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    The Observer view: Vengeful and reckless, Donald Trump must not go unchallenged | Observer editorial

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    The 47th president of the United States is a danger to his country, Britain and the world. Who would have thought that sentence would ever be written? And yet, less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, it is barely controversial to many people looking on from shell-shocked democracies beyond America’s shores. By his destructive, vindictive, illegal and irrational actions, Trump sets himself beyond the pale. In place of American exceptionalism, the world must now learn to manage, and if necessary confront, a gross American objectionablism.Proof of these assertions is to be found in the White House’s daily outpourings. Seeking revenge against those who tried to punish his attempted 6 January 2021 electoral coup, Trump is weaponising the justice department by executive order. Political opponents, FBI agents, prosecutors, media outlets and journalists are in his sights. In contrast, about 1,500 convicted Capitol Hill rioters have been pardoned. He has even had the gall to withdraw the security clearance of his predecessor, Joe Biden, citing mental incapacity.Trump is treating federal government agencies like enemy territory to be stormed and purged of deep state, so-called woke and liberal elements. To this end, he has recruited the sycophantic billionaire, Elon Musk, and teams of youthful, unaccountable acolytes to physically take over offices and computer systems, suspend, lock out or sack civil servants and seize control of programmes and budgets. The treasury, the education department, the federal election commission and independent government watchdogs are all under the hammer wielded, principally, by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”. Nor has the CIA and the wider “intelligence community” escaped Trump’s vendetta. It, too, faces mass firings under the proposed leadership of Tulsi Gabbard, a Russia apologist. Putting the anti-vax conspiracy theorist, Robert F Kennedy Jr, in charge of health and human services demonstrates how little Trump really cares about ordinary people’s welfare.Trump’s arbitrary, often unlawful orders indulge other far-right obsessions. Diversity, equity and inclusion polices, in particular transgender rights, are under siege. He has demanded a halt to the rollout of EV charging stations, declared open season on wildlife and the environment by relaxing oil and gas drilling regulations, and withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement. He even wants to ban paper straws, preferring plastic. From an immediate international perspective, Trump’s decision to eviscerate USAid, the world’s biggest foreign aid provider, and the attempted sacking of nearly all its staff, is the most savagely objectionable misdeed of all.His freezing of USAid’s $42.8bn (£34.5bn) budget spells death or renewed suffering for millions of dependent people, from Sudan to Bangladesh to Ukraine. The US accounts for about $4 in every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid. To the instant human toll, as Britain’s former prime minister Gordon Brown points out, must be added a loss of US global influence that will benefit authoritarian rivals China and Russia. “The era when American leaders valued their soft power is coming to an end,” Brown wrote. His view was echoed by foreign secretary David Lammy, who described Trump’s mindless aid vandalism as a “big strategic mistake”.Trump’s egotistic rampage is causing widespread additional international damage and confusion. His on-off tariff wars with China, Canada and, prospectively, the EU; his militarisation of migration policy along the US border with Mexico; his imperialistic vow to seize Greenland by force from Nato ally Denmark; and his disdain for the UN, typified by his withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, are all decisions underscoring his broader contempt for the multilateralist, rules-based international order. Nothing more damningly illustrates that contempt than yet another outrageous executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC).Trump’s ICC attack was prompted in part by a wish to protect Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and court-indicted war crimes suspect, who was feted at the White House last week. He used this occasion to unveil his most absurd, most dangerous idea to date: a forcible “clean-out” of the 2 million inhabitants of Gaza and a US-owned “Riviera” real estate development amid the ruins of their Palestinian homeland. This wheeze is too ignorant, too insulting and too inhumane to be taken entirely seriously. Yet that has not stopped Israeli and US rightwingers using it as potential justification for wrecking the ceasefire, resuming the war and laying the ground for annexations in Gaza and the West Bank.Trump, the convicted felon, proves each day that he is unfit for the high office he holds. He aims to destroy the fundamentals of American democracy: the separation of powers, civil and voting rights, secularism, free speech and equality under the law. He is a menace to global peace, stability and prosperity. Pushback has begun, largely through the courts. Yet a few defiant judges cannot win this huge, rapidly developing struggle. The Democrats, stunned into virtual silence, must wake up. Meanwhile, Britain and the western democracies must take a united stand. So far, Keir Starmer and his ministers have been too circumspect. They must be bolder and braver in their criticism and in upholding British values.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe rise of Trump and like-minded far-right populists, lawless bullies and anti-democratic autocrats around the world is the great challenge of our age. Trump the objectionable is setting the world on fire. More

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      While Trump blathers about tariffs and Gaza, Musk is executing a coup d’état | John Naughton

