Elon Musk’s Cringey Chainsaw Act Exposes a Deep Ignorance Fueling DOGE; The New Republic, February 21, 2025

 Michael Tomasky, The New Republic; Elon Musk’s Cringey Chainsaw Act Exposes a Deep Ignorance Fueling DOGE

[Kip Currier: Read and share this New Republic article with as many people as possible. We must work to raise awareness of what the Trump/Musk alliance is perpetrating and inflicting.

Matthew 20:16: "So the last shall be first, and the first last."

As this article unpacks, even catching a glimpse of the richest man on Planet Earth perversely fetishizing a chainsaw on stage -- as he elatedly wreaks havoc on the lives of Americans and the world -- is both stomach-churning and heart-breaking. We see before us a WWE-esque caricature of a human; a performative individual who is profoundly lacking an ethical center and values like compassion, reason, and integrity.

Elon the Oligarch can buy whatever access his heart desires. He can attain whatever healthcare he or his family needs. Musk also has unfettered access to lucrative government opportunities for self-enrichment, despite having clear conflicts of interest and supporting the abrogation of government ethics rules. The unchecked damage that Team Musk is unleashing will be far-reaching for millions.

Consider just a few examples:

• The veteran who has served this country and may need, say, a pair of hearing aids or a cancer treatment regimen but may not now be able to get the healthcare they need and deserve. 

• The recent college graduate who wants to serve their country in the FBI, FDA, or FAA but who was summarily fired because they were one day shy of finishing their probationary period before DOGE jubilantly sacked them and countless other probationary federal employees sharing their expertise and service.

• The university researcher who has been performing medical research that is leading to new insights and treatments for common and rare diseases but whose funding and research studies may now be halted and eliminated altogether.

Musk wants us to feel guilty for government programs that we support with our tax dollars, while he games the system to advance his aim of being the world's first trillionaire.

When the time comes to vote, remember the politicians who unabashedly are supporting Elon the Tyrannical right now, and the administration giving him a free hand to take a chainsaw to programs that assist persons in need and empower other people to help their fellow humans in need.]

[Excerpt]

"At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Elon Musk appeared on stage in oversized sunglasses, a black gothic MAGA hat, a thick gold chain around his neck—and wielding a chainsaw. Ha ha. Over at Politico’s Playbook, the new team may not have heard of the New Deal, but thank goodness they do have enough sense to know that the richest man in the world and the president he works for (or is it the other way around?) might—make that will—come to rue that cringey image.

The way Musk’s DOGE is going about these cuts is the equivalent, as I heard former Biden administration official Mitch Landrieu say on TV this week, of a man thinking he needs to lose 30 pounds and deciding to saw off his leg. That’s funny, and true. But this is even worse. A man sawing off his leg hurts only himself. What Musk is doing will hurt millions of people in ways that we’re only beginning to see.

Here’s one small example, which you likely haven’t read about but which I take a little personally. If you’re one of my regular readers, you know that I was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, and went to my hometown university, West Virginia University, or WVU (not UWV, thank you). A week ago, West Virginia Watch, a small nonprofit news organization in the state, moved a story noting that the university expects to lose $12 million annually in funding that supports cancer and vascular research. 

Under dynamic Dean Clay Marsh, a native of the state recruited back to West Virginia from Ohio State by WVU President E. Gordon Gee (and the son of hell-raising newspaper editor Don Marsh, who once upon a time made The Charleston Gazette one of the most aggressive regional newspapers in the country), the cancer institute has made tremendous strides. The cuts, a university spokeswoman told West Virginia Watch, could cost the school the faculty it has recruited to do the research and conduct the clinical trials that could lead to the breakthroughs that would save a lot of lives in the state with the third-highest cancer mortality ratein America.

And if it’s $12 million at the smallish West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, imagine what it is at New York University, or UCLA, or Johns Hopkins, or even much larger state research hospitals in Florida or Washington. And it’s happening to every state university medical system in the nation."

Mr. President: Putin is THE dictator and 10 Ukraine-Russia war truths we ignore at our peril; New York Post, February 20, 2025

Douglas Murray, New York Post; Mr. President: Putin is THE dictator and 10 Ukraine-Russia war truths we ignore at our peril

"In Trump’s rush to end the bloodshed, these are also the truths against which any deal will be judged and which will define him when the history books are written.

