TPM will have a new editor and a new reporter next week. This is very exciting for us, allowing us to expand our coverage capacity and, hopefully, reach new audiences during what is a wild moment — both for democracy and for journalism — with new stories and unprecedented events flying at us by the hour.
Continue reading “TPM Adds Two New Members To Our Team”Why Is Tom Homan Going Full Fidel?
“Border Czar” Tom Homan has been, along with Stephen Miller, the public face of Trump border enforcement and anti-immigration politics going back to President Trump’s first administration, when he was briefly acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But in recent days, in a series of increasingly belligerent and menacing interviews, he’s appeared in either faux military uniforms or, in most cases, civilian garb clearly meant to appear like military-style fatigues along with a ever-changing run of camo or olive drab baseball caps.
Continue reading “Why Is Tom Homan Going Full Fidel?”Digging Into Trump’s Attack on the State of California
National Guard troops are mobilized fairly frequently for domestic purposes, usually during natural disasters. Having them federalized isn’t that uncommon. But having them federalized over the objections of a state’s civil authorities is extremely uncommon and hasn’t happened in more than half a century. As this was unfolding over the weekend, I knew generally that this had last happened under LBJ as a part of enforcement of federal law during the Civil Rights Era. But I didn’t remember that the last time was specifically during the Selma-to-Montgomery March in March 1965. I was reminded of this this morning by a piece in NOTUS. This 2016 piece in Politico gives the specific details of how and why the federalization took place, which are interesting in themselves. A federal judge ruled that the march was protected under the First Amendment and that the state was responsible for ensuring its safety. Wallace refused to use state police power to do that, thus deliberately forcing Johnson’s hands (Johnson was pissed), figuring that he would gain politically if federal troops got into violent in encounters with anti-civil rights counter-protestors. As it happened, the larger spectacle was a key part of building momentum for the passage of the Voting Rights Act that August.
Continue reading “Digging Into Trump’s Attack on the State of California”Trump Has Long Been Itching To Use The Military On American Streets
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
What A Weekend
We come into the new week with more weekend news to process than we’ve had since February or March, so I’m going to jump right into it. I tried to condense it as much as possible, grouping like things together, in roughly descending order of importance. One note: I wrote extensively about the return of Abrego Garcia on Friday so I didn’t include it here given the volume of other news, but we’ll come back to this, especially the news that the criminal division chief in Nashville resigned over the Abrego Garcia indictment. In the meantime, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a flaming retort last night to the Trump DOJ’s attempt to end the original case and sidestep the contempt of court proceeding entirely.
Civil Unrest As A Pretext For Presidential Lawlessness
We can’t talk about the protests in Los Angeles against mass deportation and President Trump itching to send in the military without a quick reminder that we all knew there was an extremely high risk that if Trump were re-elected he would provoke civil unrest in order to use it as a pretext for lawless actions he was already determined to take.
It’s too early to say whether this particular incident ends up being the defining episode of the erosion of the line between the military and domestic law enforcement. But it’s understandable why everyone has a hair trigger about Trump sending in the National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
Two things in particular:
- The President’s memo was concerningly open-ended. It didn’t specify Los Angeles or California; it applies anywhere. It empowered the defense secretary “to employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary.” It broadly defined protests as rebellion: “To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a big deal over the weekend about a detachment of 500 Marines at Twentynine Palms being ready to provide backup to the National Guard.
A former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau told Fox News: “This is an inappropriate use of the National Guard and is not warranted.”
National Guard Call Up: Legal Analysis And Discussion
The most astute analysis:
- Law professor Chris Mirasola, who used to work in the DoD Office of General Counsel, unpacks the presidential memo.
- The NYT’s Charlie Savage on the various legal issues implicated.
- Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck on what the presidential proclamation did and did not do and why it remains alarming.
