A quick refresher: there was originally $42.5 billion in broadband grants headed to the states thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill most Republicans voted against (yet routinely try to take credit for among their constituents).

But after taking office this second time, the Trump administration rewrote the grant program’s guidance to eliminate provisions ensuring the resulting broadband is affordable to poor people, and to ensure that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos gets billions in new broadband subsidies for their fledgling satellite broadband networks.

Money given to Bezos and Musk is money not spent on better, faster, local fiber optics (especially popular community owned networks). A serious broadband policy would ensure that open access fiber is the priority, followed by wireless, with satellite filling the gaps. Satellite was never intended to be the primary delivery mechanism for broadband, because of obvious congestion and capacity constraints.

The Trump NTIA is doing all of this under the pretense that giving taxpayer money to billionaires (for satellite service they already planned to deploy) instead of spending it on high quality fiber is “saving taxpayers money.” That’s generally resulted in widespread delays for this BEAD (Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment) program, despite Republicans spending much of last election season complaining this program was taking too long.

The Trump NTIA hijacking of the program has also created a $21 billion pool of “non deployment funds” made up of the fake savings Republicans claim they created by screwing up the program. There’s a looming fight emerging over what happens to that money. Congress and the infrastructure law specifically states this money is supposed to be dedicated to expanding broadband access.

States would obviously like to use this money either for broadband, or for local infrastructure. But you get the sense that this giant wad of cash is very tempting for the Trump administration to just hijack and use as an unaccountable slush fund, doled out to its most loyal red state allies (or just kept by the “Treasury”).

After delays and excuses extended in to last summer, the Trump NTIA was supposed to provide guidance for states on how this money could be used earlier this month, but has been a no show:

“Under pressure from senators at an appropriations hearing, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last month sought to calm fears when he said that so-called “non-deployment” funds under the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program would not be rescinded.

But with no guidance so far from the department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which was expected but delayed this week, lawmakers and others are pushing to have their voice heard on exactly how states will be able to use the $21 billion pot of money.”

It’s not clear if states can trust the word of Lutnick (who’s been a little distracted by Epstein allegations). The Trump administration has threatened (quite illegally) to withhold BEAD funding entirely from states that attempt to stand up to telecom monopolies or insist that taxpayer-funded broadband is affordable. There were also several initiatives to withhold BEAD funds if states tried to regulate AI.

Unsurprisingly, many states are afraid to be honest about what a cock up this whole hijacking has been in the press for fear of losing billions in potential (and already technically awarded) funding.

There’s a real potential here that taxpayer money that was originally earmarked for future-proof, ultra-fast fiber network is going to be repurposed into a general free for all slush fund that gets redirected to whoever praises the Trump administration the most. And I wouldn’t be surprised that this ultimately results in state lawsuits against the federal government for redirecting funds.

“I think the state officials who think they’re going to be made whole, need to reread the Merchant of Venice, because [NTIA boss Arielle] Roth is coming for her pound of flesh,” Sascha Meinrath, Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State University, told me in an email. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s operationalized in a way to directly target or disadvantage blue states — whether in what it does, or what’s tied to the acceptance of the funding.”

One last side note: last election season the “abundance” folks like Ezra Klein spent ample time parroting GOP criticism of the admitted delays and problems with this BEAD program (ignoring why the program took so long, as well as other examples of similar broadband grant programs from the same year doing well) as an example of a Democratic bureaucratic dysfunction.

But I’ve noticed that since Trump hijacked the program, introduced massive delays, redirected billions to billionaires, and even tried to run off with half the funding, the subject hasn’t been revisited by Klein since. Quite generally (since infrastructure just doesn’t get those clicks) the press coverage of this whole mess has ranged from nonexistent to positively tepid.

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We’ve noted how Microsoft is a little sensitive about AI slop at the moment. Back in January, CEO Satya Nadella wrote a well-circulated blog post lamenting critics of “AI slop” and demanding the public simply move past such conversations. It was relatively innocuous, but wasn’t received well for some valid reasons.

One problem is that Nadella put the onus on the consumer for ignoring a lot of Microsoft’s terrible choices as it relates to AI, whether it’s the ample lazy AI slop that fills the company’s zombified MSN portal, the rushed integration of AI into software in a way that poses major new security risks, their undercooked AI copyright bots, the company’s efforts to shovel Copilot down the throats of people (whether they want it or not), or some of the really dodgy privacy practices they’ve been engaged with via Windows 11 AI “snapshot” features.

Last week found Microsoft under fire yet again, this time for defensively locking down a Discord server after people wouldn’t stop calling the company “Microslop.” More specifically, Microsoft Streisanded themselves after they tried to ban the term on its Copilot discord server. When people found creative ways to get around the ban, Microsoft decided to lock down the entire server.

When called out for that by frustrated users, Microsoft tried to blame the entire incident on “spammers” who were trying to post “harmful content”:

“The Copilot Discord channel has recently been targeted by spammers attempting to disrupt and overwhelm the space with harmful content not related to Copilot,” a Microsoft spokesperson told us, adding that the “blocking of terms like ‘Microslop’ and some others associated with this spam campaign were temporary while the company worked to implement better safeguards.”

Microsoft executives don’t really seem to want to engage in any serious introspection into their rushed adoption of AI in ways customers don’t always appreciate. Most recently, their integration of Copilot into Notepad opened up a major cybersecurity vulnerability.