To ignore them or not treat them with the gravity they deserve will also have enormous consequences for decades to come:

Truth No. 5

Putin is a dictator. Putin has ruled Russia with an iron KGB fist since coming to power in 1999. He has ruthlessly quashed independent media, ended free and fair elections, crushed civil society and killed his political opponents. And not just inside Russia, but around the world. People who live inside Russia and express any opposition to the war are imprisoned.

Truth No. 6

Zelensky is not a dictator. A political outsider, Zelensky won the 2019 presidential election, which was relatively free and fair. He has a 57% approval rating, not the 4% Trump claimed.

Unlike in Russia, Ukraine has vibrant independent media that hold the government to account — despite claims to the contrary by internet swamp creatures and Russian bots.

Many Ukrainians freely criticize the government’s conduct of the war. When Britain was fighting for its survival against the Nazis in the 1940s, it too did not hold elections.

The Russian ambassador to the UK spent yesterday crowing that he’s “not sure” Zelensky would be re-elected if there were elections today. But we all know one thing for sure. Whether or not Zelensky would be re-elected in Ukraine, Putin will always be re-elected in Russia. Because his elections are con jobs, pageant shows. Putin hasn’t won a free and fair election in his life. Because he doesn’t hold them."

Ukrainians Rally Around Zelensky as Trump and Putin Denigrate Him; Time, February 21, 2025

 HANNA ARHIROVA / AP, Time; Ukrainians Rally Around Zelensky as Trump and Putin Denigrate Him

"After Trump called Zelensky a “dictator”—for legally postponing an election last year—and as reports emerged of U.S. and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible ceasefire without input from Ukraine, even some of Zelensky’s harshest domestic critics have begun defending him.

“We may have different opinions about Zelensky, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos. “And to publicly criticize him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”

Trump’s harsh words for Zelensky have drawn criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans in the U.S. Congress, where defending Ukraine from Russia—with tens of billions of dollars in military aid—has had bipartisan support. But Vice President J.D. Vance admonished Zelensky for publicly warning Trump about falling for Russian disinformation...

A poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology put public trust in Zelensky at 57%. The survey was conducted Feb. 4 to Feb. 9 among 1,000 people living across Ukraine in regions and territories controlled by the Ukrainian government."

Nearly Twice as Many Americans View Trump as 'Dictator' Than Zelensky; Newsweek, February 20, 2025

Mandy Taheri, Newsweek; Nearly Twice as Many Americans View Trump as 'Dictator' Than Zelensky

"Nearly twice as many Americans view President Donald Trump as a "dictator" compared to Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a new poll. Trump recently used the word to describe the Ukrainian president...

A YouGov poll of 4,071 Americans conducted on February 19 asked participants whether they believe Zelensky, Trump and Putin are dictators.

The poll found that 41 percent of participants view Trump as a dictator, just below the 45 percent who do not. Gender played a role in participants answers, as among women, 46 percent consider Trump a dictator, compared to 35 percent of men.

The divide also falls along political lines, with 80 percent of Republicans saying Trump is not a dictator, while 68 percent of Democrats believe he is.

Fourteen percent of respondents said they were unsure if they consider him a dictator or not.

When participants were asked if they considered Zelensky a dictator, as Trump did on Wednesday, 22 percent said yes, while 45 percent said no. A larger share of participants, 33 percent, were unsure.

A majority of Democrats, 63 percent, said the Ukrainian leader is not a dictator, with only 15 percent believing he is. Republicans were fairly split among the three responses, with 36 percent unsure, 31 percent saying no and 33 percent saying yes."

Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin; New York Post, February 20, 2025

 Ronny Reyes, New York Post; Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin’

"Fox News host Mark Levin, a longtime supporter of President Trump, is breaking with the commander-in-chief over his recent attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warning Trump that “MAGA doesn’t support Putin.”

Speaking on the Mark Levin Show on Wednesday, Levin offered a rare criticism of the president as he backed Zelensky for maintaining order in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Levin’s segment appeared to be a direct response to Trump’s claims that Zelensky is a dictator that the Ukrainian leader is stopping free elections and only has a very low approval rating. 

The Fox News host said both of those assertions are false."

