BREAKING: Vivek just announced that he will be pausing his own weekly podcast to launch a new show with Elon called "DOGEcast," which they will use to give the nation regular updates on their cost-cutting
Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock 🤭
To be clear, I have not done any media interviews and this is not actually my checklist.
I am trying to make life multiplanetary to maximize the probable lifespan of consciousness. Some of the items below are needed for that. https://t.co/Sv0N3Z5U4l
This disgraceful ICC decision is the last nail in the coffin of the international order based on Yalta-Potsdam arrangements. Politicizing & criminalizing self-defense against terrorism also discredits previous judgments against real war criminals like Putin. https://t.co/57gvbDk8rp
I just spoke to a $100M company CEO. They cut 85 jobs to 2 through AI automation. Not in 5 years. Not in 2. NOW. The future isn't coming. It's already redistributing power.
There are a lot of good arguments for moving agencies out of DC and into states:
1. Cost 2. Closer to those you regulate 3. Jobs and economic activity in regions that need it 4. Culture 5. Independence 6. Force lobbyists to travel / relocate
BREAKING: Bill Clinton just laid into Donald Trump like no one has before. Retweet to make sure all Americans see this takedown.pic.twitter.com/CKJt8Fakvu
Nikki Haley trashes Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard, saying she has sided with Russia, China, Iran & Syria against the US: “She said Trump turned the US into Saudi Arabia’s prostitute. DNI is not a place for a Russian-Iranian-Syrian-Chinese sympathizer.” pic.twitter.com/45qGzKeF91
Musk, Ramaswamy lay out plans for ‘mass’ federal layoffs, rule rollbacks under Trump Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said Wednesday that their brand-new government efficiency panel will identify “thousands” of regulations for President-elect Trump to eliminate, which they argue will justify “mass head-count reductions” across government. ...... “The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings,” they wrote. “We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.” .......... Slashing regulations should allow for “at least” proportional cuts to the government workforce .......... “A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy” .......... “Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited” ............ Musk and Ramaswamy pointed to several recent Supreme Court decisions that have taken aim at the power of the administrative state, arguing that a “plethora of current federal regulations” exceed agency authority and could be on the chopping block. ............
“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy”
........... “Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited” ........... Musk and Ramaswamy preemptively addressed arguments about civil service protections that could potentially block Trump from firing federal workers. ......... “The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation,” they wrote. “But the statute allows for ‘reductions in force’ that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to ‘prescribe rules governing the competitive service.’ That power is broad.” ........ “With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of ‘rules governing the competitive service’ that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area” ........... Government workers are already mobilizing in the face of potential mass cuts, reportedly hiring lawyers and preparing public campaigns while also hoping Congress will step in ........... Musk has spent much of his time at the Palm Beach, Fla., resort over the past two weeks, reportedly weighing in on Trump’s Cabinet picks and attending meetings, including those with world leaders. ........ He also hosted Trump in Texas to observe the launch of a SpaceX rocket Tuesday afternoon.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decadeslong executive power grab. ....... Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. ........... On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it. .......... The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic .......... We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs. .......... We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.
