"Will Saletan was in for Sarah today and we did a giant, super-sized show. It’s a great conservation, the through-line of which is basically: We are living in something close to the worst-case scenario."
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Worse Than We Feared: Five weeks in and the Trump administration has been more corrupt, dangerous, and evil than we expected.; The Bulwark, February 28, 2025
, The Bulwark; Worse Than We Feared: Five weeks in and the Trump administration has been more corrupt, dangerous, and evil than we expected.
What Would the Church Say About End-of-Life Decisions for a Pope?; The New York Times, March 2, 2025
Reporting from Vatican City, The New York Times; What Would the Church Say About End-of-Life Decisions for a Pope?
"A respiratory crisis suffered by Pope Francis on Friday during his two-week hospitalization for pneumonia has added urgency to a delicate, and uncomfortable, question worrying many in the church: What would happen if the pope remains in critical condition for an extended period, with his health worsening, his faculties fading, his quality of life deteriorating?
And what would his approach be to extended medical interventions, as well as, ultimately, his end-of-life plans?
Francis, 88, has talked about a resignation letter he put on file with the Vatican soon after his election in the event that he became incapacitated, but its contents are unknown. It is also unknown if he has a living will, or whom, if anyone, he has entrusted to make decisions about his health if he no longer can do so himself.
Asked about the pope’s desires, the Vatican responded that “it’s too early” to talk about end-of-life details. And while his prognosis remains guarded, Saturday evening’s health bulletin had encouraging news about the pope’s health."
Trump’s firing of watchdog agency chief illegal and would give ‘license to bully officials’, judge rules; Reuters via The Guardian, March 1, 2025
Reuters via The Guardian; Trump’s firing of watchdog agency chief illegal and would give ‘license to bully officials’, judge rules
"A US judge on Saturday declared president Donald Trump’s firing of the head of a federal watchdog agency illegal in an early test of the scope of presidential power likely to be decided at the US supreme court.
US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington had previously ruled that Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel who is responsible for protecting whistleblowers, could remain in his post pending a ruling.
Jackson said in her ruling on Saturday that upholding Trump’s ability to fire Dellinger would give him “a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will”.
The justice department filed a notice late on Saturday saying it was appealing against Berman’s ruling to the US court of appeals for the district of Columbia."
Saturday, March 1, 2025
How to Assess the New Legal Risks of Your DEI Policies; Harvard Business Review (HBR), February 27, 2025
Joan C. Williams, Laura J. Maechtlen and Jamie Dolkas, Harvard Business Review (HBR); How to Assess the New Legal Risks of Your DEI Policies
"With a series of executive orders, the Trump administration has put a target on corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. As of this writing, key portions have been enjoined by a federal court. Yet the administration has signaled its intention to make noncompliance so punitive that many companies still are scrambling to review their DEI programs and practices for EO compliance.
In the rush, two key facts are getting lost in the shuffle. The first is that core federal and state equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws have not changed. Trump’s executive orders did end federal contractor affirmative action programs, and Trump can direct federal employees to take certain actions against “illegal” DEI policies and programs. But what is “illegal” under core EEO laws today hasn’t changed from before President Trump took office. This highlights that what companies are concerned about is not entirely legal risk, but regulatory and litigation risk.
The second core fact is that companies have a First Amendment right to express their views on DEI. This right was affirmed in the spring of 2024 by a conservative-leaning panel of judges of the Eleventh Circuit, which struck down Florida’s prohibiting companies from expressing certain ideas in DEI trainings.
But with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s February 5th memo directing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division “to investigate, eliminate, and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities in the private sector,” leaders are understandably and urgently looking for guidance on how to pursue their lawful, fair, and business-driven DEI initiatives."
