Yoga classes resume at San Diego beach as court says they are ‘protected speech’; The Guardian, June 6, 2025

Dani Anguiano and agencies, The Guardian ; Yoga classes resume at San Diego beach as court says they are ‘protected speech’

"oga classes are back on at San Diego beaches this week after a federal appeals court ruled that a city ordinance restricting such activities was unconstitutional and that teaching yoga was “protected speech”.

The three-judge panel of the US ninth circuit court of appeals on Wednesday overruled a San Diego judge and decided in favor of two instructors who had sued over a law that San Diego passed in 2024 banning yoga classes of four or more people at shoreline parks and beaches.

“Because the ordinance targets teaching yoga, it plainly implicates [the instructors’] first amendment right to speak,” the ruling stated, finding that the ordinance violated the instructors’ rights...

Outdoor yoga is a service to those who are disabled or cannot afford yoga classes elsewhere, said Pease.

“It is a popular thing here. We’re a beach community, and it’s a way for people to access yoga that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to,” Pease said."

A Comprehensive Accounting of Trump’s Culture of Corruption; The New York Times, June 7, 2025

 The Editorial Board, The New York Times; A Comprehensive Accounting of Trump’s Culture of Corruption

"The message seemed obvious enough: People who make Mr. Trump richer regularly receive favorable treatment from the government he runs.

The cryptocurrency industry is perhaps the starkest example of the culture of corruption in his second term. He and his relatives directly benefit from the sale of their cryptocurrency by receiving a cut of the investment. Even if the price of the coins later falls and investors lose money, the Trumps can continue to benefit by receiving a commission on future sales. Forbes magazine estimates that he made about $1 billion in cryptocurrency in the past nine months, about one-sixth of his net worth...

The self-enrichment of the second Trump administration is different from old-fashioned corruption. There is no evidence that Mr. Trump has received direct bribes, nor is it clear that he has agreed to specific policy changes in exchange for cash. Nonetheless, he is presiding over a culture of corruption. He and his family have created several ways for people to enrich them — and government policy then changes in ways that benefit those who have helped the Trumps profit. Often Mr. Trump does not even try to hide the situation. As the historian Matthew Dallek recently put it, “Trump is the most brazenly corrupt national politician in modern times, and his openness about it is sui generis.” He is proud of his avarice, wearing it as a sign of success and savvy.

This culture is part of Mr. Trump’s larger efforts to weaken American democracy and turn the federal government into an extension of himself. He has pushed the interests of the American people to the side, in favor of his personal interests. His actions reduce an already shaky public faith in government. By using the power of the people for personal gain, he degrades that power for any other purpose. He stains the reputation of the United States, which has long stood out as a place where confidence in the rule of law fosters confidence in the economy and financial markets. This country was not previously known as an executive kleptocracy."

They are not good at this: Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.; The Washington Post, June 6, 2025

Dana Milbank , The Washington Post; They are not good at this: Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.

"Nearly five months into this reign of error, the mistakes are multiplying. It becomes more obvious each week that Trump and his aides are just not good at this governing thing...

Trump, at a town hall this spring, was asked what mistakes he had made in his first 100 days. He was silent for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you, that’s the toughest question I can have because I don’t really believe I’ve made any mistakes.” The audience laughed.

Even by then, the administration had already racked up an impressive catalogue of maladministration. (Mother Jones published an entertaining list of them.)"

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."

Former Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden speaks out about her firing by Trump; CBS, June 6, 2025

CBS; Former Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden speaks out about her firing by Trump

"In this preview of an interview with national correspondent Robert Costa to be broadcast on "CBS Sunday Morning" June 8, Dr. Carla Hayden, the former Librarian of Congress fired by President Trump last month, talks for the first time about her abrupt dismissal, and the challenges facing her former institution – and libraries nationwide."

Pride Cometh Before The Fall; The Assembly, January 6, 2025

Jessica Wakeman , The Assembly; Pride Cometh Before The Fall

"Anti-gay activists had launched the Hide the Pride campaign a few years earlier. It’s a national effort encouraging people to disappear LGBTQ materials in public libraries during Pride Month so others cannot borrow them. In Burnsville, participants carried the crusade well beyond June. Edwards said they were still finding LGBTQ books hidden throughout the library for the next year...

Librarians also noticed that five people who weren’t regular patrons had borrowed an unusually large number of books on LGBTQ subjects—another Hide the Pride tactic. “It really made me sad,” said Edwards, who has worked at the branch for seven years. “Mostly because they were trying to hide things from people who might need them, and doing it out of some misguided sense of morality.” ...