This whole incident will, of course, only result in users doubling down on their criticisms:

These companies have invested untold oceans of cash into a technology that may have utility for many, but hasn’t, to date, been all that profitable. Many AI companies have layered under-cooked automation on top of very broken systems (see: health insurance or journalism or war) in problematic ways, raising questions about company valuations and systemically poor judgement. All while AI’s immense energy consumption has caused companies to disregard already tepid climate goals.

Instead of engaging in real conversation about these issues you tend to get a lot of generalized defensiveness (“why can’t you simply praise us for our innovation?”), all of which has been made worse by the tech sector’s enthusiastic coddling of authoritarianism.

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You might recall that during the great mass TikTok hyperventilation of 2021-2025, there was no limit of face fanning by Republicans like Brendan Carr about overseas involvement in social media. Carr was so particular on this subject, he scuttled an FCC program aimed at shoring up “smart” home device security standards because one of the testing labs (unsurprisingly) did business in China where this stuff is made.

Fast forward to this year, and Carr curiously has zero problems with significant Saudi and Chinese investments in Larry Ellison and Paramount’s efforts to acquire Warner Brothers. Though Carr’s actual regulatory oversight of the deal is limited given the lack of public broadcast licenses involved, he took to CNBC anyway to insist the massive $111 billion deal should likely fly through regulatory approval:

“If there’s any FCC role at all, it’ll be a pretty minimal role. And I think this is a good deal, and I think it should get through pretty quickly,” Carr added.

Carr told CNBC that Netflix “would have a very difficult path” getting regulatory approval, adding that Paramount’s was “a lot cleaner, does not raise at all the same types of concerns.”

“I think there’s some real consumer benefits that can emerge from it,” he added.

Carr’s (and Republicans’ more generally) gushing excitement comes despite the fact that significant structural overlap between Paramount and Warner Brothers will mean significantly more layoffs than we would have seen during the originally proposed Netflix Warner Brothers tie up. Layoffs that will likely be much worse than past Warner deals due to the absolutely massive debt involved.

This is before you even get to Larry Ellison’s obvious quest to built autocratic-friendly state television, the likes of which coddles authoritarianism and, in countries like Russia and Hungary, ultimately led to the total decimation of serious truth-to-power journalism.

Then there’s the $24 billion in combined funding for the Paramount deal from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). As well as the recent announcement that Chinese company Tencent is weighing a significant investment. Before his deal was scuttled, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos was pretty pointed about this being a problem:

“Before pulling out of the deal, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos – speaking to the BBC in London on the morning after the recent BAFTA Film Awards – called the Gulf sovereign funds backing Paramount’s bid a “bad idea,” noting that they are from “a part of the world that is not very big on the First Amendment.”

“It seems very odd to me with the level of investment that we’re talking about that they’d have no influence or editorial control over media in another country,” Sarandos added.

If you recall the multi-year right wing hysteria campaign about TikTok, it was fixated on the idea that having any overseas involvement in U.S. media was a doomsday scenario (they were not subtle or flexible on this point). Of course Trumpism immediately proceeded (with bumbling Democrat help) to “fix” this problem by offloading the company to Trump’s technofascist friends, while still maintaining a significant investment presence by the Chinese.

When Netflix was planning to buy Warner Brothers, Republicans engaged in no limit of face-fanning, featuring threats of “investigations” by Republican Attorneys General, and a phony Trump DOJ “investigation” into the antitrust concerns raised by the deal. But when a technofascist ally oligarch wants to own a major media property, with Saudi and Chinese help, all of that mysteriously disappears.

It’s almost as if Trump Republicans have no coherent ideology beyond their own power and unchecked wealth accumulation, and all of their posturing on issues like antitrust and national security, routinely propped up by a lazy press, is as hollow as a Dollar Store fake chocolate Easter bunny.

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We’ve talked a lot about the resurgence of measles in America over the past 14 or so months, and for good reason. It’s a horrible disease of historic significance. Equally historic was America achieving elimination status of the measles 26 years ago, only to see that almost certainly fall away thanks to the incompetence and inaction by Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr. This is all connected with a surge of anti-vaxxer nonsense that has proliferated across several decades, but which is now peaking thanks to the clowns this administration has put in charge of American health.

But as bad as the measles is, and it is really bad, it would be nothing to the visible horror show that any real return of polio in America would be. It was only weeks ago that the chair of ACIP, the CDC’s committee for recommendations on vaccine policies, wondered aloud if we should be vaccinating for polio any longer. Perhaps in part because of those comments, healthcare professionals throughout the country are ringing the alarm bells, warning that the country is in no way prepared for a return of polio.

Part of the problem, ironically enough, is that vaccines have done such a wonderful job of eliminating polio that healthcare professionals are no longer proficient in treating it.

“We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak,” said Grace Rossow, an operating-room communications coordinator in Illinois, who has long-term health issues following a case of polio as an infant.

“They don’t know how to treat it. It is a massive problem if we have a resurgence of polio.”

Polio has no cure. Those who get it merely get their symptoms treated as best they can. Up to half of those who get the disease will suffer from long-term effects for the rest of their lives. Symptoms of post-polio syndrome include such fun things as increasing weakness in the muscles, fatigue, pain and muscle atrophy, problems breathing and swallowing, and an inability to be mobile without mechanical assistance. And that’s what you can deal with once you get past the acute symptoms, like paralysis in the lower extremities and the inability to breath without the help of an iron lung.

