“While the Maga movement had already begun this value divergence in 2016, the bulk of Trump’s most norm-breaking inclinations were kept in check by those around him in his first term. But those moderating influences have since been replaced by cheerleaders and powerful lieutenants. In this sense, the US government now embodies the values behind Trump’s and his supporters for the first time, and is rapidly showing them to be misaligned even with most western conservatives. The hectoring by Trump and Vance of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week was criticised even by prominent rightwing voices across the Atlantic, including Robert Jenrick, Britain’s outspoken former Conservative immigration minister. Acknowledging the new reality can be clarifying. Western leaders from Canada to Europe stand more chance of navigating both Trump and the broader geopolitical and economic future if they know that he and Vance are using a completely different calculus. A government seemingly driven by zero-sum ideology and a commitment to reducing international co-operation is one whose threats of a trade war you should probably take seriously despite possible economic self-harm. Likewise, a leadership team that believes geopolitics is a game of cards played by strong men and great powers is one whose support and co- operation other countries should quickly build independence from.” (John Burn-Murdoch/FT)
“Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world. Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff. You have fired ‘nobody,’ Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from his Department of Government Efficiency. Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his DOGE team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting in front of the president and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest. Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department. Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was ‘good on TV,’ with the clear subtext being that he wasn’t good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.” (Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman/NYT)
“Ms. Freeland, a career journalist from Alberta who rose through elite institutions to become a top politician, is now running to replace the man who brought her into politics, Justin Trudeau. On Sunday, Canada’s Liberal Party will announce the results of its election for a new leader, chosen by 400,000 members. The winner will also become Canada’s prime minister, though not for long: The party does not command a majority in Parliament, so has a weak grip on power. Federal elections must take place before October. Ms. Freeland’s dramatic December resignation as finance minister, deputy prime minister, and all-around right-hand woman to Mr. Trudeau triggered his own decision to step down, plunging Canada into political turmoil. This has come as Canada is thrust in crisis. This week President Trump made good on his threat to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian goods and, while he eased some of those measures Thursday, he made plain he would continue to hit Canada’s economy with surcharges. Canada retaliated, entering an uneven trade war with its closest economic partner. Mr. Trump has also menaced Canada in a more existential way, insisting he wants to make it the 51st state … Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his dislike of Ms. Freeland. During his first presidency, she led the Canadian side on the renegotiation of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. By all accounts, she drove a tough bargain and won concessions for Canada. When she announced she was stepping down in December, Mr. Trump posted, ‘Her behavior was totally toxic.’ And last week, in an interview with the British outlet The Spectator, he doubled down: ‘She’s a whack,’ he said. ‘She’s absolutely terrible for the country.’ But Ms. Freeland seems to be relishing the fight. ‘Donald Trump doesn’t like me very much,’ she says with a smile on one of her ads.” (Matina Stevis-Gridneff/NYT)
“The House Republican drive to significantly reduce federal spending on medical care has placed the party on a collision course with the health needs of its own constituents. The House GOP is advancing a budget that could impose major cuts in the Medicaid program that now provides health services to more than 72 million Americans.But dozens of House Republicans represent districts where the share of residents receiving health coverage through Medicaid is greater than in the average district nationwide. And far more House Republicans than House Democrats now hold seats in districts where the share of residents confronting serious health challenges — including diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, breast cancer deaths, cardiovascular problems and a lack of health insurance of any kind — exceeds the average. Those are among the major findings of an exclusive CNN analysis of data collected by the Congressional District Health Dashboard, a partnership between the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The concentration of chronic health problems in Republican-held districts underscores the treacherous cross-pressures confronting the House majority as it advances its budget blueprint. Medicaid looms as the biggest single source of potential cuts available to Republicans as they seek to satisfy House conservatives demanding to offset the huge cost of extending the tax cuts passed in 2017, during President Donald Trump’s first term.” (Ron Brownstein and Edward Wu/CNN)