Each branch strives to provide materials that meet the needs of its patrons. And for nearly a decade, all four AMY branches assembled Pride Month displays. While there have been complaints in other counties in the past, AMY Director Amber Westall Briggs said she was able to alleviate concerns after speaking with local leaders. Additionally, branch’s obscenity guidelines are posted on its website.

Briggs said librarians use a concept called “mirrors and windows,” which is the idea that children should “have a mirror in which the book reflects themselves, so that they see themselves and their family and their community, and then also a window so they can see a completely different cultural experience.”

“Our collections represent the community that we are a part of, but they also have to be diversified to represent a larger world,” Briggs explained. “That’s what a library is.”"

UK government signals it will not force tech firms to disclose how they train AI; The Guardian, June 6, 2025

 Eleni Courea and Dan Milmo, The Guardian ; UK government signals it will not force tech firms to disclose how they train AI

"Opponents of the plans have warned that even if the attempts to insert clauses into the data bill fail, the government could be challenged in the courts over the proposed changes.

The consultation on copyright changes, which is due to produce its findings before the end of the year, contains four options: to let AI companies use copyrighted work without permission, alongside an option for artists to “opt out” of the process; to leave the situation unchanged; to require AI companies to seek licences for using copyrighted work; and to allow AI firms to use copyrighted work with no opt-out for creative companies and individuals.

The technology secretary, Peter Kyle, has said the copyright-waiver-plus-opt-out scenario is no longer the government’s preferred option, but Kidron’s amendments have attempted to head off that option by effectively requiring tech companies to seek licensing deals for any content that they use to train their AI models."

How AI and copyright turned into a political nightmare for Labour; Politico.eu, June 4, 2025

 JOSEPH BAMBRIDGE , Politico.eu; How AI and copyright turned into a political nightmare for Labour

"The Data (Use and Access Bill) has ricocheted between the Commons and the Lords in an extraordinarily long incidence of ping-pong, with both Houses digging their heels in and a frenzied lobbying battle on all sides."

Dismissed by DEI: Trump’s Purge Made Black Women With Stable Federal Jobs an “Easy Target”; ProPublica, June 4, 2025

J. David McSwane , ProPublica; Dismissed by DEI: Trump’s Purge Made Black Women With Stable Federal Jobs an “Easy Target”

"Her experience is part of a largely untold story unfolding as Trump dismantles civil rights and inclusion programs across government: Many of those being forced out, like Crowner, are Black women who spent decades building a career of government service, only to see those careers shattered in a sudden purge.

ProPublica interviewed Crowner and two other career civil servants, all Black women, who are among the hundreds of fired federal employees represented in a legal action brought against the Trump administration. Filed in March with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board by legal teams including the Washington branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, the case contends the administration violated the First Amendment rights of employees by targeting them for holding views perceived as contrary to the Trump 2.0 doctrine.

What has received less attention is the suit’s claim that the administration also violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They claim the DEI purge disproportionately affected those who aren’t white men."

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder accuses corporate America of appeasement over DEI; Financial Times, June 6, 2025

Madeleine Speed , Financial Times; Ben & Jerry’s co-founder accuses corporate America of appeasement over DEI

"Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen said corporate America’s retreat from efforts to boost diversity and inclusion amounted to “appeasement”, as the campaigning businessman claimed consumers cared more than ever about corporate “purpose”. 

Companies ranging from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, to Walt Disney and McDonald’s, have scaled back diversity targets or policies under pressure from US President Donald Trump, who is waging war on “illegal and immoral” diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

Cohen told the Financial Times in an interview that he saw the widespread corporate retreats as “appeasement” that “just encourages bullies”. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The Ben & Jerry’s co-founder added that the backtracking was indicative that while companies were notionally doing DEI they “didn’t really believe in it”."

The Trump Administration Is Spending $2 Million to Figure Out Whether DEI Causes Plane Crashes; The Atlantic, June 5, 2025

 Isaac Stanley-Becker , The Atlantic; The Trump Administration Is Spending $2 Million to Figure Out Whether DEI Causes Plane Crashes

"The FAA’s parent agency agreed in March to spend as much as $2.1 million on an investigation into DEI policies and their impact on recent safety incidents. To conduct that investigation, the Trump administration has turned to Alex Spiro, a former prosecutor and a prominent defense attorney who has represented Elon Musk, among other billionaires and celebrities.