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      Way back in 2019, Steve Bannon, then a Trump consigliere, outlined in a TV interview a strategy for managing information. “The opposition party is the media,” he said, “And because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time… All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang.”Since his re-election, Donald Trump has been following this script to the letter, and the media, not to mention the entire world, are feeling punch-drunk. Which is, as Bannon pointed out, enabling other members of the Trump crew to get their stuff done. Really bad stuff too, to which the world has not been paying enough attention.Prime suspect in this respect is Elon Musk, whom Trump has chosen to slash $2tn off US government spending. Late on Friday 31 January, he and a few of his goons gained access to the Department of Treasury payments system – the system that processes the federal spending that makes up more than a fifth of the US economy. More importantly, Musk and a 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who has previously worked for two of his companies, were given the ability to make changes to the payments system, thereby enabling them to stop disbursements of taxpayers’ dollars to recipients that the Trump crowd decide are illegitimate – for example a $367m payment to an outfit called Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Inc.It’s conceivable, of course, that this payment was an example of the wasteful federal spending that Musk and co are pledged to root out and eliminate. But that is not the point. The point is that all the spending passing through the system constitutes expenditure that has been authorised by Congress. Traditionally, the system was run by apolitical civil servants who had no authority to decide whether a particular payment was unwise or unacceptable. Now, suddenly, that power has been appropriated by an unelected billionaire who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to ensure that Trump was elected.But the Treasury coup is just one part of a bigger story. Musk is not just going after payments, he’s also going after jobs, salaries and the employment status of federal employees. And his strategy mirrors what he did to Twitter after being forced to buy it. At around 5pm on 28 January, millions of US government employees received an email from Musk with the subject line “Fork in the Road”. The message in the email was stark: accept a sweeping set of workplace changes or resign within nine days. It was more or less a replica of the email that Twitter employees received in November 2022 and it signals an intention to do to the federal bureaucracy what he did to Twitter in 2022: hollow it out and subject it to intensive personal control.It’s worth pondering the immensity of what’s happening while Trump blathers on about tariffs, acquiring Gaza, buying Greenland, trolling Justin Trudeau and generally “flooding the zone” with crap. As Mike Masnick, a distinguished tech commentator, puts it: “A private citizen with zero constitutional authority is effectively seizing control of critical government functions. The constitution explicitly requires Senate confirmation for anyone wielding significant federal power – a requirement Musk has simply ignored as he installs his loyalists throughout the government while demanding access to basically all of the levers of power, and pushing out anyone who stands in his way.”Musk’s arrival at the heart of American power signals a new, sinister kind of technocracy – an obnoxious blend of obscene wealth, narcissism, arrogance, determination, IQ and the kind of “solutionism” that believes there is no problem that cannot be solved by technology. He reminds Masnick of “a toddler ‘fixing’ a grandfather clock by removing its pendulum. Yes, the clock needed maintenance – but now it can’t tell time at all. The federal government absolutely needs reform, but what we’re seeing isn’t reform – it’s vandalism dressed up as innovation.”The strange thing is that what most people expected from Trump 2.0 was his usual performative chaos: perhaps a bit less than last time, but chaos nonetheless. What no one saw coming was a tech bro who spotted an opportunity to use AI to re-engineer the US government in the name of the “efficiency” that Silicon Valley worships, and was able to pay hundreds of millions to get into the driving seat. In the bad old days, insurgent colonels would surround the presidential palace with tanks and capture the radio station. Thanks to Trump, Musk didn’t have to worry about the palace, and he already had his own radio station (X), so he went straight to the heart of the matter – the Treasury. What we’re watching is nothing less than a thoroughly modern coup d’état.What I’ve been readingLLMs and a flawed paradigm
      An astute essay by Erik J Larsen on his Substack, Colligo, about the large language models that the tech industry calls “AIs”.How to raise your artificial intelligence
      A fascinating conversation with psychologist Alison Gopnik and AI scientist Melanie Mitchell in the LA Review of Books.The Musk junta Nice satirical piece by Garrett Graff on Doomsday Scenario, imagining how foreign correspondents would report on current events in Washington DC.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      Who is helping Elon Musk gut the US government?