And if Polio does indeed return, it will be because selfish or misguided people, typically clinging to religious excuses that are simply unserious, have refused to be good members of their communities by getting them and their children vaccinated.

Art Caplan is a polio survivor, who has suffered from post-polio syndrome and now currently teaches medical ethics at NYU.

When Kirk Milhoan, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said the vaccine advisers were reconsidering routine childhood vaccines because the risks of illnesses such as polio had dropped, “that makes me furious”, Caplan said.

“If you could gather up the kids I saw die or become really severely disabled from 50 years ago, they would want you arrested … It’s horrifying, and the height of irresponsibility to leave the door open even a crack,” he continued.

As more families choose not to vaccinate, particularly after the US stopped fully recommending several key vaccines, Caplan said: “You are begging to have a recurrence of the disease.”

Betting on the return of a disease as infectious as polio while witnessing falling vaccination rates is an easy bet. That’s how these diseases work. And if the angry rash and a few dead children haven’t gotten through to the masses on the measles, I dare say that children with deformed and mangled joints, bones, and bodies, either stuffed into iron lungs or getting by with the help of dual walking canes, would likely clarify the minds of Americans on this matter.

But, and I cannot stress this enough, there is no reason we should have to sacrifice so many people, so many children, to re-convince ourselves to do the right thing.

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Judge Boasberg got his vindication in the frivolous “complaint” the DOJ filed against him, and now he’s calling out the DOJ’s bullshit in the long-running case that caused them to file the complaint against him in the first place: the JGG v. Trump case regarding the group of Venezuelans the US government shipped off to CECOT, the notorious Salvadoran concentration camp.

Boasberg, who until last year was generally seen as a fairly generic “law and order” type judge who was extremely deferential to any “national security” claims from the DOJ (John Roberts had him lead the FISA Court, for goodness’ sake!), has clearly had enough of this DOJ and the games they’ve been playing in his court.

In a short but quite incredible ruling, he calls out the DOJ for deciding to effectively ignore the case while telling the court to “pound sand.”

On December 22, 2025, this Court issued a Memorandum Opinion finding that the Government had denied due process to a class of Venezuelans it deported to El Salvador last March in defiance of this Court’s Order. See J.G.G. v. Trump, 2025 WL 3706685, at *19 (D.D.C. Dec. 22, 2025). The Court offered the Government the opportunity to propose steps that would facilitate hearings for the class members on their habeas corpus claims so that they could “challenge their designations under the [Alien Enemies Act] and the validity of the [President’s] Proclamation.” Id. Apparently not interested in participating in this process, the Government’s responses essentially told the Court to pound sand.

From a former FISC judge—someone who spent years giving national security claims every benefit of the doubt—”pound sand” is practically a primal scream.

Due to this, he orders the government to work to “facilitate the return” of these people it illegally shipped to a foreign concentration camp (that is, assuming any of them actually want to come back).

Believing that other courses would be both more productive and in line with the Supreme Court’s requirements outlined in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, 145 S. Ct. 1017 (2025), the Court will now order the Government to facilitate the return from third countries of those Plaintiffs who so desire. It will also permit other Plaintiffs to file their habeas supplements from abroad.

Boasberg references the Donald Trump-led invasion of Venezuela and the unsettled situation there for many of the plaintiffs. He points out that the lawyers for the plaintiffs have been thoughtful and cautious in how they approach this case. That is in contrast to the US government.

Plaintiffs’ prudent approach has not been replicated by their Government counterparts. Although the Supreme Court in Abrego Garcia upheld Judge Paula Xinis’s order directing the Government “to facilitate and effectuate the return of” that deportee, see 145 S. Ct. at 1018, Defendants at every turn have objected to Plaintiffs’ legitimate proposals without offering a single option for remedying the injury that they inflicted upon the deportees or fulfilling their duty as articulated by the Supreme Court.

Boasberg points to the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, saying that it’s ridiculous that the DOJ is pretending that case doesn’t exist or doesn’t say what it says. Then he points out that the DOJ keeps “flagrantly” disobeying courts.

Against this backdrop, and mindful of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed Plaintiffs in this situation, the Court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose. The Court will thus order Defendants to take several discrete actions that will begin the remedial process for at least some Plaintiffs, as the Supreme Court has required in similar circumstances. It does so while treading lightly, as it must, in the area of foreign affairs. See Abrego Garcia, 145 S. Ct. at 1018 (recognizing “deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”)

Even given all this, the specific remedy is not one that many of the plaintiffs are likely to accept: he orders that the US government facilitate the return of any of those who want it among those… not in Venezuela. But, since most of them were eventually released from CECOT into Venezuela, that may mean that this ruling doesn’t really apply to many men. On top of that Boasberg points out that anyone who does qualify and takes up the offer will likely be detained by immigration officials upon getting here. But, if they want, the US government has to pay for their plane flights back to the US. And, in theory, the plaintiffs should then be given the due process they were denied last year.

Plaintiffs also request that such boarding letter include Government payment of the cost of the air travel. Given that the Court has already found that their removal was unlawful — as opposed to the situation contemplated by the cited Directive, which notes that “[f]acilitating an alien’s return does not necessarily include funding the alien’s travel,” Directive 11061.1, ¶ 3.1 (emphasis added) — the Court deems that a reasonable request. It is unclear why Plaintiffs should bear the financial cost of their return in such an instance. See Ms. L. v. U.S. Immig. & Customs Enf’t (“ICE”), 2026 WL 313340, at *4 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 5, 2026) (requiring Government to “bear the expense of returning these family units to the United States” given that “[e]ach of the removals was unlawful, and absent the removals, these families would still be in the United States”). It is worth emphasizing that this situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them.

