“At the height of the US trade war with Japan in the 1980s, Congress established a nationwide network of organizations to advise small American manufacturers on how to survive and grow in what was then a particularly difficult environment. Decades later, there is now at least one Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) center in all 50 states, and they continue to provide taxpayer-subsidized consulting to thousands of businesses, including makers of ovens, printers, tortillas, and dog food. But on Tuesday, shortly before the president announced sweeping tariffs on global imports, Trump administration officials informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with government priorities … Depending on the state, centers are operated by universities, government agencies, or independent nonprofits. States also help pay for the MEP program, but the congressional aides believe it would be difficult in many states—especially smaller ones—to make up for the loss of federal funding. Carrie Hines, president and CEO of the American Small Manufacturers Coalition, which represents all of the state help centers, says businesses pay market rates for the personalized consulting they offer. ‘This is not a handout,’ she says. Traditional consulting firms may not be able to assist these small businesses or even exist in some regions, she adds. ‘We fill that unique void of technical assistance, with boots on the factory floor,’ Hines says. Wyoming’s help center, known as Manufacturing Works, was among the organizations that on Tuesday did not receive some $700,000 in funding it had been expecting from NIST. The other states affected include Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Dakota. ‘Those 10 centers were blindsided,’ Hines says. Jodie Mjoen, CEO and president of North Dakota’s MEP center Impact Dakota, says he’s begun working with partners on finding new ways to support its 21 current projects across 93 manufacturers. These companies, according to Mjoen, are trying to contend with tariffs and other regulations, deploy more AI and automation, and introduce new skills to their employees. ‘This is what it’s all about,’ he says. ‘Implementing innovative emerging technology solutions’ and keeping the ‘US manufacturing supply chain thriving and expanding.’” (Paresh Dave and Louise Matsakis/WIRED)
“Here’s what Trump said the other day, and he has said versions of it a number of times: ‘In the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?’ OK. First of all. Nobody can tell what commission he’s talking about. President Chester Arthur empaneled a commission that recommended reducing tariffs by 20 to 25 percent, going hard against the conventional wisdom of the day. But Congress defied him, lowering tariffs by just an average of around 1.5 percent (and yes, that’s another thing—Congress is supposed to set tariffs, not the president, making this move, among other things, an impeachment-worthy ‘abuse of power,’ a phrase invoked by The Wall Street Journal editorial board Thursday). It is true that tariffs were the chief source of federal government revenue for most of the country’s history until the twentieth century. Tariffs and excise taxes, which are taxes on specific goods—gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, certain amusement activities. And for a spell, a modest income tax, which President Lincoln imposed during the Civil War and that lasted through 1872. But broadly speaking, tariffs were the ball game. Even so, they were always a political hot potato because there were powerful interests that supported them (steel, iron, and wool) and other powerful interests that opposed them (wheat, cotton, tobacco). Tariffs were at the center of some of the most heated debates of the nineteenth century. But here’s the thing you need to know that the president of the United States does not: Tariffs supported most of what the federal government did in the 1800s because the federal government didn’t do much of anything. The government did about four things. It recruited and paid an army. It delivered mail. It ran some courts of law. And it collected duties and tariffs. That was about it. There was no need for much federal revenue.” (Michael Tomasky/ TNR)
“Mallory McMorrow: Democrats fight for the American dream. The idea that if you work hard, you get a good education— which should be available no matter where you are—you will be able to have a good life, afford to buy a house and raise a family, and in a place like Michigan, maybe have a place up north and go on vacation. We've just lost that universal value. We're the first generation that did worse than our parents. And I think people just are so angry with the idea that, ‘I did everything right, and I still can't afford anything, and I am never going to get to where I want to be.’ Democrats have to show that that is what we stand for, and we will fight for you, at a moment when the Republicans are just once again giving massive tax breaks to billionaires. Charlotte Alter: So how specifically should Democrats do that? Mallory McMorrow: You have to do contrast, and that isn't just to say, ‘Donald Trump is bad.’ Something that has been really frustrating for me is watching Democratic messaging talk about things like tax cuts for billionaires as if it is just free money that falls out of the sky. We have to made it abundantly clear: these are our taxpayer dollars as Michiganders that go to Washington, and then the Republicans are turning around... and giving your money to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. This is reverse Robin Hood at its grossest.” (Charlotte Alter/Time)
