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Elon Musk’s proposed new political party could focus on a few pivotal congressional seats
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 14:20
The new US political party that Elon Musk has boasted about bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress.Tesla and SpaceX’s multibillionaire CEO mused about that approach on Friday in a post on X, the social media platform which he owns, as he continued feuding with Donald Trump over the spending bill that the president has signed into law. On Saturday, without immediately elaborating, the former Trump adviser announced on X that he had created the so-called America party.“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” wrote Musk, who is the world’s richest person and oversaw brutal cuts to the federal government after Trump’s second presidency began in January. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring they serve the true will of the people.”Musk did not specify any seats which he may be eyeing.In another post on Friday, when the US celebrated the 249th anniversary of its declaration of independence from the UK, Musk published a poll asking his X followers whether he should advance on his previously stated idea of creating the America party to challenge both Republicans and Democrats. More than 65% of about 1.25m responses indicated “yes” as of Saturday morning.“Independence Day is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system!,” Musk also wrote in text accompanying the poll, which he promoted several times throughout Friday.Musk on Saturday then posted on X: “Today, the America party is formed to give you back your freedom.”He also wrote: “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party, and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.”One of the replies to Musk’s announcement that he reposted showed a picture of a two-headed snake near the word “uniparty” as well as the logos of the Democratic and Republican parties.“End the Uniparty,” the reply said. Musk in turn responded to the reply with: “Yes.”New political parties do not have to formally register with the Federal Election Commission “until they raise or spend money over certain thresholds in connection with a federal election”.Musk’s posts on Friday and Saturday came after he spent $277m of his fortune supporting Trump’s victorious 2024 presidential campaign. The Republican president rewarded Musk by appointing him to lead the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, which abruptly and chaotically slashed various government jobs and programs while claiming it saved $190bn.But Doge’s actions may also have cost taxpayers $135bn, according to an analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan non-profit dedicated to studying the federal workforce.Musk left Doge at the end of May and more recently became incensed at Trump’s support for a budget bill that would increase the US debt by $3.3tn. He threatened to financially support primary challenges against every member of Congress who supported Trump’s spending bill – along with promising to “form the America Party” if it passed.The House voted 218 to 214 in favor of the spending bill, with just two Republicans joining every Democrat in the chamber in unsuccessfully opposing it. In the Senate, the vice-president, JD Vance, broke a 50-50 deadlock in favor of the bill, which Trump signed on Friday hours after Musk posted his America party-related poll.The Trump spending bill’s voting breakdown illustrated how narrowly the winning side in Congress carries some of the most controversial matters.Trump has warned Musk – a native of South Africa and naturalized US citizen since 2002 – that directly opposing his agenda would be personally costly. The president, who has pursued mass deportations of immigrants recently, publicly discussed deporting Musk from the US as well as cutting government contracts for some of his companies.“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head to South Africa,” Trump posted on his own Truth Social platform.The president also told a group of reporters in Florida: “We might have to put Doge on Elon. Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible.” More
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‘Harvey would say, we’re on the brink’: why conservatives are coming for a gay rights hero
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 13:00
As San Francisco’s pride festivities came to a close last week, a cloud hung over the otherwise joyful celebrations as the city’s LGBTQ+ community learned that the US government had stripped a naval ship of its name honoring the gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, claimed the action showed the administration’s commitment to “taking the politics” out of military naming conventions. San Francisco’s queer community saw things differently.For many, the move was yet another example of Trump taking a swipe at progressive values. To others, the decision to remove Milk’s name from the frigate represented something more sinister: an intention, on the part of an emboldened administration, to take the LGBTQ+ community out of public view and to strike their accomplishments from the historical record.“On its own, it is not the most significant offense that we’ve witnessed in the past six months,” said Marc Stein, a professor of history at San Francisco State University who researches sexuality and politics. “But when combined with so many other things, it sends a powerful message.”Hegseth’s announcement is the latest attack on Milk’s legacy from conservatives in California and on the national stage. In 2023, the southern California city of Temecula made news when its school board attempted to remove references to Milk from elementary school textbooks. Before that, it was revealed that Tucker Carlson, while a college student, had apparently been connected to a society celebrating Milk’s murderer.Since Trump took office, the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights and visibility has only accelerated, from a directive to purge the military of transgender service members, to a supreme court decision allowing K-12 students to opt out of reading materials with LGBTQ+ themes.Taken together, LGBTQ+ advocates and community members fear that much of the progress made to secure their rights since Milk’s assassination in 1978 is in peril.