In Case of an Election Crisis, This Is What You Need to Know In 2020, when Donald Trump questioned the results of the election, the courts decisively rejected his efforts, over and over again. In 2024, the judicial branch may be unable to save our democracy. ............ The rogues are no longer amateurs. They have spent the last four years going pro, meticulously devising a strategy across multiple fronts — state legislatures, Congress, executive branches and elected judges — to overturn any close election. ............. The new challenges will take place in forums that have increasingly purged officials who put country over party. They may take place against the backdrop of razor-thin election margins in key swing states, meaning that any successful challenge could change the election. ........... Stephen Miller, a former Trump adviser, has brought suit in Arizona claiming that judges should be able to throw out election results. ........... Many states recently changed how they conduct voting. Even a minor modification could tee up legal challenges, and some affirmatively invite chaos. ........... Any time a state changes an election rule or can be accused of not having followed one, someone with legal standing (like a resident of that state or a candidate or a party) can bring a lawsuit. ........... Federal judges have on occasion been known to act in political ways, and any one of the 1,200 of them could make a decision that plunges the nation into deep confusion. ................. public confidence in the court is nearly at a three-decade low. No matter how nonpartisan the justices are, should the Supreme Court intervene, there is a high chance millions of Americans would see the decision as unfair. ................. state officials and local election boards also can wreak havoc by refusing to certify elections, and this time they will have new tools to manufacture justifications for undermining democracy. A new Georgia law empowering local boards to investigate voter fraud offers a prime example. On its face, the law sounds laudatory or at least innocuous. But the law could be read to give an election board the power to cherry-pick an instance or two, claim the entire election illegitimate and refuse to certify the votes. This is straight out of the 2020 playbook, when Mr. Trump reportedly successfully pressured two Wayne County, Mich., election officials not to certify the 2020 vote totals. Fortunately, that tactic didn’t work. This year it might. ................ there are state legislatures to contend with: They might make baseless allegations of fraud and interfere to get a different slate of electors appointed to the Electoral College, as happened in 2020. ............ the Congress has the power to swing the entire election. The rules are complex; even as a law professor, I can barely make sense of them. ............... Such maneuvering is totally inconsistent with the 2022 law. But it can be attempted and create chaos. Likewise, if a governor certifies a fake slate, that will be hard for Congress to fix. ............... In a world in which one party is still consumed by election fraud claims from 2020 (as JD Vance’s nonanswer in the debate underscored) and is prepared to claim the same in 2024, we have much to fear. ............ It does not require much imagination to see a member of Congress acting in bad faith to try to squeeze through bogus election fraud theories and plunge the country into uncertainty on Jan. 6. The 20 percent voting threshold is meant to avoid crackpot election fraud theories, but these days more than 20 percent of Congress might be inclined to support a crackpot theory. And some Republican strategists are gearing up to argue the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act is unconstitutional and invalid. ................ If no candidate gets a majority of the Electoral College, either through mischief or a simple tie, then the Constitution sends the election to Congress. Mischief can occur on Jan. 6, for example, with Congress knocking votes of electors as not being “regularly given.” If for whatever reason no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the House will decide the presidency, under arcane voting rules in which the states, not a House majority, pick the president. ............... If either candidate wins the Electoral College decisively, any dispute will be rendered academic. ............ it is the new House and Senate, not the existing ones, that will call the shots on Jan. 6.
The Push for Minority Voters and the Undecided It’s therefore perplexing why Donald Trump’s bigotry and obsession with immigration — which pervade every aspect of his politics and have always formed the core of his grievance messaging — is not disqualifying for all Latino and Black voters.
OpenAI Could Be a Force for Good if It Can Address These Issues First OpenAI, the artificial intelligence start-up behind ChatGPT, is now worth as much as Goldman Sachs or AT&T. OpenAI has also said it intends to shed its status as a nonprofit to become a for-profit business within two years. ................ Artificial intelligence may be the most consequential technological advance in our lifetime, and OpenAI is unique in the breadth of its potential impact. Its product could displace workers in far-flung industries, from customer service to radiology to film production. Its work is so energy-hungry that it could knock off track the planet’s progress on climate change. ............... the effects it will have on our democracy, national security and privacy will be profound. .............. OpenAI has responded to these concerns by saying it will become a public benefit corporation. A benefit corporation is a traditional for-profit company with one key difference: It is legally obligated to balance profit with purpose. Public benefit corporation leaders and boards must consider workers, customers, communities and the environment, not just shareholders, as in a standard corporation. ............. an estimated 15,000 companies globally adopting the new legal form. Think of Patagonia, Allbirds, Chobani and Warby Parker. .............. even a high-functioning government will not be able to stay ahead of a fast-moving industry ............... Recently OpenAI created what it says is an independent Safety and Security Committee, but it also has the power to blow that up whenever it becomes inconvenient, just as Microsoft laid off its entire A.I. ethics and society team in 2023. ............. Perhaps Mr. Altman could take a cue from Patagonia, a brand he’s often been spotted wearing. Patagonia’s purpose trust owns all of the company’s voting stock, meaning that the decision makers are obliged to advance Patagonia’s commitment to protecting the earth and its natural resources. .............. Every day, by applying these same principles, thousands of certified B Corps show that business can be a force for good to create high-quality jobs, rebuild strong communities and solve environmental crises — all while making money for investors.