“Wisconsin is drowning in big money for the pivotal April 1 state Supreme Court race, which will determine the ideological balance on the court. Elon Musk himself has already spent around $2.5 million on outside groups that are supporting conservative candidate Brad Schimel. Other big Republican donors have also ponied up, including Diane Hendricks and Richard Uihlein. And big Democratic donors like George Soros, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) are also pouring obscene amounts into our state to support liberal judge Susan Crawford. It’s likely that this race will shatter the previous national record for spending on a state Supreme Court race — a record set just two years ago, right here in Wisconsin, when Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly. The amount spent by the candidates and the outside groups in that race came to about $51 million, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. So how come Elon Musk and other billionaires can flaunt their wealth and splatter our screens with endless streams of mud at election time? Is there no limit at all in Wisconsin anymore?The short answer is: There is no limit. And the reason for that is two-fold: First, a long history of disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance. And second, a disgusting rewrite of Wisconsin’s own campaign finance law in 2015 by the Republican-dominated legislature and then-Governor Scott Walker. The ruinous U.S. Supreme Court rulings relating to campaign finance date back as far as 1886 in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. An employee of the Court, but not a single justice, appended a head note on the decision that said ‘corporations are persons,’ and from then on, subsequent Supreme Courts reiterated that absurd equation.” (Dan Schafer/The Recombobulation Area)
“It’s clear Trump wants the world to know he’s in charge. (In a bit of too-coincidental timing that suggests the White House wanted this message to get out, Trump’s post and Politico’s scoop published simultaneously.) What’s less clear is how the leaders of top government agencies will respond when Musk says jump. Despite the president’s public chest-thumping, Musk is still a billionaire with a powerful distaste for authority, access to a global megaphone and, shall we say, an underdeveloped aptitude for self-restraint. Lest we forget that before he bought Twitter, Musk required his own SEC-mandated ‘Twitter sitter’ to monitor his posts. It’s hard to imagine any of Trump’s agency heads mounting a forceful defense against Musk. And yet, frustration about Musk and DOGE’s singular power has been mounting, even on the right. Just last week, the Washington Post reported that two DOGE staffers overrode Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s orders to allow certain foreign aid, including for HIV treatment, to continue. The news prompted a number of Republican members of Congress to speak out. ‘Now that Marco is confirmed and in place, there should be nobody in the administration — outside of the president of the United States or at the direction of the president — that should pause, delay or cancel anything Marco thinks is in our best national interest,’ Republican Senator Thom Tillis told NOTUS. Musk met with congressional Republicans this week and reportedly promised to keep the lines of communication open. Musk’s shock-and-awe purge of government agencies has also begun to backfire.“ (Issie Lapowsky/Vanity Fair)
“The projected effects of aid cuts by the United States government are sobering. According to one estimate, USAID cuts could end up costing 500,000 lives in South Africa over the next decade. People who’ve come to depend on life-saving U.S. assistance are facing the unimaginable. Beyond the dire consequences for aid recipients, the destruction of professional careers and livelihoods both in aid recipient countries and in Washington, DC will prove costly. The lost human capital will be hard to replace. The effects of job losses and program halts will reverberate across the economies of low-income countries in the coming months and years. It’s worth reiterating that the trend in aid cuts extends beyond the United States. Furthermore, over the last four years donor countries shifted to spending aid money on refugees within their territories and repurposing aid for climate-related projects — moves that effectively reduce the amount of aid money flowing to low-income countries. These trends, and the increasing use of foreign aid to pursue narrow foreign policy objectives, look set to continue … First, low-income countries can and therefore must aspire to wean themselves off of aid dependency in critical service sectors. Foreign development assistance is obviously welcome. But it must always serve national development goals and never substitute for the state. Second, the quest for independence from aid comes with a real risk of deterioration of aid-supported service delivery systems. These systems have been critical for achieving most of the gains in human welfare witnessed in low-income countries over the last three decades. It would be a shame if we wound back the clock on immunization rates, infant and maternal mortality rates, school enrollment rates, etc.” (Ken Opalo/The Africanist Perspective)
“Sudan has launched a legal case against the United Arab Emirates, blaming the Gulf nation for arming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the country’s ongoing civil war, as experts warn of an escalating proxy conflict. The case, filed to the International Court of Justice, claims the UAE armed the group responsible for ethnic-based attacks in Darfur that the US said amounted to genocide. Two years of conflict have led to the gravest displacement crisis in the world and prompted the first global declaration of famine in decades.” (Jeronimo Gonzalez/SEMAFOR)