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      Elon Musk’s rapid attempt to defund and depopulate the federal government has thrown US politics into chaos while the billionaire’s so-called “department of government efficiency” seizes control of operations at key agencies. Carrying out this hostile takeover are a team of staffers made up of wealthy executives, far-right ideologues and young engineers that have come to make up “Doge”.At government institutions such as the treasury department, General Services Administration and United States Agency for International Development, Musk’s allies have gained access to computer systems, including the sensitive personal data and payment information of tens of millions of Americans. His team is working to shut down USAid, the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian aid, and members have been spotted at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Education and National Institutes of Health.To undertake this unprecedented and potentially illegal gutting of public funding, Musk has assembled loyalists who largely lack government experience and who range from tech elites to Maga diehards, according to a review of the people publicly associated with Doge.Doge has not released any detailed account of who is working at the unofficial agency, and Musk, along with other staff, is technically a “special government employee”, which allows him and others to evade ethics and financial disclosures that would normally apply to government workers. The Doge team has taken steps to avoid public scrutiny, including limiting their online footprints.A lawsuit filed by unions of federal workers alleges that Musk’s allies in Doge have held calls and interviews in which they have withheld their last names in an effort to escape media scrutiny. These interviewers have also allegedly refused to answer questions while talking to federal employees.Musk shared a letter on X sent to him from the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor for Washington DC that vowed to pursue “any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people”, which includes identifying them.As hundreds of employees were put on administrative leave at USAid, several sources told the Guardian that Musk was directing Doge’s day-to-day operations personally.“This was just the Doge dudes just literally on the phone with Musk just getting directions from him,” one USAid employee said.Within the White House, Musk appears to be running Doge with a high degree of independence and with Donald Trump’s backing. The president briefly praised Musk’s team on Monday, although he said that he had not met with them personally.“They work, actually, out of the White House,” Trump said. “They’re smart people.”A Doge spokesperson did not respond to a list of questions concerning its staff and operations.Tech executives and engineers take over major agenciesSeveral people at Doge come directly from Musk’s private companies, including the Boring Company, Tesla and xAI. One executive taking a lead role overseeing the effort, according to multiple outlets, is Musk’s longtime lieutenant Steve Davis.Davis has worked for Musk in different capacities for about 20 years and is president of the tunnel-digging Boring Company. He was present on Saturday night at USAid when Doge staffers and agency security officials clashed over Musk’s team’s demands for access to restricted areas, multiple sources told the Guardian. When USAid officials attempted to block the team, two sources said that Davis threatened to bring in US marshals to the agency. The Guardian granted anonymity to those sources to protect them from retaliation.Davis is known for cost cutting and running fast-paced operations, which have at times resulted in clashes with safety regulators. While he was president of Boring in 2023, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) found that 15 to 20 Boring employees in Las Vegas had been burned with chemical accelerants due to hazardous working conditions at the site. The company’s former safety manager told Fortune that Davis had undercut and isolated him in ways that prohibited him from doing his job, while former employees said Davis imposed difficult deadlines and encouraged a breakneck pace. One Boring employee emailed the safety manager warning that workers “consistently flirted with death” while in the tunnels, according to Fortune. The Boring Company did not return a request for comment on these allegations.Another former Musk employee, Amanda Scales, worked at the billionaire’s artificial intelligence startup xAI before becoming chief of staff at the office of personnel management, which functions as the government’s human resources agency. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the acting head of OPM instructed heads of agencies to send Scales a list of employees on probationary periods or administrative leave as the new administration seeks to make drastic cuts to the federal workforce.Allies of the world’s richest man have also been placed in key positions at the General Services Administration – which handles government real estate and federal IT structure – and the treasury department. The former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd is now in charge of the GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, with 404 Media reporting that Shedd told workers he wants to implant artificial intelligence throughout government systems to write software and automate services. Musk himself has said he wants to deploy AI to review government payments for potential waste.Tom Krause, the CEO of the multibillion-dollar tech company Cloud Software Group, and a Musk ally, is now working within the treasury department. A judge ruled on Thursday that he was one of two “special government employees” associated with Doge who can access sensitive treasury data.View image in fullscreenSeveral tech moguls have said they are collaborating with Doge, though it’s not always clear in what capacity. The billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who donated $2.5m to a pro-Trump political action committee and celebrated his re-election, told the New York Times last month that he was “helping Doge”. Andreessen did not go into detail on what his help entailed and said he was not speaking for Musk, but he appeared to have advance knowledge of Doge’s goals and told the Times it had plans for “the money side”, head count and regulation. Weeks after the interview, Musk’s lieutenants went after the money side of the federal government – the treasury department.In addition to the more established executives working at Doge or collaborating with the group, Wired reported that Musk had hired a group of young engineers fresh out of college or high school who possess little experience outside of tiny tech firms. These Doge staffers, who according to the outlet range from 19 to 25 years old, have at times been given huge amounts of access and power over the federal government – including sources telling Wired that the engineer Marko Elez had gained direct “write access” to treasury department payment systems.Elez resigned on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his links to a now-deleted social media account that promoted eugenics and racism. Among other racist posts, the account posted on X that “you could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity” and called for repealing the Civil Rights Act, according to the Journal. Earlier that day, a judge had granted Elez and one other Doge employee the power to see sensitive treasury department data.Elez was reinstated on Friday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother young Doge staffer with access to sensitive government systems, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, has gone by the username “Big Balls” online and founded a company called “Tesla.Sexy LLC”, according to Wired. He has reportedly been on calls with GSA employees as they are asked to defend their jobs.“These people are clueless, given how smart they’re supposed to be,” one USAid employee currently on administrative leave said of the young Doge team. “They’re under the impression that if you just say [to do something], then it will magically happen.”Maga world gets a role in DogeAlong with the staff working with Doge full-time, with some even sleeping in government buildings, Musk’s team has worked in tandem with Trump hardliners to dismantle or exert control over government agencies. Doge staffers showed up to USAid in the past week with Peter Marocco, who briefly served at several agencies during Trump’s first term and was accused by multiple staffers of poor leadership and toxic workplace behavior.Marocco was allegedly photographed inside the Capitol building during the January 6 riot, according to a widely cited, citizen-led investigation that has accurately named numerous other rioters. When Dallas’s D Magazine asked him about the allegations last year, Marocco did not deny them but called the reports “smear tactics”.The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has now tapped Marocco to run USAid and review its programs as Musk continues work to shut down the agency entirely. Current and former USAid staffers told the Guardian last week that Marocco represented a disaster for the agency, with one former official calling him “a destroyer”.“He’s the most unqualified person to be sitting in any seat of government, let alone the person who has the keys to our foreign assistance,” another former colleague at USAid who still works at the agency said.Also working with Doge is the far-right Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is head of a “delivering on government efficiency” group within the House oversight committee. Greene, who has espoused numerous extremist conspiracies and in 2022 spoke at a white nationalist event, has used her power to demand that NPR and PBS testify about their operations. Greene cited a PBS report that stated Musk gave “what appeared to be a fascist salute” during a speech last month as one of the reasons to compel the news outlet’s executives to appear at the hearing.The conservative ideology extends to Doge’s human resources department, where the head of HR is an employment attorney and consultant who has promoted a “non-woke” alternative to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, 404 Media reported. Stephanie Holmes told the rightwing Federalist Society in 2022 that she started her firm to counter the “really progressive ideology that HR was pushing into corporate America”.The spokesperson for Doge is Katie Miller, who is married to the deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller. Before working at Doge, Miller was Mike Pence’s press secretary and a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, where she defended Trump’s anti-immigration policies, including during the period when it was separating families at the border. During Doge’s takeover of agencies on Sunday, Miller issued a statement on X claiming that no violations of security protocol had taken place. On Wednesday night, she told reporters that Musk would decide for himself when his actions constituted a conflict of interest.Stephen Miller has also begun working closely with Musk in the new Trump administration, according to the New York Times, and on Monday went on Fox News to defend the shutdown of USAid by decrying it as a “swamp nest of bureaucrats”. During Trump’s first term, Miller served as a key policy adviser and pushed for extreme policies such as banning immigration and travel from Muslim-majority countries. In 2019, more than 50 civil rights organizations and 20 Democratic senators called for Miller’s resignation after it emerged that he had sent hundreds of emails to far-right editors at Breitbart that included him citing information from prominent white nationalist websites.Changing staff and hidden identitiesSome of the people who had been associated with Doge in the months before Trump’s official order on 20 January have either been given roles elsewhere in the administration or pushed out entirely. The former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was originally slated to co-lead Doge with Musk, trumpeting the agency in posts on X. He left after reportedly facing internal tensions with the Tesla CEO and announced a run for Ohio governor.The former Trump tech adviser Michael Kratsios was helping interview hires for Doge, according to Bloomberg, but has since been nominated as the president’s science adviser. The top Silicon Valley investment banker and Musk ally Michael Grimes was also reportedly in discussions about joining Doge. He’s now expected to join the commerce department.Others hold unclear roles within Musk’s unofficial agency, such as the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Baris Akis, who, the New York Times reported, has become close to Musk and an integral part of Doge in recent weeks. Akis is a Turkish national who does not hold US citizenship, according to the Atlantic, which reported that Trump’s advisers declined Musk’s request to officially hire him because of his immigration status. It is unclear in what capacity, if any, he is still involved in the effort. The Doge spokesperson, Katie Miller, did not respond to a request for comment on whether Akis is still involved in Doge.Government watchdog groups have condemned the lack of transparency around Doge’s operations.“It’s inappropriate for the federal government to purposely hide the identities of senior officials who are shaping the policies and servicing the public,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight. “These officials must be held accountable for their work, both by their colleagues and the public. It’s also crucial that these officials abide by ethics and transparency requirements to assure the public they are serving in the best interest of our communities.”Andrew Roth contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      What does Elon Musk believe?

