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Writers and Editors (RSS feed)

Should Elon Musk have that much access to private data and power?

  • Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’ (Makena Kelly, David Gilbert, Vittoria Elliott, Kate Knibbs, Dhruv Mehrotra, Dell Cameron, Tim Marchman, Leah Feiger, and Zoë Schiffer, 'The Big Story,' Wired, 3-13-25) Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI. 'In Musk’s mind, Washington needed to be debugged, hard-forked, sunset. His strike teams of young engineers would burrow into the government’s byzantine bureaucratic systems and delete what they saw fit. They’d help Trump slash the budget to the bone.'

 

Techno-Fascism Comes to America (Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 2-26-25) When a phalanx of the top Silicon Valley executives—Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai—aligned behind President Trump during the Inauguration in January, many observers saw an allegiance based on corporate interests.

    The ultra-wealthy C.E.O.s were turning out to support a fellow-magnate, hoping perhaps for an era of deregulation, tax breaks, and anti-“woke” cultural shifts. The historian Janis Mimura saw something more ominous: a new, proactive union of industry and governmental power, wherein the state would drive aggressive industrial policy at the expense of liberal norms.

     In the second Trump Administration, a class of Silicon Valley leaders was insinuating itself into politics in a way that recalled one of Mimura’s primary subjects of study: the élite bureaucrats who seized political power and drove Japan into the Second World War. The historic parallels that help explain Elon Musk’s rampage on the federal government.


Trump Team Eyes Politically Connected Startup to Overhaul $700 Billion Government Payments Program (Christopher Bing and Avi Asher-Schapiro, ProPublica, 4-17-25) SmartPay, a little-known firm with investors linked to JD Vance, Elon Musk and Trump, could get a piece of the federal expense card system — and its hundreds of millions in fees. “This goes against all the normal contracting safeguards,” one expert said.


Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington (Simon Shuster and Brian Bennett, Time, 2-9-25) No single private citizen, certainly not one whose wealth and web of businesses are directly subject to the oversight of federal authorities, has wielded such power over the machinery of the U.S. government. So far, Musk appears accountable to no one but President Trump, who handed his campaign benefactor a sweeping mandate to bring the government in line with his agenda.


Labor Leaders Fear Elon Musk and DOGE Could Gain Access to Whistleblower Files (Caroline Haskins, Business, Wired, 4-10-25) Companies tied to Elon Musk have dozens of workplace health and safety cases open at OSHA. Union leaders and former OSHA officials are concerned.  

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The Problem with Tariffs

Trump's tariffs: a roundup, updated 4-17-25

 

'The Economist' editor unpacks the 'biggest trade policy shock' of Trump's tariffs (Terry Gross, Fresh Air, 4-9-25) President Trump's sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs have upended the global economy, sending stock markets into turmoil. "This is, without a doubt, the biggest trade policy shock, I think, in history," Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, says.

    "Trump last week ordered a minimum 10% tax on nearly everything the U.S. buys from other countries. He's also ordered much higher levies on things the country buys from China, Japan and the European Union. However, a lot of those tariffs are in flux, because almost each day the president has either increased some tariffs or paused others."


Politically Connected Firms Benefit From Trump Tariff Exemptions Amid Secrecy, Confusion (Robert Faturechi, Trump Administration, ProPublica, 4-22-25) The administration’s lack of transparency about tariff exemptions has experts concerned that some firms might be winning narrow carve-outs behind closed doors. “It could be corruption, but it could just as easily be incompetence,” one lobbyist said.


Trump claims he is negotiating with China on trade. China says otherwise. (Ana Swanson and Jonathan Swan, NY Times, 4-25-25)

    As he left the White House for his trip to Rome for the pope’s funeral, President Trump was pressed on his claim to Time magazine that President Xi Jinping of China had called him to talk about tariffs. According to a pool report, when asked if he had talked with Xi, Trump said he had spoken to him “numerous times,” but would not say whether they had talked since he imposed the new tariffs. Chinese officials said today that the two countries are not negotiating on tariffs, indicating that Trump is trying to create the impression that more is going on behind the scenes to resolve the trade war than actually is.


How to Think About the Tariffs (Matthew C. Klein, The Overshoot, 4-4-25) This is bad policy, executed thoughtlessly. But it is worth thinking through exactly *why* it is bad.


This Is What Trumponomics Is Really About (Kyla Scanlon, Opinion, NY Times, 4-16-25) Reindustrialization. But "the Trump administration sometimes appears to ignore that advanced automation means far fewer workers to produce the same manufactured goods. Even if factories return, they will employ a small fraction of the people they once did.
    "To reindustrialize will require investment in people and machines — and a coherent strategy. Given the Trump administration’s aversion to collaboration and the internal contradictions of the factions within the administration, its reindustrialization drive appears disconnected from reality and destined to fail."