“The renaming of the ship is part of a broader pattern wherein the Trump administration and its allies are trying to roll back the advances of the last several decades,” said Stein.At the Cinch Saloon, a historic gay bar in San Francisco’s Castro district, June’s Pride month celebrations were held against a backdrop of conversations about the fate of the community. Bartender Eric Berchtold expressed fear that the administration is working up to rescind the right to same-sex marriage. “It’s blatant malice,” Berchtold said. “They want to erase us and eradicate our history like we don’t exist.”Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride, said that fears of rolling back progress have been felt most acutely by older members of the community who were part of the gay liberation movement in the 1960s and 70s.View image in fullscreenAmong those affected people are Cleve Jones, an activist and friend of Milk’s who worked in Milk’s office when he was city supervisor. “I can remember when we were criminalized, when we were routinely beaten and fired, when you could not have a job if you were known to be gay,” said Jones.When Milk was elected as city supervisor in 1977, he was the country’s first openly gay politician. Two decades prior, he had been forced to resign from the navy due to his sexuality.That’s why publicly displaying Milk’s name on a military vessel represents much more than a public gesture, explained Craig Loftin, professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton and a scholar of LGBTQ+ history. “In the big-picture history of LGBTQ people, the quest for public visibility and recognition is at the core and center of that narrative,” he said.“[Milk] was a leader in this idea of not hiding in the shadows.”A swinging pendulumThat isn’t to say that the quest for gay liberation has been linear.While the gay liberation movement made enormous strides on the fronts of decriminalization and visibility in the 1960s and 70s, the rise of the religious right as a powerful political bloc in the 80s paused progress. That coincided with the onset of the Aids pandemic, which devastated gay communities across the country – nowhere more acutely than in San Francisco. In response to silence on the part of the federal government and the Reagan administration, a new wave of activism was spurred that demanded research into treatment and condemned homophobic discrimination.“It’s waxed and waned,” said Loftin. “It took several years before we had activist groups like Aact Up channeling their rage in a strategic, focused way that yielded significant results and moved gay culture further than where it had been,” Loftin said. In the decades that followed, the community saw same-sex marriage legalized, the military’s “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy repealed, and, most recently, a surge of visibility for trans Americans. “There is a pendulum quality to a lot of history, but especially LGBT history.”Knowing this, Loftin is hopeful that the community will come together and fight back with vigor. “My optimistic thought is that because they’re hitting us so hard and so fast, the pendulum will swing back the other direction, hopefully harder and faster,” he said. “[Trump] is awakening a dragon.”View image in fullscreenBerchtold, the Cinch Saloon bartender, said he saw a lot more activism among patrons today than he did when he started working at the bar 22 years ago.Jones is more fearful. To him, there is a gulf between an older generation that remembers the traumas of past decades, and a younger cohort that takes the advances for granted.“Younger ones never watched everyone they knew die,” said Jones. “I carry those memories with me as I interact daily with young people who are completely oblivious to that reality.”‘Everything feels very fragile’To Stein and others, what is most jarring about the renaming of USNS Harvey Milk is that it lifts the veil on which groups the administration plans to target. Until now, policy decisions have primarily focused on restricting the rights of trans Americans – which advocates say has had the effect of making cisgender members of the LGBTQ+ community complacent.“It is a lie that the administration is only going after trans people,” said Stein. “They are especially targeting trans people … but [cis] gay and lesbian people should not feel like they are going to be safe from what’s happening.”Jones echoed: “There is a significant number of gay and lesbian men and women who may think this is going to stop with trans people. That’s just foolishness.”View image in fullscreenAdvocates and scholars also see attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as connected to the administration’s larger ambitions to curb civil liberties, including those of women and immigrants.“There is going to be great variation depending on … where you live,” said Stein, drawing a thread between disparities in access to gender-affirming care, abortion rights and immigrant protections. “Those of us who are in San Francisco and California are protected in some respects from the worst of what’s going on, but we also live in a nation with a powerful federal government.“Everything is very fragile at this moment,” added Ford. “You can’t take for granted that they’re not going to try to take your rights.”Jones says that if he were alive today, Harvey Milk would agree. A Jewish American who came of age during the second world war, he would have seen the government’s actions as indicative of an unhealthy democracy and sounded the alarm.“He would say, ‘Watch out. We are on the brink. It is happening again. It is unfolding all around us.’” More
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The Rev William Barber’s ‘moral movement’ confronts Trump’s America. Can it work?