The War Trump Chooses: That wasn't Trump against Zelens'kyi. It was Americans against reason; Timothy Snyder, Thinking About (Substack), March 1, 2025
Timothy Snyder, Thinking About (Substack) ; The War Trump Chooses: That wasn't Trump against Zelens'kyi. It was Americans against reason
"Even the press mockery of Zelens'kyi's clothing, perhaps the depths of yesterday's grotesquerie, reveals a similar disconnect from what is actually happening in the world. The implicit notion is that the people who wear suits and ties are the real heroes, because heroism consists, somehow, in always knowing how to adapt to the larger power structure and to blend it. But in history there do arrive moments when unexpected things happen and behaviors, including symbolic ones, must be adjusted. Zelens'kyi decided three years ago not to wear suits not, as was insultingly suggested yesterday, because he does not own one; and not, as was ridiculously suggested, because he does not understand protocol. Three years ago he decided that he would dress as appropriate to register solidarity with a people at war, his own people at war. This is, frankly, something that Americans should already know, rather than an appropriate subject for a question at the White House, let alone a mocking one. But it is the mockery itself that reveals an American illogic, or worse. Some Americans want to think that the most important thing is conformity, that sneering at human difference shows our own courage. Once we knew better. When Ben Franklin went to the French to ask for support during the Revolutionary War, he wore a coonskin cap, which was not comme il fallait. When Winston Churchill visited the White House during the Second World War, he wore a wartime outfit that not unlike the one that Zelens'kyi wore yesterday."
It Was an Ambush: Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.; The Atlantic, February 28, 2025
Tom Nichols, The Atlantic; It Was an Ambush
Today marked one of the grimmest days in the history of American diplomacy.
"Vance’s presence at the White House also suggests that the meeting was a setup. Vance is usually an invisible backbencher in this administration, with few duties other than some occasional trolling of Trump’s critics. (The actual business of furthering Trump’s policies is apparently now Elon Musk’s job.) This time, however, he was brought in to troll not other Americans, but a foreign leader. Marco Rubio—in theory, America’s top diplomat—was also there, but he sat glumly and silently while Vance pontificated like an obnoxious graduate student.
Zelensky objected, as he should have, when the vice president castigated the Ukrainian president for not showing enough personal gratitude to Trump. And then in a moment of immense hypocrisy, Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.” But baiting Zelensky into fighting in front of the media was likely the plan all along, and Trump and Vance were soon both yelling at Zelensky. (“This is going to be great television,” Trump said during the meeting.) The president at times sounded like a Mafia boss—“You don’t have the cards”; “you’re buried there”—but in the end, he sounded like no one so much as Putin himself as he hollered about “gambling with World War III,” as if starting the biggest war in Europe in nearly a century was Zelensky’s idea...
Trump might as well have dictated this post on Truth Social before the meeting, because Zelensky didn’t stand a chance of having an actual discussion at the White House. When he showed Trump pictures of brutalized Ukrainian soldiers, Trump shrugged. “That’s tough stuff,” he muttered. Perhaps someone told Zelensky that Trump doesn’t read much, and reacts to images, but Trump, uncharacteristically, seems to have been determined to stay on message and pick a fight...
The sheer rudeness shown to a foreign guest and friend of the United States was (to use a word) deplorable as a matter of manners and grace, but worse, Trump and Vance acted like a couple of online Kremlin sock puppets instead of American leaders. They pushed talking points that they either knew or should have known were wrong. Even if Zelensky were as fluent and capable in English as Winston Churchill, he would never have been able to rebut the flood of falsehoods."
World leaders back Zelenskyy following Trump, Vance Oval Office spat; Fox News, February 28, 2025
Caitlin McFall, Fox News; World leaders back Zelenskyy following Trump, Vance Oval Office spat
"European leaders came out with sweeping support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the explosive Oval Office meeting in which President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance gave harsh reprimands and accused him of being "disrespectful."
Several leaders took to social media to back Ukraine and to remind Washington that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the Russia-Ukraine conflict's "aggressor," not Zelenskyy."