Trump ends federal leadership program, cutting off key talent pipeline; The Washington Post, February 20, 2025

 Olivia George, The Washington Post; Trump ends federal leadership program, cutting off key talent pipeline

[Kip Currier: "So we do not lose heart." 2 Cor. 4:16.

Trump, Vance, Musk, and others in his circle want the American people to despair and believe that our government is irreparably broken. [Read/Listen to Ezra Klein's 2/7/25 New York Times interview with Kara Swisher "What Elon Musk Wants"] That we as a country, committed to the bedrock principle E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), are irrevocably divided. That we are not indivisible, in contravention of our Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all).

The damage being done every day by the Trump administration is tragic, uncharitable, and vengeful.

Yet, we must and will persevere as a nation. We must build stronger guardrails to protect against this kind of unilateral, monarchical destruction of federal employees, programs, and agencies that help people, provide deserved opportunities, strengthen our democracy and the free world, and present hope and information to those yearning for freedom and self-determination.

Take heart. We will rebuild our government when this regime has ended.]

[Excerpt] 

"The Trump administration ended the Presidential Management Fellows Program in a late-night executive order Wednesday, axing a decades-old initiative that has long been celebrated as a pipeline to draw talent into civil service careers.

The two-year, full-time fellowship brings recent graduate students into agencies across the government with pay, benefits, training and mentorship. It bills itself as “the premier leadership development program” and has helped thousands of graduates get into government roles since its founding in 1977.

President Donald Trump instructed the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to “promptly terminate” the program in the executive order, which targeted “elements of the Federal bureaucracy” that he had “determined are unnecessary.” The order also eliminated or dramatically diminished a handful of other programs and federal advisory committees, including the U.S. Institute of Peace, which works to prevent and resolve violent conflict, and the U.S. African Development Foundation, which invests in African grassroots enterprises.

“This is one of the most unsettling, tragic pieces of news yet,” said Sean O’Keefe, a member of the presidential management program’s inaugural class who went on to become the NASA administrator under President George W. Bush. “This is a firing of convenience. They are looking for a headcount reduction; there is nothing qualitative about this.”

Russia’s War on Ukraine: Three Years, Three Hundred and Two False Claims; NewsGuard's Reality Check, February 21, 2025

Eva Maitland and Madeline Roache, NEWSGUARD, NewsGuard's Reality Check; Russia’s War on Ukraine: Three Years, Three Hundred and Two False Claims

"As the war in Ukraine approaches the three-year anniversary of the Russian invasion that launched the conflict, NewsGuard has now identified and debunked 302 false claims relating to the war, nearly all of them originating as Russian propaganda.

These 302 claims appear in NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints proprietary database of viral false narratives that NewsGuard analysts have identified and debunked. NewsGuard analysts have identified 551 websites spreading these false claims...

AI IN ACTION: HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SUPERCHARGES PRO-KREMLIN PROPAGANDA

In 2022, NewsGuard debunked just one AI-generated falsehood emanating from Russia. In the second year of the war, NewsGuard debunked five AI-generated false claims, and there were 16 in the third. Indeed, as AI tools became more readily available, the easy access to AI image, audio, video and text generators has enabled Russia and its allies to reach more people, in more languages, with more convincing false claims...

HOME-GROWN, FOREIGN-TRAINED: THE AMERICAN PROPAGANDIST BEHIND 14 FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT ZELENSKY

The driving force behind these false corruption claims that have amassed so many millions of views appears to be John Mark Dougan, a Florida deputy sheriff turned Kremlin propagandist. Dougan is part of a Russian influence operation dubbed by Microsoft as Storm-1516. It appears to be an offshoot of the Internet Research Agency, a disbanded Russian troll farm.

NewsGuard has debunked 37 false narratives linked to Dougan and Storm-1516 targeting Ukraine, the U.S. 2024 election, the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the German 2025 election."

Ronald Reagan narrated a short film in 1945 about the Tuskegee Airmen; Task & Purpose, February 20, 2025

 MATT WHITE, Task & Purpose; Ronald Reagan narrated a short film in 1945 about the Tuskegee Airmen

"An Army film produced in 1945 on the Tuskegee airmen begins with footage of a fighter taxiing behind a narrator’s familiar voice.