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 11:00
On 2 June, at St Mark’s Episcopal church in Washington DC, people packed the sanctuary – elders in denim jackets, seminarians in collars, organizers clutching clipboards. Some had come in from North Carolina; others walked from their homes just a few blocks away. The seats were full, so the crowd lined the aisles and leaned against the red-brick walls beneath stained-glass windows that cast streaks of light across the floor.It was the first Moral Monday of the summer – a tradition of weekly, nonviolent protest that began in North Carolina in 2013 and now serves as the beating heart of the Rev William Barber’s national movement to end poverty and systemic injustice. “I am not afraid,” the congregation sang. They clapped in rhythm. They swayed in place. Their voices, layered and lived in, reverberated through the rafters: “I would die for liberation, because I know why I was made.” It was part worship, part invocation, part warning. They folded into the center of the sanctuary as they sang covenants of nonviolence – pledges to neither resist arrest nor retaliate, to remain disciplined and dignified in the face of confrontation. One organizer stepped forward and asked them to consider the gravity of what they were saying. “In every cell of your body,” he said, “do you believe that?”Barber, the co-chair of the revived Poor People’s campaign, a national movement to challenge inequality in all its forms through moral protest and policy change, has spent years preparing people for moments like this. Barber draws on a tradition that views justice as a covenant rather than charity, as a sacred demand to confront moral rot. Right now, that means challenging the Trump administration’s second-term agenda – and the Republican-controlled Congress advancing legislation that would slash Medicaid, food assistance and public education, while simultaneously giving tax breaks to some of the wealthiest Americans – or what Barber has simply called “policy murder”, a wholesale dismantling of services for the poor and vulnerable.But Barber’s battle is both a moral rebellion against Trump’s America and against the deeper architecture of inequality that has survived every administration. His movement doesn’t simply resist a president. It challenges a political theology that weds nationalism to capitalism and cloaks exploitation in scripture. In Barber’s view, Trump isn’t the disease – he’s the symptom of a nation that never fully confronted its sins. “Jesus was not crucified because he was just talking about private sin,” he told me. “He was crucified because he turned over the money tables. That’s where government and religion had come into an unholy relationship, and were robbing from the poor.”View image in fullscreenIn a sermon the day before, Barber had turned to 2 Kings – to four lepers outside a besieged city, caught between certain death and uncertain deliverance. “Why sit we here until we die?” they ask, before rising to move toward the enemy camp. That movement, Barber reminded his audience, is what made the miracle possible. The lepers rose to risk the unknown and found the enemy had already left, leaving behind food, shelter and silver. Deliverance had already come; it just took the marginalized to move first. The US is in its own such moment, Barber said. “This is murder by policy,” he preached, pointing to the $1.1tn in proposed cuts to healthcare, food aid and climate infrastructure. “We cannot stay here and die.”Organizers passed protest signs around the sanctuary like communion: Fund Life, Not Death. Our Faith Demands Justice, Not Policy Murder. Handouts followed: 13.7 million people are at risk of losing health insurance. Eleven million at risk of losing food assistance. Billions redirected from public programs to tax breaks for corporations, defense contractors and deportation forces. Congress was deliberating over what Barber calls a “big, bad, ugly, disgusting, deadly budget”, and they wanted to take a moral stand.The room was intentionally diverse – it’s what Barber calls a fusion movement, rooted in the idea that poor and working people across race, religion and region have a moral force capable of reshaping the nation. They prayed. They assigned roles. Some would march. Some would risk arrest. All would bear witness. Slowly, deliberately, the congregation began to move. First, those in wheelchairs; then the people along the walls peeled off. Then, one section at a time, released with care – no rush, no clamor. They lined up two by two, like they were boarding an ark. It was a practiced procession, not chaos. The organizers had been clear: move like the black-and-white footage you’ve seen, like those who marched before you – with order, with discipline, with conviction.“When politicians and priests bless policies that hurt the poor,” Barber said, “that’s when the prophets have to rise.” For Barber, this is the prophet’s role: to expose, to indict and to force a moral reckoning in the public square. The structure of his movement’s actions, the insistence on grounding resistance in both scripture and strategy, is shaped by a long religious protest tradition in the US. Now, under a second Trump term, with safety nets unraveling and rights under siege, that witness feels urgent again. As the movement experiments with decentralized leadership, more youth recruitment and a sharper digital presence, it will have to decide: is it a movement to awaken the conscience, or to seize the wheel? Can this movement still meet the scale of today’s coordinated assault on democracy, rights and the poor?