Security. The current system caps taxable income, meaning contributions stop at a certain threshold regardless of how much more is earned. This design places a disproportionate burden on those below the cap while limiting contributions from those above it. At the same time, narratives around insolvency continue to build, framing the system as unsustainable. The concern is not just the imbalance itself, but where it leads. When a system is allowed to weaken without structural correction, it creates the conditions to argue that replacement is the only viable solution.

Closing — The Loop

What appears as separate issues such as foreign conflict, rising prices, shifting narratives, and structural policy gaps operates within a repeating loop. Disruption captures attention, messaging reshapes perception, time resets expectations, and the cycle begins again. The system does not rely on resolution. It relies on continuation. The longer the loop runs, the harder it becomes to distinguish between what is happening and what is being presented as happening.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into into Rigged by Design with Jason and me. Join us for my next live video in the app on April 16, 2026 at 10:05 a.m. PST / 1:05 p.m. EST.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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Update – April 9, 2026: I’ve embedded the FOIA logs as PDFs directly into this piece so you can review them yourself without having to track them down across broken links, misfiled directories, or dead-end searches. Most people never get to this part of the process because what usually circulates is a summary or an interpretation, not the underlying records themselves.

The Q4 2024 log did not appear through any standard search. The link was mis-indexed in a way that made it look like the file was missing, even though it had been there the entire time. I reconstructed the URL manually using the naming conventions from earlier quarters, and once corrected, the log opened immediately. That kind of error does not block access outright, but it does make the file difficult enough to find that most people would stop looking. You do not have to go through that process here.

I filed five FOIA requests in November 2025 because the absence of any visible inquiry into these events didn’t make sense. Each request was tied to specific, documented incidents. The responses so far have not produced any substantive records. One request remains unanswered. Another was closed with instructions to search the FOIA library, which I did, and nothing there matched the scope of what I requested. That request is now under appeal.

No documents have been released, and there have been no partial disclosures or redactions to evaluate.

At this point, the work is not limited to what has been returned. It includes what has not been produced and what it takes to locate records that are technically public but not easily accessible. The logs are here, along with the current status of the requests, so you can review them directly without having to piece the process together yourself.

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November 24, 2025

I wasn’t looking for a smoking gun when I opened the State Department’s FOIA logs. I was researching ICE privatization, trying to understand how the infrastructure for detention is shifting quietly into private hands. But sometimes the most revealing evidence appears when you’re looking for something else entirely.

I needed a benchmark for how federal agencies communicate internally during moments of national stress. The 2024 election seemed like the obvious case study: bomb threats across multiple swing states, voting-machine failures, mass voter purges, and more than a million mail ballots returned as undeliverable. These weren’t rumors. They were publicly documented incidents. Non-partisan groups like Smart Elections and the Election Truth Alliance have been tracking these irregularities with granular precision, pushing for hand recounts that should have been automatic. Yet none of these events produced the federal paper trail you would expect from any functioning system.

That disconnect sent me into a rabbit hole – the FOIA logs. I wanted to see which questions journalists, researchers, or watchdog organizations had asked about the 2024 election. This was, after all, an election that should have triggered immediate federal scrutiny, especially after Kamala Harris conceded in under twenty-four hours, even before the eight election-security experts issued their November 13 letter warning of vulnerabilities and recommending targeted recounts in key states. Instead, what I found was a public record so hollow it felt surreal.

The Link That Wasn’t Broken

The State Department releases FOIA logs quarterly. Q2 2024 opened without issue. Q3 opened without issue. But the Q4 2024 link — the quarter covering the November election — didn’t lead to a missing file or a temporary server error. It led to a directory path that didn’t exist. The year in the URL was wrong. The internal routing didn’t match any previous quarter. It looked like the file had never been uploaded at all.

This is where experience matters. Government files rarely vanish. They get mislabeled, mis-indexed, or buried behind broken directory structures that make them functionally invisible. So I manually reconstructed the URL using the naming conventions from earlier quarters. The moment I corrected the year and case number, the log opened. It had been there the entire time, hidden behind an error that guaranteed almost no one would find it.

The FOIA log for the fourth quarter of 2024 — the period covering an election riddled with documented irregularities and then quietly treated as routine — wasn’t unavailable. It was misfiled in a way that made it appear absent. Whether that happened through negligence or design, the result was the same: one of the most important public records of the year was hidden from public view.

