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Category: Politics

The far-right is rising at a crucial time in Germany, boosted by Elon Musk

The far-right is rising at a crucial time in Germany, boosted by Elon Musk

By Matt Fitzpatrick, Flinders University With only a few weeks until Germany’s election, Elon Musk has unambiguously thrown his support behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In a video address to a party rally last week, he appeared to urge Germans to “move on” from any “past guilt” related to the Holocaust. It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything. Troublingly, the AfD…

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Wyden warns Bessent: Political meddling in Treasury payments risks severe economic damage to U.S.

Wyden warns Bessent: Political meddling in Treasury payments risks severe economic damage to U.S.

U.S. Senate Committee On Finance: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., demanded answers from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today following a report that personnel affiliated with Elon Musk have sought access to a highly sensitive Treasury Department payment system. That system, which is maintained by non-political staff, disperses trillions of dollars each year, such as Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax credits for individuals and businesses, grants and payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with…

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Mark Carney vows Canada will ‘stand up to bully’ as Trump imposes 25% trade tariffs

Mark Carney vows Canada will ‘stand up to bully’ as Trump imposes 25% trade tariffs

  The Guardian reports: Mark Carney, the favourite to replace Justin Trudeau as the Canadian prime minister, has vowed that his country is “going to stand up to a bully” after Donald Trump imposed 25% tariffs on goods coming in from Canada. There are now 25% tariffs on goods coming into the US from Canada and Mexico, while China is being hit with tariffs of 10% on imported goods, leading some economists to fear the outbreak of a full-on, tit-for-tat…

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Trump shows yet again he’s not really interested in reining in government spending

Trump shows yet again he’s not really interested in reining in government spending

Rachael Bade writes: For all his bluster about “government efficiency” these days, President Donald Trump has never been comfortable as a scissor-happy, cost-cutting deficit warrior. He barreled into a Republican Party a decade ago that was dominated at the time by the debt-minded politics of Paul Ryan and the tea party movement and single-handedly shut down talk of slashing Social Security and Medicare. This week, his aversion to austerity showed its face again — and it portends strife ahead for…

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Musk applies his Twitter destruction playbook on the U.S. government and it’s even more dangerous

Musk applies his Twitter destruction playbook on the U.S. government and it’s even more dangerous

Mike Masnick writes: Remember how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by ripping apart its infrastructure without understanding it? Now imagine that same playbook applied to the federal government. It’s happening, and the stakes are exponentially higher. When reviewing Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s book “Character Limit” last fall, I highlighted two devastating patterns in Musk’s management: his authoritarian impulse to (sometimes literally) demolish systems without understanding them, and his tendency to replace existing, nuanced solutions with far worse alternatives (even when…

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24 hours after Washington air crash, Trump admin urges air traffic controllers across the U.S. to resign

24 hours after Washington air crash, Trump admin urges air traffic controllers across the U.S. to resign

The New York Times reports: The most challenging day in decades for air traffic controllers, safety inspectors and other Federal Aviation Administration employees started with profound questions about a deadly crash the night before — and ended with an email urging them to resign from their jobs. The email, sent from President Trump’s Office of Personnel and Management to employees across the sprawling federal government, arrived just before 8:30 p.m. Thursday — almost exactly 24 hours after an air crash…

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Resistance: Acting FBI director refused DOJ order to fire Jan. 6 agents

Resistance: Acting FBI director refused DOJ order to fire Jan. 6 agents

NBC News reports: Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll on Friday refused a Justice Department order that he assist in the firing of agents involved in Jan. 6 riot cases, pushing back so forcefully that some FBI officials feared he would be dismissed, multiple current and former FBI officials told NBC News. The Justice Department ultimately did not dismiss Driscoll. He sent out a memo to the workforce Friday night explaining that he had been ordered to remove eight senior FBI…

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Elon Musk is grasping the levers of power by attempting to control the government’s payment systems

Elon Musk is grasping the levers of power by attempting to control the government’s payment systems

Greg Sargent writes: President Donald Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power to carry out his war on the “deep state.” The justification for this is supposed to be that the government is corrupted to its core precisely because it is stocked with unelected bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people. Musk, goes this story, will employ his fearsome tech wizardry to root them out, restoring not just efficiency to government but also the democratic accountability that “deep state” denizens…

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Musk operatives have infiltrated yet another government agency

Musk operatives have infiltrated yet another government agency

Wired reports: Elon Musk’s minions—from trusted sidekicks to random college students and former Musk company interns—have taken over the General Services Administration, a critical government agency that manages federal offices and technology. Already, the team is attempting to use White House security credentials to gain unusual access to GSA tech, deploying a suite of new AI software, and recreating the office in X’s image, according to leaked documents obtained by WIRED. Some of the same people who helped Musk take…

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Musk operatives lock government workers out of computer systems at Office of Personnel Management

Musk operatives lock government workers out of computer systems at Office of Personnel Management

Reuters reports: Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials. Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists. Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and…

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Economists agree: Trump’s ‘tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world’

Economists agree: Trump’s ‘tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world’

The Guardian reports: As Donald Trump threatens to slap steep tariffs on many countries, he is boasting that his taxes on imports will be a boon to the US economy, but most economists strongly disagree – many say Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation, slow economic growth, hurt US workers and result in American consumers footing the bill for his tariffs. “Virtually all economists think that the impact of the tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world,”…

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Local officials just prevented Trump from flooding part of California

Local officials just prevented Trump from flooding part of California

Politico reports: President Donald Trump declared victory on Friday in his long-running water war with California, boasting he sent billions of gallons south — but local officials say they narrowly prevented him from possibly flooding farms. ”Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!” he said in a…

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Tulsi Gabbard’s cult connections are difficult to hide

Tulsi Gabbard’s cult connections are difficult to hide

The Wall Street Journal reports: To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records. Gabbard, a former House member who is now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a…

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The FAA is facing a major crisis without a leader because Elon Musk pushed him out

The FAA is facing a major crisis without a leader because Elon Musk pushed him out

The Verge reports: The Federal Aviation Administration is facing its first major aviation disaster in 16 years without a leader because Elon Musk helped push him out. Michael Whitaker stepped down as FAA administrator on January 20th, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, after clashing with Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is regulated by the agency. Musk publicly called on Whitaker to resign after the FAA fined SpaceX for failing to get approval for launch changes. And now the power…

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Gallup: Trump is the most unpopular U.S. president in over 70 years

Gallup: Trump is the most unpopular U.S. president in over 70 years

Gallup reports: At 47%, President Donald Trump’s initial job approval rating for his second term is similar to the inaugural 45% reading during his first term, again placing him below all other elected presidents dating back to 1953. Trump remains the only elected president with sub-50% initial approval ratings, and his latest disapproval rating (48%) is three percentage points higher than in 2017, marking a new high for inaugural ratings. Trump’s current job approval rating, from Gallup’s Jan. 21-27 poll,…

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