The A.I. Wars Have Three Factions, and They All Crave Power Beneath almost all of the testimony, the manifestoes, the blog posts and the public declarations issued about A.I. are battles among deeply divided factions. ............... Some are concerned about far-future risks that sound like science fiction. Some are genuinely alarmed by the practical problems that chatbots and deepfake video generators are creating right now. Some are motivated by potential business revenue, others by national security concerns. ............. this isn’t really a debate only about A.I. It’s also a contest about control and power, about how resources should be distributed and who should be held accountable. .......... Should we focus on avoiding the dystopia of mass unemployment, a world where China is the dominant superpower or a society where the worst prejudices of humanity are embodied in opaque algorithms that control our lives? ................ One faction describes the dangers posed by A.I. through the framework of safety, another through ethics or integrity, yet another through security and others through economics. ............. The loudest perspective is a frightening, dystopian vision in which A.I. poses an existential risk to humankind, capable of wiping out all life on Earth. A.I., in this vision, emerges as a godlike, superintelligent, ungovernable entity capable of controlling everything. A.I. could destroy humanity or pose a risk on par with nukes. If we’re not careful, it could kill everyone or enslave humanity. It’s likened to monsters like the Lovecraftian shoggoths, artificial servants that rebelled against their creators, or paper clip maximizers that consume all of Earth’s resources in a single-minded pursuit of their programmed goal. .................... In the name of long-term-ism, Elon Musk reportedly believes that our society needs to encourage reproduction among those with the greatest culture and intelligence (namely, his ultrarich buddies). And he wants to go further, such as limiting the right to vote to parents and even populating Mars. ............... More practically, many of the researchers in this group are proceeding full steam ahead in developing A.I., demonstrating how unrealistic it is to simply hit pause on technological development. ................ there’s plenty already happening to cause concern: Racist policing and legal systems that disproportionately arrest and punish people of color. Sexist labor systems that rate feminine-coded résumés lower. Superpower nations automating military interventions as tools of imperialism and, someday, killer robots. ................ The doomsayers think A.I. enslavement looks like the Matrix; the reformers point to modern-day contractors doing traumatic work at low pay for OpenAI in Kenya. ............ it’s noticeable that many leaders in this cohort are people of color, women and people who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. They are often motivated by insight into what it feels like to be on the wrong end of
algorithmic oppression
and by a connection to the communities most vulnerable to the misuse of new technology. ............ present-day harms that are exacerbated by A.I. misinformation, surveillance and inequity ....... even those worried that A.I. might kill us in the future should still demand that it not profile and exploit us in the present. ........... One version has a post-9/11 ring to it — a world where terrorists, criminals and psychopaths have unfettered access to technologies of mass destruction. Another version is a Cold War narrative of the United States losing an A.I. arms race with China and its surveillance-rich society. ............. These perspectives serve the interests of American tech tycoons as well as the government agencies and defense contractors they are intertwined with. ............. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom lead dominant A.I. companies, are pushing for A.I. regulations that they say will protect us from criminals and terrorists. Such regulations would be expensive to comply with and are likely to preserve the market position of leading A.I. companies while restricting competition from start-ups. .................. A.I. research is fundamentally international; no one country will win a monopoly. ............. fears about the existential risks of A.I. are really fears about the threat of uncontrolled capitalism, and dystopias like the paper clip maximizer are just caricatures of every start-up’s business plan. .................. By analogy to the health care sector, we need an A.I. public option to truly keep A.I. companies in check. A publicly directed A.I. development project would serve to counterbalance for-profit corporate A.I. and help ensure an even playing field for access to the 21st century’s key technology while offering a platform for the ethical development and use of A.I.