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      View image in fullscreenElon Musk is not a people person, as millions around the world will be able to attest after the planet’s richest man cut off food supplies, healthcare and probably even life itself to some of the most vulnerable without so much as a fore- or afterthought.Musk sees himself as a data man, wielding numbers like a machete to slash and burn his way through government waste and corruption as he leads the rightwing charge to capture the US state.Within days of Musk dispatching his minions to kick down the doors of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and rifle through its finances, the agency was in effect out of business. Musk claimed USAid was “a criminal organisation” and full of Marxists – an assertion called “laughable” by the agency’s former administrator under George W Bush, Andrew Natsios, who describes himself as a conservative Republican.Musk didn’t care. Less than three weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the head of the new “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a special group that Trump created, has built an extensive power base in Washington of a kind not seen before.Trump has given free rein to Musk to send his operatives into more than a dozen federal agencies to look for evidence of mismanagement and subversion, and to generally create chaos, outside of the usual bounds of oversight and regulation.Crucially, Musk now in effect controls the office of personnel management (OPM), which oversees federal employment. He immediately encouraged more than 2 million government workers to resign with the stated aim of forcing a few hundred thousand out the door.View image in fullscreenIt’s clear who Musk thinks should be running the country instead, from his recruitment to Doge of “special government employees” from his own companies and the wider tech industry to storm the federal citadels. They include a significant proportion of young male software engineers of the kind who tend to worship tech billionaires like Musk, including a teenager who has gone by “Big Balls” online.Few, if any, have undergone the security clearances other government workers need to access sensitive and personal information. If they had, Doge might have been discouraged from hiring another recruit from Silicon Valley, Marko Elez, who was sent into the US treasury department, where he had access to taxpayer records. Elez resigned on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal revealed he had posted racist messages on social media and defended eugenics.“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” Elez wrote on X in July.He was reinstated on Friday.On the face of it, Musk is implementing Trump’s commitment to cut spending, “dismantle the deep state” and sack “rogue bureaucrats”. But his embrace of the far right, including an unrestrained endorsement of the German nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), and what looked to much of the world like a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration celebrations, has raised urgent questions about Musk’s political beliefs and how he intends to use his newfound power.As it happens, much of what Musk is doing is also good for his businesses, including scrapping regulatory bodies and curtailing the power of unions and workers. The labor board, which upholds workers’ rights, has been frozen and agencies that regulated the financial industry have either been scrapped or told to abandon key parts of their work.Musk’s politics have been eclectic. In the past, he has backed universal basic income and a tax on carbon emissions. At the same time, he has a deep dislike of trade unions and public transport because it means being around “random strangers, one of whom might be a serial killer”. He espouses a visceral hostility to diversity programmes and appears to regard those who believe in helping the less fortunate as subversive.Thrown into this mix is Musk’s fascination with the pro-natalism movement, for which he has done his bit by fathering 12 children, and his hope that one day his rocket company, SpaceX, will help them colonise Mars.Raised in South Africa under apartheid, Musk is clearly suspicious of democracy and the leaders it produces. His grandfather headed a fringe political movement in Canada in the 1930s, Technocracy Incorporated, which sought to abolish democracy in favour of government by elite technicians, but its overtones of fascism saw it banned during the second world war.Musk shows some of the same tendencies, as do other libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley billionaires unhappy with the messiness of elected government. He has spoken in support of direct democracy, where policies and other issues are decided by popular referendums rather than elected representatives.In the meantime, Musk appears happy to embrace the US version of the “strongman” ruler through the Republican right’s “unitary executive theory”, which regards the authority of the president as paramount and Congress as an impediment to the implementation of his or her will.Over the years, Musk has described himself as “not a conservative” and “politically moderate”. He backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election going back to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 until he soured on the party in the past few years.View image in fullscreen“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold,” he wrote on X in 2022.But there were clues to other motives, including a statement that he would be voting Republican because of Joe Biden’s support for trade unions and what he regarded as insufficient Democratic backing for his companies.Not long before last year’s presidential election, Musk declared that Trump would save American democracy from Democrats trampling on individual liberties. But he kept moving ever further to the right in public, with an open embrace of racist European political leaders, including the AfD, and the promotion of claims of a “white genocide” in the country of his birth, South Africa.Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, has linked his shift from Obama voter to cheerleader for the AfD to the transition of his daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson.Wilson was 16 when she texted a relative: “Hey, I’m transgender, and my name is now Jenna. Don’t tell my dad.” The day after Wilson turned 18 in 2022, she changed her name because of “gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form”.Musk told Isaacson he was sanguine about the change but then Wilson became a fervent Marxist and wouldn’t speak to him any more, a situation he described as one of the most painful of his life.“She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil,” Musk told the author.Musk blamed Wilson’s progressive Los Angeles school and said he was disturbed at the “woke mind virus” holding back America.After California passed a law barring school districts from requiring teachers to tell parents of changes to a student’s sexual orientation and gender identity, Musk announced he was moving the headquarters of his two largest companies, SpaceX and X, to Texas. He said that the law caused “massive destruction of parental rights” and put children at risk of “permanent damage”.Musk did not say that moving his companies also had significant tax advantages for himself and his businesses, which would additionally be subject to fewer climate regulations than in California.Still, his apparent anger over his daughter’s transition appears to have set in motion a broader hostility toward identity issues, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, a favourite target of the Trumpian right. Musk announced that the words “cis” and “cisgender” were considered slurs on X, and he came out against pronouns, tweeting that they “suck”.In late 2022, another tweet linked Musk’s hostility toward the way people choose to identify themselves – an odd position for a man who claims to be a champion of free speech – to his anger at the Biden administration’s Covid restrictions.View image in fullscreenMusk mocked Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, who was instrumental in the lockdown and other measures to contain the crisis.“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” he wrote.Some saw the tweet as evidence that Musk was now openly identifying with the far right, which defied mask regulations and stay-at-home orders and called for Fauci to be locked up for intruding on their liberties.But while Musk’s hostility toward pronouns was personal, Covid regulations touched on his businesses and net worth.Musk refused to close his Tesla factory at the height of the pandemic, claiming without evidence that “panic” over the virus would do more damage than the disease itself. He disparaged social distancing, predicted that the virus would claim few lives in the US (it eventually claimed more than 1.2 million), and described the lockdown as “fascist” and “erasing people’s freedoms”. Musk tweeted a meme comparing Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to Hitler over his government’s Covid restrictions.Musk may have dressed up his position as a concern about people’s welfare but its immediate effect was to keep his factories rolling even if the people working in them were at greater risk of infection and death. And while Musk claimed a principled position in favour of individual liberty, he has a history of suppressing the rights of his own workers.In 2023, he said that he disagreed with the concept of trade unions.“I just don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants sort of thing,” he told the New York Times Dealbook Summit. “Unions naturally try to create negativity in a company.”One reason Musk may not like unions is they tend to stand up for their members. He has faced accusations from former employees of aggressively using a secretive dispute-resolution process to fend off repeated claims of sexual and racial harassment within his companies, including accusations of women enduring a “frat house” atmosphere of groping and other abuses ignored and even perpetrated by high-level managers.Tesla has paid out millions of dollars to Black workers subjected to racial harassment.Yet, while Musk restricts the rights of his employees to seek redress from the courts, he and his companies filed at least 23 lawsuits in federal courts in the year to August 2024, according to Fortune magazine.They include a legal action by X against the Center for Countering Digital Hate over a report accusing the social network of making millions of dollars out of accounts spewing hate from “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories”. A California judge threw out the lawsuit last year, saying it was clear the “case is about punishing the defendants for their speech”.Musk will probably spend a lot more time being frustrated by the courts. Judges have already put on hold his push for mass resignations from the civil service and placed some restrictions on Doge’s mass collection of data. Federal workers, unions and civil rights organisations are lining up a flurry of lawsuits to challenge Musk’s actions.But the courts themselves may become a target for Musk as he works to tear down the old order.Isaacson in his biography wrote that Musk once described being in “a state of war at all times” as one of his default settings.No one thinks that, so long as Trump continues to regard the billionaire as more of an asset than a liability, Musk’s thirst for power will stop at gutting federal agencies. The question is where he will launch his next offensive. More

