Attention to the Unseen

  Elon Musk has defended making an ‘awkward hand gesture’ at Trump’s inauguration that some have likened to a Nazi salute. James O’Brien and his listeners are broadly unconvinced. While addressing a crowd of MAGA supporters during a celebration of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the influential billionaire made a gesture putting his right hand on his chest before raising it it in the air (01:22). Then he turned and made the same hand gesture to the crowd behind him. He…

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Politico reports: Elon Musk has already achieved his first cut at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency: his co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk’s preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them. An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise. Just 69 days…

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Reuters reports: Nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, are having their flights canceled under President Donald Trump’s order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday. The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the U.S. as well as Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution because they fought for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government,…

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If Donald Trump won’t be able to trumpet that the largest crowd in human history assembled to celebrate his resurrection, perhaps today’s Capitol Rotunda gathering marks the greatest assembly of billionaires Washington has ever seen. On Friday, January 20, 2017, Trump signed his first executive orders in the Oval Office shortly after his inaugural parade ended. Note that he needed his chief of staff to point out where on the order his signature was required:   Trump loves spectacles. But…

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BREAKING: Donald Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP, crashes over -40% as Melania Trump launches her own memecoin. This is beyond insane. pic.twitter.com/6Oj2GGqjqF — The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) January 19, 2025 You can't make this up: The website used to launch $MELANIA was created on Saturday, January 18th, at 9:36 AM ET. On January 19th, at 4:13 PM ET, the memecoin was launched. That's a 31 hour gap from when the website was created to the launch of the coin. Was the Melania……

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Noah Berlatsky and Ilana Gershon write: Since Donald Trump’s election victory, the Democratic Party and numerous pundits have been arguing about why Kamala Harris lost. Some have argued that Harris failed to emphasize progressive economic policies. Others have insisted that she should have more explicitly disavowed the left. Perhaps most convincingly, writers like Financial Times columnist and data reporter John Burn-Murdoch have noted that this has been an unfavorable time for incumbents globally, from the United Kingdom to Japan, as…

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Peoples Dispatch reports: Panamanian movements have expressed their readiness to resist US President Donald Trump’s threats to Panama’s sovereignty. On January 20, as part of a mobilization of trade unions and social movements in Panama City in defense of the public pension system, they will also denounce the expansionist threats of Trump. At a rally in December, Trump said that the fees being charged at the Panama canal are too high and that if they did not come down, “we…

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The Guardian reports: Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House chief strategist, has described the tech titans gathering at Monday’s inauguration as “supplicants” to Donald Trump making “an official surrender”, akin to the Japanese surrender to allied forces on the deck of the USS Missouri in September 1945. Bannon, who served as architect of Trump’s 2016 presidential win but later fell out with the president-elect after he criticized his intellect and members of his family, told ABC News in an…

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The New York Times reports: President Biden warned in his farewell address to the nation last week that an oligarchy is taking shape in America. In Washington, the oligarchs are already here, buying big houses. Counting President-elect Donald J. Trump himself, there are at least a dozen billionaires among his cabinet picks and those headed for senior roles in the new administration. Elon Musk tops the list with a $429 billion net worth, according to Forbes, making him the world’s…

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Sam Harris writes: Let this be a cautionary tale for any of Elon’s friends who might be tempted to tell the great man something he doesn’t want to hear: 1. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus first invaded our lives in March of 2020, Elon began tweeting in ways that I feared would harm his reputation. I also worried that his tweets might exacerbate the coming public-health emergency. Italy had already fallen off a cliff, and Elon shared the following opinion with…

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The Guardian reports: There is a “real and very, very present” threat to the US from a shadowy collection of rightwing leaders, a new book on the movement behind Donald Trump warns, with the aim being “an end to pluralistic democracy”. Katherine Stewart, a journalist who specializes in the religious right, spent years researching the money and influence that has aided and encouraged tens of millions of Americans in their worship at the throne of Trump. The result is Money,…

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Reuters reports: Germany’s ambassador to the United States has warned that the incoming Trump administration will rob U.S. law enforcement and the media of their independence and hand big tech companies “co-governing power”, according to a confidential document seen by Reuters. The briefing document, dated Jan. 14 and signed by Ambassador Andreas Michaelis, describes Donald Trump’s agenda for his second White House term as one of “maximum disruption” that will bring about “a redefinition of the constitutional order – maximum…

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