The unpredictability of Trump’s tariffs will increase the pain (The Economist, 3-27-25) The cost of uncertainty. Businesses are struggling to adjust.


Larry Summers on Trump: ‘The First Rule of Holes Is Stop Digging’ (Lawrence H. Summers, NY Times, 4-14-25) The former treasury secretary on the president’s chaotic trade war. Summers explains the dangers of President Trump’s economic policies, and why we should expect more instability ahead. Tariff levels are still at once in century levels  Read More 

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Trump's Damaging Initiatives and Priorities aka 'Trump's Rampage Through Democracy'

Trump Watch: A checklist.

A steadily growing batch of links to revealing pieces, continually updated (most recently 4-24-25)

    If the shape of the column goes wonky (too narrow, in particular), scroll down and click on one of the headings/links. That should bring the columns back to a readable width.

 

Sign seen recently: TRUMP FIRED THE WATCHDOGS. PROJECT 2025 IS HAPPENING NOW.
Trump and Musk are tearing down democracy to expedite Project 2025—threatening everything from fair elections to Social Security.  

  See more about Project 2025 here and check out David A. Graham's The Project 2025 Presidency (The Atlantic, 4-24-25) "The blueprint for Trump 2.0 predicted much of what we’ve seen so far—and much of what’s to come."

Obamacare would be even harder to kill now, but Trump promises to try anyway (Tami Luhby, CNN, 1-7-24) Nearly 60% of adults had a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act in May 2023, close to the highest share since the law was passed in 2010, according to the KFF Health Tracking Poll. In November 2024, Trump posted on his Truth Social site that Republicans should “never give up” trying to terminate the law and that he would replace it with “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE.”

 

The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out. (Michael Schaffer, Politico, 11-15-24)

   "The first Trump administration sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much. Trump returns to office with far more radical ambitions than he had in 2016, and much more coherent plans for achieving them. If you’re against gutting environmental regulations, bulk-firing public servants, doing away with Obamacare or instituting mass deportations, public fury is a way to push back — or at least stiffen the spines of Democrats who might collaborate with the administration. The left will have to wait for actual presidential deeds to drive the backlash. For better or worse, those will happen soon enough.


One Word Describes Trump: Patrimonialism (Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic, 2-24-25) "Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones."
     "Patrimonialism explains what might otherwise be puzzling. Every policy the president cares about is his personal property. Trump dropped the federal prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams because a pliant big-city mayor is a useful thing to have. He broke with 50 years of practice by treating the Justice Department as “his personal law firm.” He treats the enforcement of duly enacted statutes as optional—and, what’s more, claims the authority to indemnify lawbreakers. He halted proceedings against January 6 thugs and rioters because they are on his side. His agencies screen hires for loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution.
     "In Trump’s world, federal agencies are shut down on his say-so without so much as a nod to Congress. Henchmen with no statutory authority barge into agencies and take them over. A loyalist who had only ever managed two small nonprofits is chosen for the hardest management job in government. Conflicts of interest are tolerated if not outright blessed. Prosecutors and inspectors general are fired for doing their job. Thousands of civil servants are converted to employment at the president’s will. Former officials’ security protection is withdrawn because they are disloyal. The presidency itself is treated as a business opportunity."


There Is a Very Good Reason Why Donald Trump Thinks Everything Is Rigged (David Corn, Mother Jones, 1-24)

    In business, he was a master of gaming the system.

    "When the US targeted Russia’s oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine, the trail of assets kept leading to our own backyard. Not only had our nation become a haven for shady foreign money, but we were also incubating a familiar class of yacht-owning, industry-dominating, resource-extracting billionaires. In the January + February 2024 issue of our magazine, we investigate the rise of American Oligarchy—and what it means for the rest of us.    

    "Donald Trump is not a typical oligarch. Before entering politics, he was not part of the small group of powerful and rich people who buttressed the ruling elite.... But essential to his own rise to wealth and power was a core component of oligarchy: exploiting a rigged system. And during both his private sector career and his time in the White House, he has been friendly to oligarchs, cutting deals with them, cozying up to oligarchic regimes, and stacking his own Cabinet with the super­rich. It’s this world of immense wealth and power that Trump wishes to rule."


Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administrative Actions is part of Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions (Just Security, 4-24-25)  Invaluable links.

    On Jan. 20, 2025, President Trump began his term with presidential actions including 26 executive orders, with more expected to follow. Just Security is covering key developments, including in concise “What Just Happened” expert explainers, legal and policy analysis, and more. Originally published Jan. 21, 2025, and frequently updated.


Federal worker unions sue to block Trump’s effort to strip them of bargaining rights. (NY Times, 4-4-25) The complaint, filed late one night in federal court in Oakland, Calif., is the latest development in the unions’ escalating battle with the administration over its attempts to slash the federal work force and roll back the protections afforded to the civil service employees. Unions representing government workers have repeatedly sued over the efforts to cut jobs and dismantle offices and agencies, winning at least temporary reprieves in some of those cases.