I’m guessing not many are eager to re-enter the US and face deportation again. Of course, many of these people left Venezuela for the US in the first place for a reason, so perhaps some will take their chances on coming back. Even against a very vindictive US government.

The frustrating coda here is the lack of any real consequences for DOJ officials who treated this entire proceeding as a joke—declining to seriously participate and essentially daring the court to do something about it. Boasberg could have ordered sanctions. He didn’t. And that’s probably fine with this DOJ, which has learned that contempt for the courts carries no real cost.

Unfortunately, that may be the real story here. Judge gets fed up, once again, with a DOJ that thumbs its nose at the court, says extraordinary things in a ruling that calls out the DOJ’s behavior… but does little that will lead to actual accountability for those involved, beyond having them “lose” the case. We’ve seen a lot of this, and it’s only going to continue until judges figure out how to impose real consequences for DOJ lawyers for treating the court with literal contempt.

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Last week, a federal magistrate judge told the DOJ it could not arrest journalist Don Lemon. The DOJ appealed and lost that appeal too. The legal system said no.

So the DOJ arrested him anyway.

On January 18th, protesters interrupted services at a Minnesota church after discovering its pastor leads a nearby ICE field office. Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort followed the protesters through the church’s publicly accessible doors to cover the story. They streamed the protest. They asked questions. They committed acts of journalism.

And by this morning they were both in federal custody (though since released).

Organizers of the protest, to the extent they had any real organizational control, were arrested. Pictures of at least one of those arrests were run through one AI platform or another to make those arrested appear to be in more distress than they actually had been.

When that didn’t quench the thirst for cruelty and fascism of this particular regime, Pam Bondi’s DOJ then attempted to go after the journalists themselves. For what crime? Anyone’s guess, honestly. The DOJ attempted to get arrest warrants for Fort and Lemon from the courts, which told them to fuck all the way off. The DOJ then attempted to appeal the rejection without informing the lower court, and attempted to get the Appeals Court to hide the request under seal. That wasn’t successful either.

But rather than admitting that violating the First Amendment rights of journalists was a total stinker of an endeavor, the DOJ convened a grand jury, apparently got an indictment, and then both Lemon and Fort were arrested at Bondi’s direction.

Local Minnesota reporter Georgia Fort, along with former CNN journalist Don Lemon, were arrested by federal agents following their coverage of a protest at a church in St. Paul. Don Lemon’s attorney said he was “taken by federal agents” on the evening of Thursday, Jan. 29, while he was in Los Angeles covering the Grammy Awards. Local independent journalist Georgia Fort was also arrested at her home by federal agents.

A statement from the Center of Broadcast Journalism called the arrest “An assault on press and on the 1st Amendment.”

“Georgia Fort, a trusted and cherished journalist in Minnesota, was arrested in the early morning hours for doing her job by covering a pop-up protest at Cities Church in St. Paul,” the statement read. “It is an outrage that a vetted and credentialed member of the media would be in any way prosecuted for doing her appointed duty in covering news. If the federal government can come for Georgia no member of the supposed ‘free’ press is safe.”

This is incredibly dumb for a variety of reasons. For starters, the Minnesota courts, where any trial will take place, are not going to take kindly to the idea that it told the DOJ its requests for arrest warrants were hot garbage only to have that same DOJ end run around the courts to make those same arrests via a grand jury. It’s a slap in the face to the very court system within which the DOJ will have to operate. Elie Mystal is spot on about this at The Nation.

The arrests of the two journalists are clearly unconstitutional. You don’t need to be a legal scholar to know that arresting journalists for covering the news is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Lemon’s arrest is also flatly illegal. Last week, the Trump administration went to a federal magistrate judge, Douglas L. Micko, to ask for an arrest warrant for Lemon. The judge refused. The Trump administration then appealed and lost that appeal. The legal system literally said the government couldn’t arrest Lemon, but the government arrested him anyway, and they went all the way to Los Angeles (far from Minnesota) to get him.

Georgia Fort is a prominent Black journalist based in Minnesota. She was out front in covering the George Floyd protests, and expertly covered the trial of his killer, Derek Chauvin. I have little doubt that this prior reporting is among the reasons she was targeted by the Trump administration.

Add to that the very open question, based on the law that the DOJ is citing here, whether any of this actually violates a statute, by anyone involved in this at all. I would very much argue that it does not, by plain reading of the law. As Quinta Jurecic at the Atlantic notes, the legal argument is garbage.

The indictment itself makes for a strange read. No attorneys other than political appointees appear on the filing—a hint that career Justice Department employees might not have wanted to be involved. The government treats Lemon and Fort as co-conspirators of the protesters without acknowledging any protections afforded by their role as journalists. Both charges derive from the FACE Act, a 1994 law meant to prevent anti-abortion protestors from restricting access to reproductive-health clinics. Here, though, the Justice Department is leveraging a lesser-known portion of the statute that provides similar protections for freedom of religion in places of worship. Kyle Boynton, who recently departed from his position as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division, told me that this provision of the FACE Act has never been used—probably because “it’s plainly unconstitutional” as an overreach of Congress’s authority to legislate under the Commerce Clause. Boynton, who prosecuted FACE Act cases and crimes committed against houses of worship while at the Justice Department, was unimpressed with the legal reasoning in the indictment. “I think it’s very likely to face dismissal,” he said. Not only might courts find the statute unconstitutional, but Lemon and Fort could also contest the charges on First Amendment grounds, and the indictment doesn’t clearly show a FACE violation to begin with.