- A helpful thread from Carrie A. Lee, a former associate professor at the US Army War College:
Quote Of The Day
“I’ll say it over and over again; you can’t build the mass deportation machine without first building the police state machine.”–Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council
‘He Eats His Hate’
ABC News suspended veteran newsman Terry Moran for a blistering tweet about White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Here’s the tweet:
IMPORTANT
A great visualization from Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell on the people Trump doesn’t want to exist:
This is part of a broader campaign to delete the statistical and visual evidence of undesirables, or at least those who may not fit into President Donald Trump’s conception of the new American “golden age.” Entire demographics are being scrubbed from records of both America’s past and present — including people of color, transgender people, women, immigrants and people with disabilities. They are now among America’s “missing persons.”
The Purges: FBI Retribution Edition
The Trump administration has forced out two senior FBI officials and punished a third for his friendship with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, the longtime Trump target.
Two Time Losers
Damian Williams, the former U.S. attorney in Manhattan, is leaving Paul Weiss, which cut a deal with President Trump, and joining Jenner & Block, which in contrast sued over Trump’s executive order against it and won.
Proud Boys Sue Over Jan. 6
Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola – all convicted in the Jan. 6 attack then given clemency by President Trump – have sued prosecutors and FBI agents in federal court in Florida over their prosecutions, demanding $100 million in punitive damages.
A Mother Lode Of Extremist Materials
An alleged series of thefts of combat equipment from an Army Ranger regiment in Washington state led to the arrest earlier this month of two veterans at a home full of Nazi and white supremacy paraphernalia and a stockpile of stolen weapons, the NYT reports.
What Happened To The ADL?
The Forward: ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt compared pro-Palestinian student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in an address to Republican attorneys general.
DOGE Watch
- A 6-3 Supreme Court granted DOGE access to confidential Social Security records, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasting the decision in a written dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
- Over the objections of the three liberal justices, the Supreme Court cut back the scope of discovery the watchdog group CREW can seek from DOGE.
- Frank Bisignano, the new head of the Social Security Administration, declared himself to be “fundamentally a DOGE person.”
Trump’s Ban On AP Reinstated
In a widely panned decision, two Trump appointees on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals largely reinstated the Trump White House’s ban on the Associated Press in retaliation for not using “Gulf of America” in its stories.
Federal Judges Are Begging Us to Pay Attention
Adam Bonica used computational text analysis to examine judicial decisions in nearly 300 cases involving the Trump administration and found what he called an “institutional chorus of constitutional alarm“:
The sharp language from the bench isn’t judicial activism; it’s the sound of democracy’s defense mechanisms under unprecedented stress. These interventions span the political spectrum. Judges were responding not to partisan disagreement but to actions that crossed fundamental legal and constitutional lines.
The alarm is being sounded by conservative and liberal judges in a range of cases, many of which you’ll be familiar with from Morning Memo.
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Los Angeles Guard Deployment Raises Specter Of Kent State
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Responding to street protests in Los Angeles against federal immigration enforcement raids, President Donald Trump ordered 2,000 soldiers from the California National Guard into the city on June 7, 2025, to protect agents carrying out the raids. Trump also authorized the Pentagon to dispatch regular U.S. troops “as necessary” to support the California National Guard.
The president’s orders did not specify rules of engagement about when and how force could be used. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who did not request the National Guard and asserted it was not needed, criticized the president’s decision as “inflammatory” and warned it “will only escalate tensions.”
I am a historian who has written several books about the Vietnam War, one of the most divisive episodes in our nation’s past. My recent book, “Kent State: An American Tragedy,” examines a historic clash on May 4, 1970, between anti-war protesters and National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio.
The confrontation escalated into violence: troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine others, including one who was paralyzed for life.
In my view, dispatching California National Guard troops against civilian protesters in Los Angeles chillingly echoes decisions and actions that led to the tragic Kent State shooting. Some active-duty units, as well as National Guard troops, are better prepared today than in 1970 to respond to riots and violent protests – but the vast majority of their training and their primary mission remains to fight, to kill, and to win wars.
Federalizing the Guard
The National Guard is a force of state militias under the command of governors. It can be federalized by the president during times of national emergency, or for deployment on combat missions overseas. Guardsmen train for one weekend per month and two weeks every summer.
Typically, the Guard has been deployed to deal with natural disasters and support local police responses to urban unrest. Examples include riots in Detroit in 1967, Washington DC in 1968, Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992, and Minneapolis and other cities in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.
