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

 

Jaclyn Peiser

 and 

Taylor Telford

, 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

Melody Xu, Assistant Campus Editor , 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."

Three billionaires: America’s oligarchy is now fully exposed; The Guardian, February 27, 2025

Robert Reich, The Guardian; Three billionaires: America’s oligarchy is now fully exposed

"One of the unacknowledged advantages of the horrendous era we’ve entered is that it is revealing the putrid connections between great wealth and great power for all to see.

Oligarchs are fully exposed and they are defiant. It’s like hitting the “reveal codes” key on older computers that let you see everything.

On Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, the third-richest person in America, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, announced that the paper’s opinion section would henceforth focus on defending “personal liberties and free markets”.

Anything inconsistent with this view would not be published, according to his statement. “Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

The Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned, as he should have...

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, bought Twitter in 2022, laid off everyone who was filtering out hateful crap on the platform, renamed it X and turned it into a cesspool of lies in support of Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg, the second-richest person, has followed suit, allowing Facebook to emit lies, hate and bigotry in support of Trump’s lies, hate and bigotry.

All three of these men were in the first row at Trump’s inauguration. They, and other billionaires, have now exposed themselves for what they are.

They are the oligarchy. They continue to siphon off the wealth of the nation. They are supporting a tyrant who is promising them tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks that will make them even richer.

They are destroying democracy so they won’t have to worry about “parasites” (as Musk calls people who depend on government assistance) demanding anything more from them.

When billionaires take control of our communication channels, it’s not a win for free speech. It’s a win for their billionaire babble."

‘It’s not unusual’: RFK Jr. downplays largest measles outbreak in decades as cases spread to Kentucky; Independent, February 27, 2025

Josh Marcus, Independent; ‘It’s not unusual’: RFK Jr. downplays largest measles outbreak in decades as cases spread to Kentucky

"During a Trump administration cabinet meeting, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downplayed the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas that has killed a child and resulted in over 120 cases of the disease since January. 

“We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said during the meeting. “Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. In this country last year there were 16. So, it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

He described those hospitalized as part of the outbreak centered near Gaines County as “mainly for quarantine,” though a local official said otherwise...

It’s the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015, all the more notable because the disease was considered eliminated in the U.S. as of 2000 given widespread vaccination."

Consumers are planning a one-day economic blackout on Feb. 28. Here's what to know.; USA TODAY, February 26, 2025

Betty Lin-Fisher, USA TODAY ; Consumers are planning a one-day economic blackout on Feb. 28. Here's what to know.

"Consumers are preparing for a 24-hour economic blackout on Friday, one of several boycotts planned by groups of consumers or activists to protest what they call corporate greed, companies that have rolled back their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and President Donald Trump's efforts to eliminate federal DEI programs since taking office.

On Friday, those groups are encouraging consumers to not spend any money anywhere for one day. If they have spend, they are encouraged to buy from a local business. 

Why do organizers seek a spending boycott?

The organizer of the boycott goes by TheOneCalledJai on Instagram, but his real name is John Schwarz. He told USA TODAY he started the “bold” idea because the time was right and people are frustrated with what he calls corporate greed and other frustrations.  

Professors have told USA TODAY that boycotts can be successful in shaming a company into reversing decisions or taking action, but they don't always work. There needs to be clear actions outlined, they say. But consumers do like being able to take action against something they feel strongly about."

Ohio’s J.D. Vance rebuked by the Pope, denounced by NATO allies, ridiculed for bizarre rant; Ohio Capital Journal, February 25, 2025

Marilou Johanek, Ohio Capital Journal ; Ohio’s J.D. Vance rebuked by the Pope, denounced by NATO allies, ridiculed for bizarre rant

"For a supposed Ivy League intellectual, Vance sure spouts stupidity on the regular: Honestly, you’ve got to be really off base on Catholic theology for the Vatican to correct your twisted take on love with descending priorities as justification for mass deportations. In Vance’s godawful reading of the Christian order of love concept; (to mesh with his political ideology) family, community, and country come first and everyone outside that concentric circle later or not so much. Which puts migrant families outermost from Vance’s construct on brotherly love for me but not thee from outside our borders. 

Francis rejected the VP’s sophomoric theoretical defense of cruel immigration crackdowns as flatly wrong. He urged the misguided millennial to meditate on the parable of the Good Samaritan, “on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” But “American citizens first” nativist Vance has no interest in building a “fraternity open to all,” just an all-white patriarchy focused on baby-making. To that point, he started a holy war (barely a week after inauguration) against charitable organizations across the country that feed, clothe and house refugees and immigrants (i.e., Catholic Charities and Catholic relief groups) by implying they perform their labor of love for federal money — not humanitarian concerns. 