I obtained the “scope of work” document for Spiro’s investigation, which is marked “privileged” and “confidential” and has not been previously reported. It shows how the president’s musings—his accusations, he said at the time, were based on “very strong opinions and ideas”—translate into taxpayer-funded government action. It also reveals the cost of the administration’s fixation on DEI at a time when the FAA is struggling to hire and retain air-traffic controllers, linchpins of aviation safety, and when Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is seeking funds to overhaul the country’s antiquated air-traffic-control system. Recent radar outages at Newark Liberty International Airport have caused severe flight delays and spotlighted just how deep technology and staffing problems run.

The investigation by Spiro, a partner at the elite firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, is due to conclude soon, a person familiar with the dynamics told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the work. Contrary to what Trump may hope, it’s not expected to find that programs aimed at ensuring representation for women and people of color are responsible for this year’s string of aviation disasters, including the January crash at Reagan airport, which killed 67 people and prompted Trump’s tirade against DEI."

Death is not the end! From the new robot Walt Disney to Mountainhead, movies are fuelled by immortality; The Guardian, June 6, 2025

 Stuart Heritage, The Guardian; Death is not the end! From the new robot Walt Disney to Mountainhead, movies are fuelled by immortality

"The catalyst is the recently announced Disneyland show Walt Disney – A Magical Life, which will feature as its star attraction an animatronic recreation of Walt Disney. This, according to Josh D’Amaro, Disney experiences chair, will give visitors a sense of “what it would have been like to be in Walt’s presence”. However, Disney’s granddaughter Joanna Miller is convinced that this is not what Disney the man would have wanted. In a Facebook post that was stinging enough to earn her an audience with the Disney CEO, Bob Iger, Miller said Disney was “dehumanising” her grandfather. “The idea of a robotic Grampa to give the public a feeling of who the living man was just makes no sense,” she wrote. “It would be an impostor, people are not replaceable. You could never get the casualness of his talking, interacting with the camera, [or] his excitement to show and tell people about what is new at the park. You cannot add life to one empty of a soul or essence of the man.”

As recently as a decade ago, this would have been the stuff of bad science fiction – a woman worried that a multinational corporation is bringing a dead relative back to life against his wishes, like a warped nonconsensual Westworld – but no more. As an entertainment concept, post-humanism feels worryingly current.

After all, the subject forms the backbone of Jesse Armstrong’s new film Mountainhead. Set in a world of bro-y tech billionaires that is only half a degree removed from our own – one in which AI-created misinformation has already caused society to start to erode – the inciting force of all the dark chaos that unfolds is Steve Carell’s character, who finds himself with a pressing need and an increasingly tight deadline to become transhuman. In other words, his body is failing and only technology can help him ward off the inevitability of death.

And this is no flight of fancy. As recently as this year, scholars have been sounding alarms about Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant company. In a Politico article illuminating the growing tension between the religious right and Musk’s views on extending human life beyond normal mortality, Alexander Thomas, of the University of East London, pointed out that transhumanism ultimately means that “the 8 billion people alive today simply don’t matter – genocide and wars are mere ripples, as long as some survive, and Musk is the one that needs to survive”."

Do AI systems have moral status?; Brookings, June 4, 2025

 Mark MacCarthy, Brookings; Do AI systems have moral status?

"In March, researchers announced that a large language model (LLM) passed the famous Turing test, a benchmark designed by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950 to evaluate whether computers could think. This follows research from last year suggesting that the time is now for artificial intelligence (AI) labs to take the welfare of their AI models into account."

Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining; The Guardian, June 2, 2025

Richard Luscombe , The Guardian; Trump officials open up millions of acres in Alaska to drilling and mining

"Millions of acres of Alaska wilderness will lose federal protections and be exposed to drilling and mining in the Trump administration’s latest move to prioritize energy production over the shielding of the US’s open spaces.

Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said on Monday that the government would reverse an order issued by Joe Biden in December that banned drilling in the remote 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), the New York Times reported.

The former president’s executive order was part of a package of protections for large areas of Alaska, some elements of which the state was challenging in court when he left office in January."

Antarctica ‘too wild for humans to rule’, says Shackleton medal winner; The Guardian, June 7, 2025

Donna Ferguson , The Guardian; Antarctica ‘too wild for humans to rule’, says Shackleton medal winner

"Cormac Cullinan has a dream. A dream, he says, that will “change how humanity sees, understands and relates to Antarctica”. The vast frozen continent – home to emperor and Adélie penguins, leopard and Ross seals, and feeding grounds for orcas, beaked whales and albatrosses – should be recognised as an autonomous legal entity “at least equivalent to a country”, says the environmental lawyer.

And this week that dream became one step closer to reality as judges awarded Cullinan the Shackleton medal for the protection of the polar regions.

