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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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      Trump isn’t a narcissist – he’s a solipsist. And it means a few simple things | John R MacArthur

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      Two weeks into the Trump administration, I’m still being asked by foreigners about the new president’s “political vision”.Some of them, especially the French and the British, might be excused for excessive politeness toward a country that in many respects they still envy and admire. But on most of the news programs and podcasts to which I’ve been invited, I’m still encountering earnest interviewers struggling to understand Trump from a conventional political perspective, no matter how contradictory, irrational, or stupid his statements and actions may be. How can this be and what does it augur?The investigative psychiatrist Robert J Lifton once explained to me that Trump is a solipsist, as distinct from the narcissist that he’s often accused of being.A narcissist, while deeply self-infatuated, nevertheless seeks the approval of others and will occasionally attempt seduction to get what he wants (I think of the French president, Emmanuel Macron). For Trump the solipsist, the only point of reference is himself, so he makes no attempt even at faking interest in other people, since he can’t really see them from his self-centered position.Trump’s absence of external connection is self-evident: his treatment of the “other” – from his own family to his tenants, his political rivals, the victims of the Los Angeles fires or the displaced people of Gaza – displays not only a lack of empathy, but also an emotional blindness. How else could he tease out loud about dating his own daughter, Ivanka? How else could he so cruelly insult former president Biden in his inauguration address, with Biden seated just a short distance away?Trump’s solipsistic character was on full display on 20 January in the Capitol Rotunda. After stating, absurdly, that houses had burned “tragically” in Los Angeles “without even a token of defense”, the president seemed to turn philosophical and then appeared to ad-lib: “Some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country … they don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting.”I suppose it’s better than his reaction to a 2018 fire in Trump Tower that killed a resident, Todd Brassner. Trump’s tweeted response: “Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!” No condolences for the dead man or his family. That’s also interesting.None of this is to say that Trump’s policy directives don’t suggest disturbing political predilections that need to be discussed and challenged. He is the president, after all, not just a coldhearted landlord. His firing of 17 inspectors general, attempt to end birthright citizenship and temporary halt of “all federal financial assistance” are certainly causes for concern, and possibly alarm. So, also, are his threats to slap high tariffs on Canada and Mexico, friendly nations that normally are happy to kowtow to their vastly more powerful neighbor no matter who occupies the White House.But this misses the point of Trump, malevolent though he may be. He delights in being attacked because it keeps him at center stage. What could be better for a solipsist than to be criticized across the full spectrum of America’s limited ideological bandwidth?In an editorial, the New York Times denounced Trump’s “first assertions of executive power” that “blatantly exceed what is legally granted”. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ridiculed an unprovoked “trade war” that “will qualify as one of the dumbest in history”. Already, Trump has changed the script by “pausing” the tariff increases, but he got the Journal worked up enough to pay him a lot of attention. Federal judges blocked Trump’s two most obviously unconstitutional orders, but the Times still got into a dither about his threats to the constitution.View image in fullscreenOne can’t just ignore Trump’s blathering, but like parents dealing with an ornery child, editors, reporters and columnists need to temper reprimands and raised voices with self-restraint, calmness and even studied indifference. Humor, sarcasm and ridicule can be useful tools, though as we learned from Barack Obama’s famous roast of Trump in 2011, they can also motivate the target to run for president.Covering Trump, like bringing up children, is an art, not a science.Of course, none of Trump’s tariff actions or anti-immigrant edicts will bring factories back from Mexico (the cheap labor and investment protections under our current trade agreement with Mexico and Canada are too good for a rational businessman to pass up). Neither will they quickly raise wages for working-class citizens, since creating a labor shortage through deportations will take much longer to affect pay scales than if Congress simply raised the federal minimum wage, or legalized the “illegals”. Also, ironically, Trump’s tariff threats and military border bluster may backfire and encourage fentanyl production to move to the United States from south of the border.However, it’s a fair bet that Trump the solipsist doesn’t care if his policies fail to help the ordinary people who voted for him, and we anti-Trumpers should fear his supporters’ rage if they conclude that they’ve been duped by their hero. The backlash is more likely to be felt by liberals than by Trump, who will retreat safely to Mar-a-Lago and resume cheating at golf.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile I do tend to mock, rather than fear, Trump’s sound and light show, I don’t mean to make light of his most reckless impulses. There’s always collateral damage when somebody starts a war.On the eve of the inauguration, in the Watergate Hotel, I attended the “Coronation Ball”, where “populist” and royalist rightwingers packed the Moretti Grand Ballroom to drink and dine on French champagne and red wine, as well as Gallic cuisine that included amuse-bouches. I was there at the invitation of an open-minded business consultant, an unfanatical Trump partisan who may not have understood that I wanted to cover the event, though he knows the world of journalism.It was indeed amusing to meet a guy wearing a Gen Douglas MacArthur button. So was hearing Steve Bannon’s rip-roaring speech, which flattered the black-tie and evening dress crowd as the “vanguard of a revolutionary movement” that was “just in the top of the first inning”. Bannon warned his rightwing Jacobins not to “flinch” or “question” Trump’s mission of ending “any of these forever wars” and accomplishing “the deportation of all 15 million illegal aliens”.And when Bannon called for “no mercy, no quarter, no prisoners”, he apparently was including Rupert Murdoch and Fox News: “Murdoch sent a memo: ‘We’re going to make [Trump] a non-person’ … and [Trump] knew it. And he still came back like Cincinnatus from the plough, who saved his country.” (Bannon might have mentioned that the Roman patrician, according to legend, was twice dictator of the Republic, but I quibble.)It wasn’t all amuse-bouches, however. Later in the evening, when the jazz band took a break, the far-right personality Jack Posobiec launched a diatribe against the cliques surrounding the former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, who, he said, would never return to power “because they’ll have to come through us”. Meanwhile, a lot of political prisoners would be freed, and not just the martyrs of January 6. “Derek Chauvin will be freed!” he declaimed.Two guests in military dress uniforms standing nearby looked at me, laughing with incredulous astonishment. “You’re going to tell us who he is ?” one said. Once I found out from other journalists in the crowd that it was Posobiec – he of “stop the steal” fame and other conspiracy theories dear to Trump and Maga – I could better appreciate the foreign journalists’ difficulty understanding the president. With no political vision, no long-range goals, it’s quite possible that it never occurred to Trump to pardon George Floyd’s murderer. But now that an influential courtier has serviced the monarch with a concrete idea – an idea guaranteed to slake a solipsist’s thirst for attention – we should all be worried about the short-term whims of the king.