From boycotts to ‘good-buys,’ consumers are showing support for DE; The Washington Post, February 28, 2025
and
, The Washington Post; From boycotts to ‘good-buys,’ consumers are showing support for DEI"Similar grassroots efforts are materializing across the country as brands such as Walmart, Meta and Google ratchet down diversity programs in the face of legal and political headwinds. Consumers are spearheading short-lived spending embargoes against companies that retreat from DEI, or “buycotts,” to reward minority-owned small businesses and brands that say they value diversity. Such efforts reflect some consumers’ heightened focus on conscientious spending, experts say, and a willingness to withhold their dollars from companies whose values clash with theirs.
Among the calls to action circulating on social media is Friday’s “economic blackout” organized by John Schwarz, founder of the People’s Union USA. The group, which bills itself as a nonpartisan, grassroots movement dedicated to economic resistance, is urging Americans to do zero spending for 24 hours to raise awareness about certain retailers’ positions on DEI and convey that many Americans are struggling while corporations are raking in big profits."
A spectacle to horrify the world’: what the papers say about Trump and Vance’s meeting with Zelenskyy; The Guardian, February 28, 2025
Guardian staff , The Guardian; A spectacle to horrify the world’: what the papers say about Trump and Vance’s meeting with Zelenskyy
"The unprecedented scenes in the Oval Office dominated the front pages on Saturday, with the papers united in their horror. Adjectives including disastrous and vile were used to describe the meeting in which Donald Trump and his vice-president JD Vance openly berated the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy...
The Daily Mail called the meeting “A spectacle to horrify the world” and said that during the “shouting match in the Oval Office” a “raging Trump humiliates Zelensky on live TV”...
The Daily Mirror went for “Shock & War” as its front page headline, with subheads reading “Trump stuns the world with vile rant at Zelensky” and “Ukraine hero forced home without a deal.”...
The Sun declared “Ukraine hero ambushed” above the splash headline “The Fight House”, alongside a picture of Trump wagging his finger at Zelenskyy...
The Independent said “Zelensky ambushed by Trump, calling the meeting a “disastrously bad-tempered summit”."
Prioritise artists over tech in AI copyright debate, MPs say; The Guardian, February 26, 2025
Rachel Hall, The Guardian; Prioritise artists over tech in AI copyright debate, MPs say
"Two cross-party committees of MPs have urged the government to prioritise ensuring that creators are fairly remunerated for their creative work over making it easy to train artificial intelligence models.
The MPs argued there needed to be more transparency around the vast amounts of data used to train generative AI models, and urged the government not to press ahead with plans to require creators to opt out of having their data used.
The government’s preferred solution to the tension between AI and copyright law is to allow AI companies to train the models on copyrighted work by giving them an exception for “text and data mining”, while giving creatives the opportunity to opt out through a “rights reservation” system.
The chair of the culture, media and sport committee, Caroline Dinenage, said there had been a “groundswell of concern from across the creative industries” in response to the proposals, which “illustrates the scale of the threat artists face from artificial intelligence pilfering the fruits of their hard-earned success without permission”.
She added that making creative works “fair game unless creators say so” was akin to “burglars being allowed into your house unless there’s a big sign on your front door expressly telling them that thievery isn’t allowed”."
Gov. Shapiro meets with Penn Med leader amid ‘existential’ threat posed by Trump; WHYY, February 27, 2025
Jared Mitovich, WHYY ; Gov. Shapiro meets with Penn Med leader amid ‘existential’ threat posed by Trump
"Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has met with the leader of the University of Pennsylvania’s Health System multiple times as Philadelphia’s largest private employer faces an “existential threat” from a loss of federal funding.
The meetings were described by the dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, Jon Epstein, in a live-streamed message to the Penn Medicine community on Feb. 18 that was obtained by WHYY News. It remains unclear when exactly the meetings were held and whether Shapiro discussed with Epstein a statewide response to the challenges facing Penn and other state universities — including a precipitous decline in the National Institutes of Health’s support for research that has prompted schools to curtail graduate admissions and lay off employees.