The prestigious prize, worth £10,000, shines a light on people who have shown “courage, determination, ingenuity and leadership” in their work to protect the polar regions, indicating Cullinan’s radical plan to adopt and implement an Antarctica Declaration is gaining momentum."

Holmes Rolston III, Pioneer of Environmental Ethics, Dies at 92; The New York Times, June 2, 2025

John Motyka, The New York Times; Holmes Rolston III, Pioneer of Environmental Ethics, Dies at 92

"A life-defining moment for the environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III came when he was forced out as pastor of the Presbyterian church in rural Rockbridge Baths, Va., in 1965.

It was a painful setback, prompted by his passion for science and the time off he took for hiking jaunts in the Shenandoah hills — pursuits that did not square with his conservative congregation’s view of a minister’s role.

But the dismissal propelled him on to a restless intellectual and spiritual journey, with stops as a trained theologian and a natural historian, until, as a newly minted philosophy professor, he posed a question that had been unasked or routinely dismissed since before Plato: Does nature have value?

His answer — that nature has intrinsic value apart from that derived from human perspectives — appeared in a groundbreaking essay in 1975 that launched his career as the globally recognized “father” of environmental ethics. Moreover, in tune with rising public concern about land, air, water and wildlife, his thesis heralded what the philosopher Allen Carlson called the “environmental turn” in philosophy after millenniums of neglect...

Professor Rolston’s essay “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” was published in the prestigious journal Ethics. It was the first major article in a philosophical journal to accord value to nature."

Lack of oversight may be why younger lawyers use fake AI citations; ABA Journal, June 1, 2025

 DAVID WEISENFELD , ABA Journal; Lack of oversight may be why younger lawyers use fake AI citations

"Under Rule 5.1 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, a partner in a law firm and a lawyer who—individually or together with other lawyers—has managerial authority in a law firm must make “reasonable efforts” to ensure all lawyers in the firm conform to the Rules of Professional Conduct.

But what are reasonable efforts in the age of generative AI, which has seen lawyers being sanctioned for citing fictitious cases?...

In the 2024 Massachusetts case Smith v. Farwell, a lawyer for the plaintiff filed legal memoranda that cited and relied on fictitious cases. Acknowledging his ignorance of AI and disclaiming any intention to mislead the court, the lawyer attributed the inclusion of the cases to an associate and two recent law school graduates who had not yet passed the bar who worked on the brief.

The judge credited the attorney’s contrition, but he said it did not exonerate him of all fault and ordered him to pay a $2,000 sanction.

Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse, a lack of technical knowledge does not justify any sort of failure to supervise, according to Lucian Pera, a partner with Adams and Reese."

Opinion: A Culture War is Brewing Over Moral Concern for AI; Undark, June 5, 2025

CONOR PURCELL , Undark; Opinion: A Culture War is Brewing Over Moral Concern for AI

"SOONER THAN we think, public opinion is going to diverge along ideological lines around rights and moral consideration for artificial intelligence systems. The issue is not whether AI (such as chatbots and robots) will develop consciousness or not, but that even the appearance of the phenomenon will split society across an already stressed cultural divide.

Already, there are hints of the coming schism. A new area of research, which I recently reported on for Scientific American, explores whether the capacity for pain could serve as a benchmark for detecting sentience, or self-awareness, in AI. New ways of testing for AI sentience are emerging, and a recent pre-print study on a sample of large language models, or LLMs, demonstrated a preference for avoiding pain.

Results like this naturally lead to some important questions, which go far beyond the theoretical. Some scientists are now arguing that such signs of suffering or other emotion could become increasingly common in AI and force us humans to consider the implications of AI consciousness (or perceived consciousness) for society."

AI firms say they can’t respect copyright. These researchers tried.; The Washington Post, June 5, 2025

 Analysis by Nitasha Tiku 

with research by 

Andrea Jiménez

 and 

Will Oremus

, The Washington Post; AI firms say they can’t respect copyright. These researchers tried.

"A group of more than two dozen AI researchers have found that they could build a massive eight-terabyte dataset using only text that was openly licensed or in public domain. They tested the dataset quality by using it to train a 7 billion parameter language model, which performed about as well as comparable industry efforts, such as Llama 2-7B, which Meta released in 2023.

A paper published Thursday detailing their effort also reveals that the process was painstaking, arduous and impossible to fully automate.

The group built an AI model that is significantly smaller than the latest offered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, but their findings appear to represent the biggest, most transparent and rigorous effort yet to demonstrate a different way of building popular AI tools.

That could have implications for the policy debate swirling around AI and copyright.