“The ceasefire agreement consisted of two phases, the first of which ended at the beginning of March. Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) released thirty-three hostages (and the bodies of eight more) in return for nearly two thousand Palestinian prisoners. The second phase, which should have been under negotiation by now, was meant to arrange for the return of the remaining living hostages, believed to be twenty-four people, in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza—and a change of government there. Notionally, Hamas would be replaced by a new regionally supported Palestinian administration. Once it was in place, the Saudis were expected to join in the underwriting of Gazan reconstruction and in normalizing relations with Israel. But, from the start of the war, Netanyahu has obstructed any effort to set up a new Palestinian governing structure, because that would inevitably engage the Palestinian Authority, and would thus be a step toward eventual Palestinian independence. Harel told me that Netanyahu’s government is now not only authoritarian in style but also ‘brazenly theocratic,’ aiming for, among other things, incorporating into Israel ‘Judea and Samaria’—the occupied West Bank. An alternative administration for Gaza is not, though, entirely hypothetical. Earlier this month, Western-aligned Arab states assembled in Cairo, where they detailed plans for a government of Palestinian ‘technocrats’—adjacent to and legitimatized, but not chosen, by the P.A., which controls parts of the West Bank, under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Egypt and Jordan pledged to offer security support. Some fifty-three billion dollars, presumably in large part from the Gulf states, would be funnelled into reconstruction.” (Bernard Avishai/TNY)
“Greenland has been – for decades – a neo-Nazi fantasy. Julius Evola, a mid-20th-century Italian philosopher and now ‘the internet’s favorite fascist,’ proposed Greenland as ‘the primordial homeland of a highly civilized prehistoric white race … sufficiently civilized to be conceived as ‘divine’ by the ancients.’ (Evola’s explanation for how these divines could morph into actual non-white indigenous inhabitants is that their divinity was perhaps diluted by, you guessed it, breeding with lower orders.) The online intellectual fascist influencers followed and amplified by Vance, Junior, Musk, Marc Andreessen, and countless Trump administration minions (who we have covered in previous Freakshows) are deeply attached to this mythology. An anon called Plethonist (who seems to have now deleted his X account after we started writing about fascist Xitter) writes in an online white supremacist-friendly rag called IM1776. The magazine is published by The Arts & Literature Foundation, an outfit that bills itself as the ‘leading publication of the New Right.’ It is housed in the same building near Capitol Hill as other hard-right, well-funded conservative outfits, including the Conservative Partnership Institute and the extreme Zionist Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and ironically, was home to far-right Liberty Lobby (founded by notorious anti-Semite Willis Carto). Its editor-at-large writes and tweets under the pseudonym Benjamin Braddock, the character played by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“Marine Le Pen has been found guilty of misappropriating European Parliament funds to support her political party in France. The sentence includes both hard ‘prison’ time (2 years with an electronic bracelet) and, more seriously, 5 years during which she is not eligible to run for office. What is more, it will take effect immediately, even while appeals are pending, by explicit order of the court. The decision transforms the 2027 presidential race, in which Le Pen would have been a frontrunner. Her number 2, Jordan Bardella, will seek to replace her, but he will very likely have challengers from within the party, starting with spokesman Sébastien Chenu. Le Pen may be able to accelerate the appeals process, which just might culminate in time to allow her to reinstate her candidacy, but there is no certainty of that. In the meantime, the court’s decision blasts open a whole new battlefield for 2027. With Le Pen sidelined, the contest among the remaining hopefuls, especially on the right, will intensify. The race to appeal to Le Pen voters will make for some ugly politics. The RN, taking a leaf from Trump’s playbook, will of course attack the ‘weaponization’ of the judicial system. And they will have a point, since many other politicians, including the current prime minister, François Bayrou, and former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is even now wearing an electronic bracelet of his own, have been accused of similar campaign finance violations. Sarkozy is on trial now for accepting money from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, surely a worse offense than siphoning money out of the European Parliament, but Sarkozy was never disqualified from office, even though suspicions of occult financing date back to before his presidential campaign.” (Art Goldhammer)
“Many of the cuts first announced by Elon Musk’s DOGE crew hit foreign-aid programs or Washington-based bureaucrats. So Trump’s base of supporters might have thought they’d be spared. But those initial trims don’t get you close to the promised $2 trillion in savings, so DOGE now is slashing costs in red America. That could include as many as thirty-four leases for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the agency that oversees working conditions and provides assistance to sick miners—many of them in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. ‘Without the federal inspections, coal operations will just run rampant,’ a former mine prosecutor said in this excellent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigation. ‘There won’t be any accountability.’ That could mean there will be more victims like Randall Dickerson, forty-nine: ‘I wake up in the morning, I’m coughing my brains out. I have to use an inhaler and an oxygen machine and I’m not even 50.’” (Bill Grueskin/CJR)