But it’s even dumber than that. As Dan Froomkin points out, part of the indictment tries to argue that the “overt acts” needed to prove a “conspiracy” is… that these journalists… interviewed the pastor. Or, as the DOJ says, “peppered him with questions.”

My goodness. How dare he commit acts of journalism?

Separately, you can watch the Don Lemon stream footage. He makes it very clear that he is there in his capacity as a journalist. He is not actually interrupting services. He is there covering the story. The same is true of Fort.

Both arrested journalists are Black. The head of the DOJ’s “civil rights division,” Harmeet Dhillon, celebrated by retweeting Republican operative Mike Davis calling Lemon “a klansman.”

Davis, for those unfamiliar, went on a right-wing fabulist’s podcast before the 2024 election and promised that if Trump won, opponents would be “hunted.” He promised “retribution.” He said: “We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious…. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.”

That guy is now calling a Black journalist a “klansman” for doing journalism, while the head of Civil Rights retweets it approvingly.

It’s not just Davis and Dhillon joyfully cheering on this blatant attack on the First Amendment. The White House itself posted a black and white photo of Don Lemon cheering on his arrest, calling it (ridiculously) the “St. Paul Church Riots” (there were no riots) and tweeting “When life gives you lemons…” along with chain emojis.

That will likely go right into Lemon’s filing for vindictive prosecution.

Courts have already ordered both Lemon and Fort released, though they’ll be back in court. In Lemon’s case, the judge refused to issue the requested $100k bond the government asked for. The court also will allow him to travel internationally on a pre-planned trip, even though the government demanded he hand over his passport. All of this seems clearly designed for blatant intimidation over media coverage.

The DOJ is now treating journalism as conspiracy, questions as overt acts, and coverage as crime. Courts told them no and they did it anyway—gleefully celebrating the end of the rule of law, openly gloating about punishing the President’s critics for their speech.

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Look, I know we’ve all gotten somewhat numb to the constant stream of unhinged pronouncements from the White House. At some point, the brain develops defense mechanisms. But every now and then, something comes along that is so transparently, obviously, undeniably insane that it demands we stop and actually process what is happening.

This weekend was one of those moments.

President Trump sent a text message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that was subsequently leaked to PBS and reported on by the New York Times. And I genuinely need you to read this, because summarizing it doesn’t do justice to how absolutely deranged it is:

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

Let me be absolutely clear about what you just read: The President of the United States is explicitly stating that because he didn’t receive an award he wanted, he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of Peace” and is therefore justified in threatening to forcibly take territory from a NATO ally.

This is the stated reasoning. From the President. In writing. To a foreign head of state.

And this only came after Trump first announced illegal and unnecessary tariffs on products from Europe for not just handing him Greenland (which is actually a tax on Americans, since that’s who pays the tariffs). Støre’s initial text message to Trump was an attempt to get him to calm down and to stop doing ridiculously antagonistic shit like taxing Americans because foreign countries won’t just hand Trump an entire territory he’s unhealthily obsessed with.

I want to focus on a few layers of insanity here, because they compound on each other in ways that should be making every American deeply uncomfortable.

First: Trump is yelling at the wrong country about the wrong thing.

The Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded by the Norwegian government. It is awarded by an independent five-member committee chosen by Norway’s parliament. Prime Minister Støre had to patiently explain this (again) in response:

As regards the Nobel Peace Prize, I have on several occasions clearly explained to Trump what is well known, namely that it is an independent Nobel Committee, and not the Norwegian government, that awards the prize

This is not obscure information. This is how the Nobel Prize has worked since 1901. The fact that the President either doesn’t know this or doesn’t care is already disqualifying. But we’re just getting started.

Also, Greenland is a territory of Denmark. Denmark, notably, is not Norway. Norway is not Denmark. Greenland is not controlled by Norway, just like Norway’s government doesn’t determine who gets the Nobel Peace Prize and… why are we even talking about this?

Second: He’s openly admitting his Greenland obsession has nothing to do with national security.

For months, the official line has been that acquiring Greenland is somehow essential for American national security. But here’s Trump, in his own words, saying the quiet part extremely loud: the real reason is that his feelings got hurt over a prize. The “national security” framing was always pretextual nonsense, and now we have the President himself confirming it. Beyond the fact that the threat to take Greenland has, itself, done a tremendous amount of damage to US national security, Trump’s linking it to the prize undermines every other claim.

If Greenland were actually critical to American security interests, the Nobel Committee’s decisions would be completely irrelevant. The fact that Trump is explicitly linking the two reveals the entire enterprise as what it always was: the wounded ego of a man who desperately wants validation and will threaten sovereign nations to get it.

Third: “There are no written documents” is weapons-grade historical illiteracy.