“Brendan Carr, the newly appointed chair of the FCC, has made no secret of his antipathy for mainstream press—including NPR, which he recently alleged may be violating the law by broadcasting commercial messages. It’s an unusually timed claim, but as Carr made clear in a conversation with Semafor’s Ben Smith last week, he’s out for vengeance after four years of a Democratic administration in Washington. That’s why it’s all the more encouraging to see NPR stand tall with its tough-but-fair coverage of the Trump administration. One of NPR’s latest and most significant examples: reporter Stephen Fowler dug into many of the most absurd, multimillion-dollar claims made by Elon Musk’s DOGE group. He found error upon error—each of which pointed in the same direction of exaggerated or nonexistent savings for taxpayers. Among the foul-ups: DOGE was claiming savings from a contract that wasn’t actually canceled; it was trumpeting $99 million in savings from a $9.9 million contract; and it was promoting savings of $150 million while linking to a contract for $119,000. When Marty Baron was running the Washington Post’s newsroom during Trump’s first term, he was famously quoted as saying, ‘We’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work.’ NPR is in the FCC’s gunsights, but that hasn’t distracted its reporters from doing their jobs.” (Bill Grueskin/CJR)
“The MAGA universe is a big tent of incels and NASCAR fans and frat boys with rich daddies who ‘like beer.’ Dear Leader’s bleats and Jesse Watters's insult comedy fluffs them up – but they’re not all paying close attention. Then, there are the others – men with convictions and post-graduate degrees, who read European fascist texts and applaud each other’s ravings about the revival of a race of white men whose virility and mental force has been diluted by mixing with the lower orders and attenuated by feminism. Most Americans, and probably many MAGA voters, have never heard of them as they go about amusing each other, advocating for eugenics, and translating dead fascist writers (IYKYK). But they are the plutonium pit of the MAGA bomb. Racism and domination of the naturally inferior sex is not a casual pastime for them, it’s their raison d’etre. Some of the most powerful men in America are tuned in to them. They are the brain trust, the moral – if you want to twist that word – nerve center of the Trump 2.0 movement. Donald Trump famously amplified one of them, a Canadian millennial who tweets under the name @CaptiveDreamer7, which is a reference to a memoir by a fascist Frenchman during World War II who joined the Waffen SS, during last fall’s debate with Kamala Harris … Offline, @CaptiveDreamer7 is a low-brow Bartleby the Scrivener in a Canadian Christian university’s purchasing department.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“The Associated Press was recently ‘rotated’ out of its Pentagon workspace, but that's not stopping the newswire from landing big stories. Tara Copp, Lolita C. Baldor and Kevin Vineys published this exclusive last night: ‘References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content.’ The AP has published the database for all to see … >> ‘Trump Is Breaking the Fourth Wall:’ The Atlantic's Megan Garber makes the case that the ‘show’ of Trump's first term ‘was mere prologue,’ and the second term is truly his ‘reality-TV presidency.’ Garber says ‘reality shows establish, and then are beholden to, their own rules. They are stridently insular. They are thoroughly self-rationalizing. That is the fun—and the danger. They will do whatever they want, because they can.’” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)
“As of this writing, (Vice President JD) Vance follows 1,139 people on Twitter, which was rebranded as ‘X’ when it was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk in late 2022. However, TPM was only able to view 60 of the accounts Vance is following on the site. A former Twitter staffer confirmed to TPM that, prior to the takeover, there was ‘no programmatic limit’ preventing users from seeing every other page someone with a public account was following. Under Musk — who has been working with the Trump administration on the lawless DOGE initiative that has made drastic cuts to federal agencies and programs — that has apparently changed.Even with a small window into Vance’s feed, it is clear that it includes extreme content. In fact, one of the pages that Vance follows made their own recent headlines unrelated to their association with the vice president. One page followed by Vance is the writer who goes by the pseudonym ‘Cremieux Recueil.’ On Monday, the Guardian newspaper highlighted an upcoming ‘natalist conference featuring speakers including self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science.’ According to the paper, one of those speakers is ‘Cremieux.’ The Cremieux account is filled with posts that promote the idea of a racial ‘IQ gap.’ On Substack, the writer has also suggested there are ‘genetic pathways of crime.’ Cremieux did not respond to a request for comment from TPM.” (Hunter Walker/TPM)
“The leadership of the Democratic Party has earned these dismal polling numbers the hard way—through many years of ceaseless work being cowardly, ineffectual, unimaginative, dishonest, and self-serving. American politics is spiraling rapidly downward, and only a radical intervention can fix the problem. The equation is simple: Trump is failing and becoming more unpopular—but the current Democratic Party leadership is even less popular. Given these two facts the most logical solution is for a third force to emerge, challenge the existing leadership of the Democratic Party, and replace it with a forceful alternative to Trumpism. The most important fact of American politics—indeed, of global politics—is that we are living in an age of anti-system rage. Since at least the economic meltdown of 2008, the American electorate has consistently rewarded politicians who speak to their anger at the established order: Barack Obama, the Tea Party movement, and Donald Trump. The one exception is Joe Biden in 2020, but his victory was due to the fact that under Covid and amid widespread protests against police violence, Donald Trump became the establishment.” (Jeet Heer/The Nation)