How the right spread ‘brutal and cruel’ misinformation after Minnesota lawmaker killings; The Guardian, June 17, 2025

Rachel Leingang and Joseph Gedeon, The Guardian; How the right spread ‘brutal and cruel’ misinformation after Minnesota lawmaker killings

[Kip Currier: The money quote from this Guardian article: 

"Lee didn’t say much, according to Smith, and seemed surprised to be confronted."

 Bullies often are surprised when people stand up to them and call them out.]

[Excerpt]

"Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator confronted Mike Lee, a Utah senator, on Monday to tell him directly that his social media posts fueled ongoing misinformation about a shooting that killed her friend.

Lee’s posts, which advanced conspiracies that a Minnesota assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for Melissa Hortman’s death, were among many threads of false or speculative claims swirling online after the killings.

Smith told Lee his posts were “brutal and cruel,” according to CNN. “He should think about the implications of what he’s saying and doing. It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation,” she said. She wanted him to hear from her directly how painful it was to see his words after the brutality her state endured. Lee didn’t say much, according to Smith, and seemed surprised to be confronted...

Elon Musk, a frequent poster of unverified rightwing claims, amplified the narrative to his 200 million followers, quote-tweeting claims that “the left” killed Hortman and saying “the far left is murderously violent”...

Boelter’s own recorded sermons expose his extremist views. Preaching in Congo in 2023, he is recorded as saying: “The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong.” He ranted against LGBTQ people as “confused,” claiming “the enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul”. His alleged hit list included abortion providers and pro-choice advocates."

Suspected Minnesota Shooter Is Not a Left-Wing Democrat; NewsGuard's Reality Check, June 17, 2025

Chiara Vercellone , NewsGuard's Reality Check; Suspected Minnesota Shooter Is Not a Left-Wing Democrat

"What happened: Conservatives are baselessly claiming that Vance Boelter, the man who allegedly shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota, is a registered Democrat. Others have inaccurately described him as a “leftist.”

Context: In the early hours of June 14, Boelter, posing as a law enforcement officer, allegedly fatally shot Democratic Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously wounded Democratic State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their respective homes, authorities said.

A closer look: Within hours, conservative social media accounts began claiming that Boelter, who was taken into custody on June 15, was a member of the Democratic Party and a leftist, in an apparent attempt to cast Democrats and liberals as violent and to deflect any claims that he was a conservative.

• Conservative commentator Ann Vandersteel, a self-described “citizen journalist” who has more than 360,000 followers on X, posted: “The man who just assassinated Democrat Rep. Melissa Hortman is also HIMSELF A DEMOCRAT.” The post garnered 45,500 views and 1,100 likes in two days.

• Anonymous conservative X account @amuse posted on June 16: “His Democrat roommate insists (without evidence) that Boelter, a registered Democrat, is a huge Trump supporter.” The post received 44,800 views and 1,000 likes in less than one day.

Others, including X owner Elon Musk and Republican Sen. Mike Lee, claimed that Boelter is “far left” and a “Marxis[t].”

Actually: Friends of Boelter, voting records, government officials, and an alleged manifesto that authorities said was found in Boelter’s vehicle show that he was not a Democrat or liberal and may have voted for Donald Trump."

The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security; The New York Times, June 16, 2025

Alexandra Berzon, Nicholas Nehamas and Tara Siegel Bernard , The New York Times; The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security

"Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found.

Their work has led to the departures of thousands of employees, thinning an already overstretched work force and setting off a wave of public anxiety over the state of an agency administering politically sacrosanct retirement benefits that Mr. Trump has vowed to protect.

Mr. Musk has left Washington amid a blowup with Mr. Trump, and some of his top aides at DOGE have also departed, leaving federal workers and the public to assess what Mr. Musk’s tornadolike path through Washington yielded. At Social Security, Mr. Musk’s efforts amount to a case study in what happened when his team of government novices ran a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts."