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It looks like four separate topics. It isn’t.

Behavior: Inside the Manosphere (Netflix)

Jason assigned this one as homework, and it delivered. What stands out most watching Inside the Manosphere isn’t the individual influencers — it’s how deliberately the ecosystem is built. The monetization model rewards outrage and identity reinforcement. Platforms optimize for engagement, and rage-baiting misogyny generates engagement. None of this is organic. It is engineered through repetition and reward loops, and it is targeting boys as young as 15 whose prefrontal cortexes are not yet fully developed.

The moment that hit hardest was the mother near the end — the one defending her son’s content as performance, not belief. The lack of accountability there is its own lesson. You don’t get to disclaim the behavior you allowed and encouraged.

The through-line to everything else this week: young men are being shaped by a system most of them can’t see, and can’t name.

Biology: Plastics Detox (Netflix)

Microplastics are now being found in human blood, organs, and reproductive tissue. Declining sperm counts are being studied in connection with exposure levels. In a small preliminary study — six couples, not a peer-reviewed clinical trial, worth flagging clearly — all participants who detoxed their homes from plastics were able to conceive after three months of attempting without success.

The regulatory contrast is worth sitting with: the EU has banned hundreds of plastic compounds. The United States has banned two. The U.S. approach is reactive — wait until harm is proven and visible. The EU approach is precautionary — restrict until safety is established. Same materials, different rules, different outcomes. And the reason for the gap is the same reason it’s always the same reason: the cost of changing is borne by corporations, and corporations have lobbyists.

You don’t have to see a system to be affected by it.

Policy Architecture: Stephen Miller and Plyler v. Doe

The New Republic published a piece on March 24th worth reading in full. On the surface, the Trump administration appears to be pulling back on the visibility of mass deportations — White House chief of staff Suzie Wiles reportedly now views the optics as a midterm liability. But underneath that messaging shift, Miller has been quietly meeting with Texas state legislators and floating the elimination of public school funding for undocumented children.

This is a direct challenge to Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court ruling that held denying public education based on immigration status violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. The goal isn’t just education policy. The goal is to use immigration as a crowbar against the 14th Amendment more broadly — connecting to the birthright citizenship executive order, to tiered citizenship, and to what legal scholars quoted in the piece describe as the construction of a permanent subclass.

The public messaging is pulling back. The structural project is accelerating. These are not the same thing.

System vs. Narrative: Dr. J. Alex Halderman

Halderman is a cybersecurity professor at the University of Michigan who has spent years documenting real, exploitable vulnerabilities in voting machine systems — and who has also been clear, consistently, that identifying vulnerabilities is not the same as proving manipulation occurred. His sealed report in the Georgia Dominion lawsuit found security red flags. It explicitly did not conclude the 2020 election was stolen.

What happened to his work is its own lesson in how technical findings get processed by a polarized media environment: one side dismissed the vulnerabilities entirely, the other treated them as proof of theft. Neither is accurate. The honest read is that the systems have weaknesses serious enough to warrant scrutiny, hand verification, and transparency and that the resistance to that scrutiny is itself worth examining.

This connects directly to the Trifecta Files.

Trifecta Files Update

Part 1 is published. It covers Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia — three states where the congressional results deserve the same scrutiny we’ve been applying to the presidential race. Part 2 covers Michigan, California, and Texas and is in progress.

Pennsylvania remains the epicenter. It delivered one of the two Senate seats that completed the Republican trifecta. The numbers in that race, and the conditions around it — ballot challenges, procedural suppression, a governor who has shown no appetite for examination — don’t add up cleanly.

If you have data, CVRs, or sourced information from any of these states, send it over.

Thank you , , , and many others for tuning into Rigged by Design with Jason and me. Join us for my next live video in the app on April 3, 2026 at 10:05 a.m. PST / 1:05 p.m. EST.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

If this work matters to you, subscribe to Jason and me as we keep documenting what others rush past or refuse to touch.

Subscribe now

Support is never expected, but always appreciated. Subscriptions and Buy Me a Coffee help keep this work independent, accessible, and ongoing. All core reporting remains free — support simply helps me keep digging.