Presidents rarely deploy National Guard troops without state governors’ consent. The main modern exceptions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, when Southern governors defied federal court orders to desegregate schools in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. In each case, the federal government sent troops to protect Black students from crowds of white protesters.
The 1807 Insurrection Act grants presidents authority to use active-duty troops or National Guard forces to restore order within the United States. President Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act. Instead, he relied on Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, a narrower federal statute that allows the president to mobilize the National Guard in situations including “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Trump did not limit his order to Los Angeles. He authorized armed forces to protect immigration enforcement operations at any “locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur.”
The standoff at Kent State
The war in Vietnam had grown increasingly unpopular by early 1970, but protests intensified on April 30 when President Richard Nixon authorized expanding the conflict into Cambodia. At Kent State, after a noontime anti-war rally on campus on May 1, alcohol-fueled students harassed passing motorists in town and smashed storefront windows that night. On May 2, anti-war protesters set fire to the building where military officers trained Kent State students enrolled in the armed forces’ Reserve Officer Training Corps program.
In response, Republican Governor Jim Rhodes dispatched National Guard troops, against the advice of university and many local officials, who understood the mood in the town of Kent and on campus far better than Rhodes did. County prosecutor Ron Kane had vehemently warned Rhodes that deploying the National Guard could spark conflict and lead to fatalities.
Nonetheless, Rhodes – who was trailing in an impending Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat – struck the pose of a take-charge leader who wasn’t going to be pushed around by a long-haired rabble. “We’re going to put a stop to this!” he shouted, pounding the table at a press conference in Kent on May 3.
Hundreds of National Guard troops were deployed across town and on campus. University officials announced that further rallies were banned. Nonetheless, on May 4, some 2,000 to 3,000 students gathered on the campus Commons for another anti-war rally. They were met by 96 National Guardsmen, led by eight officers.
There was confrontation in the air as student anger over Nixon’s expansion of the war blended with resentment over the Guard’s presence. Protesters chanted antiwar slogans, shouted epithets at the Guardsmen and made obscene gestures.
‘Fire in the air!’
The Guardsmen sent to Kent State had no training in de-escalating tension or minimizing the use of force. Nonetheless, their commanding officer that day, Ohio Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General Robert Canterbury, decided to use them to break up what the Department of Justice later deemed a legal assembly.
In my view, it was a reckless judgment that inflamed an already volatile situation. Students started showering the greatly outnumbered Guardsmen with rocks and other objects. In violation of Ohio Army National Guard regulations, Canterbury neglected to warn the students that he had ordered Guardsmens’ rifles loaded with live ammunition.
As tension mounted, Canterbury failed to adequately supervise his increasingly fearful troops – a cardinal responsibility of the commanding officer on the scene. This fundamental failure of leadership increased confusion and resulted in a breakdown of fire control discipline – officers’ responsibility to maintain tight control over their troops’ discharge of weapons.
When protesters neared the Guardsmen, platoon sergeant Mathew McManus shouted “Fire in the air!” in a desperate attempt to prevent bloodshed. McManus intended for troops to shoot above the students’ heads to warn them off. But some Guardsmen, wearing gas masks that made it hard to hear amid the noise and confusion, only heard or reacted to the first word of McManus’ order, and fired at the students.
The troops had not been trained to fire warning shots, which was contrary to National Guard regulations. And McManus had no authority to issue an order to fire if officers were nearby, as they were.
Many National Guardsmen who were at Kent State on May 4 later questioned why they had been deployed there. “Loaded rifles and fixed bayonets are pretty harsh solutions for students exercising free speech on an American campus,” one of them told an oral history interviewer. Another plaintively asked me in a 2023 interview, “Why would you put soldiers trained to kill on a university campus to serve a police function?”
A fighting force
National Guard equipment and training have improved significantly in the decades since Kent State. But Guardsmen are still military troops who are fundamentally trained to fight, not to control crowds.
In 2020, then-National Guard Bureau Chief General Joseph Lengyel told reporters that “the civil unrest mission is one of the most difficult and dangerous missions … in our domestic portfolio.”