Denmark’s connection to Greenland stretches back over 300 years. There are, in fact, extensive written documents, including treaties that the United States itself has signed recognizing Danish sovereignty over Greenland. A 2004 defense pact between the U.S. and Denmark—which already grants the US tremendous rights to make use of Greenland for the US military—explicitly recognizes Greenland as “an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark.” In 1916, when Denmark sold what are now the U.S. Virgin Islands to the United States, the treaty included an explicit clause where the U.S. agreed not to object to Danish interests in Greenland.

But sure, “there are no written documents” and “boats landing” is apparently the level of historical analysis we’re working with now. (We won’t even get into the question of what it means for the United States that “boats landing here hundreds of years ago” gives you no rights to the land).

Fourth: He’s threatening to invade a country because he didn’t get a Peace Prize.

Like, what the fuck are we even doing here?

Also, no, he didn’t stop “8 wars PLUS.” Stop letting him get away with lying about this. He’s taking credit for a ton of other things that weren’t wars, that aren’t over, or that he had nothing to do with.

Fifth: This is 25th Amendment territory, and everyone knows it.

The 25th Amendment exists precisely for situations where a President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” When the President openly states that his bellicose foreign policy is being driven by a grudge over not receiving a peace prize—and that this grudge means he no longer feels obligated to pursue peace—we are describing someone whose judgment is fundamentally compromised.

Some people are actually (finally!) saying this out loud. Senator Ed Markey tweeted simply: “Invoke the 25th Amendment.” Rep. Eric Swalwell tweeted just “25” with a copy of the letter. The Daily Beast ran a piece with the headline “Trump’s Insane New Threat Leaves No Doubt: It’s Time for the 25th Amendment.“

As the Daily Beast put it:

It is clearly not rational to start a war because your feelings got hurt by not winning a prize that you were not even eligible for. It is certainly not rational to sabotage the country’s national security—emboldening Russia and China—over those hurt feelings.

But here’s what’s actually happening: basically everyone in a position to do something about this is pretending everything is fine.

The normalization machine is working overtime.

The same people who would be absolutely losing their minds if any Democratic president sent a message like this to a foreign leader are now either silent or actively running interference. A decade ago, as a political rival, Ted Cruz once warned that we’d wake up one day to find a President Trump had nuked Denmark. And yet now he’s actively supporting Trump’s lunacy.

Or take Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt. In December of 2024 after Trump was re-elected, but before he took office, the Senator went on TV to talk up how Trump was the non-interventionist President who would keep the US out of foreign wars.

Well, I think that’s a longer discussion and a discussion that President Trump had in his first term. I do think we’re entering a new phase, though, of realism in this country. President Trump will be less interventionist*, and we get back to our core national interests. Principally defending the homeland, the Indo-Pacific, and China, and so I think that’s a longer term conversation.*

We’ll make sure everybody is safe over there. That’s the first order of business, but, again, I think people have had enough of these forever wars all across the world*. We can’t be everywhere all at once all the time. That’s just not our capability, so I think that I’m welcoming President Trump coming with this agenda.*

Yet, over the weekend he tweeted out a long thread arguing that “territorial expansion is a time-honored American tradition” and that it’s “in our blood” to acquire Greenland (leaving out that the examples he gave of the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska did not come with a mad President demanding we get the land or we’d attack).

And the most galling part? Everyone knows. Everyone knows this is insane. The Republicans know it. The Democrats know it. Foreign leaders definitely know it. The Norwegian Prime Minister had to respond to an unhinged text message from the leader of the free world as if it were a normal diplomatic communication. Denmark’s foreign minister had to issue statements about how “you can’t threaten your way to ownership of Greenland” as if that’s a thing that should ever need to be said to an American president.

Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who is not seeking reelection (funny how that works), actually said what everyone is thinking. When he saw the letter, he simply tweeted: “Very embarrassing conduct.”

That’s the most honest assessment you’ll get from a sitting Republican member of Congress. And notice he’s only willing to say it because he’s on his way out.

What are the actual consequences here?

Trump has now announced 10% tariffs on goods from the UK, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland—all NATO allies—as punishment for not supporting his acquisition of Greenland. When asked if he’ll follow through, he said “100%.” It’s a silly question all around, but to date, much of the media had treated Trump’s weird infatuation with Greenland as if it were a joke, rather than deadly serious.

When asked if he would use military force to seize Greenland, the President of the United States responded: “No comment.”

The President won’t rule out military action against NATO allies because he didn’t get a peace prize.

Because he didn’t get a peace prize. Peace. Prize.

The EU is holding an emergency summit. Denmark has said that U.S. military action in Greenland would spell the end of NATO. European allies are deploying troops—symbolic numbers, but troops nonetheless—to Greenland. We are watching in real-time as the post-World War II international order that the United States built and led for 80 years crumbles because one man’s ego couldn’t handle not getting an award.

And Russian state media? They’re gloating. As the BBC reported, pro-Kremlin outlets are full of praise for Trump’s Greenland push, which kinda highlights that Trump’s claim that we need Greenland to protect us from Russia is bullshit. Russia is loving this mess. Putin couldn’t have designed a more effective way to fracture NATO if he’d tried. And he tried.

“Standing in the way of the US president’s historic breakthrough is the stubbornness of Copenhagen and the mock solidarity of intransigent European countries, including so-called friends of America, Britain and France,” writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

“Europe does not need the American greatness that Trump is promoting. Brussels is counting on ‘drowning’ the US president in the midterm congressional elections, on preventing him from concluding the greatest deal of his life.”

This is not normal. Stop pretending it is.