‘Silence is not an option’Barber met the demonstrators at the corner of East Capitol Street NE and 1st Street SE, where the procession paused before the slow walk towards the steps of the supreme court. He stood with his cane in hand, a white stole slung over his shoulders that read: “Jesus was a poor man.” He joined the group like a hinge between past and present. No microphone. No grand announcement. Just a nod, a steadying breath, and then a turn toward the supreme court.Passersby smiled and posed for selfies, unaware or unbothered by the stakes. The procession kept moving, members singing as they went. The air filled with hymns and the weight of memory. At the court steps, the crowd swelled; marshals implored folks to move closer. They sang battle hymns through the speaker system, a thread of the sacred pulled taut across the concrete. The day was structured to echo the civil rights movement, orderly, solemn and visually potent.When Barber took the mic, he drew on the movement’s rhetorical authority as well. “We gather here not in protest alone,” Barber said, “but in prophetic power. We stand not just as people of faith, but as stewards of moral memory. Injustice has written itself into the budget lines, and silence is not an option when lives hang in the balance of a ledger.” Barber reminded the crowd that the country’s wounds were not just policy failures; they were moral abscesses. “There can be no healing of the soul of America without healing the body,” he said. Not while people are starving. Not while they’re uninsured. Not while injustice is passed off as fiscal responsibility.View image in fullscreenHe said something similar in 2020, in the days after Biden was elected president and many people across the nation released what felt like four years of held breath. Biden called for unity; Barber pushed back. “There has to be division before there can be healing,” he said. In Barber’s theology, peace doesn’t mean calm. It means justice. False unity, he warned, is not reconciliation – it’s complicity. And that is the deeper challenge beneath Barber’s movement: not just to resist one budget, or even one party, but to confront the country’s underlying sickness: its habit of mistaking cruelty for order, and order for peace.‘What will you do with the breath you have left?’“They say they’re cutting waste, fraud and abuse. But what they’re saying is it’s wasteful to lift people, fraudulent to help them live and abusive to make sure they have healthcare,” he said. For a moment, it felt like the church services I’d grown up in. Come on, Barber! a clergyman shouted. Yessuh! a resonant voice rang from the other side of the crowd. By the time Barber started whooping – stretching his syllables as his voice reached a thunderous crescendo – the crowd had been whipped into a passionate holler.Barber told stories of movement members who died without care – Pam in Alabama, Jade in North Carolina – who called him not for comfort, but for commitment. Don’t quit, they said. “They had the courage to fight even while they were dying,” he said. “We ought to have the courage to fight while we’re living.”Then he slowed and asked a simple question to those gathered: “What will you do with the breath you have left?” The question hung in the air. He didn’t wait for an answer. A few days later, he told me why it sticks with him. “That was George Floyd’s cry. That was my brother’s cry – he died in his 60s, waiting on healthcare. That was the cry of people during Covid: ‘I can’t breathe.’ That’s what I hear when I say that,” he told me. “The breath you have left – that’s what you’ve been given. That’s what you owe.”Breath is a gift and a responsibility. “We’re not gonna sit here and let healthcare die,” he said. “We’re not gonna sit here and let living wages die. We’re not gonna sit here and let democracy die. It’s time to live. It’s time to stand. It’s time to speak. To protest. To live justice.” The line echoed down 1st Street. Whether it reached the halls of power was another question.Fusion organizingBarber has always insisted this movement isn’t built for the news cycle. “Movements are not driven by whether the media covers it,” he told me. “They’re driven by whether it’s right. You don’t build fusion coalitions because it’s sexy, you build it because it’s necessary.”The spotlight matters, though. And as the glare has dimmed since 2020, so too has the movement’s leverage in elite policy spaces. For Obery Hendricks, a professor in the department of religion at Columbia University, the tension is theological and tactical. Barber speaks from the Black prophetic tradition, a tradition that calls out injustice with moral clarity. But clarity alone isn’t always enough. “Too often, prophetic rhetoric is co-opted as performance,” Hendricks told me. “It becomes poetry without praxis.”But even when the national spotlight is not focused on the organization, that hasn’t stopped the Poor People’s campaign from lining up in moral opposition to what it sees as destructive policy across the country. “People say, where’s the movement?” Barber told me. “We say, where are you? The movement is here. Maybe you’re just not paying attention.” Fusion organizing in 2025 isn’t theory – it’s practice. Amazon workers marching with choirs in Alabama. Climate activists linking arms with veterans on Capitol Hill. Disability advocates and union reps shaping policy in North Carolina. Barber’s once-local campaign is now connected with movements across the country, from Georgia’s voting rights drives to Los Angeles’s housing struggles.Sometimes, the actions pay off. Inside of St Mark’s, I met Emma Biggs, a childcare advocate from North Carolina who had made the trip to DC for the rally. She had joined similar protests before. In June of last year, she was among those who were arrested inside the state legislature while protesting a looming childcare shortfall. The state legislature had passed a stopgap funding bill by the time protesters were released.To Vaughn A Booker, a scholar of religion and African American history at the University of Pennsylvania, though, the power of Barber’s model lies more in its moral insurgency than the results it produces. “He has this style that’s like a preacher reading out the names on judgment day. He’s not just naming problems. He’s naming people, policies and outcomes,” Booker said. “It lands differently when it comes from the pulpit.” And maybe that’s the point. In an era of institutional drift, moral confrontation remains a kind of clarity. “Moral discourse may not be a dominant mobilizer anymore,” he said. “But that was always the case. The prophets didn’t expect to win. They expected to witness.”View image in fullscreenBarber echoed the sentiment. Bearing moral witness matters even when it doesn’t automatically produce results, because failing to show up at all cedes ground unnecessarily. “A moral fight is one that you have to engage, because not to engage is to risk damage that might not be reversible,” he said. “If a group of politicians were going to crucify voting rights and crucify healthcare, then every crucifixion needs a witness.”Not everyone will