In my view, the tragedy of Kent State shows how critical it is for authorities to be thoughtful in responding to protests, and extremely cautious in deploying military troops to deal with them. The application of force is inherently unpredictable, often uncontrollable, and can lead to fatal mistakes and lasting human suffering. And while protests sometimes break rules, they may not be disruptive or harmful enough to merit responding with force.
Aggressive displays of force, in fact, can heighten tensions and worsen situations. Conversely, research shows that if protesters perceive authorities are acting with restraint and treating them with respect, they are more likely to remain nonviolent. The shooting at Kent State demonstrated that using military force in these situations is an option fraught with grave risks.
This is an updated version of an article originally published Aug. 27, 2024. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
More Thoughts on the Unfolding Crisis in CA
In my first post I wanted to make clear the specifics of what was happening with the National Guard. The President has the power to federalize the State National Guards. I wanted to make sure everyone knew that this is not a power Trump made up. It’s within his power and authority. As far as I know the last time this was done over the objection of state’s governor was during the Civil Rights era to enforce federal civil rights law. But every Presidential power can be abused and this is the one perhaps most liable to abuse. This whole situation is a definitional abuse of power. It is a wholly manufactured crisis. The President has the authority to federalize the National Guard. But the powers he takes from that decision are far from unlimited.
Continue reading “More Thoughts on the Unfolding Crisis in CA”Breaking Out of Los Angeles
This is serious enough to break in on the weekend.
You’ve seen the intentionally provocative ICE raids in LA and the protests spawned by them. A short time ago White House immigration Czar Tom Homan said he was sending in the National Guard to control the situation. It wasn’t clear what he meant since the California National Guard reports to the Governor of California. The President has to nationalize the Guard to put it under his command. About fifteen minutes ago Gov. Newsom tweeted out a statement that the President is in fact nationalizing the California State Guard. The exact words from his statement were “the federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers.” But that’s clear what that means.
Continue reading “Breaking Out of Los Angeles”House GOP Fears Trump-Elon Breakup Might Get In ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill’s Way
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
House Republicans are hoping the public breakup between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk does not last very long for the sake of the “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill.
Thursday’s news cycle was dominated by the clash between the President and the world’s richest man and their petty attacks on each other — which included mentions of Jeffrey Epstein, impeachment, black-eye makeup, as well as a back and forth over the contents of the reconciliation package the House recently passed.
The showdown between the two appears to have House Republicans worried that more unwanted attention — pointing to the poison pills in the House package — would be on the reconciliation bill they are calling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As we’ve been reporting for some time, House Republicans have attempted to disguise their sweeping cuts to the social safety net by referring to the changes as “reforms” like enacting work requirements for Medicaid, among other things.
“I just hope it resolves quickly, for the sake of the country,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told CNBC Friday morning.
Other House Republicans are also preaching deescalation for the sake of the bill they spent weeks fighting with each other over.
“Both of them have paid a tremendous price personally for this country, and I think at the end of the day, they’re both going to put the country first,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) said, according to Politico. “And them working together is certainly far more better for the country.”
Meanwhile, Department of Government Efficiency caucus Chair Aaron Bean (R-FL) said Friday he was “shocked and dismayed” to see his “two friends fighting,” adding that he remains optimistic that the former allies can work it out.
“I believe there’s a Diet Coke in their future, that they can settle it and cooler heads will prevail,” Bean said. “We need them together. We need to be united, and we’re stronger together. So I’m very optimistic that there will be a happy ending very soon.”
— Emine Yücel
Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend
- A look into Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) dirty stalling tactics that helped her ultimately block Democrats on the House Oversight Committee from subpoenaing Elon Musk this week — even though not enough Republicans were initially present to override the effort.
- Some thoughts on the creator of Succession’s new, satirical movie Mountainhead, and what it tells us about our current cultural moment, as the Fox News echo chamber, social media and AI merge to create a society in which reality is elusive.
Let’s dig in.
A ‘Disturbing’ 20 Minute Meltdown That Shows How Congress Is Broken In The DOGE Era
Washington was consumed with drama related to Elon Musk on Thursday afternoon as the megabillionaire who spearheaded the so-called Department of Government Efficiency launched into a public social media spat with President Trump. But turmoil surrounding the President’s former ally actually started earlier that morning when tensions over Musk essentially caused the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to short circuit and grind to a halt.