Supreme Court Reform Is in the Air Biden is right to propose term limits for Supreme Court justices .............. the political branches have gamed the system in a manner that complies with the letter of the Constitution but violates its spirit. .............. The purpose of lifetime tenure is supposed to be to secure judicial independence, not to secure decades of ideological advantage on the court. The purpose of granting the Senate the confirmation power is to offer a thoughtful check on the president’s judgment, not to cripple the president’s appointment powers unless his or her party also controls the Senate. ............. When you combine a constitutional misjudgment with senatorial shortsightedness and extreme polarization, you land exactly where we are today — with instability and anger that harm the court and threaten the rule of law. ........... President Jimmy Carter didn’t appoint a single justice in his sole term. Donald Trump appointed three. Barack Obama had three vacancies in his eight years, but he was able to confirm only two new justices. Ronald Reagan was able to confirm three new justices ........... Democrats have won five of the last nine presidential elections, but Democratic presidents have nominated only three of the nine Supreme Court justices. ............ According to the Supreme Court, the average term of a Supreme Court justice has been 16 years. Many modern justices, however, have served well over 25 years. ............. And despite their theoretical independence, justices were too often prisoners of their political times — susceptible to the same racism and xenophobia that plagued the rest of the American body politic. ............... The judicial confirmation wars keep escalating. A dispute over filibuster abuse led Democrats to break the judicial filibuster for lower court nominees. Four years later, Republicans broke the filibuster for the Supreme Court. ............. The combination of the Republican decision to block an election-year floor vote for Merrick Garland while Barack Obama was president and then confirming Amy Coney Barrett under Trump just days before the 2020 election was both a raw exercise of political power and an ominous warning that the next phase of the judicial wars may well mean that divided governments simply won’t be able to confirm new Supreme Court nominees. ................ Writing nuanced, thoughtful opinions in hot-button culture war cases is a good way to kill your chances for higher judicial office. ............. the new political imperative is to nominate and confirm young justices who will do exactly what you want for as long as you want — for terms of office that can stretch longer than the reigns of ancient kings. .................. Democracy alone isn’t a sufficient safeguard for free speech, equal protection or due process. Criminal defendants, for example, are not a popular constituency, but much of our Bill of Rights is dedicated to protecting their basic rights. ............. Biden’s proposed reforms adopt the most common term limits proposal — every justice serves for 18 years (which roughly matches the median court term throughout the nation’s history), which in turn means that every president would select two justices per term, in his or her first and third years in office. This proposal has the virtue of addressing the worst of our current problems while preserving the best of the current system. ............... A long, fixed term (absent impeachment) would help guarantee judicial independence. The justices would have more than enough time to develop their own jurisprudence and make their marks on the court.
When Trump Rants, This Is What I Hear I arrived here first as a 3-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, settling with my family in Northern California, in a small town with trees so thick that their branches mingled high over the roads. My mother introduced us around the neighborhood not just as a new family, but as a Peruvian family (she signed cards, “from your Peruvian friends”). It mattered to her that people knew, whether to convey her pride or pre-empt their questions. Even when you’re trying to fit in, you can’t help standing out. .......... I’ve long regarded Trump as a challenge for America — for democratic institutions, for honesty and, yes, for its immigrant tradition — but this xenophobic cacophony, building so relentlessly over the past decade, now feels overpowering. It also feels directed my way, at who I am and the choices I’ve made. ........... For all of Trump’s particular efforts — the wall, the travel ban, the family separations and now the pledge of mass deportation — he is part of a long tradition. You don’t have to go back to the expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the Great Depression, or the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19th century,
or Benjamin Franklin’s musings on those inassimilable Germans
. .............. Trump does not say that he knows any good immigrants; he must imagine their existence. .............. “Little is more extraordinary than the decision to migrate, little more extraordinary than the accumulation of emotions and thoughts which finally leads a family to say farewell to a community where it has lived for centuries, to abandon old ties and familiar landmarks,” John F. Kennedy wrote in “A Nation of Immigrants.” He called it a “highly individual decision” and “an enormous intellectual and emotional commitment.” ............... There is a parallel existence always shadowing me, a version I glimpse in the cousins and friends who remained. What if I’d stayed? ................ I’ve always been jealous of those Americans who claim one unmistakable hometown, the place whose streets and rhythms they instantly recognize, a singular setting that anchors their memory. I ache for that, but I lost it. When I visit Lima, I feel out of place. My cultural references are dated, my mental maps fragmented, my friendships treasured but fragile. I don’t quite get the jokes. My longing is for a place that no longer exists, just like that other person I might have been. ................ “I will never be American enough for many Americans,” the journalist Jorge Ramos writes in “Stranger,” a 2018 memoir. “Just as I will never be Mexican enough for many Mexicans.” ............... The old place is gone, so I cling to the new with the zeal of the convert ............. Six years before Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, began spreading rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Trump complained in an Oval Office meeting that he didn’t like admitting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador or African countries. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” the president asked, as he rejected a bipartisan immigration proposal. With little subtlety, he said he’d rather draw from Norway. “Why do we need more Haitians?” he reiterated. “Take them out.” ................ “When migrants move, it’s not out of idle fancy, or because they hate their homelands, or to plunder the countries they come to, or even (most often) to strike it rich,” Suketu Mehta writes in “This Land Is Our Land,” a 2019 manifesto. They move, he explains, “because the accumulated burdens of history have rendered their homelands less and less habitable.” ............ My parents enjoyed a comfortable life in Peru; neither poverty nor oppression compelled our departure. But that life was not enough. My father’s American dream was less for himself than for me and my sisters, and we came here to find it. I chose to return to the United States for college because the Peru of my youth was mired in hyperinflation and terrorism; because I missed the sisters who had made that choice already; because the taste I’d had of America, even as a child, was impossible to forget. ......... Hoping that the new home will be better than the old one does not diminish the pain of truncating the life you have known, leaving a hole so gaping that even a land of opportunity has trouble filling it.
I’ve Covered Politics for 50 Years. Here’s Why So Much Hinges on Electing Kamala Harris. Beirut, clearly, had been a civilized and sophisticated city; parts of it still were — and yet it was descending into the unthinkable. The lesson was stark: My American soul, my life experience, had assumed that civilization was a rock-solid given, especially in historic cultural and commercial centers like Beirut. But it wasn’t. It was a tenuous state of grace. It needed to be nurtured, protected. ............ we have been flirting, dangerously, with disorder and disunity in the Trump era. ........... Ms. Harris, who was trained in the rule of law, understands viscerally the importance of the stability that government provides. Donald Trump doesn’t. He has attempted to destroy our faith in the institutions that keep us safe — the courts, the F.B.I., the intelligence community, the diplomatic corps, the military, even our electoral process and, this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ............ Let’s focus just for a moment on the military: It is the template for the highest form of citizenship. It requires a solemn pledge to subsume your individuality to protect the greater good. According to his former chief of staff John Kelly, Mr. Trump has referred to service members as “suckers” and “losers” — though he has said that this was “a total lie.” The former president has absolutely no idea of the rigors the military requires, the notions of service and sacrifice. He is a stranger to the most basic requirements of a democracy................ Impediments do exist, of course, and bigotry will always be part of the human condition. But the liberal failure to acknowledge the steady progress toward a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous society has been as purposefully myopic as Mr. Trump’s fever dream that white America is under siege — most recently, by legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. .................. the great choice we’re facing: whether we’re ready to follow our destiny as a wondrously creative, inclusive democracy or crash on
the straitened delusions of antique white nativism
, an American tendency of long standing but always a losing one in the past. .............. he has become the emperor of the irrational, pursuing a dismal vision of “American carnage” at a moment when crime is down, illegal immigration is down, inflation is down and our economy is the envy of the world.
How Harris Can Finish Strong audiences “will not tune in to watch information.” They will “only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama.” ........... strong drama is built around intention and obstacle. The hero has to be seized by a strong, specific desire, and she needs to face a really big obstacle. ........... You don’t communicate your deepest desire when your campaign is run by a committee. ......... George W. Bush used to tell that story about struggling with alcohol and then coming to faith. ............ Nixon, who saw himself as the scrappy outsider perpetually facing establishment foes. ............ As the election went on, Obama gripped our attention by showing greater depths of himself. By contrast, I can think of only one time we learned something surprising about Harris during her short campaign — that she owns a gun. Otherwise, she seems to hold conventional Democratic postures on all things. That’s not gripping. ........... “A great way to reveal character is to show somebody in crisis.” In any great story there are moments when we think the hero faces near certain defeat but then flips the tables. That’s when we find out what she has inside. .......... hold-backism is a common disease in our politics. Mitt Romney is a first-class human being, but during his 2012 campaign, he held himself back. In 2016, Hillary Clinton held herself back. Al Gore was said to be charming in private but held himself back. ............ It’s understandable. So much is at stake. You’re surrounded by consultants and strategy memos. A candidate can lose herself within the machinery.