In his message, Epstein — who was appointed to his position in a permanent capacity Feb. 11 — painted a dire portrait of Penn Med’s future amid a “chaotic pace of government regulations and executive orders,” many of which have placed the university directly in their crosshairs...
Caught in the middle of the political upheaval are graduate students, researchers and 49,000 employees of Penn’s health system — which the university says supports 79,990 jobs in the region and generates a $15.1 billion economic impact.
Penn’s graduate admission cuts are the difference between studying pharmacology and working at Costco for Keely Barton, a first-generation student whose research appointment at Georgetown University ends in the next month. She was rejected from Penn’s prestigious Biomedical Graduate Studies program Friday, even though she said she was told when she interviewed in early February not to worry about changes at NIH impacting admissions.
On Feb. 7, the NIH slashed the rate it pays universities to support indirect costs to 15%. The weekend she expected to be offered admission came and went...
“I think there’s an entire generation of scientists that could be lost to this,” she said. “We can’t survive as a society without an investment in science.”...
Earlier this week, state lawmakers held an at-times contentious meeting with Jameson in opposition to the school’s scrubbing of web pages related to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — with two officials walking out in protest of one top administrator’s referral to diversity as a “lightning rod."
In the message obtained by WHYY News, Epstein acknowledged that scrutiny of DEI has caused “considerable anger and pain” in the Penn Medicine community.
“For now, it’s clear that we need to modify some of our programs and websites in response to explicit government directives indicating that such diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts violate the law,” Epstein said, while cautioning that the school was not departing from its “core values.”"
Northwestern Libraries’ website removes DEI mention as University responds to executive orders; The Daily Northwestern, February 23, 2025
, , The Daily Northwestern; Northwestern Libraries’ website removes DEI mention as University responds to executive orders
"Northwestern Libraries removed the mention of diversity on its website, following President Donald Trump’s executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives."
Trump Thinks He Humiliated Zelensky. He Really Humiliated the United States; The Daily Beast, March 1, 2025
David Rothkopf, The Daily Beast; Trump Thinks He Humiliated Zelensky. He Really Humiliated the United States
"The Trump-Putin Axis came fully out of the closet today.
The new U.S. administration has clearly embraced what might be called a “mob boss” foreign policy—because of the criminal pasts of the men who are leading it and because of the tactics they appear to favor.
In an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and his dangerously ill-informed yes-man, JD Vance, the U.S. president pressed for a deal to squeeze mineral assets out of Ukraine in exchange for some ill-defined level of continued support for that country that could only be described as extortionate...
It was an ugly display of foreign policy crudeness, the likes of which we have never seen in the White House. It is tempting to call it inept. But it was not. It achieved precisely the goal that Putin and Trump had long sought, to produce a public break between the United States and Ukraine that would directly and meaningfully support Russia’s illegal, brutal conquest of its neighbor.
Trump and Vance, however, were rebuffed by Zelensky in important ways. When the Americans sought to perpetuate lies that have been a staple of Kremlin propaganda and Trump campaign speeches, Zelensky stood up to them. He refuted the idea that Ukraine provoked Russia’s invasion.
Trump has made it clear that he would stop U.S. support for Ukraine and that he was sympathetic to Putin, a man who has sought both to deny Ukraine’s right to exist and to wipe the country from the map.
Unsurprisingly, Zelensky was not cowed by the two-bit goons who confronted him...
It is surely one of the darkest days in the history of American foreign policy...
But for all the embarrassment we feel at our president, we should not lose sight of the hugely embarrassing and damaging performance of JD Vance. Vance, like Trump, had virtually every fact wrong. Furthermore, he was completely out of line addressing a foreign head of state as he did, especially one who is one of the genuinely great heroes of our era and who has been fighting courageously not just on behalf of his own people, but in defense of the ideals and interests of the U.S. and our long-time European allies."
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