This bizarre scene was a perfect distillation of how Congress is (or depending on your view, isn’t) working in the second Trump era, with MAGA partisans going to cartoonish lengths to protect the president and his allies from scrutiny. The episode took place in a hearing that was nominally about the use of artificial intelligence. In his opening remarks, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) noted how Musk, whose DOGE minions have used AI to siphon up federal data and slash government programs, has changed that conversation.
“Optimizing the federal government’s use of technology has long been a bipartisan priority of this committee,” Lynch said. “We cannot sit here, however, and have the traditional bipartisan conversation about federal IT modernization without acknowledging the fact that the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and DOGE are leading technology initiatives that threaten the privacy and security of all Americans and undermine our government and the vital services it provides.”
Following those remarks, Lynch moved to subpoena Musk to appear before the committee. His motion was quickly seconded. After last year’s election, Republicans have a majority in the House and its committees. But at the time of Lynch’s motion, one Democratic member said only six of the 25 Republicans on Oversight were present. These absences theoretically meant the Democrats had a temporary majority needed to issue the subpoena.
However, this effort to have the committee dedicated to oversight provide some actual oversight of Musk was quickly derailed. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who was serving as chairwoman, almost immediately called to “suspend” the proceedings. She then presided over a more than twenty minute delay as she strained the bounds of normal procedure to buy time for her colleagues to make their way to the hearing. The extended interlude was filled with surreal scenes as Democratic members attempted to question Mace and move forward with business as usual.
At one point, even though Republicans were evidently outnumbered and outvoted, Mace declared that they had won a voice vote to consider a motion to table Lynch’s motion. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) attempted to speak at this point and was shut down.
“I love you,” Mace said to him. “This is not debatable.”
Mace did not respond to a request for comment.
At another point, as she swatted away Democrats’ efforts to hold the vote, Mace seemed to wink. She also called Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) “babe” when the congresswoman asked to do a roll call “so we can determine if y’all really have the votes.”
“No ma’am,” Mace replied.
As Democrats began to openly note that Mace’s stonewalling appeared to be a fairly unprecedented effort to allow absent Republican members the time to filter in, Mace continually shut down discussion and efforts to hold a vote. One Republican member responded to an inquiry about whether they were following rules by noting that Democrats had lost the last election.
That comment made the situation on Capitol Hill quite plain: After winning the election, Trump and his partisans are willing to throw out any traditional rule book.
After about twenty minutes and twenty seven seconds, Mace allowed the vote to proceed. As she checked the numbers with the clerk, it was apparent the Republicans were still coming up short. Mace then allowed Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who had since slipped in, to vote. With those two final additions and the twenty minute-plus standstill, Republicans were able to table the effort to subpoena Musk by a vote of 21-20.
In a statement to TPM, Lynch accused the GOP members of “ refusing to exercise Congressional authority on behalf of the American people to demand answers and accountability for the destruction, chaos, and cruelty Elon Musk and DOGE have unleashed on our government and on communities nationwide.”
“It is disturbing that Republicans would rather shield the richest man in the world from testifying publicly than fight for the folks who rely on VA health care, Social Security benefits, weather services, humanitarian aid, scientific research, and more vital programs and services that have been decimated by Elon Musk’s chainsaw,” Lynch said, adding, “The Oversight Committee was made for this moment, and Republicans are failing the American people by refusing to do their jobs. Just because Elon Musk has turned in his ID badge does not mean he can walk away from the monstrosity he has created and the permanent damage left in his wake.”
— Hunter Walker
Bullshit Mountain 2.0
“I call this alternate reality, I call this place where these folks live, Bullshit Mountain,” Jon Stewart told the crowd during The Rumble in the Air Conditioned Auditorium debate with Bill O’Reilly in 2012. “On Bullshit Mountain,” Stewart went on, “our problems are amplified and the solutions simplified.”