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      Judge temporarily blocks Musk’s ‘Doge’ team from accessing treasury records

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      A federal judge early on Saturday blocked Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing treasury department records that contain sensitive personal data such as social security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.US district judge Paul A Engelmayer issued the preliminary injunction after 19 Democratic attorneys general sued Donald Trump. The case, filed in federal court in New York city, alleges the Trump administration allowed Musk’s team access to the treasury department’s central payment system in violation of federal law.The payment system handles tax refunds, social security benefits, veterans’ benefits and much more, sending out trillions of dollars every year while containing an expansive network of Americans’ personal and financial data.Engelmayer, who was appointed by Barack Obama, also said anyone prohibited from having access to the sensitive information since 20 January must immediately destroy all copies of material downloaded from treasury department systems.He set a hearing for 14 February.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit being filed.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, whose office filed the lawsuit, said Doge’s access to the treasury department’s data raised security problems and the possibility of an illegal freeze in federal funds.“This unelected group, led by the world’s richest man, is not authorized to have this information, and they explicitly sought this unauthorized access to illegally block payments that millions of Americans rely on, payments for health care, childcare and other essential programs,” James said in a video message released by her office on Friday.James, a Democrat who has been one of Trump’s chief antagonists, said the president does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress.Musk’s Doge was created to discover and eliminate what the Trump administration has deemed to be wasteful government spending. Doge’s access to treasury records, as well as its inspection of various government agencies, has ignited widespread concern among critics over the increasing power of Musk, while supporters have cheered at the idea of reining in bloated government finances.Musk has made fun of criticism of Doge on his X social media platform while claiming it is saving taxpayers millions of dollars.States also included in the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.The suit alleges that Doge’s access to the treasury records could interfere with funding already appropriated by Congress, which would exceed the treasury department’s statutory authority. The case also argues that the Doge access violates federal administrative law and the US constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.It also accuses the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, of changing the department’s longstanding policy for protecting sensitive personally identifiable information and financial information to allow Musk’s Doge team access to its payment systems.“This decision failed to account for legal obligations to protect such data and ignored the privacy expectations of federal fund recipients,” including states, veterans, retirees and taxpayers, the lawsuit says.Connecticut’s attorney general, William Tong, said it was not clear what Doge was doing with the information in the treasury systems.“This is the largest data breach in American history,” Tong said in a statement on Friday. “Doge is an unlawfully constituted band of renegade tech bros combing through confidential records, sensitive data and critical payment systems. What could go wrong?”The treasury department has said the review was about assessing the integrity of the system and that no changes were being made. According to two people familiar with the process, Musk’s team began its inquiry looking for ways to suspend payments made by USAid, the US Agency for International Development, which Trump and Musk are attempting to dismantle. The two people spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.Separately, Democratic lawmakers are seeking a treasury department investigation of Doge’s access to the government’s payment system.Also, labor unions and advocacy groups have sued to block the payments system review over concerns about its legality. A judge in Washington on Thursday temporarily restricted access to two employees with “read only” privileges. More

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      Trump hints Musk ‘Doge’ team has free rein with Pentagon next in line for cuts