The Trump-Musk feud shows danger of handing the keys of power to one person; The Guardian, June 7, 2025

Nick Robins-Early , The Guardian; The Trump-Musk feud shows danger of handing the keys of power to one person

"While the ongoing episode had the tenor of sensational reality TV, the fight between Trump and Musk once again exposed the danger of putting key public goods in the hands of private companies controlled by erratic billionaires. It highlighted how something like space travel, once a vaunted and collective national enterprise, can now be almost entirely derailed by the emotional whims of a single person.

Musk and Trump’s partnership had already fueled months of concern about corruption and calls for investigations into the Tesla CEO’s use of his position in government to benefit his companies. The breakup has highlighted another risk of Musk’s deep ties with the government, where the services that he provides can now become collateral damage in interpersonal disputes. Tens of billions of dollars hang in the balance of their fight.

The messy, public way that the clash has played out also serves as a reminder of how unpredictable their decision-making can be. Musk’s vow to sideline SpaceX’s spacecraft and his reversal, without which the US would have immediately been prevented from reaching the International Space Station (ISS), appeared, for instance, as an emotional lash-out amid a string of other insults against Trump, and it was nearly impossible to discern whether he was serious."

The Musk-Trump breakup: What happens when narcissistic co-leaders turn on each other?; The Ink, June 6, 2025

The Ink; The Musk-Trump breakup

What happens when narcissistic co-leaders turn on each other?

"It might be tempting to sit back, break out the popcorn, and say, “Let them fight.” But what’s unfolding is more than a mutual tantrum. Two of the world’s most powerful and most self-interested men are making and rolling out on the fly immensely consequential decisions in a series of angry outbursts, decisions which have serious implications for millions of real people, none of whom are non-player characters. 

And whatever happens next (maybe they’ll reconcile, maybe Musk will start a third party), Musk and his DOGE teams have already done — and continue to do — considerable damage to this country’s institutions and to human beings here and around the world. And with congressional Republicans and the White House fully onboard with the slash-and-burn approach, that’s not likely to stop just because of a spat between strongmen."

Trump and Musk’s Unlikely Alliance Breaks Down in Rapid and Public Fashion; The New York Times, June 5, 2025

Tyler Pager and Theodore Schleifer , The New York Times; Trump and Musk’s Unlikely Alliance Breaks Down in Rapid and Public Fashion

[Kip Currier: In the words of fictional billionaire Logan Roy from TV's Succession, these "are not serious people." As George Dillard wrote in a 2024 "We Are Not Serious People" piece for Medium:

"There were a lot of memorable lines in Succession, but Logan’s line is the one I often find myself repeating in my head, because there are not a lot of serious people left in America anymore." 

https://worldhistory.medium.com/we-are-not-serious-people-00ca768240e3

These are not individuals of good character or emotional intelligence whom reasonable, thinking, morally-grounded people with sound judgment would want leading them, working for them, or in a relationship with any family member they care about.

Even more, Trump and Musk et al are not people you want with access to the nuclear codes or in charge of spacecraft and satellites your country depends upon. They care nothing about the well-being of anyone other than themselves and perhaps a tiny handful of people in their immediate oligarchic circles. They are rich in assets and bankrupt in any semblance of decency or dignity.

And yet...here we are. Remember this at election time in 2026 and 2028.]

[Excerpt]

"The sparring swiftly devolved into threats on their respective social media platforms, as Mr. Trump threatened to cut the billions in dollars in federal government contracts with Mr. Musk’s companies. For his part, Mr. Musk unleashed a tirade of attacks on the man he had once lavishly praised. He suggested it might be time to create a new political party, claimed there were references to Mr. Trump in government documents about the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and indicated his support for a post calling for the president’s impeachment."

Intellectual property is our bedrock; Daily Journal, May 17, 2025

 Phil Kerpen, Daily Journal; Intellectual property is our bedrock

"Elon Musk is probably the second-most powerful man in the world these days, so when he responded to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s “delete all IP law” post with “I agree,” we need to take this radical proposal seriously.

Musk and Dorsey want their AI bots to remix all the world’s content without having to worry about who owns it, but it’s important that we slow down and start from first principles, or we risk undermining one of the foundations of our Constitution and economic system.