Bullshit Mountain would become Stewart’s enduring metaphor for Fox News in the second half of the Obama presidency. It was a convenient shorthand to explain how Fox pundits could routinely espouse conspiratorial nonsense or fixate on an obscure event with seemingly no broad implications for the American public and use it as proof positive of the country’s imminent collapse. Bullshit Mountain was an acknowledgment that the two major political parties didn’t merely have different opinions on how to solve the country’s problems, but increasingly were living in two different realities with entirely different problems. There was also the non-subtle accusation of cynicism in the name Bullshit Mountain. Maybe the audience believed this crap, but the executives and the anchors knew it was bullshit, right?
In Jesse Armstrong’s breakout show, “Succession,” he satirized a fictional version of the Murdoch empire which took us behind the scenes of Bullshit Mountain. In Armstrong’s interpretation of this world, there were the serious people who understood how to play the game and accumulate power, and those who were not serious, who didn’t know how to play the game, or worse, didn’t know it was a game at all.
In his follow-up to Succession, HBO’s new made-for-TV movie Mountainhead, Armstrong seems to acknowledge that Bullshit Mountain may no longer be a place created and controlled by serious people, that the bullshit from which the mountain is made may have broken confinement and swamped us all. Bullshit Mountain may now be where we all live — our dominant reality.
Centered on a foursome of ultrarich tech founders (all men) who gather at a mountain lodge for a poker game as the world falls apart after the release of the AI-powered social network they all had some role in creating, Mountainhead depicts a world where seriousness might be a detriment to world dominance.
“Nothing means anything and everything is funny,” the founder of the AI social network explains when confronted by a litany of abuses enabled by his product, including a video of a kid juggling severed feet.
The technology these founders have created has effectively dissolved any sense of shared reality by allowing anyone to create and propagate alternate realities which leads to the unraveling of the global order. But more interesting than the consequences of this technology, which we are in many ways already aware of, is the way in which the founders have isolated themselves from their own reality, both intentionally and unintentionally.
After about 30 mins of dialogue laced in the idiomatic gibberish of Silicon Valley … “first principles” .. “post-human”… “decel” … “p(doom)” … “game theory” … “chunky numbers” … you realize these characters have nothing meaningful to say to each other, whether socially or in response to the global catastrophe they helped create. While there is a tinge of the tragic in their inability to communicate emotionally with each other, there is also something powerful in the artifice of their language, which protects them from having to meaningfully take responsibility for their actions.
Viewing the potential collapse of the world through their screens, a vantage point from which nothing can be known for certain, the artificiality of their language lends an artificiality to the events, regardless of whether or not they are really happening. The collapse of a country’s economy gets referred to as “de minimis,” news of the mayor of Paris’s assassination becomes an example of the “compound distillation effect of the content.” But when the four characters end up bunkered in the basement, erroneously fearing retaliation from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, it’s clear that they are as susceptible to the fake reality their technology has created as any of its users.
Whether you find Mountainhead successful satire may depend on your priors. However, in the wake of DOGE, Elon’s takeover and remaking of Twitter and the enthusiasm with which our major AI companies are cheerleading a new cold war with China, it’s hardly a work of speculative fiction.
In Jon Stewart’s farewell speech from the Daily Show in 2015, he claimed that the bullshitters were getting lazy and that vigilance was our best defense. But his framing assumed a continued dichotomy between the bullshitters and the bullshited. He didn’t offer any advice on what to do when there’s no longer a difference.
— Derick Dirmaier
Day-After Musings on the Feud
A few thoughts on yesterday’s antics.
I imagine that in many parts of the world, yesterday’s Musk-Trump blow-up reminded people of the events of two years ago and the so-called Wagner Group Rebellion in which erstwhile oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin got increasingly cranky and finally started a military drive on Moscow before standing down at his moment of apparent but perhaps illusory strength. Two months later, Prigozhin died in a plane crash.
Continue reading “Day-After Musings on the Feud”Trump Admin Returns Abrego Garcia—To Face New Criminal Charges
The Trump administration is finally abiding by a court order and returning the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, ABC News reports, but in a face-saving maneuver it is criminally charging him for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants.
Continue reading “Trump Admin Returns Abrego Garcia—To Face New Criminal Charges”