Kamala Harris Is Turning a Trump Tactic on Its Head Her particular Achilles’ heel — pointed out by her opponent, who, whatever his manifest unfitness for the job, does have a talent for identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities — is contained in the word “protection.” ........... As much as the Harris campaign promotes “joy,” the national mood radiates fear — of exposure, threat, bodily harm. How’s a woman supposed to protect us from that? .................. In the public sphere, as in the personal, he who would dominate offers to protect. Forty-seven years ago, the feminist philosopher Susan Rae Peterson identified the syndrome of the “male protection racket,” asking, “Since the state fails them in its protective function, to whom can women turn for protection?” She explained that “women make agreements with husbands or fathers (in return for fidelity or chastity, respectively) to secure protection. From whom do these men protect women? From other men, it turns out.” She continued: “There is a striking parallel between this situation and tactics used by crime syndicates who sell protection as a racket. The buyer who refuses to buy the protective services of an agency because he needs no protection finds out soon that because he refuses to buy it, he very definitely needs protection. Women are in the same position.” .............. Donald Trump has it figured out. “Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago,” he told a Pennsylvania rally in late September. Also: “less healthy,” “less safe on the streets” and “more stressed and depressed and unhappy.” In a part of his speech aimed explicitly at female voters, he added, “I will fix all of that and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end.” Women, he promised, “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger.” Why? “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.” .................. Mr. Trump is a master of the protection racket. He takes the old domestic savior scam national. He’s running a Halloween campaign, leaping from behind every podium to yell “Boo!” to scare his base, male and female both, with any hobgoblin he can conjure — migrants who are “vicious monsters,” who are “poisoning the blood of our country” and who will “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States of America,” “radical left thugs” who “live like vermin” and “steal and cheat on elections,” Democratic governors who want to “execute” babies after they’re born, liberal schools conducting a “brutal operation” to change a child’s gender. Mr. Trump and his running mate have conjured childless women whose only companions are feline and illegal immigrants dining on felines. To save us from these monsters, Mr. Trump proposes himself. .................... His protection, of course, is as mythical as the threats he manufactures. Violent crime is near a 50-year low. Homicides fell nearly 12 percent from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year drop in six decades, and rape declined by more than 9 percent. Women — and especially never-married women — have made significant economic gains since 2019. As for stress, as the “Daily Show” comedian Desi Lydic remarked after Mr. Trump’s speech, “I love how he’s acknowledging that we’re stressed out, as though he’s not the one stressing us out.” ................... Many voters, especially men, perceive the prospect of being protected by a woman as a threat. In a society where men judge their worth by their ability to protect, being protected by a woman is seen as a disgrace, a stain on one’s honor. ............... Women are allowed to play the protector in one arena: as mothers. The vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin famously tried to market herself as the “mama grizzly” candidate and said in 2010 in a speech to the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, “You thought pit bulls were tough. Well, you don’t want to mess with the mama grizzlies.” It’s no coincidence that at the same time that the Trump campaign is leaning on the “protector” theme, it’s disparaging Ms. Harris because she’s not a mother. ................. With his “I am your protector” speech, Mr. Trump was baiting Ms. Harris to cast herself as a protector, knowing he’d have her in a bind. He is a wizard at rope-a-dope, issuing an outrageous assertion in order to goad a response that will trap his opponent. He cast doubt on Ms. Harris’s racial credentials as an invitation for her to come out as an identity warrior..................... For them, war’s the point, not victory — outrage, not outcomes, as victim cultures on both the right and the left amply demonstrate. ........... This is how recent Republican administrations have profited from their own incompetence. Their inability to provide real protection (from, say, Osama bin Laden) fed the public’s desire for a symbolic act (like the “defeat” of Saddam Hussein). George W. Bush’s failure at practical protection — to heed the multiple warnings that a catastrophic attack on American soil was in the works — allowed him to play to the hilt the role of symbolic protector. A political advocacy group backing Mr. Bush in 2004 against John Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, aired a multimillion-dollar TV spot in which a girl whose mother was killed on Sept. 11 declared of Mr. Bush, “He’s the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe.” Mr. Trump has pulled a similar switcheroo on countless fronts, from trade to manufacturing to immigration to lost elections. ............... If Mr. Trump embodies the make-believe rescuer, the bombastic redeemer who speaks loudly while carrying a tiny stick, Ms. Harris is his levelheaded, no-nonsense opposite. Her record of public service and her utilitarian policy plans attest to workable fixes to actual dangers instead of the amplification of invented ones. ............... I want reasoned and stable governance, exemplified by a president whose lodestar is the well-being and security of her citizenry, not the bloodlust of his base. ........... In 1977, Ms. Peterson observed that, under the laws of the state, women are like the “victimized, unwilling clients of an organized protection racket, because they cannot turn to each other, being unorganized themselves.”
