Music: Yussef Kamaal — ‘Strings of Light’
Putin doesn’t want peace, he wants Ukraine
In an editorial, The Kyiv Independent says: It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war. The American people have not, and they should speak up. In the past several weeks, the U.S. leadership has demonstrated explicit hostility towards Ukraine and aligned its rhetoric and policy with Russia. The animosity culminated today when U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at a meeting in the Oval Office. After…
‘The free world needs a new leader,’ says EU foreign policy chief as the U.S. aligns with Russia
Politico reports: European leaders on Friday rallied to defend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance subjected him to a tirade of withering and infantilizing abuse in the Oval Office. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said: “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” In what may prove to a significant turning point in the tottering postwar…
How Elon Musk carried out an electronic coup and seized control of the U.S. government
The New York Times reports: Trump had announced the Department of Government Efficiency on Nov. 12 as an entity outside of government, but Mr. Musk quickly began to see problems with that — including the fact that it could be subject to public-record rules. He was also intent on getting access to federal data and payment systems. He felt that if he could not, the whole endeavor would be a waste of his time. Several people involved in the talks…
The DOGE coup is worse than you think
Brian Barrett writes: If you’ve felt overwhelmed by all the DOGE news, you’re not alone. You’d need too much cork board and yarn to keep track of which agencies it has occupied by now, much less what it’s doing there. Here’s a simple rubric, though, to help contextualize the DOGE updates you do have time and energy to process: It’s worse than you think. DOGE is hard to keep track of. This is by design; the only information about the…
Hegseth threatens military strikes in Mexico
The Wall Street Journal reports: It was the first call U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held with Mexico’s top military officials, and it wasn’t going well. Hegseth told the officials that if Mexico didn’t deal with the collusion between the country’s government and drug cartels, the U.S. military was prepared to take unilateral action, according to people briefed on the Jan. 31 call. Mexico’s top brass who were on that call were shocked and angered, feeling he was suggesting U.S….
Musk’s Starlink is keeping modern slavery compounds in operation
Wired reports: The plea for help arrived last summer. “I am in Myanmar and work for a fraud company,” a Chinese human-trafficking victim wrote in a short email sent from within the Tai Chang scam compound. Like thousands of others in the region, they were promised legitimate work only to find themselves tricked into modern slavery and forced to scam people online for hours every day. Tai Chang, which backs on to the Myanmar-Thailand border, has been linked to incidents…
How Sam Altman could divide Elon Musk and Donald Trump
Matteo Wong writes: The rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk is entering its Apprentice era. Both men have the ambition to redefine how the modern world works—and both are jockeying for President Donald Trump’s blessing to accelerate their plans. Altman’s company, OpenAI, as well as Musk’s ventures—which include SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI—all depend to some degree on federal dollars, permits, and regulatory support. The president could influence whether OpenAI or xAI produces the next major AI breakthrough, whether Musk can succeed…
Music: Yussef Kamaal — ‘Remembrance’
Judge Alsup blocks mass firings of federal workers. Judge Bates orders sworn testimony from DOGE officials
The Washington Post reports: A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind directives that initiated the mass firing of probationary workers across the government, ruling that the terminations were probably illegal, as a group of labor unions argued in court. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered OPM to rescind its previous directives to more than two dozen agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Science Foundation…
Musk’s ‘freelance henchmen’ in DOGE are one scam away from a national security emergency
The Atlantic reports: [Elon Musk’s] major contribution, repeated to Trump and his advisers down at Mar-a-Lago, was to reject thinking about government as a lawyer would—a collection of institutions bound by norms, laws, and rules, and controlled by policy and decree. The bureaucracy does not easily bend to white papers. “The government runs on computers” soon became a mantra repeated by Trump’s advisers, who found themselves in awe of his enthusiasm and speed, even as they expressed annoyance at having…
Conflicts of interest: DOGE operatives at HUD from an AI real estate firm and a mobile home operator
Wired reports: On February 10, employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received an email asking them to list every contract at the bureau and note whether or not it was “critical” to the agency, as well as whether it contained any DEI components. This email was signed by Scott Langmack, who identified himself as a senior adviser to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Langmack, according to his LinkedIn, already has another job: He’s the…
America’s oligarchy is now fully exposed by Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk
Robert Reich writes: One of the unacknowledged advantages of the horrendous era we’ve entered is that it is revealing the putrid connections between great wealth and great power for all to see. Oligarchs are fully exposed and they are defiant. It’s like hitting the “reveal codes” key on older computers that let you see everything. On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, the third-richest person in America, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, announced that the paper’s opinion section would henceforth focus…
Trump’s Washington is starting to feel like Putin’s Moscow
Peter Baker writes: She asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism of his administration. And so, before long, Yelena Tregubova was pushed out of the Kremlin press pool that covered President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, all but forgotten nearly 25 years later. But it was also a telling one. Mr. Putin did not care for challenges. The rest of the press pool got…
Tesla cars monitor everything — including you
The 2024 Tesla Model 3 has some of the most advanced navigation, autonomous driving, and safety features currently on the market, meaning it’s full of equipment that can record and track your surroundings—and you. How much data does Tesla collect? Where is it stored? And can you trust them to protect your sensitive information? WIRED decided to investigate.
Trump administration sets out to create an America its people have never experienced − one without a meaningful government
A worker removes letters from the U.S. Agency for International Development building. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images By Sidney Shapiro, Wake Forest University and Joseph P. Tomain, University of Cincinnati The U.S. government is attempting to dismantle itself. President Donald Trump has directed the executive branch to “significantly reduce the size of government.” That includes deep cuts in federal funding of scientific and medical research and freezing federal grants and loans for businesses. He has ordered the reversal or removal of regulations…