I’ve written before about how Techdirt has become something of a democracy blog, because when the fundamental institutions that allow for things like innovation and free speech are under attack, everything else becomes secondary. This is one of those moments.

A President who openly admits his foreign policy is driven by personal grievances over awards he didn’t receive is not fit for office. A President who threatens to invade NATO allies and won’t rule out military force against them is a danger to global stability. A President who doesn’t understand (or doesn’t care) that the Nobel Committee is independent from the Norwegian government has no business conducting diplomacy.

These aren’t controversial statements. They’re obvious. Everyone knows it.

But none of the political elite want to act. For nearly a decade now there’s been this weird paralysis where opposing Trumpian nonsense is treated as simply not allowed. Why? Because his most vocal supporters might get upset? So fucking what. He’s ripping apart the global order over a personal grievance. He’s already destroyed so much goodwill and soft power that it will take decades to recover—if recovery is even possible.

The fact that it’s taken until now to even begin discussing the 25th Amendment is already a travesty. That no one with actual power will do anything about it is the real indictment.

We’re protecting a mad king because those who could stop it are too scared of random troll accounts on X (not to mention the world’s richest man) possibly mocking them for not being loyal enough to the mad king.

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Last week we noted how the BBC has been tripping over itself to apologize to Donald Trump for some edits made to a BBC documentary. Admittedly the edits weren’t the best idea; they effectively cobbled together two different parts of Trump’s January 6 speech 54 minutes apart not to misrepresent, but to make it more clear that Trump actively encouraged an open, violent insurrection that resulted in fatalities.

Obviously our mad, idiot king didn’t much like that.

Despite multiple resignations and numerous CEO apologies (and a promise to never air the documentary again), Trump insists he’s going to sue the BBC anyway, for between $1 and $5 billion:

“US President Donald Trump says he intends to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion “probably sometime next week” despite the broadcaster’s apology to him over a documentary Trump’s lawyers described as defamatory.

“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated … They cheated, they changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

Again, the edits didn’t entirely “change the words coming out of Trump’s mouth,” because he actively did vocally support a violent insurrection against the government. They did however cobble together two different parts of a speech to make it sound like they were said all at once, something the documentary editors should have known better than to do given king dingus’ litigious nature.

Granted Trump may not have as much fun in British courts, where Justices and Judges are likely to be less receptive to Donald’s incoherence. UK defamation laws are also an entirely different affair, with Trump being particularly challenged by the fact the BBC edits occurred more than twelve months ago, and defamation action in UK courts must occur within twelve months of the alleged offense.

Last week we noted how the BBC’s over-groveling undermined the most important thing: that Donald Trump really did actively incite a violent insurrection resulting in $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol, 174 assaulted police officers, and four belated law enforcement suicides. And he’s abusing the courts to stifle journalism critical of his radical extremist authoritarianism.

It sounds like BBC leadership isn’t entirely invertebrate. While BBC officials like Chair BBC chair Samir Shah admit the edits were an “error of judgment” (unlike executives at CBS) it appears they’ll actually be putting up a fight in court of Trump follows through:

“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”

As Trump’s health, power, and influence wanes, this sort of bullying is only going to become less and less effective and more and more toothless. In the interim, it would be nice if some major media institutions could dig deep and find a little backbone; especially given how many lawyers and donors would be happy to help fund a pro bono acceleration of Donald Trump’s inevitable collapse.

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The Trump administration is promising to block billions in already-awarded infrastructure bill broadband grants to any states that enforce net neutrality or try to impose any sort of meaningful oversight on the country’s unpopular, predatory broadband monopolies.

That was the promise of Commerce Department official Arielle Roth, a former Ted Cruz staffer now in charge of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Roth made the comments about the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment grants (BEAD) at a recent speech at the Hudson Institute, a far right wing think tank:

“Specifically, any state receiving BEAD funds must exempt BEAD providers throughout their state footprint from broadband-specific economic regulations, such as price regulation and net neutrality.”

The infrastructure bill set aside $42.5 billion in BEAD broadband grants to be doled out and managed by individual states. It took several years to get this money rolling out, in part, because state and federal governments had to remap the entirety of broadband access in the United States in a bid to avoid repeating past subsidy scandals and make sure the money was spent semi-wisely.

Again, this money was already awarded, and states were just about to start deploying broadband using this money when Republicans began retooling the whole program earlier this year. By both stripping out requirements that the resulting taxpayer-funded broadband be affordable, and redirecting as much of the money as possible to billionaire Elon Musk for expensive satellite broadband he already planned to deploy.

This introduced all manner of new delays to the program, ironically after Republicans (with Ezra Klein’s help) spent much of last election season whining very loudly about the fact this BEAD program was taking too long to deliver broadband.

Again, this money had already been awarded after years of expensive planning. States have already been forced to spend even more money to revamp plans to make Trump officials happy. Yet the Trump administration keeps fiddling with the rules and weakening core definitions (for stuff like “broadband” and “unserved,”) ensuring that fewer and fewer locations qualify for assistance and states are left constantly on their heels trying to please our mad king and his army of weird zealots.

Now, the Trump administration is also trying to leverage the funding to bully states away from engaging in even basic oversight of companies like Comcast, AT&T, Charter, or Verizon.

If you recall, the Trump administration destroyed net neutrality (some modest rules trying to keep telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to harm competitors and consumers). And they’re destroying whatever was left of FCC oversight of telecom monopolies. With federal oversight gutted, now they’re taking aim at the handful of states that have tried to fill the consumer protection void.

