Despite Musk’s departure, Trump’s war against unions and workers will continue

  President Donald Trump’s second administration has been defined by its assault on the federal workforce. With Elon Musk at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration fired tens of thousands of federal workers, jeopardizing services that working families across the country rely on. Yet the attacks on workers have gone beyond firing public sector workers and will not end just because Musk has left the government.

Empathy can take a toll – but 2 philosophers explain why we should see it as a strength

  In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk offered his thoughts about what motivates political progressives to support immigration. In his view, the culprit was empathy, which he called “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”

  As shocking as Musk’s views are, however, they are far from unique. On the one hand, there is the familiar and widespread conservative critique of “bleeding heart” liberals as naive or overly emotional. But there is also a broader philosophical critique that raises worries about empathy on quite different and less political grounds, including findings in social science.

Like many populist leaders, Trump accuses judges of being illegitimate obstacles to safety and democracy

  Federal judges and at times Supreme Court justices have repeatedly challenged – and blocked – President Donald Trump’s attempts to reshape fundamental aspects of American government.

  Many of Trump’s more than 150 executive orders, including one aimed at eliminating the Department of Education, have been blocked by injunctions and lawsuits.

  When a majority of Supreme Court justices ruled on May 16, 2025 that the Trump administration could not deport a group of Venezuelan immigrants without first giving them the right to due process in court, Trump attacked the court.

A need for chaos powers some Americans’ support for Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to the US government

  A video of a Las Vegas Tesla dealership that had been set on fire by anti-Elon Musk protesters was posted on March 18, 2025, by an account on X called EndWokeness.

  The next day Musk replied to the post, “Some people just want to watch the world burn,” an iconic line from the 2008 Batman film “The Dark Knight.” Alfred, the Wayne family’s faithful butler, says the line to Bruce Wayne – Batman – to describe the motivations behind the Joker’s chaotic acts of violence.

  Musk – and Alfred – was right. Some people do, in fact, say they think that society should be burned to the ground. It’s part of a psychological measure political psychologists created called the “need for chaos.”

Tesla and terrorism nonsense

  The 9/11 attacks provided the U.S. government with one of the greatest opportunities in U.S. history to destroy the freedom of the American people. Declaring a “war on terrorism,” federal officials seized upon the crisis to exercise omnipotent powers, purportedly to keep the nation “safe” from the terrorists who were supposedly hell-bent on coming to get us. In the process, the war-on-terrorism racket became as effective in destroying liberty as the war-on-communism racket had done throughout the Cold War.

  With the war on terrorism, U.S. officials don’t have to bother complying with constitutional restraints and the restrictions in the Bill of Rights. That’s because the U.S. is considered to be at “war.” Therefore, the executive branch is permitted to do pretty much anything it wants without concerning itself with interference by the other two branches — Congress and the federal judiciary. That’s a perfect recipe for the destruction of liberty.

The Trump administration is hurting consumers’ wallets by kneecapping the CFPB

  Most Americans can’t afford to lose money to corporations that cheat them or to banks and credit card companies that charge excessive fees, and they need somewhere to turn for help. They may not realize that the fine print on their car loan says the company can repossess the car after one missed payment or that a term buried several pages into their family’s home mortgage could result in foreclosure. They may not understand why their bank is withdrawing fees from their savings account or why they are charged such a high penalty when they overdraw their account a day before their paycheck is deposited. And seniors and consumers with the fewest resources may find themselves the target of financial scams.

Exhausted by the news? Here are 6 strategies to stay informed without getting overwhelmed − or misled by misinformation

  Political spin is nothing new, and identifying reliable news and information can be hard to do during any presidency. But the return of Donald Trump to the White House has reignited debates over truth, accountability, and the role of media in a deeply divided America.

  Misinformation is an umbrella term that covers all kinds of false and misleading content, and there is lots of it out there.

  During Trump’s chaotic first presidency, the president himself promoted false claims about COVID-19, climate change, and the 2020 election.

Don’t cheer, Gov. Ivey: Killing the Department of Education will hurt Alabama students

  Gov. Kay Ivey is a sure-footed politician.