      John R MacArthur is president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine More

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      in US Politics

      Trump calls for ‘termination’ of 60 Minutes in fresh attack on US media

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      Donald Trump has called for the “termination” of 60 Minutes, a long-established fixture of US journalism, in a fresh onslaught against the media that also included baseless claims that money from the country’s beleaguered foreign aid body had been illicitly funding news organisations.The demand that 60 Minutes be taken off the air came in a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform. It was the latest salvo in his long-running dispute with the CBS program over its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, last year’s defeated Democratic presidential candidate, over which Trump has lodged a $10m suit alleging “election interference”.“CBS should lose its license, and the cheaters at 60 Minutes should all be thrown out, and this disreputable ‘NEWS’ show should be immediately terminated,” Trump wrote, alleging that the program and the network had “defrauded the public” to an extent “never seen before.”The diatribe followed 60 Minutes’ release of an unedited transcript of Harris’s interview to the Federal Communications Committee in an effort to parry Trump’s accusations. The transcript was also posted on its website.“[The transcripts] show – consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public – that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” read an accompanying note on the site.The original controversy arose after the transmitted interview featured a different segment of Harris’s answer to a question about Israel from the version screened as a trailer. Trump’s supporters claimed that the final version was more polished than the original, which was mocked as a “word salad”. Trump followed up by accusing the show of editing Harris’s answer to portray her in a more positive light, thus boosting her election chances.Employees of 60 Minutes have denied claims of bias and say such edits are standard practice. However, CBS’s owner, Paramount Global – which is currently seeking an $8bn merger with Skydance Media – has opened negotiations with Trump’s lawyers over the $10m lawsuit amid reports of pressure from the newly appointed FCC chair, Brendan Carr.In an interview with Fox News, Carr said he shared Trump’s opinion about the 60 Minutes interview with Harris.“This is a rare situation where we have extrinsic evidence that CBS had played one answer or one set of words and then swapped in another set. And CBS’s conduct through this, frankly, has been concerning,” he said.Trump – who frequently branded journalists “the enemy of the people” in his first term – broadened Thursday’s attack to other outlets by amplifying false claims that USAid, the currently shuttered foreign assistance agency, had been funding Politico and other news outlets to the tune of $8m.“With the new Democrat scandal that just arose with respect to USAID illegally paying large sums of money to Politico and other media outlets, the question must be asked, was CBS paid for committing this FRAUD?” he wrote.The accusation – denied by Politico and subsequently debunked – was first made by Trump-supporting social media influencers , who tried to establish a link between a glitch that caused a payment delay to Politico staff and the freezing of USAid’s funding by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), whose agents have accessed the federal government’s payments system.It was later repeated by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.In fact, payments to Politico’s subscriptions services have been made throughout the vast government bureaucracy – including from staff of Republican members of Congress, the Washington Post reported. Politico said in a statement that just two separate subscription payments totalling less than $43,000 came from subdivisions within USAid in 2023 and 2024.In a statement to staff, Politico’s chief executive officer, Goli Sheikholeslami, and editor-in-chief, John Harris, wrote that the site “has never been a beneficiary of government programs or subsidies – not one cent, ever, in 18 years”. More