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      Donald Trump has indicated that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is operating without guardrails after it gained access to Americans’ private information “very easily” and as it prepares to assail the Pentagon.The US president was speaking at a White House press conference alongside Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister of Japan, but most of the questions focused on Musk’s sweeping mission to root out waste in the federal government, which has caused disarray in Washington.Trump suggested that he has given the tech billionaire free rein and appeared blase about the details. Asked why Doge needs access to treasury payment systems including Americans’ social security numbers, home addresses and bank accounts, he replied: “Well, it doesn’t, but they get it very easily. We don’t have very good security in our country.”The president claimed that he was “very proud” of Musk’s team of young and “very smart” software engineers. He said: “They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption and we’ve found tremendous corruption.”Doge has so far produced no evidence of corruption at USAid, which it shuttered without seeking the required authority from Congress, or other agencies. Its fast and furious assault on the government has resulted in a flurry of lawsuits and street protests.Pressed on whether there was anything he has told Musk he cannot touch, Trump offered only a vague reply. “Well, we haven’t discussed that much,” he confessed. “I’ll tell them to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people. Very, very, very, very capable.“They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately as somebody gets tongue-tied that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing. We have very smart people going.”Trump confirmed that he had asked Musk – the world’s richest man – to review spending in the sprawling defence department, which has a proposed budget for 2025 of $850bn. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad.”But he added pointedly: “Social security will not be touched. It will only be strengthened … we have illegal immigrants on social security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them off.”Democrats in Congress are seeking a treasury department investigation of the access that Musk’s team was given to the government’s payment system, citing “threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data”.Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to inspectors general: “Given the threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data posed by Mr Musk and his team’s reported access to critical federal payment systems … we request that you use your authorities to investigate this matter further.”On Friday, Trump also said Doge should rehire a staff member who resigned after being linked by a newspaper report to an openly racist social media account.First JD Vance, the vice-president, said Marko Elez, 25, should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people”. Asked whether he endorsed Vance’s view, Trump told reporters he was not aware of the specific case but “I’m with the vice-president”.Soon after Musk, who had polled his X followers on the question, posted: “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

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      Trump says he will fire ‘some’ FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases and defends Doge’s treasury access – live

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      Donald Trump has made clear he will fire “some” of the FBI agents who investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack, after the bureau turned over their names to a justice department official who was previously one of the president’s attorneys. Speaking at a joint press conference with Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, the president also again backed dismantling the Department of Education and said he was “very proud” of the work of the “department of government efficiency”, despite objections from Democrats and advocacy groups. Earlier in the day, he renewed his offensive against USAid, and said he’d announce a new barrage of tariffs on unspecified countries next week.Here’s what else has happened today:

      Trump said he is in “no rush” to make his plan to put the United States in charge of the Gaza Strip a reality.

      USAid’s dismantling may be a boon for China’s global influence, analysts say.

      The health and human services department and agencies under its umbrella – such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control – may be the next targets of Trump’s mass layoffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.
      A US judge on Friday said he will enter a “very limited” temporary order blocking Donald Trump’s administration from taking certain steps to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USaid), according to Reuters.US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington said he would issue the order following a lawsuit by the largest US government workers’ union and an association of foreign service workers, who sued on Thursday to stop the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency.In a notice sent to the foreign aid agency’s workers on Thursday, the administration said it will keep 611 essential workers on board at USaid out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000. This move has largely been directed by Elon Musk, who’s spearheading the president’s effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.A Justice Department official, Brett Shumate, told Nichols that about 2,200 USaid employees would be put on paid leave under the administration’s plans, saying, “The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID.”A US official said the agency will deploy about 1,500 more active-duty troops, bringing the total number to about 3,600, according to the Associated Press.Moving troops south is part of Donald Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration and beef up security at the border. Trump signed several executive orders during his first week in office addressing immigration, including one declaring a national emergency at the southern border.Roughly 1,600 active-duty troops have already been deployed, according to the Associated Press, and about 500 more are anticipated to head south within the next few days.Donald Trump has signed an executive order to address “serious human rights violations occurring in South Africa”, Reuters reports, in the latest sign of worsening relations between the United States and Africa’s largest economy.It was not yet clear how the order would affect South Africa, but it comes after secretary of state Marco Rubio accused the country of “anti-Americanism”, while Trump announced he would cut funding to the country over its efforts to reform land ownership.Here’s more on the spat:The shuttering of USAid continues apace, with its name taped over on a building directory outside its Washington DC headquarters:Only a few hundred staffers are set to remain at the organization that facilitates the US foreign aid strategy:Donald Trump has made clear he will fire “some” of the FBI agents who investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack, after the bureau turned over their names to a justice department official who was previously one of the president’s attorneys. Speaking at a joint press conference with Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, the president also again backed dismantling the Department of Education and said he was “very proud” of the work of the “department of government efficiency”, despite objections from Democrats and advocacy groups. Earlier in the day, he renewed his offensive against USAid, and said he’d announce a new barrage of tariffs on unspecified countries next week.Here’s what else has happened today:

      Trump said he is in “no rush” to make his plan to put the United States in charge of the Gaza Strip a reality.

      USAid’s dismantling may be a boon for China’s global influence, analysts say.

