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Category: Politics

DOGE’s millions: As Musk and Trump gut government, their ax-cutting agency gets cash infusion

DOGE’s millions: As Musk and Trump gut government, their ax-cutting agency gets cash infusion

By Avi Asher-Schapiro, Andy Kroll and Christopher Bing This story was originally published by ProPublica While Elon Musk and his underlings demand budget cuts and layoffs across the federal government, funding for their agency — the Department of Government Efficiency — has soared to nearly $40 million, ProPublica found in a review of Office of Management and Budget records. Billionaire investor Musk has called DOGE “maximally transparent.” President Donald Trump has said that some 100 people work for the group,…

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The DOGE sysadmins alone know what they are doing

The DOGE sysadmins alone know what they are doing

Zeynep Tufekci writes: [Thomas Jefferson] feared that an elected authoritarian would not just pulverize the institutions meant to limit his power, but take them over to wield as weapons, thus further entrenching himself. Even Jefferson couldn’t have imagined a future in which the arsenal being deployed included centralized databases with comprehensive records on every citizen’s employment, finances, taxes and for some, even health status. After a judge blocked a Trump executive order, Elon Musk shared a post with his more…

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Firings weaken FAA measures for ensuring flight safety

Firings weaken FAA measures for ensuring flight safety

Rolling Stone reports: While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but…

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Ukraine: The past, present, and future of Russian disinformation

Ukraine: The past, present, and future of Russian disinformation

Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren write: On the morning of Nov. 7, 2024, the pro-Russian X account @OCanonist posted a video of men in Ukrainian military uniforms shooting and setting ablaze a mannequin wearing a Trump 2024 T-shirt and red hat. With it, @OCanonist shared the message, “It’s time to defund this degenerate country.” Over the course of the following day, the post was shared more than 26,000 times and viewed by 12.4 million users. From X, the video exploded…

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How aspiring strongmen consolidate power: Fire civil servants; dismantle government departments

How aspiring strongmen consolidate power: Fire civil servants; dismantle government departments

A leader bent on expanding his own power would see the government’s bureaucracy as a key target. Andry Djumantara – iStock/Getty Images Plus By Erica Frantz, Michigan State University; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Yale University, and Joe Wright, Penn State With the recent confirmations of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – two of the most controversial of President Donald Trump’s high-level administration nominees – the president’s attempt to remake government as a home for political loyalists continues. Soon after coming…

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Trump’s confidential plan to place Ukraine in a legal stranglehold

Trump’s confidential plan to place Ukraine in a legal stranglehold

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports: Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country. The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document…

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Former NATO commander: Without strong defense, Europe will be at war with Russia within five years

Former NATO commander: Without strong defense, Europe will be at war with Russia within five years

  “The way to prevent that is strong defense to spend money on defence to be prepared for the worst case, because that is the only way we are going to deter Russia.” US withdrawal from NATO and failure to challenge Putin in ceasefire talks would cause a war in Europe in five years warns Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Richard Shirreff on Frontline.

WSJ: Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout

WSJ: Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says: Trump on Tuesday mimicked Russian propaganda by claiming Ukraine had started the war with Russia and that Kyiv is little better than the Kremlin because it hasn’t held a wartime election. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky replied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space,” which may have been imprudent but was accurate. Mr. Trump escalated on Wednesday, as he usually does, calling Mr. Zelensky a “dictator,” and suggesting Ukraine’s…

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Bill Browder: It’s time to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets

Bill Browder: It’s time to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets

  James O’Brien is joined by Sir Bill Browder, an anti-corruption campaigner who is the head of the Magnitsky Global Justice Campaign, and chief executive of the finance company Hermitage Capital. Sir Bill Browder offers hope on Ukraine’s bleak situation following Donald Trump’s comments about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The US president took aim at Zelenskyy after he accused Trump of “helping Putin to come out of isolation” by working with him. On Wednesday evening, Number Ten released a statement expressing…

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DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug

DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug

Brian Barrett writes: Within just the last week or so, Elon Musk’s DOGE hit team of mostly young, almost exclusively male engineers and executives have done the following: Pushed a website live to track “savings” that showed no savings for several days, and made it trivially easy for random people on the internet to make changes to it. Published classified information on that same website. Got called out for accidentally inflating that savings amount by $7,992,000,000, and doubled down on their inaccuracy before they fixed it. Fired hundreds of people…

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Christian asylum seekers and other migrants deported to Panama forced into ‘fenced cages’ in jungle

Christian asylum seekers and other migrants deported to Panama forced into ‘fenced cages’ in jungle

The New York Times reports: Nearly 100 migrants, recently deported by the United States to Panama where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, several of the migrants said. It is unclear how long the group, which was deported under the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to expel unauthorized migrants, will be detained at the jungle camp. Conditions at the site are primitive,…

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Gaza transfer plan: The banality of ethnic cleansing

Gaza transfer plan: The banality of ethnic cleansing

Member of the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi, writes: Widespread support for the idea of transferring the population of Gaza to other countries, alongside the notion that “there are no innocent people” in the Palestinian enclave, constitute a betrayal of every moral principle that should guide a people who endured the Holocaust. All those who support the “voluntary migration” proposal should understand: the Palestinian people are not going anywhere. The fact that polls show overwhelming support among Jewish Israelis for the idea…

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The 50-year-old law that might, eventually, stop DOGE

The 50-year-old law that might, eventually, stop DOGE

Wired reports: As Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency rampages through the US government, its access to sensitive data is alarming federal agencies and Americans who interact with them. In the month since the Trump administration began its purge of federal workers, opponents fighting DOGE in court have been pinning their hopes of stopping the world’s richest man on a 50-year-old law. In just a few weeks, DOGE staffers have accessed federal employee records at the Office of Personnel Management, government payment data at the Department of the…

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GOP in Congress ‘scared shitless about death threats’ if they were to defy Trump

GOP in Congress ‘scared shitless about death threats’ if they were to defy Trump

Gabriel Sherman reports: Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. “They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of…

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Zelenskyy commits cardinal sin: he tells the truth about Trump

Zelenskyy commits cardinal sin: he tells the truth about Trump

Julian Borger writes: All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump. All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble,…

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Trump expresses fawning admiration for ‘leader’ Musk

Trump expresses fawning admiration for ‘leader’ Musk

The Hill reports on Sean Hannity’s joint interview with Musk and Trump: Trump had high praise for Musk throughout the interview, highlighting his successful tech career and his intelligence. The president noted he was impressed with Musk when he saw Musk’s team had the ability to catch a rocket booster instead of having it crash into the ocean. “Something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab…

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