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      in Elections

      Giuliani says he has settled defamation dispute and will keep Florida condo

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      Rudy Giuliani’s trial over whether he must turn over his Florida condo and other prized possessions to former Georgia election workers whom he defamed was delayed on Thursday after the former New York mayor failed to show up in court.Giuliani later shared on X that he had “reached a resolution of the litigation with the plaintiffs that will result in a satisfaction of the plaintiffs’ judgment”.“This resolution does not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any of the parties. I am satisfied with and have no grievances relating to the result we have reached,” he wrote.“I have been able to retain my New York co-op and Florida condominium and all of my personal belongings. No one deserves to be subjected to threats, harassment, or intimidation. This litigation has taken its toll on all parties. This whole episode was unfortunate. I and the plaintiffs have agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same.”A jury ordered Giuliani to pay $148.1m to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss in 2023 after he falsely accused the women of attempting to steal the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.Giuliani, who has shown little remorse for his actions, later turned over multiple watches as well as a 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL 500 once owned by the movie star Lauren Bacall to Freeman and Moss.A federal judge in New York had been scheduled to weigh whether Giuliani must also turn over his condo in Palm Beach, which he claims to be his permanent residence. The non-jury civil trial was also set also determine whether Giuliani must hand over three New York Yankees World Series rings to the two women.Per Giuliani’s post on X, it appears that he was not forced to turn over his condo or World Series rings.Earlier this week, Judge Lewis Liman ordered that Giuliani’s son Andrew must hold on to the rings as the trial gets under way, saying, “The point was to ensure the security of the rings,” ABC reports.This month, Giuliani, who has been disbarred in New York and Washington DC, has so far been found in contempt of court twice.Last week, Liman issued his ruling after Giuliani failed to provide financial evidence surrounding his $148m judgment, saying: “The defendant has attempted to run the clock by stalling.” At the hearing, Giuliani acknowledged that he did not always comply with the requests for information, arguing that he regarded them as a “trap” set by lawyers.Later that week, Giuliani was once again found in contempt of court for continuing to spread false statements about Freeman and Moss. Federal judge Beryl Howell in Washington DC said Giuliani had violated court orders that prevented him from defaming the two women.Giuliani’s attorney, Ted Goodman, said in response: “This is an important point that many Americans still don’t realize due to biased coverage and a campaign to silence Mayor Giuliani. This contempt ruling is designed to prevent Mayor Giuliani from exercising his constitutional rights.”After the verdict in 2023, Freeman and Moss detailed their harrowing experiences as a result of Giuliani’s lies against them. Freeman said: “I want people to understand this: money will never solve all of my problems. I can never move back to the house I called home. I will always have to be careful about where I go, and who I choose to share my name with … I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name.” More