“Devout Catholic” convert Vance went all glib and combative on compassion and care for the “least of these” because they included Brown and Black mothers and fathers and children fleeing horrendous homelands for hope. But upholding the dignity of every human being (native-born or not) as a core tenet of Christianity clashes with the core MAGA mission to degrade, shackle and ship terrified families back to the foreign hellscapes they fled. Vance threw nasty and mean into the mix to look tough on dehumanized “illegals” and scorn mercy. He is a dutiful, if not decent, Trump toady. 

But the swift rebuttals to Vance’s hollow broadsides from the Church and the pope himself only reinforced the veep’s smallness as a smug sycophant slinging ugly. Whatever reputation Vance may have enjoyed in the past as a thoughtful individual with at least a modicum of integrity is long gone. With a brief stint as a venture capitalist, an even briefer stint as Ohio senator and now VP, Vance is heady with power and hubris over his meteoric rise from bending the knee to a man he once derided as “America’s Hitler.” Then Vance went to the Munich Security Conference recently, not to collaborate with NATO allies on mutual security interests and Ukraine, but to turn on them."

Jeff Bezos’s Hypocritical Assertion of Power; The Atlantic, February 26, 2025

Joshua Benton, The Atlantic; 

Jeff Bezos’s Hypocritical Assertion of Power

His decision will only make The Washington Post a weaker institution. 

"But the scale of the hypocrisy on display here is eye-watering, and this decision can only make the Post a weaker institution.

Let’s get the motivation out of the way. This is the same Jeff Bezos who decided to cancel the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election—a move that led more than 250,000 paying Post readers to cancel their subscriptions within days. The same Bezos who flew to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to Donald Trump after the election. The same Bezos whose Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary—the most it had ever paid for a doc, nearly three times what any other studio offered, and more than 70 percent of whichwill go directly into Trump’s pockets. All of that cash seems to have served as a sort of personal seat license for Bezos, earning him a spot right behind the president at the inauguration. The tech aristocracy’s rightward turn is by now a familiar theme of the postelection period, and it doesn’t take much brain power to see today’s announcement as part of the same shift."

After soldier turns to social media, Army fixes barracks issue; Task & Purpose, February 26, 2025

JEFF SCHOGOL,

Task & Purpose; After soldier turns to social media, Army fixes barracks issue

"A soldier in Hawaii who posted online that the air conditioning in his barracks had not worked since January told Task & Purpose that the problem was finally resolved on Tuesday...

The soldier posted on Hots & Cots on Saturday that the air conditioning in Building 356 in Schofield Barracks C Quad, which houses about 150 soldiers, had stopped working on Jan. 30 following a power outage.

This is the latest episode in a growing trend of soldiers turning to online message boards and other services after long waits for service or other quality-of-life issues...

Although the Army has urged soldiers to go through their chain of command and submit work orders to resolve barracks issues, time and time again such problems have not been fixed until soldiers have raised their concerns on online forums such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms."

An AI Maker Was Just Found Liable for Copyright Infringement. What Does This Portend for Content Creators and AI Makers?; The Federalist Society, February 25, 2025

 John Blanton Farmer , The Federalist Society; An AI Maker Was Just Found Liable for Copyright Infringement. What Does This Portend for Content Creators and AI Makers?

"In a case decided on February 11, the makers of generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, lost the first legal battle in the war over whether they commit copyright infringement by using the material of others as training data without permission. The case is called Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc.

If other courts follow this ruling, the cost of building and selling GenAI services will dramatically increase. Such businesses are already losing money.

The ruling could also empower content creators, such as writers, to deny the use of their material to train GenAIs or to demand license fees. Some creators might be unwilling to license use of their material for training AIs due to fear that GenAI will destroy demand for their work."

Watchdog Flags Sheldon Whitehouse for Potential Ethics Violation in Backing Bill That Enriched Wife’s Employer; National Review, February 25, 2025

JAMES LYNCH, National Review; Watchdog Flags Sheldon Whitehouse for Potential Ethics Violation in Backing Bill That Enriched Wife’s Employer

"A watchdog organization is calling for an ethics investigation into Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) for supporting legislation that resulted in nearly $7 million being paid to a firm his wife works for.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed an ethics complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee Monday requesting an investigation into Whitehouse’s votes on legislation that led to $6.9 million in grants to Ocean Conservancy, an environmentalist group his wife Sandra works for.

“Senator Whitehouse advocated and voted for legislation that led to $6.9 million of taxpayer funds being paid to an organization that his wife works for and receives an income from,” said FACT executive director Kendra Arnold.