“ ‘We look for confidence in our achievements, our appearance, our accomplishments," intoned the perfectly coiffed and made-up Angela Halili on a recent episode of the ‘Girls Gone Bible’ podcast. But ‘godly confidence,’ she continued, ‘has nothing to do with your external circumstance.’ Her co-host, Arielle Reitsma, also in heavy makeup and with equally perfect hair, chimed in with an occasional ‘yeah’ …. Halili and Reitsma look nothing like stereotypical church ladies, to put it mildly. They look like sexy young actresses on the outer fringes of Hollywood, which is what they are: According to IMDB, their movie roles include the horror movie victim in ‘Spin the Bottle’ and the ‘slutty girl’ in ‘Rock of Ages.’ This incongruity between cosmopolitan appearance and fundamentalist message is central to their popularity. Whether or not this is entirely strategic, ‘Girls Gone Bible’ and other female-centric, Christian-themed podcasts can be understood as parallel to the better-known ‘manfluencer’ content of Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson and others. Although their content manifests first and foremost as lifestyle advice on dating, working out and fashion, for example, those influencers are perceived as driving younger men into the misogynistic far right and the MAGA movement, and may have been a decisive factor in the 2024 presidential election. Halili and Reitsma are offering a sense of community and religious fellowship to younger women who want to be seen as feminine, fashionable and sexually attractive. But the political and cultural ramifications of their messaging, which includes urging young women to accept a ‘submissive’ role in marriage and overt support for the Trump agenda, are impossible to miss.” (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)
“A similar thought comes to mind when we read the strange story of William (James), Henry (James), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This was a new organization, sprung from the side of National Institute of Arts and Letters, intended to be something like the Académie française. The original seven academicians selected in 1904 proceeded to elect the subsequent members. Henry James was elected on the second ballot, William on the fourth, in May 1905. But William declined the honor, in a letter in which he characterized the academy, not inaccurately, as ‘an organization for the mere purpose of distinguishing certain individuals (with their own connivance) and enabling them to say to the world at large ‘we are in and you are out.’’ William went on to say: ‘And I am the more encouraged to this course by the fact that my younger and shallower and vainer brother is already in the Academy, and that if I were there too, the other families represented might think the James influence too rank and strong.’ Whatever attempts had been made to pass this off as friendly family joshing, it has a sharp edge of hostility. And as William’s biographer points out, it was not a casual note. William rewrote the letter, making it nastier still: he added ‘shallower’ to ‘younger’ and ‘vainer’ in the final version, as if to put Henry more dramatically in his place. Whatever the closeness of the brothers—and they were indeed close, both citizens of a family in which family ties were of overwhelming importance—the sibling rivalry that must have traced back to childhood was still operative, and still driving William’s psychosocial reactions.” (Peter Brooks/The Paris Review)
“First, why are African international organizations (IOs) so weak? Given the weakness of many of the region’s states, shouldn’t it be possible for the Continent’s interstate organizations to dictate and enforce collective policies? After all, African states are infamous for outsourcing significant chunks of their policymaking. Second, what can be done to strengthen African IOs? Answering these questions is important in an era of multipolarity and shifting global geopolitical alliances. The long twentieth century has ended; and the international system is about to get a lot more dangerous for weak states. And given their current levels of capacity and lack of strategic self-awareness, African states will only stand a chance of successfully navigating the next half century if they figure out smart ways of banding together. How can the Continent’s 54 recognized states do this? Below I make the case for replacing the ideologically-heavy and consensus-driven model of African unity of the last six decades with a more practical model that recognizes differences in capacity and influence. We live in an era when the Continent desperately needs serious strategic leadership. Which is why it’s important to accept that the Nkrumahs, Nyereres, and Gowons of our time are more likely to emerge if states that step up to the plate are able to reap the benefits of bankrolling regional cooperation by acquiring agenda setting powers and gaining more influence on Continental affairs. To be blunt: the current model that largely gives Burundi as much weight as Nigeria in Addis Ababa is not working.” (Ken Opalo/The Africanist Perspective)
“LiDAR stands for ‘light detection and ranging,’ and it works by rapidly emitting laser pulses toward the ground. The system then measures how long it takes light to travel to the ground and back again, using that time to calculate elevation. This data can then be used to create high resolution models. In the past, LiDAR has helped image everything from tree growth to lost cities in the Amazon, and it just revealed something else incredible. This time, researchers were able to record an ancient fortified settlement deep in the forests of Neamț County, Romania. ‘Thanks to current technology and using LiDAR scans I was able to obtain a faithful image of an almost 5000-year-old fortification.’ Vasile Diaconu—an archaeologist on the study—said in a translated post. ‘On this occasion, we observed details that we could not observe in the field precisely because of the vegetation.’ The settlement roughly dates back to the transition from the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. Researchers used noninvasive methods to image the sites, launching drones equipped with LiDAR to generate an aerial view of the fortifications. Diaconu argues that using these new technologies are essential parts of archaeological research. ‘Only by using modern technologies will we be able to better understand the complexities of archaeological sites,’ he said.” (Emma Fredrickson/Popular Mechanics)