The moral case for IP was already powerfully articulated prior to American independence by John Locke. In his 1694 memorandum opposing the renewal of the Licensing Act, Locke wrote: “Books seem to me to be the most proper thing for a man to have a property in of any thing that is the product of his mind,” which is no doubt equally true of more modern creative works. Unlike physical property, which is a mixture of an individual’s work effort and the pre-existing natural world, creative works are the pure creation of the human mind. How could they not then properly be owned by their authors?

The Constitution cements this truth. Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” This clause isn’t incidental; it’s a deliberate choice to recognize inventors and authors properly have a property right in their creations and is the only right expressly protected in the base text of the Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added...

Deleting all IP law is like banning free speech to stop misinformation — it might narrowly accomplish its goal, but only by destroying what we ought to be protecting."

Trump strikes a blow for AI – by firing the US copyright supremo; The Guardian, May 13, 2025

Blake Montgomery , The Guardian; Trump strikes a blow for AI – by firing the US copyright supremo

"Over the weekend, Donald Trump fired the head of the US copyright office, CBS News reported. Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, was sacked after she issued a report questioning AI companies’ growing need for more data and casting doubt on their expressed need to circumvent current copyright laws.

In a statement, New York Democratic representative Joe Morelle pointed specifically to Trump’s booster-in-chief Elon Musk as a motivator for Perlmutter’s firing: “Donald Trump’s termination of register of copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

Trump’s abrupt severing of the copyright chief from her job reminds me of the Gordian knot. Legend has it that Alexander the Great was presented with a knot in a rope tying a cart to a stake. So complex were its twistings that no man had been able to untie it of the hundreds who had tried. Alexander silently drew his sword and sliced the knot in two. The story is one of a great man demonstrating the ingenuity that would lead him to conquer the world. Alexander did solve the riddle. He also defeated its purpose. The cart is left with no anchor. Perhaps the riddle had taken on more significance than the original problem of keeping the cart in place, but that is a question for another day.

Trump may have cut through any thorny legal questions the copyright office had raised, but the vacuum at the head of the US’s copyright authority means that richer and better-connected players will run roughshod over copyright law in the course of their business. That may be what the president wants. The more powerful players in lawsuits over AI and copyright are undoubtedly the well capitalized AI companies, as much as I want artists to be paid in abundance for their creativity. These tech companies have cozied up to Trump in an effort to ensure a friendlier regulatory environment, which seems to be working if the firing of the copyright chief is any evidence. Lawsuits over how much AI companies owe artists and publishers for their surreptitious use of copyrighted material with an avowed lack of permission still abound, and both plaintiffs and defendants will be taking their cues from the US copyright office."

The hidden ways Trump, DOGE are shutting down parts of the U.S. government; The Washington Post, May 11, 2025

Hannah Natanson

 and 

Maxine Joselow

, The Washington Post ; The hidden ways Trump, DOGE are shutting down parts of the U.S. government

[Kip Currier: Billionaires and millionaires doing everything they can to intentionally break our federal government is unconscionably amoral and appalling.

Think about all of the people being hurt by these actions, as highlighted in this Washington Post article. While the richest man in the world gaslights people that this will benefit them.

Now imagine all of the millions and millions of people being hurt by Trump 2.0 whose stories we don't know.]

[Excerpt]

"Across the federal government, Trump officials are halting a wide range of operations by declining to approve key funds. This unofficial hold on many activities has incapacitated many agencies’ divisions, even though they remain technically intact...

Elon Musk, who is preparing to step back from his work leading DOGE, recently told reporters at the White House that his team had remade the government in a way that would benefit Americans.

“In the grand scheme of things, I think we’ve been effective,” he said. “Not as effective as I’d like. I think we could be more effective. But we’ve made progress.”

However, Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, said the Trump administration and DOGE appear to be “deliberately embedding red tape into government” by instituting “needless additional reviews of already-approved grants.”

“This makes sense if you assume that the purpose of DOGE is not to make government work better,” Moynihan said in an email, “but to stop government from working at all.”"