 
The NIH’s Most Reckless Cuts Yet (Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 3-27-25) End a clinical trial early, and researchers might not be able to tell if it worked, leaving participants worse off than when they started. But that is what the Trump administration is asking scientists to do.


The shame of Columbia University (Robert Reich, 3-21-25)

     Columbia University’s president and trustees today surrendered the university’s academic freedom to the Trump regime. Trump threatened to cancel $400 million in federal funding if Columbia didn’t put its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department in “academic receivership.” In surrendering to Trump, it's opening all universities to Trump's tyranny. A cornerstone of academic freedom is that professors can research and teach what they want. Not even during the communist witch hunts of the early 1950s did a university agree to put an entire academic department under special oversight because of what its faculty researched or taught. Trump also demanded that Columbia ban the wearing of face masks, so that protesters can be more easily identified. It’s all about intimidation — not only at Columbia but at every other university in America. Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and dozens of other schools face federal inquiries and fear similar penalties.

---The Real Takeover of Columbia Was By Those on the Right (Alisa Solomon, The Nation, 5-6-24) Columbia offers a case-study in how right-wing politicians are using exaggerated claims of anti-semitism to advance a conservative agenda.
---The new definition of antisemitism is transforming America – and serving a Christian nationalist plan (Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona, The Guardian, 3-23-25) Redefining antisemitism in the law (equating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism) "was never about Jewish safety. It is about consolidating authoritarian power under the veneer of minority protection."


Crimson Courage: Harvard Stands Up to Political Intimidation (Julian Vasquez Heilig, Cloaking Inequity, 4-14-25)

    "The April 14 letter from Harvard was more than administrative boilerplate — it was a declaration. The Trump administration had issued sweeping, punitive demands. These included requiring federal approval of admissions data, mandatory plagiarism scans for faculty, shuttering of DEI offices, and the placement of entire departments under third-party oversight for alleged “antisemitism.” The list of demands read less like a compliance memo and more like an authoritarian manifesto.
     "But Harvard didn’t flinch. In its official response, the university stated: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” That one sentence is as radical as it is obvious. Harvard wasn’t just rejecting a policy — it was rejecting the premise that education should be controlled by political whims.

  Garber went further: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” With that statement, Harvard transformed from a symbol of elite caution to a beacon of institutional defiance.

    "The implications are enormous. If Harvard can be threatened, any institution can. And if Harvard can resist, so can others."

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Learning About Yourself by Looking Into the Past

Gathering your personal history

by Mary Scott, Advocate Staff Writer, Calvert Advocate.

5-26-09. Reprinted here by permission.

 

Everyone has a story to tell. A good personal history won’t include just facts; it will also include stories, according to Pat McNees, a professional personal historian.

 

"The first thing to do is start a timeline...make it include a combination of incidents in your life and turning points,” McNees said. "You want to get the significant periods like high school. When you met your husband, got married, or had children.”

 

Instead of just writing these things down, McNees suggested either video or audio recording the person telling the stories so their voice is preserved. “The voice is an essential part of the person. When you hear someone’s voice it immediately brings back a flood of memories,” she said.

 

Photos can also be a part of someone’s personal history. McNees suggested going through your photographs and  Read More 

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Trump 2.0 links, updated 3-2-25

A long roundup of links to life as being radically changed by Trump and (unelected) Musk.

 

NPR News Now A roundup of the day's top stories in under five minutes. New podcast episodes each weekday. (Bookmark that, to return to for later roundups.)
Trump-Musk news (ongoing links to stories, Washington Post)  Keep this link open so you can follow stories as they appear.

Spotlight on President Trump Ongoing news, New York Times.


‘It felt like Squid Games’: HHS employees on finding out their jobs were eliminated (WTOP,4-2-25) Employees with the Department of Health and Human Services tell WTOP they lined up and scanned their badges one by one Tuesday. If the light turned green, they still had their job. If it turned red, they didn't. “It felt like ‘Squid Games,'” one worker said.
    One worker said while they want agencies to be more efficient and accountable, the strategy being used does not make sense. They said many units in the agency consist of “small teams” that are “efficient,” especially in what they are able to accomplish.
   One worker, in response to comments that better jobs will come along, said: “It means so much more than just the job itself … It’s like wiping out an entire collection of history of knowledge and being like, it doesn’t matter … It doesn’t matter, and these groups of people don’t matter.”

Section on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine (many sources)

---The Shame of It (Robert Reich).

   Reich's tips on How to help the people in Ukraine. Here's the practical part:
  "Europe and all free people around the world must rally at this time of American emergency. If the United States won’t seize Russia’s frozen assets and put them into an account for Ukraine to pay for further arms, Europeans must do this and let Ukraine buy from European defense contractors.  Read More 

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