The paper itself does not take a position on whether scraping text to train AI is fair use.

That debate has reignited in recent weeks with a high-profile lawsuit and dramatic turns around copyright law and enforcement in both the U.S. and U.K."

The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore; NPR, June 6, 2025

 Andrew Limbong, NPR ; The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore

"The U.S. Copyright Office is normally a quiet place. It mostly exists to register materials for copyright and advise members of Congress on copyright issues. Experts and insiders used words like "stable" and "sleepy" to describe the agency. Not anymore...

Inside the AI report

That big bombshell report on generative AI and copyright can be summed up like this – in some instances, using copyrighted material to train AI models could count as fair use. In other cases, it wouldn't.

The conclusion of the report says this: "Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market."

"It's very even keeled," said Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, a group that represents artists and publishers pushing for stronger copyright laws.

Kupferschmid said the report avoids generalizations and takes arguments on a case-by-case basis.

"Perlmutter was beloved, no matter whether you agreed with her or not, because she did the hard work," Kupferschmid said. "She always was very thoughtful and considered all these different viewpoints."

It remains to be seen how the report will be used in the dozens of legal cases over copyright and AI usage."

If Trump cuts funding to NPR and PBS, rural America will pay a devastating price; The Guardian, June 6, 2024

Margaret Sullivan , The Guardian; If Trump cuts funding to NPR and PBS, rural America will pay a devastating price

"With the sharp decline of the local newspaper business over the past 20 years, many parts of America have turned into what experts refer to as “news deserts”. These are places that have almost no sources of credible local reporting.

As local newspapers have shuttered or withered – at a rate of more than two every week – news deserts have grown. The effects are sobering. People who live in news deserts become more polarized in their political views and less engaged in their communities.

One of the foundations of democracy itself – truth – begins to disappear. People turn to social media for information and lies flow freely with nothing to serve as a reality check.

Right now, many small and rural communities that are on the brink of becoming news deserts do still have access to public media – particularly to National Public Radio’s network of member radio stations, which employ dedicated local reporters.

But the Trump administration’s new effort targeting public radio and television is a serious threat...

Voters – especially those in rural areas, small towns and red states – should let their elected representatives know that they need public radio and television to continue. That public media may even be their lifeline."

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."

‘Andor’ Shows How a Resistance Is Built, One Brick at a Time; The New York Times, April 23, 2025

James Poniewozik , The New York Times; ‘Andor’ Shows How a Resistance Is Built, One Brick at a Time

"The conflicts too may seem familiar, even more so as the second season unfolds. Imperial troops search for the “undocumented” amid a security panic that is manufactured — and amplified by media outlets — to justify a crackdown. The Empire disappears people to prison gulags with no hope of return. It bullies a small territory, undermining its autonomy to gain control of valuable natural resources. Senators weigh whether it is safe to speak out against the growing civil-liberties violations.

You could see this as Gilroy and company importing current events into the “Star Wars” galaxy. But you could also see it as current events repeating historical patterns that — swashbuckling and adorably memeable aliens aside — “Star Wars” has been concerned with since its beginning.

“A New Hope” hit theaters in 1977, a popcorn blend of Bicentennial rebel spirit and post-1960s antiauthoritarianism, about a feathered-haired farm boy flooring the pedal on his space hot rod and sticking it to the Man right in the exhaust port. As George Lucas said in a 2005 interview, he conceived his films in the Nixon and Vietnam years as a way of wrestling with the question, “How do democracies get turned into dictatorships?”...

In an age of copycat I.P. cash grabs, “Andor” doesn’t merely echo its source material: It also retroactively improves it. Sometimes, “Andor” suggests, the long process of liberation is harder than bulls-eyeing womp rats in your T-16 and less glamorous than a lightsaber duel. Sometimes it simply means grabbing a brick. And sometimes it means becoming one."

‘Andor’ Is Not the Resistance You’re Looking For; The New York Times, April 22, 2025

 Gita Jackson, The New York Times ; ‘Andor’ Is Not the Resistance You’re Looking For

"“Star Wars” has always been political. When the main thrust of the narrative is about rebels rising up against empire, that’s simply hard to avoid. “Andor,” a Disney+ streaming series that premiered in 2022, wears its politics openly: The show is about the brutal sacrifices people make, or are forced to make, in resistance to authoritarianism. As the new season begins streaming on Tuesday, it seems especially prescient...

In the struggle against authoritarianism in real life, many of us are like that, moved to action even before we know what we truly believe. If nothing else, “Andor” visualizes a simple truth that I try to remember when the news is grim: There are more of us than there are of them."