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      in US Politics

      Meta donates $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund

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      Meta has donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the company confirmed on Thursday.The donation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, appears to be the latest effort by the social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to improve relations with the incoming president, and comes just weeks after Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Meta confirmed its donation to the Guardian on Thursday but did not provide details regarding the reason for the contribution.During the dinner last month at Mar-a-Lago, the Meta CEO reportedly congratulated the president-elect on his victory and the two “largely exchanged pleasantries”, according to the New York Times.Zuckerberg also reportedly met with Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported, and other incoming White House advisers, such as Stephen Miller.A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told the BBC at the time that Zuckerberg was “grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration”.“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.Zuckerberg’s team informed Trump’s inaugural team about Meta’s plans to contribute to the inaugural fund before meeting the president-elect for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, according to the Wall Street Journal.The donation by Meta seems to mark a shift for the company, as Meta did not make any contribution to Trump’s 2017 or Biden’s 2021 inaugural fund.Over the last several years, the relationship between Trump and Meta has been strained. Trump has accused the company of unfairly censoring him and other conservative voices on its platforms.In March of this year, Trump referred to Facebook as “an enemy of the people” during an interview with CNBC. He stated: “I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially concerning elections.”After the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021, Meta suspended Trump from posting on its platforms. Two years later, in 2023, the company restored his account with certain restrictions in place. However, in July of this year, those restrictions were lifted.Earlier that month, in a post on Truth Social, Trump said that if he’s elected in November, “election fraudsters” would be imprisoned, and referred to Zuckerberg.“If I’m elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time” Trump wrote. “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”.And in a book titled Save America, Trump accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him during the 2020 election and “steering” Facebook against him.But over the summer, the New York Times reported that Mark Zuckerberg and Trump had several private phone calls. In one of those calls, Zuckerberg reportedly wished Trump well following the assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, and expressed that he was “praying” for him.In a July interview with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg publicly praised Trump’s reaction to the Pennsylvania assassination attempt – when he stood up and began pumping his fist in the air – and described the moment as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”.Zuckerberg expressed regret around some of his past political activities in a letter to Congress in late August and accused the Biden administration of pressuring Meta in 2021 into censoring more Covid-19 content than he was comfortable with.He did not endorse any candidate for the 2024 election, and has stated that he wants to stay away from politics.Trump told a podcast in October that he liked Zuckerberg “much better now”, adding: “I actually believe he’s staying out of the election, which is nice.”After Trump’s election victory in November, Zuckerberg congratulated him and said he was looking forward to working with the president-elect.“We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration,” he wrote.Earlier this month, reports indicated that Zuckerberg was seeking an “active role” in the Trump administration’s tech policy decisions.Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who is also a former UK deputy prime minister, also added that Zuckerberg wanted to participate in “the debate that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere”. More

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      in Elections

      BuzzFeed Strikes Deal to Sell ‘Hot Ones’ Company for $82.5 Million

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      The sale, to a group that includes the show’s host, Sean Evans, and Soros Fund Management, will allow BuzzFeed to pay down tens of millions of dollars in debt.BuzzFeed on Thursday said it had reached a deal to sell the company behind the popular interview show “Hot Ones” for $82.5 million, easing a cash crunch that has loomed over the media company for months.The buyer is a consortium of investors led by an affiliate of Soros Fund Management that also includes Sean Evans, the affable host of “Hot Ones,” and Chris Schonberger, the founder of First We Feast, the show’s parent company. Mythical Entertainment, the media company created by the YouTube stars Rhett and Link, is also an investor.The deal will allow BuzzFeed to pay down tens of millions of dollars in debt that was scheduled to come due this month. The company is reducing its debt load of nearly $124 million by $88.8 million, using proceeds from the sale and funding from its operations, leaving the company with more cash than debt on its books.The deal is also a new chapter for the company behind “Hot Ones,” a show in which Mr. Evans stoically interviews celebrities while they eat progressively hotter chicken wings. Scarlett Johansson, Megan Thee Stallion, Sydney Sweeney, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have all appeared as guests. Campaign officials for Vice President Kamala Harris wanted her to go on the show, but First We Feast demurred, saying that “Hot Ones” didn’t want to delve into politics, an adviser to Ms. Harris, Stephanie Cutter, said during an interview last month.The sale unwinds the vestiges of a deal, struck three years ago, to acquire Complex, a rival company that owned First We Feast and is known for its coverage of pop culture. The deal helped BuzzFeed go public, but the company’s stock has since fallen, as investors grew increasingly bearish on digital media.BuzzFeed has since pared back its investment in expensive original content, telling investors that it is focusing on using technology such as artificial intelligence to create and deliver content to users. The company shuttered its news division in 2023, and this year, it sold Complex for $108.6 million, though it held onto First We Feast.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump picks Kari Lake as Voice of America director