be reachable through scripture, though. Whereas nearly half of Americans attended weekly religious services at the height of the civil rights movement, only about 30% of Americans do so now, according to a recent Gallup poll. Barber sees the rising suspicion of moral language, and the growing distance from the church, but he doesn’t see it as an obstacle; rather, he sees an opportunity. “Young people are not leaving the faith because they don’t want justice,” he told me. “They’re leaving because we’ve too often offered them religion without justice, and theology without truth.” So he remains committed to preaching in public, to claiming a tradition that doesn’t just soothe, but disrupts with the intent of building a kind of moral pressure. Barber believes the system has rotted at its core. It’s why he often refers to a sickness in the country’s body, a deterioration of its heart – but he also believes it has the capacity to be reformed, and is drawing on a prophetic tradition to push it towards change. “He’s operating within the system,” Booker told me. “He’s not outside of it burning it down. He’s trying to get the system to live up to its stated values.”Barber’s strategy mirrors that of Martin Luther King Jr a generation before: not to write legislation personally, but to focus enough attention on a moral crisis that the system has to respond. The marches weren’t meant to replace lawmaking, but to expose it – to show where justice had failed, and to make action unavoidable.The campaign’s futureBarber began a labored walk to the Capitol. A woman caught up to him quietly and asked if he had a moment to speak. His eyes were forward, fixed on the entrance. “If you don’t mind,” he said gently, “I’m trying to focus on what I’m doing.” She apologized and nodded, but had to say her piece.She walked beside him and told him that the A was missing from DEI – the A for accessibility. So many movements, she said, leave out people with disabilities. People who walk with a limp. Barber smirked. “Oh, people like me?” he said. The procession stopped and Barber, alongside a small group, descended down the elevator.View image in fullscreenThis is where conviction met cost. At the Capitol rotunda, the group prayed with the purpose of arrest. Suvya Carroll, a disability rights advocate born with cerebral palsy, clutched a Bible. Carroll told Barber she and her friend were there because “people like us always get left out. But we believe this movement sees us.” As Capitol police moved in, she was arrested along with Barber and five others. Barber later reflected on Carroll’s arrest in particular: “That child looked the Capitol police in the eye and said: ‘I’m ready.’ And we all prayed. Right there, in the middle of that dome. And I thought, Lord, if this doesn’t matter, what does?”The arrest was symbolic – the third time Moral Monday activists had been detained since April – but it also surfaced a deeper truth. The witness came from many, but the weight still fell on one. When Barber turned toward the elevator, others followed. And once inside the rotunda, all eyes returned to him. As questions swirl around the future of his organization, a harder one remains: how long can a movement built on moral clarity lean on a single voice? Barber’s voice remains central, but the campaign’s future may depend on how well it distributes that moral authority across a broader base. If the theology is prophetic, the structure has to be plural.Barber’s protest is grounded not in outcome, but in obligation. He’s asked: what will you do with the breath you have left? For Barber, that’s not just a question. It’s a way to keep moving. “This country gets amnesia,” he told me. “We forget. That’s why prophetic work is not about a moment. It’s about building a memory that resists the lie.” Even though he’s become a brand, he’s trying to build a witness. “I don’t want people to follow me, I want them to follow the truth,” he said.“Prayer,” he likes to say, “is never the end of protest. It’s the beginning of a demand.” That day in the rotunda, his prayer echoed through marble. Maybe it reached no one. Maybe it moved someone. But it was heard.That’s the point of prophecy. Not certainty. Witness. More
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I chaired the FCC. The 60 Minutes settlement shows Trump has weaponized the agency | Tom Wheeler
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 11:00
It is time to unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Paramount Global, the parent of CBS Television, has agreed to pay $16m to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Presumably, the FCC can now cease its slow-walking of the Paramount-Skydance Media merger.Just two days after the president took office, the agency’s new chair, Brendan Carr, inserted the FCC into the issues in the Trump lawsuit that alleged “news distortion”. As the New York Post headlined: “Trump’s FCC pick Brendan Carr says ‘60 Minutes’ editing scandal could affect Paramount-Skydance merger review.”That lawsuit was filed in the final week of the 2024 presidential campaign under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a statute historically used against false advertising. The case was filed in a single-judge federal district court that one legal publication characterized as “a favored jurisdiction for conservative legal causes and plaintiffs”. CBS characterized the case as “without merit”.The 60 Minutes broadcast aired in October; the day before, a different excerpt had appeared on Face the Nation. Soon after, the Center for American Rights – a group that describes itself as “a public interest law firm dedicated to protecting Americans’ most fundamental constitutional rights” – filed a complaint at the FCC alleging CBS had engaged in “significant and substantial news alteration”. The complaint was dismissed as seeking “to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment”. Immediately upon becoming the FCC chair, Carr reversed that decision and ordered a formal proceeding on the matter (but let stand the dismissal of a complaint against a local Fox station over its 2020 election coverage).The election of Trump and the installation of a Trump-appointed FCC chair transformed the Paramount/CBS merger from a review of the public interest merits of the transfer of broadcast licenses into a broader question that included the 60 