“It’s morning,” says the unmistakable voice of then-Army captain Ronald Reagan, who always enjoyed his ‘morning’ metaphors. On screen, fighters take to the air. “Twenty miles from the enemy,” Reagan says.

The 10-minute Army-produced film is a kind of first draft of history on the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed World War II flyers who were in the news last month when the Air Force removed — and then partially replaced — videos on the unit from its boot camp. But the National Archives video on those airmen is worth watching, both for what it says and for what it doesn’t say. Along with some vintage footage of training, the film is narrated by future-President Ronald Reagan, back when he was an Army officer making films for what was then the War Department...

Perhaps Reagan’s most notable passage comes toward the end, when he firmly divides the world into two sides — the Axis powers versus the American way — and puts the segregation and racism behind the Tuskegee project squarely into the Axis’ camp. 

“Here’s the answer to Hitler and Hirohito,” Reagan says. “Here’s the answer to the propaganda of the Japs and Nazis. Here’s the answer: Wings for this man.” 

It’s almost as if the future President wanted to say that diversity is a strength."

AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), February 19, 2025

 TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead

[Kip Currier: No, not everyone. Not requiring Big Tech to figure out a way to fairly license or get permission to use the copyrighted works of creators unjustly advantages these deep pocketed corporations. It also inequitably disadvantages the economic and creative interests of the human beings who labor to create copyrightable content -- authors, songwriters, visual artists, and many others.

The tell is that many of these same Big Tech companies are only too willing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against anyone whom they allege is infringing their AI content to create competing products and services.]

[Excerpt]

"Threats to Socially Valuable Research and Innovation 

Requiring researchers to license fair uses of AI training data could make socially valuable research based on machine learning (ML) and even text and data mining (TDM) prohibitively complicated and expensive, if not impossible. Researchers have relied on fair use to conduct TDM research for a decade, leading to important advancements in myriad fields. However, licensing the vast quantity of works that high-quality TDM research requires is frequently cost-prohibitive and practically infeasible.  

Fair use protects ML and TDM research for good reason. Without fair use, copyright would hinder important scientific advancements that benefit all of us. Empirical studies back this up: research using TDM methodologies are more common in countries that protect TDM research from copyright control; in countries that don’t, copyright restrictions stymie beneficial research. It’s easy to see why: it would be impossible to identify and negotiate with millions of different copyright owners to analyze, say, text from the internet."

How to Organize Our Way Out of the Trump-Musk Putsch; The Nation, February 19, 2025

EZRA LEVIN and LEAH GREENBERG , The Nation; How to Organize Our Way Out of the Trump-Musk Putsch

"For the millions of Americans now desperate to reclaim our democracy from the plutocratic vandalism of the second Trump administration, the main challenge before us is simple: We have to unify and fight back. This isn’t new and it isn’t rocket science—the one thing we know from historical fights against authoritarians is that success depends on a persistent, courageous, broad-based, and unified opposition. What that should look like and what that demands of each of us is the heart of the new movement to defeat a more disciplined and lawless Trump White House, but before we get to where we’re going, we have to start with where we are.

We run a national pro-democracy grassroots movement organization that’s been helping to marshal local volunteer groups against Trumpism for nearly a decade. Trump’s innovation in his second term is his strategic alignment with neoreactionary forces personified in Elon Musk. As one underground memo circulating in pro-democracy circles recently explained, the neoreactionary goal is “replacing the existing Constitutional system with a privatized state structure akin to a corporation, with a monarch-like figure at the top modeled after a CEO.” It’s no wonder that historians like Timothy Snyder and Heather Cox Richardson are raising the alarm about a boiling constitutional crisis...

A week after the election, we published Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink, an open-source handbook for building nationwide opposition to the coming authoritarian takeover. The first step: total opposition to Trump’s Project 2025...

We’re under no illusion that any senator or representative can summon forth the opposition on their own. It’s up to each of us to try, and learn, and improve, and build. Constituents should be organizing in their own communities as engaged neighbors, pro-democracy volunteers, and educators. Rank-and-file Democrats should be feeding off that energy and harnessing its power. And Democrats in leadership should be corralling their caucuses to produce a unified front with aggressive, creative tactics and messaging. Nobody has all the answers, and we’re all going to have to try, fail, go back to the drawing board, and try again.

