Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact

Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact

Steven Levy writes: For decades, Mark Lemley’s life as an intellectual property lawyer was orderly enough. He’s a professor at Stanford University and has consulted for Amazon, Google, and Meta. “I always enjoyed that the area I practice in has largely been apolitical,” Lemley tells me. What’s more, his democratic values neatly aligned with those of the companies that hired him. But in January, Lemley made a radical move. “I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and…

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I look at this country and I see a stranger

I look at this country and I see a stranger

Masha Gessen writes: The price of admission to Trump’s America is aggressive compliance, the sort demonstrated by more and more universities. Columbia and Williams College, for example, have been voluntarily flying flags at half-staff in honor of Kirk. Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley, has notified about 160 students, faculty members and staff that it has given their names to the federal government in connection with “alleged antisemitic incidents.” The philosopher Judith Butler and the Middle East historian Ussama Makdisi…

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Is AI throwing climate change under the bus?

Is AI throwing climate change under the bus?

  Spoiler alert: Yes, AI is bad for the climate. AI’s computing power relies on massive data centers that use enormous amounts of electricity and water. The Trump administration wants that energy to come from burning fossil fuels, rather than renewable sources. Where does that leave the climate and communities caught in the crosshairs? Inside Climate News executive editor Vernon Loeb sits down with Dan Gearino, ICN’s clean energy reporter; Arcelia Martin, who covers renewable energy in Texas; and Alabama…

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Fascist pronatalist policy depends on the veneer of white, Christian ‘family values’

Fascist pronatalist policy depends on the veneer of white, Christian ‘family values’

Adrienne Matei writes: In 1980, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, an unrepentant former leader of the Nazi women’s bureau in Berlin from 1934 to 1945, described her former job to historian Claudia Koonz as “influencing women in their daily lives”. To her audience – approximately 4 million girls in the Nazi youth movement, 8 million women in Nazi associations under her jurisdiction, and 1.9 million subscribers to her women’s magazine, Frauen Warte, according to Koonz – Scholtz-Klink promoted what she called “the cradle and…

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How gaming platforms have become hidden incubators for extremism

How gaming platforms have become hidden incubators for extremism

Axios reports: While policymakers and headlines have traditionally zeroed in on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X, young people are increasingly gathering on gaming platforms — and having conversations that are typically anonymous and largely invisible to the outside world. Why it matters: Spaces like Discord, Roblox and Steam — built for gamers to connect — have evolved into the social discourse hubs where authentic interactions happen, as mainstream apps chase virality instead. Now, these gaming platforms are drawing new scrutiny…

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Trump regime cut foods stamps then ended the government’s annual report on hunger in America

Trump regime cut foods stamps then ended the government’s annual report on hunger in America

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration is ending the federal government’s annual report on hunger in America, stating that it had become “overly politicized” and “rife with inaccuracies.” The decision comes two and a half months after President Donald Trump signed legislation sharply reducing food aid to the poor. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the tax and spending cuts bill Republicans muscled through Congress in July means 3 million people would not qualify for food stamps, also…

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Israel has transformed military service from a civic obligation into economic opportunity

Israel has transformed military service from a civic obligation into economic opportunity

Assaf Bondy and Adam Raz write: When Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel went to war, economists worldwide braced for a familiar pattern. History teaches us that wars devastate economies in predictable ways: people stop buying cars and furniture, businesses shut down, unemployment soars, and governments take over the economy by spending massively on weapons and military equipment. Israel seemed destined for this classic wartime economic transformation. Defense spending has shot up by more…

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Britain’s recognition of the state of Palestine is pathetically little and a century late

Britain’s recognition of the state of Palestine is pathetically little and a century late

Avi Shlaim writes: In a historic shift, Britain has officially recognised the state of Palestine, a century after the Balfour Declaration set the course for its dispossession. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer first announced in July that the UK would take this step at the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting in September unless Israel met certain conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza, lifting the ban on humanitarian aid, and reviving the prospect of a two-state solution. Prime Minister…

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Meet New York’s young business professionals who are voting for Mamdani

Meet New York’s young business professionals who are voting for Mamdani

The New York Times reports: Zohran Mamdani’s continued strength in New York City’s race for mayor has bewildered many business leaders who have tried to paint the democratic socialist as too extreme for the city. But the success of Mr. Mamdani’s campaign has not surprised many young professionals at tech start-ups, law firms and investment companies, who, despite earning well above the New York’s median household income of about $81,000, feel that living in the city is harder than it…

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Is Nigel Farage destined to become Britain’s next prime minister?

Is Nigel Farage destined to become Britain’s next prime minister?

Sam Knight writes: Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. Party—the latest incarnation of the right-wing, anti-immigrant political movement that he has led for twenty years—has been atop the British polls for the past six months. It is currently polling at thirty per cent, ten points ahead of the Labour government. If there were a general election tomorrow, there is a plausible chance that Reform would win hundreds of seats in the House of Commons; that the duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives,…

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Fascism is here. How are we going to fight back?

Fascism is here. How are we going to fight back?

  The Democratic leadership needs fighters willing to embrace an economic populist message that takes on the billionaires and Donald Trump’s fascist march. The masses can rise up and demand that change. In this conversation, author Jared Yates Sexton and Wajahat Ali discuss how we can fight back and defeat fascism top down and bottom up.

Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 cash from undercover FBI agents. Trump’s DOJ shut it down

Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 cash from undercover FBI agents. Trump’s DOJ shut it down

MSNBC reports: In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC. The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once…

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ICE just spent millions on surveillance technology that was banned by Facebook

ICE just spent millions on surveillance technology that was banned by Facebook

Forbes reports: In 2021, Meta banned a surveillance company called Cobwebs from gathering intelligence across all its platforms. Its security staff had discovered Cobwebs, founded by former members of Israel’s elite cyber intel agencies, was using hundreds of accounts to snoop on Facebook and WhatsApp users, many of them activists, opposition politicians and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico. Since then, ICE has spent over $5 million on the company’s tools, with one $2 million purchase made this week…

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Pentagon imposes censorship restricting how reporters cover the country’s largest federal agency

Pentagon imposes censorship restricting how reporters cover the country’s largest federal agency

Politico reports: The Pentagon on Friday said reporters who cover the agency could access the building only if they agreed not to publish certain information, an unprecedented move that demands media outlets hand the department vast control over what they publish. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, in a Friday evening email, said journalists could continue to enter the Defense Department only if they sign a note saying they will not publish classified information or some less sensitive documents that are not…

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