Minutes editing. Carr told an interviewer: “I’m pretty confident that the news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction.”The formal paperwork for FCC approval of the license transfers was submitted 10 months ago, on 6 September 2024. Now that the lawsuit has been settled, it will be interesting to see how quickly the FCC acts.The CBS case is just one example of the tactical leverage the Trump FCC regularly exerts over those it regulates. Carr, who wrote the FCC chapter in the “Project 2025” Maga blueprint, has not been shy about using this authority to achieve such political goals.Even before formally assuming the FCC chair position, Carr began exercising chair-like authority to advance the Maga agenda. This began with a letter to the CEOs of Alphabet (Google and YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft and Apple alleging: “you participated in a censorship cartel … [that is] an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled.” Going beyond traditional FCC authority, he threatened: “As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers.” Carr suggested he might investigate whether those editorial decisions were made in good faith.Recently, Carr conditioned the approval of Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Communications on Verizon agreeing to drop its corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Continuing his anti-diversity efforts, he launched an investigation into Comcast Corporation because it promotes DEI as “a core value of our business”.In his pre-FCC chair days, Carr championed press freedom. In a 2021 statement, he wrote: “A newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official.” Once he became Trump’s FCC chair, however, he not only picked up on the 60 Minutes matter, but also launched an investigation into the public broadcasters NPR and PBS “regarding the airing of … programming across your broadcast member stations”.The FCC’s regulatory authority directly covers about one-sixth of the American economy while also affecting the other five-sixths that rely on the nation’s communications networks. What was once an independent, policy-based agency has been transformed into a performance-based agency, using any leverage it can discover or invent to further the Trump Maga message.
Tom Wheeler was the chair of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017 More
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Donald Trump’s UFC stunt is more than a circus. It’s authoritarian theatre | Karim Zidan
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 08:30
Ten years ago – before I became an investigative journalist – I found myself working as a color commentator for a Russian mixed martial arts organization bankrolled by an oligarch deep in Vladimir Putin’s orbit.The job took me around the Russian Federation and its neighboring states, allowing me to pursue unique stories that would otherwise have been out of my reach. I met a Latvian fighter who escaped a black magic cult run by his coach, attended an MMA show with the president of Ingushetia (now Russia’s deputy minister of defence) and knocked back vodka shots with ex-KGB officers and Russian oligarchs.Then there was the time the organization attempted to host an event in Moscow’s famed Red Square, one of the most historically and politically significant landmarks in Russia. It also sits adjacent to the Kremlin, the seat of Russia’s political power. The event would have been a chance for the organization and its oligarch to ingratiate themselves to Putin, a known MMA fan who had previously attended their shows.Logistical issues, including security concerns and layers of bureaucratic red tape, rendered the event impossible at the time. But the incident stuck with me nonetheless as an example of the political undercurrent flowing through the sport. That memory became especially relevant as Donald Trump announced plans to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event at the White House to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday next year.Speaking to a crowd of supporters during a Salute to America event in Iowa Thursday, Trump said: “Does anybody watch UFC? The great Dana White? We’re going to have a UFC fight. We’re going to have a UFC fight – think of this – on the grounds of the White House. We have a lot of land there.”White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the news during the press briefing, adding that the president was “dead serious” about hosting a UFC event at the official residence and workplace of the president.The announcement comes as no surprise given Trump’s longstanding relationship with the UFC, its current owner Ari Emanuel and its CEO Dana White.Over the past few years, Trump has frequently attended UFC events, basking in the admiration of the young, predominantly male crowd. He has cultivated relationships with fighters, leveraging their support to portray himself as a symbolic strongman. He has embraced the UFC’s culture of defiance, machismo and spectacle to help buttress his image as a rebel against liberal norms. It has also hastened the replacement of America’s conventional political culture with an abrasive new blend of entertainment and confrontational politics, perfectly embodied by both Trump and White.The UFC CEO stumped for Trump at three Republican national conventions and a slew of campaign rallies over the past eight years. He traveled with the president on Air Force One and produced a propaganda documentary on Trump entitled Combatant-in-Chief. And when Trump won the 2024 presidential election, it was White who took the stage at his victory party – because, naturally, Trump needed his fight promoter to seal the deal.For the UFC, its association with Trump has granted the once-renegade promotion a new kind of political legitimacy and influence. It also set it apart from other sports leagues through its unapologetically conservative posture. The UFC is even sponsoring the United States semiquincentennial, dubbed America250, joining the likes of Amazon, the Coca-Cola Company, Oracle and Walmart.Since taking office in January, Trump has attended two UFC events. He most recently attended UFC 316 in June just hours after signing a memo ordering the deployment of 2,000 national guard troops to Los Angeles county after Ice immigration raids sparked mass protests. He nevertheless enjoyed a standing ovation from the fans in attendance, and glowing endorsements from the fighters, one of whom even kneeled before Trump. UFC champion Kayla Harrison embraced him, planted a kiss on his cheek and wrapped her championship belt around his waist as his family and supporters looked on in delight. It was a spectacle befitting the strongman Trump imagines himself to be.