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      President-elect Donald Trump has picked Kari Lake as director of Voice of America, installing a staunch loyalist and immigration hardliner to head the congressionally funded broadcaster that provides independent news reporting around the world.Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor and a Senate seat, was a television news anchor in Phoenix for nearly three decades until she left in 2021 after making a series of controversial statements on social media, including sharing Covid-19 misinformation during the pandemic.She launched her political career a short time later, quickly building a loyal following and national profile as she sparred with journalists and echoed Trump in her sharp criticism of what she called the “fake news”. In 2022, she said she would be a journalist’s “worst fricking nightmare” if she won the race to be governor of Arizona.She endeared herself to Trump through her dogmatic commitment to the falsehood that both she and Trump were the victims of election fraud. She has never acknowledged her defeat in the 2022 gubernatorial race and lost her Senate race last month by an even larger margin. Trump considered her for his vice presidential running mate before deciding on JD Vance.Trump has in the past been a fierce critic of Voice of America (VOA), including saying in 2020 that “things they say are disgusting toward our country.”The broadcaster drew additional criticism during Trump’s first term for its coverage of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, with a White House publication accusing it of using taxpayer money “to speak for authoritarian regimes” because it covered the lifting of lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged.VOA was founded during the second world war, and its congressional charter requires it to present independent news and information to international audiences. It responded to Trump’s criticism by defending its coverage.Upon taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration swiftly removed a number of senior officials aligned with Trump from VOA and positions affiliated with it.Also on Wednesday, Trump announced Leandro Rizzuto as his choice to be the US ambassador to the Washington-based Organization of American States, and said he wanted Florida personal injury attorney Dan Newlin to be his administration’s ambassador to Colombia.He also picked Peter Lamelas, a physician and the founder of one of Florida’s largest urgent care companies, to be the US ambassador to Argentina. Lamelas is also a large donor to the past campaigns of Trump and other top Republicans. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s threat to the media: time to pass the Press Act