“It is this type of circular relationship between a Senator and an organization that lobbies and pays his wife a salary that the public is rightfully fed up with. Congressional rules are in place to ensure our taxpayer dollars are going to serve our nation and that our Senators are not behaving in a manner that would call this into question.”...

Senate ethics rules prohibit a lawmaker from using official actions of obtain financial benefits for themselves or their spouse. They also advise Senators to avoid the appearance of impropriety or conduct that reflects unfavorably on the institution.

Ocean Conservancy has paid Sandra Whitehouse $2.6 million directly or through her consulting firm since 2010, tax records show. The firm has denied that Sandra Whitehouse received compensation from the federal funding her husband voted for."

Dying in Darkness: Jeff Bezos Turns Out the Lights in the Washington Post’s Opinion Section; Politico, February 26, 2025

MICHAEL SCHAFFER , Politico; Dying in Darkness: Jeff Bezos Turns Out the Lights in the Washington Post’s Opinion Section

"In personally announcing that he was dramatically re-orienting the editorial line, and in fact wouldn’t even run dissenting views, Bezos added another sharp example to a narrative that represents a grave threat to the Post’s image: The idea that its owner is messing around with the product in order to curry favor with his new pal Donald Trump, who has the power to withhold contracts from Amazon and other Bezos companies.

The paper’s image is not some abstract question for journalism-school professors. It’s a matter of dollars and cents. If readers don’t trust a publication’s name, no amount of Pulitzer-worthy scoops will fix it. For Bezos, a guy who believes that the Post needs to gain a broad-based audience, it’s a baffling blind spot...

Owners may get the final say at publications they own, but the wisest among them have let their newsrooms and editorial boards make their own decisions without fear or favor. That’s to prevent the very impression that Bezos is making — that of a mogul trying to disguise his own predilections as independent thought...

Yet even as leadership talked about amping up readership, the owner personally alienated real and potential readers: first by spiking the endorsement, then by showing up in the line of moguls at Trump’s inauguration and now by declaring that the publication would have one editorial line for all of its contributors. It all made his publication look wimpy, or possibly corrupt.

Instead of being an occasionally fussy repository of mostly mainstream points of view, the venerable publication’s opinion pages now risk looking like a vessel for a very rich owner to curry favor with the man who runs the government. It’s going to be hard to keep that image from sticking to the whole organization — including the non-wimpy, non-corrupt reporting corps that keep digging up scoops on the administration.

Bezos, of all people, should know this: He’s the branding whiz who came up with “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Among many journalists, Wednesday’s bombshell announcement is being debated as a matter of media ethics: Was Bezos within his rights as an owner to call the tune on opinion matters? Or was this type of process meddling a violation of norms that go back at least to the 1950s?...

“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” he added. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”

Sounds good late at night in the dorm room. But does said freedom include, say, the freedom to start a union at an Amazon warehouse? Or run a business without worrying that some monopolistic e-commerce behemoth is going to drive you under? Come to think of it, these sound like great subjects for energetic debate on a pluralistic op-ed page somewhere. Too bad Bezos, instead of embracing the great American history of arguing about freedom, announced that he’s not so keen on debate."

Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell; The Guardian, February 26, 2025

Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian ; Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell

"Owners and publishers of news organizations often exert their will on opinion sections. It would be naive to think otherwise.

But a draconian announcement this week by Jeff Bezos, the Washington Postowner, goes far beyond the norm.

The billionaire declared that only opinions that support “personal liberties” and “free markets” will be welcome in the opinion pages of the Post.

“Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” he added.

The paper’s top opinion editor, David Shipley, couldn’t get on board with those restrictions. He immediately – and appropriately – resigned.

Especially in the light of the billionaire’s other blatant efforts to cozy up to Donald Trump, Bezos’s move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization he bought in 2013...

What is clear is that Bezos no longer wants to own an independent news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.

It’s appalling. And, if you care about the role of the press in America’s democracy, it’s tragic.

“What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at the Post,” Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor until 2021 and the author of the 2023 memoir Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post, told me in an email Wednesday.

“I have always been grateful for how he stood up for the Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interest,” Baron said. “Now, I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”...

This outrageous move will enrage them. I foresee a mass subscriber defection from an outlet already deep in red ink; that must be something businessman Bezos is willing to live with.

He must also be willing to live with hypocrisy.

“Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” Baron pointed out, recalling that it was only weeks ago when the Post described itself in an internal mission statement as intended for “all of America”.

“Now,” Baron noted, “its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.”

It’s all about getting on board with Trump, to whose inauguration Bezos – through Amazon, the company he co-founded – contributed a million dollars. That allowed him a prime seat, along with others of his oligarchical ilk."