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhich is why Trump’s plan to stage a UFC event at the White House makes perfect sense. It is the natural climax of a partnership in which the UFC has become the stage for Maga mythology. It carries shades of fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, particularly its obsession with masculinity, spectacle and nationalism – but with a modern, American twist.View image in fullscreenFascist Italy used rallies, parades and sports events to project strength and unity. Sports, especially combat sports, were used as tools to cultivate Mussolini’s ideal masculinity and portray Italy as a strong and powerful nation. Similarly, Trump has relied on the UFC to project his tough-guy image, and to celebrate his brand of nationalistic masculinity. From name-dropping champions who endorse him to suggesting a tournament that would pit UFC fighters against illegal immigrants, Trump has repeatedly found ways to make UFC-style machismo a part of his political brand.Since Trump returned to office in January, his presidency has been marked by a purge of federal agencies, crackdowns on dissent and immigration, and hollowing out institutions once designed as guardrails against abuses in presidential power. Loyalty to Trump, rather than the constitution and the American people, has become the primary litmus test for political advancement. Meanwhile, sports have emerged as a central feature of his administration, advancing his policies while projecting a cult of personality and the celebration of violence. All of these are the hallmarks of authoritarianism.There was once a time when the US could point to the authoritarian pageantry of regimes like Mussolini’s Italy and claim at least some moral distance. That line is no longer visible. What was once soft power borrowed from strongmen is now being proudly performed on America’s own front lawn.
Karim Zidan writes a regular newsletter on the intersection of sports and authoritarian politics. More
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Trump is waging war against the media – and winning
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 05:00
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Has Trump taken leadership lessons from cold war-era Africa?
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 04:00
Ever since Donald Trump returned to power, pundits have struggled to find apt analogies for his style of governance. Some liken his loyalty demands, patronage networks and intimidation tactics to the methods of a mafia don. Others cast him as a feudal overlord, operating a personality cult rooted in charisma and bound by oaths, rewards and threats rather than laws and institutions. A growing number of artists and AI creatives are depicting him as a Viking warrior. And of course, fierce debates continue over whether the moment has arrived for serious comparisons with fascist regimes.While some of these analogies may offer a degree of insight, they are fundamentally limited by their Eurocentrism – as if 21st-century US politics must still be interpreted solely through the lens of old-world history. If we truly want to understand what is unfolding, we must move beyond Scandinavian sagas and Sicilian crime lore.I’ve found it increasingly difficult not to see striking parallels between recent events in the US and the rise of cold war-era dictatorships in Africa. It began with Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, which recalled how Mobutu Sese Seko, on a personal whim, changed Congo into Zaire in 1971. Geographical renaming has been extensive in Africa because of its history of colonialism, but now the US has started changing names too.Trump’s deployment of national guard troops and marines to Los Angeles after protests over immigration raids also echoed Mobutu’s preferred method for dealing with civil unrest: presidential guards patrolling the streets to crush protests. The blunt use of military force to suppress domestic opposition is a tactic associated with figures such as Idi Amin in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Paul Biya in Cameroon – albeit with deadlier consequences.View image in fullscreenTrump’s aggressive deportation of undocumented Latino workers also resembles Amin’s 1972 expulsion of Uganda’s Asian minority. Amin framed it as a way to return economic power to “the ordinary Ugandan”, but it led to financial ruin. The embrace of bizarre, theatrical economic measures that look great on television but wreak havoc in practice is another striking parallel. Trump’s tariffs, announced with patriotic fanfare on “liberation day”, evoke Mugabe’s grandiose land reforms of the 1980s, which hastened Zimbabwe’s collapse.Anti-intellectualism, egomania and delusions of grandeur were hallmarks of dictatorships in Africa. Ivory Coast’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny built a replica of St Peter’s Basilica in his home town. Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself “emperor” of Central African Republic. “Marshal” Mobutu ensured that Concorde could land in his native village. A similar extravaganza of ambition has reached the US, with Trump accepting a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar and hoping his face will be carved into Mount Rushmore beside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.The army parade in Washington on the day the US military turned 250 and Trump turned 79 was another moment of self-aggrandising narcissism. A populist personality cult and masculine pride often go hand in hand with deep paranoia and contempt. Trump’s relentless war on academia and the free press fits squarely within this tradition. In Equatorial Guinea, President Francisco Macías Nguema outlawed the word “intellectual” and prosecuted academics. Amin terrorised universities to the point of brain-drain.At first glance, viewing Trump as a westernised version of one of Africa’s dictators may seem jarring. After all, his interest