Trump fires top US copyright official; Politico, May 10, 2025

KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS , Politico; Trump fires top US copyright official

[Kip Currier: If the allegation below is correct -- that Musk or anyone could gain and/or be granted access to the copyrighted works that federal copyright filers are required to provide for deposit to the U.S. Copyright Office (i.e. the U.S. federal government), as a condition of receiving a federal copyright, and that Musk or anyone could then use these federally-deposited copyrighted works to train proprietary AI models without permission or payment to the owners of those federally-deposited copyrighted works -- this is a matter that must be reported on more widely and investigated by the U.S. Congress.]

[Excerpt]

"Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee which oversees the Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office, is alleging it is “no coincidence [Trump] acted less than a day after [Perlmutter] refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

Perlmutter and her office issued a lengthy report about artificial intelligence that included some questions and concerns about the usage of copyrighted materials by AI technology, an industry which Musk is heavily involved in.

“This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos,” Morelle continued in a statement. “When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?”"

Bill Gates announces end of Gates Foundation and decries Elon Musk for Doge cuts; The Guardian, May 8, 2025

Anna Betts , The Guardian; Bill Gates announces end of Gates Foundation and decries Elon Musk for Doge cuts

"“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates said."

Move fast and destroy things: 100 chaotic days of Elon Musk in the White House; The Guardian, May 1, 2025

Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian ; Move fast and destroy things: 100 chaotic days of Elon Musk in the White House

"The billionaire’s newfound sway has not come without pushback and a cost. Doge’s blitz through the government has sparked furious nationwide backlash, as well as dozens of lawsuits challenging Musk’s mass firings and accusing his task force of violating numerous laws. Musk’s personal popularity has sunk to record lows, and Tesla’s profits have tanked.

A look back at the first 100 days of the Trump administration shows the extent to which Musk’s efforts have changed the US government. It also shows that what Musk framed as a cost-cutting task initiative is failing to meet its ostensible goal of finding $1tn in fraud or waste, but it is succeeding in reshaping federal agencies along ideological grounds, paving the way for private companies to fill the resulting vacuum of public services.

Musk has recently stopped physically working from the White House and stated he plans to pivot away from his government position soon, but has entrenched himself as one of the world’s most divisive political figures and gives no sign he is willing to fully give up his influence. Instead, the first 100 days of Doge shows that the scope of Musk’s ambition extends to remaking how the government deals with everything from humanitarian aid to the rule of law."

Former US social security head predicts ‘interruption of benefits’ amid Doge cuts; The Guardian, April 25, 2025

Robert Tait  , The Guardian; Former US social security head predicts ‘interruption of benefits’ amid Doge cuts

[Kip Currier: The excerpted statements (see below) by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are moronic and deceitful. American workers have paid into Social Security and they reasonably expect and have earned the right to receive their fair share of the contributions they've made, when they decide to do so. 

Billionaires like Lutnick and Elon Musk think nothing of using every tax loophole or corporate write-off they can to make more money for themselves. Yet, these same billionaires want to deny American workers from accessing benefits from the system that they've faithfully paid into and rightfully earned.

We've all seen this "bad movie plot" before, right?

We see through the hypocrisy, sophomoric tricks, and bad faith efforts to rip off -- and take for themselves through billionaire tax cuts -- what U.S. workers have lawfully earned, don't we?

Yeah, we do! We see through your disinformation and deceptive antics, Lutnick and Musk et al. 

Call your state and federal representatives and tell them you want billionaires like Lutnick and Musk to keep their hands off the Social Security you've earned:

Directory of U.S. House Representatives: https://www.house.gov/representatives

Directory of U.S. Senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/index.htm ]

[Excerpt]

"Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and also a billionaire, added further fuel by suggesting only fraudsters would complain if there was an interruption to social security payments – the very scenario O’Malley has warned of.

“Let’s say social security didn’t send out their checks this month, my mother-in-law – who’s 94 – she wouldn’t call and complain,” Lutnick told a business podcast last month. “She’d just think something messed up and she’d get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.”"