      The health and human services department and agencies under its umbrella – such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control – may be the next targets of Trump’s mass layoffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.
      Just before he wrapped up his press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, Donald Trump was asked if he had given Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” any particular orders of where to find areas to cut spending.“We haven’t discussed that much. I’ll tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people, very, very, very, very capable. They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately, as somebody gets tongue-tied, that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said.“I’ve instructed him go into education, go into military, go into other things as we go along, and they’re finding massive amounts of fraud, abuse, waste, all of these things,” the president added, without offering details.The reporter speaking to Trump noted that social security and Medicare make up the bulk of federal spending. “Social security will not be touched, it’ll only be strengthened,” Trump replied, again without providing details of how he would do that and then pivoting to accusations that undocumented immigrants are accessing those benefits.Donald Trump said he will fire an unspecified number of the FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases, after the justice department sought the names of bureau employees involved in investigations related to the Capitol attack.“I’ll fire some of them because some of them were corrupt,” Trump replied, when asked at his press conference if he would fire all the agents who investigated January 6.“I have no doubt about that. I got to know a lot about that business, that world. I got to know a lot about that world, and we had some corrupt agents, and those people are gone, or they will be gone, and it’ll be done quickly and very surgically.”Donald Trump then signaled he remained serious about closing the Department of Education, saying regulations around schooling would be better left to the states.“We’re ranked dead last,” Trump said. “I want to see it go back to the states where great states that do so well have no debt, they’re operated brilliantly. They’ll be as good as Norway or Denmark or Sweden or any of the other highly ranked countries … 35 to 38 states will be right at the top, and the rest will come along. They’ll have to come along competitively. And by the way, we’ll be spending a lot less money, and we’ll have great education.”Donald Trump has defended Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying their work is necessary to root out unspecified “corruption”.“I’m very proud of the job that this group of young people, generally young people, but very smart people, they’re doing,” Trump said, referring to the reportedly young engineers Musk has staffed Doge with. “They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption.”Democrats have condemned the effort, saying Musk and his employees are unqualified and have put America’s privacy at risk by accessing sensitive government systems, among other concerns.The last time Donald Trump was in office, Shinzo Abe was Japan’s prime minister, and the rapport the two leaders developed looms over Shigeru Ishiba’s visit to Washington DC, the Guardian’s Justin McCurry reports:Donald Trump had yet to get his feet under the Oval Office desk when he held his first meeting with a foreign leader in late 2016. Shinzo Abe, then Japan’s prime minister, arrived at Trump Tower in November that year bearing a gift of a gold-plated golf club and harbouring a determination to get the Japan-US relationship under Trump off to the best possible start.The success, or otherwise, of Abe’s charm offensive had potentially serious repercussions. During the election campaign, Trump had suggested he would withdraw US troops from Japan, contingent on Tokyo’s willingness to make a bigger financial contribution to their countries’ postwar alliance.The gambit worked. During Trump’s five-nation visit to Asia in late 2017, he and Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, bonded over a round of golf – a sport for which the Japanese leader had apparently developed a sudden passion – and gourmet hamburgers.For the remainder of Trump’s term, Abe supported the US administration with a fervour that eluded many of his contemporaries. US troops remained in Japan, and the bilateral security treaty – the cornerstone of Japan’s postwar foreign policy – survived unscathed.As he prepares to fly to Washington on a three-day visit, all eyes are on whether Japan’s current leader, Shigeru Ishiba, will be able to re-create Abe’s personal rapport with Trump, although golf diplomacy is unlikely to play a part for the cigarette-smoking plastic-modelling enthusiast.The press conference is now underway and Donald Trump is currently giving compliments to his counterpart.Just before the two leaders came out, US vice-president JD Vance turned up in the room.Trump said the US worked well together with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba’s predecessor, Shinzo Abe.The scene is set at the White House for the forthcoming press conference between Donald Trump and Shigeru Ishiba.The press has gathered in the East Room and podium sound checks are complete as the US president and the Japanese prime minister prepare to make remarks and take questions from media representatives.The countries’ respective flags alternate behind the area where the leaders will station themselves and senior aides are chatting nearby.The press conference was due to get under way an hour ago. The two are having a working lunch. Ishiba is the second foreign leader to visit Trump here since he became the 47th president. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was the first, earlier this week, and the visit made huge waves with Trump’s comments that the US should take over Gaza.Around a dozen Democratic members of Congress attempted to enter the Department of Education today in response to reports that Donald Trump would soon order it dismantled, but were denied access.“Today we went to the Department of Education and demanded answers in defense of our students, in defense of our teachers, in defense of families and communities that are built around public education. We’re not going to let them destroy our public school system and destroy the futures of millions of kids across this country,” said congressman Maxwell Frost, who was part of the group.The group tried for about 10 minutes to get in, but were informed they would not be allowed access. Police were called, and were positioned inside the building’s lobby.You can see video of the attempt here.Only a few hundred employees will remain at USAid once Donald Trump’s dismantling of the aid agency is complete, the Guardian’s Anna Betts reports:Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly planning to keep just more than 600 essential workers at USAid, according to a notice sent to employees of the US foreign aid agency on Thursday night.The notice, shared with Reuters by an administration official on Friday, reportedly stated that 611 essential workers would be retained at USAid, which had more than 10,000 employees globally.Earlier, it was reported that the administration intended to retain fewer than 300 staff members at USAid.The USAid staff reductions are set to take effect at midnight on Friday, as indicated on the agency’s website. But a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) seeks to prevent the administration from dismantling USAid, which was established as an independent agency by a law passed by Congress in 1998.Donald Trump said he plans to announce reciprocal tariffs on many countries next week.Trump was asked about his plans for further restrictions on trading partners during a bilateral meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba. Trump replied:
      I’ll be announcing that next week, reciprocal trade, so that we’re treated evenly with other countries, we don’t want any more, any less.
      Trump warned repeatedly during his campaign that he would impose a universal tariff on imports into the US.Trump also threatened tariffs on Japanese goods if the US trade deficit with Japan is not equalized.“Should be pretty easy to do,” he said, according to Reuters. “I don’t think we’ll have any problem whatsoever. They want fairness too.”The Trump administration has agreed not to publicly release the names of FBI agents and employees who investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.The justice department agreed to a temporary deal not to immediately make public the names of agents who worked on investigations related to the 6 January 2021 insurrection until at least late March.The deal was struck after acting head of the FBI, Brian Driscoll, turned over to the justice department a list of FBI employees involved in the January 6 investigations.The data, submitted to at least partially comply with an order from the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, last month demanding information, included employee numbers, job titles and job roles.The demand prompted days of internal resistance from Driscoll and the bureau and prompted two lawsuits from groups of anonymous FBI agents who said the move endangered their safety. More

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      Here’s how Democrats should fight back against Trump | Margaret Sullivan