“In both Washington and in California, a narrative has quickly emerged about Musk’s assault on the federal government: This is what happens when you bring the Silicon Valley playbook to D.C. As Musk’s young lackeys rifle through sensitive databases, conk out in makeshift bedrooms set up in government buildings and gut entire agencies, the implication seems to be that this is how it’s done in tech. And there is obviously a very loud corner of the tech sector that agrees. But in an industry whose workforce overwhelmingly donated to Democrats, in a region whose voters overwhelmingly backed Kamala Harris, there are also a lot of people in tech who view Musk’s handiwork as not just dangerous, but totally antithetical to running a healthy business, let alone the government. They’re just increasingly terrified to say that out loud. ‘Not everyone in tech is supporting Elon Musk,’ Mark said. ‘It’s just that you don’t hear their side because they’re afraid to speak up.’ ‘I hate being careful like this. I’m not that kind of person,’ said one longtime tech communications professional who initially planned to use his name in this article but was granted anonymity prior to the interview after his company leadership told him they couldn’t risk the exposure. ‘We provide the livelihood of over 100 people and all their dependents,’ he said. POLITICO Magazine spoke with a cross-section of investors, engineers, startup founders and public relations professionals working in tech, many of whom were granted anonymity to avoid professional or personal backlash. They all described an industry known for outspokenness and self-assurance suddenly gripped with a widespread culture of fear when it comes to criticizing Musk or DOGE. This chilling effect is, of course, being felt everywhere in the American establishment and beyond, from university campuses to powerful law firms to the halls of Congress.” (Issie Lapowsky/POLITICO)
“In late June 2024, just a few days after Joe Biden’s implosion in his televised debate with Donald Trump, one of the president’s best friends got a call on his iPhone. The familiar baritone voice on the other end, much stronger than it had been during the debate, was unmistakable. ‘It’s Joe,’ he said. There was a pause. ‘Joe Biden.’ His friend replied: ‘Yeah, no shit.’ Biden burst out laughing. ‘Hey, thanks for talking Valerie off the ledge,’ the president said. Just after midnight on the evening of that disastrous debate, the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, weeping and distraught, had called her brother’s friend looking for answers and blasted the debate-prep team. Biden’s friend had calmed her down. ‘No problem,’ he told the president. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’ Biden paused and then said, ‘What do you think?’ … What the fuck happened to Joe Biden during the final days of his presidency is a subject of increasingly contentious debate. Angered by his last-minute abdication from the race, Democrats have blamed the president for putting Kamala Harris in a no-win situation, with too short a runway to mount a successful campaign against Trump. Biden’s advisers, it is said, engaged in a cover-up of his deteriorating mental condition, which was dramatically and publicly exposed during the debate. In this version of events, Biden’s inner circle knew the president was non compos mentis and hid this fact from the American public. In fact, it was stranger--and in a way, more troubling--than that. A cover-up, as we’ve understood the term to mean since Watergate, involves deliberately hiding something you know to be true. Biden’s closest advisers, however, were operating in a fog of delusion and denial; they refused to believe what they could see with their own eyes. Despite the president’s obvious cognitive decline, they had convinced themselves that he was fine. Their failure to recognize, up close, what everyone else could see from afar—that Biden was too feeble to run for reelection at the age of 82—led to a political disaster.” (Chris Whittle/VF)
“I used to watch The Amazing Race, and (Val Kilmer) came back home at some point when I was watching it and was like, ‘What are you watching that garbage for? Come on, that stuff’s going to rot your mind.’ I said, ‘It’s pretty good. You should sit down and watch it. Give it a try before you shit on it.’ So he sat down and he started watching it, and he got really into it. Then, at a certain point, he said, ‘(Will Forte), you and I have to go do The Amazing Race. We have to. Let’s do The Amazing Race.’ I’m like, ‘I am so fully in.’ We got really excited about it, and then we called our respective agents and managers, and they were like, ‘There’s no way you guys are doing that.’ That is, maybe to this day, the biggest regret of my whole career — that I never did The Amazing Race with Val. I think we would’ve gotten out very quickly, but it just would’ve been the experience of a lifetime. He was also a big fan of 30 Rock, which I had a part on. He was watching it a lot when he was staying with me. I was asked to do a 30 Rock DVD commentary, and I said, ‘Val is a big fan of 30 Rock. What if he came and we did the commentary together?’ He was busy that morning, and so we met at the recording studio. Well, he showed up dressed head to toe as Mark Twain for some unexplained reason. He was like, ‘Yeah, I’m trying this out.’” (Will Forte/NYMag)