in the continent appears limited to its natural resources, not its political models. The trade tariffs and travel bans he recently unleashed have hit several African countries hard, and his cruel withdrawal of aid hardly suggests admiration for anything African.What’s more, Trump has never set foot on African soil and reportedly dismissed the continent as a cluster of “shithole countries”. Only when a raw materials deal is in sight does he spring into life, such as last week when a “peace deal” between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda was signed at the White House. “We’re getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it,” Trump said.But once the comparison between Trump and a cold war dictator is made, it becomes hard to unsee. And it shouldn’t surprise us. The postcolonial dictator was, to a significant degree, an American creation. Sooner or later, it had to come home.The US supported repressive regimes unconditionally during the cold war, viewing them as bulwarks against communism – not just in Africa, but in Asia and Latin America. Dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Jorge Rafaél Videla in Argentina remained in power for decades thanks to US backing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US abruptly abandoned these allies and championed the gospel of democratisation. Though the 1990s were rich in rhetoric about human rights, good governance and the rule of law, on the ground the spectre of autocracy never vanished entirely.We’re now witnessing a startling reversal. With the demise of USAID and its retreat from a role promoting global democracy, it’s not only that the US has turned its back on democratising countries in Africa and elsewhere – but that it has begun to imitate some of the worst historical examples of authoritarian rule.Viewing Trump’s regime through the lens of cold war-era autocracies in postcolonial states offers a framework that is both alarming and oddly reassuring.If there is one enduring lesson from the history of autocracy in Africa, it is this: things can turn ugly, fast. Cold war dictatorships were ruthless, bloody and often ended in chaos and state collapse. Yet their histories also show that when courts are neutered and legislatures reduced to rubber stamps, civil society, independent media and the moral force of religious and academic institutions can emerge as the last formidable strongholds against tyranny. After all, sooner or later, dictators die, whereas collective efforts remain.
David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Congo: The Epic History of a People and Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World More
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in US Politics
Trump news at a glance: President rings in Independence Day by signing his ‘big, beautiful’ bill into law
by Evelyn Reynolds 5 July 2025, 01:34
Donald Trump kicked off Independence Day by signing into law his sweeping tax and spending bill during a Fourth of July picnic at the White House.The president’s signature legislation, which he called the “big, beautiful bill”, introduces major changes including tax cuts, spending boosts for defence and more aggressive funding for an immigration crackdown.Trump says the changes will spur economic growth, but Democrats described the passage of the bill as a “dark day” for the nation, warning it will benefit the wealthy and hit low-income earners the hardest.Here are the key US politics stories at a glance.Trump signs tax and spending bill into law in major win for administrationThe president signed his sweeping spending package into law on Friday during a Fourth of July picnic at the White House, significantly cutting back on federal safety-net programs and increasing funds for aggressive immigration enforcement.During the picnic Donald Trump gloated about the bill’s passing. “It’s the most popular bill ever signed in the history of the country,” Trump said, while standing next to his wife, Melania Trump. “What we’ve done is put everything into one bill. We’ve never had anything like that before.”Read the full story‘Dark day for our country’: Democrats furious over Trump bill’s passageDemocrats have erupted in a storm of outrage over the passage of Trump’s budget bill, delivering scathing critiques that offered signs of the attack lines the party could wield against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.Democratic leaders released a wave of statements reflecting their fury after the sweeping bill’s passage on Thursday.Read the full storyEl Salvador president denies Ábrego García was abused in prisonThe president of El Salvador has denied claims that Kilmar Ábrego García was subjected to beatings and deprivation while he was held in a notorious prison before being returned to the US to face human-smuggling charges.Nayib Bukele said in a social media post that Ábrego García, the Salvadorian national who was wrongly extradited from the US to El Salvador in March before being returned in June, “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight”.Read the full storyUS judge clears path for eight immigrants to be deported to South SudanEight migrants lost their last-ditch effort to halt their deportation to South Sudan by the Trump administration on Friday, clearing the way for their imminent transfer after a judge in Massachusetts denied their request.Read the full storyDemocratic lawmakers denied entry to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigration jailA group of Florida lawmakers were denied entry on Thursday into the new Florida-based immigration jail dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, one day after the first immigrant detainees began to arrive.Read the full storyTrump has ‘good conversation’ with Zelenskyy after heavy bombardment of Ukraine Donald Trump spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Friday as the US president appears increasingly disheartened over his chances of fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
‘Catastrophic’ flood in Texas kills at least 13, including children, with more missing from summer camp.
Joey Chestnut regains title in New York hotdog eating contest.
Lost Thomas Jefferson letter on arms and democracy resurfaces for Fourth of July sale.
Catching up? Here’s what happened 3 July 2025. More

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