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      It’s easy to be disgusted with the Democratic party right now. Donald Trump is running roughshod over the rule of law, treating the US constitution like toilet paper. His trusty pal Elon Musk is the arsonist in chief, burning down worthy democratic institutions and installing his minions in the heart of government where they have gained access to citizens’ private information. Much of what’s happening is illegal and unconstitutional.And the Democrats, mostly, look less like an opposition party and more like stunned bystanders. As my Guardian colleague Moira Donegan put it, they are “out of touch, opportunistic and cowardly”.But not all. Some Democrats in a new generation are punching back hard, and in so doing, showing their colleagues how to overcome their reputation for spineless dithering.Take Jasmine Crockett, for example, a 43-year-old congresswoman from Texas, who is defiantly feisty. You’ll find her everywhere – on social media, on cable TV and leading citizen protests in front of government office buildings.“We have a thug in charge of the White House,” she thundered in a TV appearance this week. And she didn’t spare her fellow citizens who elected Trump or who stayed home instead of voting in November. “Americans thought that it was OK to take a full-fledged criminal and make him the president of the United States, and then they want to act aghast when he does criminal things.”I’ve been talking with Sawyer Hackett, a strategist who worked in the Obama administration, about how Democrats can meet this terrifying moment. He praised Crockett as “an authentic source of righteous indignation when Democrats desperately need it”.The millions of anti-Trump Americans, he told me, aren’t interested in curated talking points or polished press conferences.“They want to see us fight and speak clearly about the threats we face,” Hackett said, and she has been delivering. As a Black woman, Crockett is particularly incensed about TrumpWorld’s racist attacks on diversity and has no hesitation in blasting the “mediocre white men” who benefit.The Connecticut senator Chris Murphy is at least as impressive. He has been relentless in calling out exactly what’s happening and why, especially in the shocking weeks since Trump took office.“We have days to stop the destruction of our democracy,” Murphy raged at a protest Tuesday in front of the US treasury building in Washington. “It’s the people who rule, not the billionaires. We are taking this country back from Elon Musk.”Murphy calls what’s happening a constitutional crisis. It is one that the public must play a role in fixing by putting pressure not only on Democrats but on the cowardly Republicans who hold a majority in both houses of Congress. Talk about spineless!“There’s been no better messenger in the first two weeks of Trump 2.0 than Chris Murphy,” in Hackett’s view. “At a time when too many Democrats are afraid of their shadow, Murphy is showing how to fight back with a compelling populist message that should be a blueprint for the Democrats moving forward.”As outraged and frightened Americans urge Democrats to “do something”, it’s not clear whether voices like Crockett’s and Murphy’s can really make a difference. What can be done? Lawsuits are cropping up all over, and a federal judge on Wednesday barred the enforcement of Trump’s executive order that would restrict birthright citizenship.And some in Congress are refusing to vote for anything Trump wants until the illegality ends and Musk is sent home. Their notion is simple: gum up the works.“Democrats need to throw every possible wrench into the plans of Trump, Musk and their Republican cultists in Congress,” argued scholar Norm Ornstein in the Contrarian newsletter. “Doing so will also underscore how serious the threat is to our system, thereby forcing media to cover it.” As the Virginia congressman Don Beyer suggested on Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast podcast from the New Republic: “Put those things that used to be routine and make them not routine until Trump stops breaking the law.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn other words, attack on multiple fronts, including through leveraging the power of Democratic state governments. Most of all, prepare for the midterms elections next year by honing a strong, populist message.And lead with convincing voices that can motivate the public. Crockett and Murphy surely are two of those. Though far from alone – Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, for example, is irreplaceable – they are notable because they are younger and savvy about how to communicate forcefully in today’s media environment. (Here’s Murphy’s clarity on the billionaire bonanza: “Why is Donald Trump engaged in this relentless campaign to try to silence journalists, media companies, and his political opposition? It’s because he’s trying to steal from you.”)They know how to put up their dukes.That’s important because one thing is certain: if the public believes there is no determination to fight back, Trump’s destruction will continue unabated.What’s giving me hope nowWhat’s giving me hope now is knowing so many talented young journalists, not only my students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, but others whose careers I have followed in recent years. Many of them are determined, honest, idealistic, energetic and unwilling to give up on their chosen craft despite all the headwinds and challenges that face them. Democracy demands journalism, so this is extremely important now and in the future.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Seth Meyers on Elon Musk’s US takeover: ‘A billionaire coup’

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      Late-night hosts spoke about the damage being caused by Donald Trump’s new right-hand man as well as the president’s unconvincing attempts to show off his Christian side.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers started by saying that despite the recent election, “the real president is Elon Musk”, who has shown he is in control despite being “very unpopular” with voters.He said the billionaire has been launching a “de facto takeover of the federal government” with his “team of unaccountable hatchet men”.Recent polls have shown that Americans are unhappy with Musk’s increased control but Trump has been defending him during typically hard-to-understand rambles, resembling “a real-time version of Mad Libs”.Musk has been frantically figuring out what to keep and what to cut within the government, with Meyers showing that he ultimately wants a “wholesale removal of regulations”.Meyers called it “a billionaire coup”.Musk has been busy dismantling USAid, with elected senators recently being blocked from entering the agency’s headquarters. “I’d be so embarrassed if I was a senator and I couldn’t enter the building based on something called Doge,” he said.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also criticised Musk and his “crew of teenage mutant incels” who are busy trying to “tear apart 250 years of democracy like seagulls fighting over a bag of french fries”.They are trying to fire many people within the federal government and part of that has seen the White House ordering the CIA to send an unclassified email with the names of all employees hired over the last two years.Colbert calmed viewers by saying that according to an official, the people would be protected as the list only included the first names and first initial of the last name. “Well then we’re fine,” he said. “That is an uncrackable code.”He then joked that no one would be able to figure out who he was targeting if he said that it would be funny and good for the US if “obvious fascist Elon M got his junk stuck in a four slice toaster”.Colbert then said “Trump’s goons are also doing increasingly useless things just to scour the government clean of any trace of DEI” including taking down any reference to diversity or inclusion on walls or desks. “No federal agency is safe from the anti-compassion cyberdorks,” he said.They have also been ensuring that bathroom signs comply with Trump’s ruling. “What a waste of time,” he said. “The only bathroom signs that should be taken down are the confusing ones in theme restaurants.”He then continued by saying that “it’s not all bad news, some of it is also scary” as he spoke about a second bird flu strain that has now infected cattle. “This can mean only one thing: the birds are having sex with the cows,” he said. “Please no one tell the bees, they’re going to feel so betrayed.”Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host spoke about this weekend’s Super Bowl, “also known as ‘get drunk at a friend of a friend’s weird living room’ evening”.Kendrick Lamar is the half-time performer, which means that it will lead to the “largest group of people ever to see anyone call Drake a bitch ever”.Trump will be in attendance and Kimmel joked that “he said he’s gonna let Elon pick the winner this year”.This week also saw the president attend the National Prayer Breakfast because he “doesn’t like it when people worship anyone but him”.He added that “of all the unbelievable things about Donald Trump, religious people believing he is also a religious person might be the toughest one to understand”.Kimmel said that if Trump met Jesus, “he’d call him a loser, he’d tell him to get a haircut and put a shirt on”.He also said the only reason he is going to the Super Bowl is because “he can’t stand to have even one day when he’s on TV less than Taylor Swift”. More