Is Google’s NotebookLM Going to Disrupt the Podcasting Industry? Especially if all it takes is 1 click to turn any content into podcast .......... NotebookLM is a personalized AI research assistant powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro, designed to make sense of complex information........... With just one click, it generates engaging “deep dive” discussions that summarize the key topics in your sources. ............ What’s even more impressive is how it transforms any piece of content, no matter how dry, by generating two AI hosts (one male and one female) who discuss the document’s contents in a podcast-style format.
The Trumpification of American policy Elon Musk unveils Tesla’s ‘Cybercab,’ plans to bring autonomous driving tech to other models in 2025 BlackRock Hits $11.5 Trillion With Push into Private Markets BlackRock Inc. pulled in a record $221 billion of total client cash last quarter, pushing the world’s largest money manager to an all-time high of $11.5 trillion of assets as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for stocks, bonds and, increasingly, private assets. Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump Elon Musk is planting himself in Pennsylvania, has brought his brain trust to help and may even knock on doors himself........... In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history. .......... He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election. ........ He has relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X ............. Above all, he is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used. .......... Mr. Musk’s battle plan as he directs his efforts to elect Mr. Trump with the same frenetic energy and exacting demands that he has honed at his companies SpaceX, Tesla and X. ............. These days, in private conversations, Mr. Musk is obsessive, almost manic, about the stakes of the election and the need for Mr. Trump to win. He praises Mr. Trump’s courage under fire — he endorsed him on the night of the assassination attempt in Butler — and talks about how funny he is. One person who spoke recently to Mr. Musk recalled him saying, without any hint of irony, “I love Trump.” .......... Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million. .............. But friends and colleagues say Mr. Musk is adopting the same strategy that he has used during other crises he has considered existential. Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment. ........... And so, just as he recruited friends, family and trusted lieutenants to Twitter after he bought the company, Mr. Musk has done the same at America PAC, which he founded to help Mr. Trump. Most recently, Mr. Musk added Steve Davis, a former SpaceX engineer and the head of his tunneling company, to the group, with Mr. Davis reprising a sidekick role that he played after Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. ........... “I’m not sure there is a precedent in modern history to how Musk has inserted himself into the presidential race,” said Benjamin Soskis, a historian of the ultrarich. ............. Mr. Musk, who once privately called Mr. Trump a “stone-cold loser,” possesses in abundance the things Mr. Trump values most: wealth, fame and a massive platform. ............. Mr. Musk initially supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president and suggested that Mr. Trump should “sail into the sunset.” Mr. Trump replied that Mr. Musk begged on his knees for government subsidies. ............ ... After Mr. DeSantis flamed out of the Republican primary, Mr. Musk began to tell friends that he wanted to find a way to support Mr. Trump — secretly. .............. He dismissed the power of television advertising and spoke sweepingly of an organic movement to elect Mr. Trump, with supporters persuading others to join the cause. Two voters by two voters — that was how Mr. Trump would win, he said. ............... Mr. Trump has made clear that he appreciates the help, promising to appoint Mr. Musk to oversee a government-efficiency team if he is re-elected. ............ At a rally in Reading, Pa., on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump appeared preoccupied with Mr. Musk, telling stories about his talks with Mr. Musk in three unrelated tangents and celebrating the “dark MAGA” hat that some attendees said they had bought because Mr. Musk wore it in Butler. .................. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account............... At the core of Mr. Musk’s project is America PAC, an organization that the Trump campaign is relying on for significant help in knocking on doors in battleground states and encouraging 800,000 to one million voters to cast ballots for the former president. ........... The group has spent about $80 million to help Mr. Trump according to federal records, primarily on its canvassing program. Mr. Musk’s advisers have told donors that the group has about 2,500 organizers in the field, and the group has effectively acquired the Wisconsin assets of another group, Turning Points USA, taking on about 200 new canvassers in the state. Some canvassers, during training, have been shown Mr. Musk’s social media posts about the group, as a way to encourage them. .............. The Trump campaign is conducting something of an experiment by outsourcing portions of its voter contact operation to America PAC and other groups. That is possible because of new federal election guidance that allows political campaigns to coordinate their activities more closely with outside organizations. .............. Some donors to the super PAC have groused that Mr. Musk is relying on the same team that formed the core of Mr. DeSantis’s advisers when he attempted a similar effort in the Republican primaries, to no avail. ............. Veterans of past campaigns argue that canvassing operations generally take months or even years to become effective machines. There is little precedent for successfully standing up a group of this scale just months before a presidential election. ................ Since publicly endorsing the former president in July, he has posted at least 109 times about Mr. Trump and the election. And while he has said in the past that the platform should be “politically neutral,” he has used it to advance election misinformation and the baseless claim that Democrats are engaging in “deliberate voter importation” and “fast-tracking” immigrants to citizenship to gain control over the electorate. ..................... “Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars,” Mr. Musk wrote this month in a post that has gained nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.” ................. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “trashing Kamala nonstop” and being all in for Mr. Trump. ......... If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”
Grappling With the Talmud in the Midst of Crisis What the words of ancient rabbis could and couldn’t teach me. ............. Daf Yomi — the practice of reading a page of the Talmud every day over the course of seven and a half years .......... that famously dense compilation of arguments among ancient rabbis. ........... The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, is Judaism’s foundational holy book, but it’s not a cohesive manual for daily life. That’s where the Talmud comes in. A 63-volume collection of interpretation, storytelling and debate ............ Less-observant Jews, like me, often regard it with mystification and awe, leaving the studying to our more orthodox cousins. .......... before I started Daf Yomi, my relationship with the actual texts behind all that culture and history was superficial at best. .......... I started receiving my Daf Yomi emails just before the pandemic. As the world locked down, that “daily dose of Talmud” gave structure and meaning to an otherwise blank expanse of days. I found an unexpected joy in the Talmud’s humanity and community-minded ethic. ................ But the most important lessons, for me at least, were in the ritual of reading. It became transformative, returning day after day to the same debates, doing my best to engage with a text that for over a thousand years has instructed Jews in the importance of productive argument and paying careful attention to even the smallest of details, like marriage rites or what to do with an unruly ox. Though the Talmud is an ancient text, steeped in the mores of a very different world, the underlying values don’t feel so foreign to me. The rabbis were almost always guided by a sense of fairness and justice, an urge to protect the most vulnerable and to preserve the sanctity of human life. This last principle is encapsulated in a Talmudic maxim that, in its earliest iteration, reads: “Whoever destroys a single life is considered by scripture to have destroyed the whole world.” ............... “That which is hateful to you do not do to another,” he said. “That is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go study.” ............ the Talmud itself was born of crisis, compiled at a moment of catastrophe. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., Jews were forced to reimagine their religion without the temple that had for centuries served as its center. All those arguments on subjects like whether adjoining rooftops constitute public or private space serve a larger goal: a radical reimagining of practice and faith, a new way of thinking about personhood, mutual responsibility and coexistence. That process of rebuilding and rethinking continues even now, with every person who grapples with the text. ................ even in the most profound crisis, it’s possible to imagine new ways of being, new political structures, new models of coexistence and mutual support. In fact, this is when the reimagining is most urgent.