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      Fears of a press crackdown under Donald Trump’s second term deepened with his nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director – given his calls for retribution against journalists. Yet a rare chance to protect press freedom has emerged. The bipartisan Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (Press) Act, the strongest press freedom legislation in US history, is on the brink of a vote. While President-elect Trump has urged Republicans to block it, the Senate could still deliver it to Joe Biden before the lame-duck session ends in January.The Press Act would ban secret government demands for journalists’ communications from tech giants such as Google or Verizon and protect reporters from jail for refusing to reveal sources. For investigative reporters to do their jobs – holding government officials to account for corruption and wrongdoing – they need to be able to protect the confidentiality of their sources. With courts recently weakening already-imperilled “reporter’s privilege” protections, this bill would finally give journalists in the US federal protections comparable to those afforded to other relationships where confidentiality is paramount, such as lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, and spouses.The bill has something for both Democrats and Republicans to like. The Press Act’s broad and nonpartisan definition of “journalist” takes into account the modern media landscape: you don’t have to work full-time for a mainstream media organisation to be covered. Freelancers, independent reporters writing Substack newsletters and even journalists posting primarily to social networks such as X would be included. It protects right-leaning journalists just as much as anyone at the New York Times or the Guardian.It also has commonsense national security exceptions (like preventing a terrorist attack or an imminent threat of violence) without diluting the bill’s strong protections. It’s worth remembering that Democratic administrations have abused their powers to go after the first amendment rights of journalists just as much as Republicans. The Obama administration brought a record number of prosecutions against whistleblowers, and was implicated in several government spying scandals, including secretly targeting journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News.Even the Biden administration, before reversing course after public outrage, continued pursuing at least some of the surveillance orders against news outlets that the first Trump administration initiated. That’s why, in an age of extreme political polarisation, the Press Act is about as bipartisan as it gets. The House passed the bill early in 2024 unanimously, with several prominent Republicans publicly touting its importance. The bill also has powerful co-sponsors in the Senate, ranging from Democrats such as Ron Wyden and Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee chair, to Trump-supporting Republicans like Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham.Even the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson supports the bill, as he made clear in a recent interview he did with the former Fox News and CBS reporter Catherine Herridge, who was subpoenaed to reveal a source for a story she wrote several years ago. She was recently in front of the DC court of appeals, where her lawyers argued that forcing reporters to reveal their sources in court sends a chilling effect to countless others around the country. For the bill to pass, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, must make it a priority. The lame-duck session is only a few weeks long; if senators don’t act now, we may not have this opportunity for another decade or more.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      You can judge someone by their enemies. I write for the Guardian because it has all the right ones | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The year is 2050. The US government is run by President Elon Musk and his 690 children. Donald Trump, immortalized as an AI hologram, continues to send ALL CAPS tweets ALL THE TIME. The US has a special new relationship with the UK: the British Isles have been turned into a SpaceX rocket factory.In this brave new world, might is right. International human rights law doesn’t exist anymore. Journalists don’t exist either. Kash Patel, who Trump picked as his FBI director in 2024, promised to “come after people in the media” and he followed through. Now state news is piped directly into people’s brains via Musk’s proprietary microchips.I wish I could say this was all tongue-in-cheek, all completely fantastical. But it increasingly feels like we are marching towards a techno-authoritarian future. Over the past year we’ve seen norms shattered. We’ve seen what Amnesty International, along with many leading experts, have termed a genocide in Gaza, become horrifically normalized. We’ve seen international law dangerously undermined, an accelerated rollback of reproductive rights, and attacks on press freedom. We’ve seen book bans, and school curriculums warped by rightwing ideologues – with public schools in Florida teaching the “benefits” of slavery.As Trump, who has called the press “the enemy of the people”, readies himself for his “revenge” term, we’ve also seen his former critics scramble to kiss the ring. Two major (billionaire-owned) US newspapers refused to endorse a candidate in the US election, seemingly out of fear of getting on Trump’s wrong side. Anticipatory obedience, a term coined by the historian Timothy Snyder, is the phrase of the moment.At the Guardian we’re already practicing anticipatory disobedience. You can judge someone by their enemies – and the Guardian has lots of enemies in high places. The delightful Musk has described the Guardian as “the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth” and “a laboriously vile propaganda machine”. (Propaganda, you see, is when you hold the most powerful people on earth to account.)As you may have guessed, this is where I ask you to support our work – which, because we are not owned by oligarchs, is only possible because of readers like you.I want you to know that I don’t make this request lightly. Over the past year, which has been the very worst year of my life, I have woken up every day to horrific, and seemingly never-ending, pictures of dead children in Gaza and felt utter despair. I have watched as Palestinians like me are dehumanized by many in the western media. The likes of the editorial board of the Washington Post argue that there should be two tiers of justice, and the ICC shouldn’t investigate war crimes against Palestinians. I have agonized over the role of journalism and asked myself again and again what the point of writing is. And I have, to be completely honest, felt frustrated by some of the Guardian’s own coverage of Gaza.But I wouldn’t still be writing for the Guardian if I didn’t believe it to be an essential force for good in the world; one which we simply can’t afford to lose. I write for the Guardian, and I’m asking for your support now, because there is no other media outlet with the global reach – and no paywall – that stands for progressive values in the way that the Guardian does. There is certainly no other comparable media outlet that would have let me write uncensored about Palestine in the way the Guardian has.And, of course, I write about other things as well: everything from woke chicken to feminism to vagina candles. One of the things I appreciate most about the Guardian is that although we do serious work, we don’t always take ourselves too seriously – there’s still room for humor. And in dark times, humor is not some sort of indulgence, it’s essential to getting by.As we head into a new year I hope you will consider supporting us. At the very least, please do join me in putting a very delicate middle finger up to all the Musks of the world, who would be ecstatic if the Guardian ceased to exist.You can make your contribution to the Guardian here. More