Jack Dorsey Says Intellectual Property Law Shouldn't Exist, and Elon Musk Agrees: 'Delete All IP Law'; Entrepreneur, April 14, 2025

 SHERIN SHIBU EDITED BY MELISSA MALAMUT  , Entrepreneur; Jack Dorsey Says Intellectual Property Law Shouldn't Exist, and Elon Musk Agrees: 'Delete All IP Law'

"While Dorsey may want to end intellectual property law, copyright holders are still holding on to their work. Dozens of cases have been filed over the past few years in U.S. federal court against AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta, as authors, artists, and news organizations accuse these companies of using their copyrighted work to train AI models without credit or compensation.

AI needs ample training material to keep it sharp. It took about 300 billion words to train ChatGPT, an AI chatbot now used by over 500 million people weekly. AI image generator DALL·E 2 needed "hundreds of millions of captioned images from the internet" to become operational."

Why Musk and Dorsey want to ‘delete all IP law’; The Washington Post, April 15, 2025

 

Analysis by Gerrit De Vynck

 and 

Will Oremus

with research by 

Andrea Jiménez

 , The Washington Post; Why Musk and Dorsey want to ‘delete all IP law’

"Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, posted a cryptic and drastic demand on Elon Musk’s X over the weekend: “delete all IP law.” The post drew a quick reply from Mr. X himself: “I agree.”

Musk’s laconic response amplified Dorsey’s post to his 220 million followers and sparked a debate that drew in a cast of characters including Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, tech lawyer and former vice presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan, novelist Walter Kirn, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller and the technologist and early Twitter developer Evan Henshaw-Plath, a.k.a. Rabble, among others...

Serious policy idea or not, the concord between Dorsey and Musk highlights how the debate over AI and copyright law is coming to a head in Silicon Valley.

How it’s resolved will have major ramifications for the tech companies, creative people and their livelihoods and the overall AI race."

Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You.; The New York Times, April 9, 2025

Emily Badger and Sheera Frenkel, The New York Times ; Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You.

"The federal government knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start...

These intimate details about the personal lives of people who live in the United States are held in disconnected data systems across the federal government — some at the Treasury, some at the Social Security Administration and some at the Department of Education, among other agencies.

The Trump administration is now trying to connect the dots of that disparate information. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the “consolidation” of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.

The effort is being driven by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his lieutenants with the Department of Government Efficiency, who have sought access to dozens of databases as they have swept through agencies across the federal government. Along the way, they have elbowed past the objections of career staff, data security protocols, national security experts and legal privacy protections."

Elon Musk hands out $1 million payments after Wisconsin Supreme Court declines request to stop him; AP, March 30, 2025

SCOTT BAUER AND THOMAS BEAUMONT , AP; Elon Musk hands out $1 million payments after Wisconsin Supreme Court declines request to stop him

"Elon Musk gave out $1 million checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to President Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization.”"

The power of boycotts; The Ink, March 31, 2025

 Anand Giridharadas, The Ink; The power of boycotts

"Elon Musk’s feelings are hurt. His companies are suffering.

Weird, coming from the guy who denounced empathy as Western civilization’s “fundamental weakness.” While a little needling by Tim Walz about Tesla’s plummeting share price may have set him off, the real pain point is the #teslatakedown movement, which this past Saturday put on a worldwide day of action.

Folks on the right like to complain about boycotts. They’ve called them illegal. They’ve tried to intimidate those who’d dare use their economic power. They’ve threatened to criminalize the very idea. They’ve commingled peaceful calls for investors and shoppers to withhold their hard-earned dollars with acts of vandalism, and have tried to paint the entire movement as terrorism. But, as you might expect, accusations are confessions: what far-right political figures mean when they denounce boycotts is that they want to decide who gets boycotted.

So what is it that scares the guy who wants to privatize everything? Members of the public, exercising their private power to decide, and doing it collectively (Musk famously hates that whole collective thing). Because when that power is clearly targeted and well organized, it gets results. Maybe it’s the sheer gumption of speaking truth to power in its native language — money — that pains Musk. But that’s the free market, isn’t it?"