These are frightening times, and frightening times call for active, courageous leadership. Musk and Trump are really seeking to annex the operations of the state to their pet vanity projects, bigotries, and conspiracy theories , but our enemy is not one or two men. Our enemy is apathy, cynicism, and fatalism; the pernicious, authoritarian-friendly belief that we are merely victims of world events rather than active participants in a global struggle for freedom and justice. Every time one of us—a family member, a community organizer, a representative, a senator—takes a step forward in this fight, a thousand pairs of eyes watch and learn. Courage is contagious.

Take that step, and steel yourself with the knowledge that you are the defender of a 250-year experiment in self-governance—a real-life pluralistic democracy, imperfect as it is, striving to be more perfect. Our predecessors deposed a brain-addled king; they crushed the violent insurrectionists of a slaveholding confederacy; they forced the robber barons to contend with workers and unions; they kicked the Nazis’ asses throughout Europe; they broke the back of the southern segregationist political bloc; they fought back against the terrorizing forces at Stonewall. We have planted ourselves in stubborn opposition to monomaniacal fascists of one form or another for a quarter of a millennium. No entitled reality-TV has-been backed by an addle-brained billionaire who cheats at video games is going to roll over us now.

We will not finish this fight, but we can each be damn sure to do our part while we’re here. Together, we are the opposition, and this is our republic—if we can keep it. This is the part where we keep it."

‘The greatest propaganda op in history’: Trump’s reshaping of US culture evokes past antidemocratic regimes; The Guardian, February 16, 2025

David Smith  , The Guardian; ‘The greatest propaganda op in history’: Trump’s reshaping of US culture evokes past antidemocratic regimes

"Long a master of branding, Trump is making propaganda a core element of his strongman presidency. This comes as little surprise to critics who regard it as an extension of last year’s election campaign in which he sold himself as a champion of the forgotten people and victim of a weaponised justice department.

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump’s re-election is the greatest, most successful propaganda op in history. Propaganda is why Donald Trump is president again and they know this, which is why they undermined the press, expertise and science.”

Since taking office, Trump has outpaced his predecessors by signing 64 executive orders and 27 memos and proclamations in less than a month. His blitz on immigration, trade and the federal bureaucracy was expected. But the president’s aggressive approach to reshaping national identity through symbolism and language has taken opponents by surprise.

When Trump used his inaugural address to assert his vision of US dominance by promising to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton burst out laughing. But the switch came with a sinister edge.

This week, the White House banned the Associated Press, one of the world’s biggest news outlets, because it has not changed its stylebook entry for Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America (the AP serves numerous countries that do not recognise the new name). The punitive measure prompted CNN to invoke “newspeak” from George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which language is a tool of control and can be narrowed to limit thought."

Scoop: Why Trump targets AP; Axios, February 17, 2025

 

• Marc Caputo, Axios; Scoop: Why Trump targets AP

"One of the big reasons President Trump is limiting AP reporters' White House access is to protest what aides see as years of liberal word choices that the wire service's influential stylebook spread across mainstream media, according to top White House officials.

Why it matters: The trigger was the announcement by The Associated Press that it would continue using the 400-year-old "Gulf of Mexico" rather than switch to "Gulf of America," as declared by Trump in a Day 1 executive order. But it turns out that broader underlying grievances made AP a target.

The big picture: By spotlighting AP, Trump is amplifying Republican and conservative criticisms that the AP Stylebook, a first reference for most U.S. news organizations, shapes political dialogue by favoring liberal words and phrases concerning gender, immigration, raceand law enforcement.

• "This isn't just about the Gulf of America," White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich told Axios. "This is about AP weaponizing language through their stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world."
• The dispute with AP is part of Trump's broader effort to discredit legacy media outlets and the public's trust in the press — already at a record low.

The other side: AP — which has long been considered the gold standard of neutrality — rejects any accusation of bias. Lauren Easton, vice president of corporate communications, told Axios that AP "is a global, fact-based, nonpartisan news organization with thousands of customers around the world who span the political spectrum."

• "If AP journalism wasn't factual and nonpartisan, this wouldn't be the case," she said.
• Easton said AP provides "guidance on issues brought to us by members and customers, and it is up to them what they choose to use. Again, this is guidance. It's not surprising that political parties, organizations or even individuals may disagree with some entries. The Stylebook doesn't align with any particular agenda.""