  She’s walked the narrow and dangerous path of Alabama politics all the way to summit. It requires focus, dedication, and balancing performative apathy and winking cruelty. And constant, emphatic declarations that you care more about your party than the people who live here.

  That may explain why Ivey said last week that she supports the efforts of President Donald Trump and effective President Elon Musk to destroy the U.S. Department of Education.

The dark parallels between 1920s America and today’s political climate

  As promised, the second Trump administration has quickly rolled out a slew of policies and executive orders that the president says are all aimed at “Making America Great Again.” This takes on different forms, including Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency quickly laying off thousands of workers at various federal agencies, and President Donald Trump pausing all funding for Ukraine.

  Trump says that, among others, there are three groups that are making America not-great: immigrants, people with disabilities, and people who are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

DOGE threat: How government data would give an AI company extraordinary power

  The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has secured unprecedented access to at least seven sensitive federal databases, including those of the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration. This access has sparked fears about cybersecurity vulnerabilities and privacy violations. Another concern has received far less attention: the potential use of the data to train a private company’s artificial intelligence systems.

  The White House press secretary said government data that DOGE has collected isn’t being used to train Musk’s AI models despite Elon Musk’s control over DOGE. However, evidence has emerged that DOGE personnel simultaneously hold positions with at least one of Musk’s companies.

Cutting Medicaid and federal programs are among 4 key Trump administration policy changes that could make life harder for disabled people

  While policy debates on immigration, abortion, and other issues took center stage in the 2024 presidential election, the first months of the Trump administration have also signaled major changes in federal disability policy.

  An estimated 20% to 25% of Americans have a disability of some kind, including physical, sensory, psychological, and intellectual disabilities.

America’s park and forest rangers are being fired, and oil and gas bosses are now in charge

  Billionaires Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are purging park rangers, scientists, and other public land experts while putting oil and gas industry executives and their close allies in charge of America’s public lands. As a result, visitors and communities are already feeling the impacts on their parks, and land protections are being gutted to clear a path for pollution and corporate exploitation.

Firing civil servants and dismantling government departments is how aspiring strongmen consolidate personal power – lessons from around the globe

  With the recent confirmations of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – two of the most controversial of President Donald Trump’s high-level administration nominees – the president’s attempt to remake government as a home for political loyalists continues.

  Soon after coming to office for a second term, Trump aggressively sought to overhaul Washington and bring the federal government in line with his political agenda. He is spearheading an effort to purge the government’s ranks of people he perceived as his opponents and slash the size of long-standing bureaucratic agencies – in some instances dismantling them entirely.

James Spann and our misinformation nightmare

  If you’ve ever heard of the press critic A.J. Liebling, it’s probably because you’ve heard this sentence of his: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

  Liebling penned that for a 1960 dispatch from a publishers’ convention. The New Yorker correspondent had spent days watching newspaper publishers vigorously slap each others’ back over the purported strength of their industry.

What the First Amendment really says – 4 basic principles of free speech in the US

  Elon Musk has claimed he believes in free speech no matter what. He calls it a bulwark against tyranny in America and promises to reconstruct Twitter, which he now owns, so that its policy on free expression “matches the law.” Yet his grasp of the First Amendment – the law that governs free speech in the U.S. – appears to be quite limited. And he’s not alone.

Why inequality is growing in the US and around the world

  U.S. income inequality grew in 2021 for the first time in a decade, according to data the Census Bureau released in September 2022.

  That might sound surprising since the most accurate measure of the poverty rate declined during the same time span.

  But for development experts like me, this apparent contradiction makes perfect sense.

Elon Musk says relaxing content rules on Twitter will boost free speech, but research shows otherwise

  Elon Musk’s accepted bid to purchase Twitter has triggered a lot of debate about what it means for the future of the social media platform, which plays an important role in determining the news and information many people – especially Americans – are exposed to.

  Musk has said he wants to make Twitter an arena for free speech. It’s not clear what that will mean, and his statements have fueled speculation among both supporters and detractors. As a corporation, Twitter can regulate speech on its platform as it chooses. There are bills being considered in the U.S. Congress and by the European Union that address social media regulation, but these are about transparency, accountability, illegal harmful content, and protecting users’ rights rather than regulating speech.