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Source receipts:

“Trump Throws Stephen Miller Under the Bus in Surprise Show of Panic” — The New Republic / Greg Sargent, March 24, 2026:

“University of Michigan Professor Embroiled in Georgia Election Lawsuit” — WDIV / Grant Hermes, January 28, 2022

Inside the Manosphere — Netflix documentary

Plastics Detox — Netflix documentary

Note on the plastics segment: the fertility study discussed involved six couples and does not meet the threshold for a peer-reviewed clinical study. It is cited here as preliminary and directional.

Rigged by Design is now available on Apple Podcasts for those who prefer to listen.

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This is what people are dismissing

This wasn’t my first time at a No Kings rally in San Francisco. It was my third, and I’ve been to all of them, which gave me something more than a single snapshot to work from. Each time I’ve shown up, the crowd has grown, the number of organizations has expanded, and the level of coordination has become more visible.

That matters because it directly contradicts the idea that these protests are stagnant or purely symbolic. What I saw wasn’t repetition or people going through the motions. It was growth, and not the kind you can capture in a single clip or dismiss from a distance.

You only see that pattern if you’ve been there, watching it build in real time.

I didn’t go expecting policy to shift overnight, and I don’t think anyone there realistically did. What I went to see was who was still showing up, and more importantly, what existed beyond the crowd itself. Because once you move past the surface, what becomes clear is that this is not just a protest. It is a point of entry into something larger that most people are not seeing.

I arrived early, before it filled in, and what stood out immediately were the booths lining the area. Organizations focused on everything from taxing billionaires to climate action to labor rights were already set up and actively engaging people. These weren’t abstract ideas floating online. They were tangible points of connection. People were asking questions, signing up, scanning QR codes, and having real conversations about what comes next.

This is the part that gets lost in the criticism.

Most people don’t actually know how to get involved. Social media has convinced them that engagement looks like posting, sharing, or reacting, but that model has real limitations. As I wrote last year, the rise of slacktivism has created a false sense of participation, where individuals feel they have contributed simply by amplifying a message without taking further action. The problem is not that people don’t care. It’s that the structure needed to move from awareness to action is missing.

And that structure does not build itself online.

The same platforms that amplify activism are also shaped by algorithmic bias, noise, and ownership structures that prioritize engagement over organization. They fragment attention instead of consolidating it, and they create echo chambers rather than networks capable of sustained action. That is why spaces like this rally matter. They provide something that social media cannot: a physical environment where people can find each other, understand the landscape, and begin to plug into real-world efforts.

Walking through the rally made that clear. It wasn’t a single-issue event. Climate groups stood next to labor organizers. Anti-billionaire messaging sat alongside community advocacy. What looks disconnected online is visibly interconnected in person, and that matters because movements do not grow in isolation. They grow through overlap, shared purpose, and repeated interaction.

Further along, I came across Extinction Rebellion, whose materials focused less on entry points and more on escalation. Their emphasis on civil disobedience and disruption introduces a different layer of activism, one that is often what critics expect to see immediately. But that expectation skips a critical step. Disruption requires coordination, trust, and a network that can sustain it. Without that foundation, escalation collapses before it begins.

That is where the gap in understanding becomes most obvious.

People are looking at early-stage organizing and asking why it does not yet resemble late-stage pressure. They are measuring the first step against the final outcome and calling it a failure. But movements do not operate on that timeline. They build.

One of the clearest examples of that came from a small zine I picked up at the rally outlining the progression toward something like a general strike. It wasn’t framed as an immediate demand. It was structured as a process: shared principles, relationship building, understanding risk, and developing mutual aid networks. Only after those elements are in place does the conversation shift toward large-scale disruption.

That progression is not theoretical. It is historical.

The civil rights movement did not achieve legislative change through a single march or moment of visibility. It required years of sustained organizing, boycotts, coalition building, and strategic pressure before meaningful change was forced at the policy level. Early actions did not look effective to outside observers. They looked fragmented, insufficient, or symbolic—until they weren’t.

What we are seeing now follows that same pattern.

There is also a practical reality that often gets ignored. This rally took place on a Saturday, which is not incidental. It allows working people to participate without immediately risking income. Movements cannot grow if participation requires immediate personal destabilization. Access points matter, and this is one of them.

This is not the end goal.

It is not the solution.

It is the stage where people find each other, where networks begin to form, and where the groundwork for anything larger is laid. Without that stage, there is no escalation, no sustained pressure, and no meaningful change.

So when people ask what the point is, the answer is not that this fixes everything.

The answer is that without this, nothing else happens.

Truth doesn’t come in neutral — Zorha.

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