The original Trump net neutrality repeal also tried to ban states from imposing net neutrality rules. But even our broken-ass courts repeatedly found that to be patently illegal (the federal government can’t abdicate its responsibility on consumer protection, then tell states what to do). You know, the very sort of “state rights” Republicans and Libertarian “free market” think tankers used to pretend to support.

But while a handful of states do have net neutrality rules, nobody has bothered to enforce them. In part because states — already facing a cavalcade of legal battles in the Trump era — aren’t keen to pick yet another major fight with big corporations they might lose. And they’re even less likely to do so now, with billions in potential infrastructure funding on the line.

But the key point I’ve always made is that this goes well beyond net neutrality. ISPs don’t want to just kill “net neutrality,” they want zero oversight whatsoever. So they can rip off U.S. consumers with impunity and face absolutely zero meaningful federal or state repercussion. And it’s a fight the telecom lobby is most certainly winning. Trump 2.0 is delivering the killing blow.

The United States is, it cannot be overstated, literally too corrupt to do the absolute bare minimum on corporate oversight, consumer protection, antitrust reform, or health market protection. This fact gets buried by a lot of bluster and bullshit about how fabulously innovative we are.

And because there’s so much other terrible shit going on, and because the press and public generally find infrastructure boring, this sort of rank corruption and regulatory capture is allowed to fly under the radar. But the long term impact, like most Trump policies, will be decidedly ugly.

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When a school district sues social media companies claiming they can’t educate kids because Instagram filters exist, that district is announcing to the world that it has fundamentally failed at its core mission. That’s exactly what New York City just did with its latest lawsuit against Meta, TikTok, and other platforms.

The message is unmistakable: “We run the largest school system in America with nearly a million students, but we’re unable to teach children that filtered photos aren’t real or help them develop the critical thinking skills needed to navigate the modern world. So we’re suing someone else to fix our incompetence.”

This is what institutional failure looks like in 2025.

NYC first got taken in by this nonsense last year, as Mayor Adams said all social media was a health hazard and toxic waste. However, that lawsuit was rolled into the crazy, almost impossible to follow, consolidated version of that lawsuit in California that currently has over 2300 filings on the docket. So, apparently, NYC dropped that version, and has now elected to sue, sue again. With the same damn law firm, Keller Rohrback, that kicked off this trend and are the lawyers behind a big chunk of these lawsuits.

The actual complaint is bad, and everyone behind it should feel bad. It’s also 327 pages, and there’s no fucking way I’m going to waste my time going through all of it, watching my blood pressure rise as I have to keep yelling at my screen “that’s not how any of this works.”

The complaint leads with what should be Exhibit A for why NYC schools are failing their students—a detailed explanation of adolescent brain development that perfectly illustrates why education matters:

Children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to developing harmful behaviors because their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. Indeed, it is one of the last regions of the brain to mature. In the images below, the blue color depicts brain development.

Because the prefrontal cortex develops later than other areas of the brain, children and adolescents, as compared with adults, have less impulse control and less ability to evaluate risks, regulate emotions and regulate their responses to social rewards.

Stop right there. NYC just laid out the neurological case for why education exists. Kids have underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes? They struggle with impulse control, risk evaluation, and emotional regulation? THAT’S LITERALLY WHY WE HAVE SCHOOLS.

The entire premise of public education is that we can help children develop these exact cognitive and social skills. We teach them math because their brains can learn mathematical reasoning. We teach them history so they can evaluate evidence and understand cause and effect. We teach them literature so they can develop empathy and critical thinking.

But apparently, when it comes to digital literacy—arguably one of the most important skills for navigating modern life—NYC throws up its hands and sues instead of teaches.

This lawsuit is a 327-page confession of educational malpractice.

The crux of the lawsuit is, effectively, “kids like social media, and teachers just can’t compete with that shit.”

In short, children find it particularly difficult to exercise the self-control required to regulate their use of Defendants’ platforms, given the stimuli and rewards embedded in those platforms, and as a foreseeable and probable consequence of Defendants’ design choices tend to engage in addictive and compulsive use. Defendants engaged in this conduct even though they knew or should have known that their design choices would have a detrimental effect on youth, including those in NYC Plaintiffs’ community, leading to serious problems in schools and the community.

By this logic, basically any products that children like are somehow a public nuisance.

This lawsuit is embarrassing to the lawyers who brought it and to the NYC school system.

Take the complaint’s hysterical reaction to Instagram filters, which perfectly captures the educational opportunity NYC is missing:

Defendants’ image-altering filters cause mental health harms in multiple ways. First, because of the popularity of these editing tools, many of the images teenagers see have been edited by filters, and it can be difficult for teenagers to remain cognizant of the use of filters. This creates a false reality wherein all other users on the platforms appear better looking than they actually are, often in an artificial way. As children and teens compare their actual appearances to the edited appearances of themselves and others online, their perception of their own physical features grows increasingly negative. Second, Defendants’ platforms tend to reward edited photos, through an increase in interaction and positive responses, causing young users to prefer the way they look using filters. Many young users believe they are only attractive when their images are edited, not as they appear naturally. Third, the specific changes filters make to individuals’ appearances can cause negative obsession or self-hatred surrounding particular aspects of their appearance. The filters alter specific facial features such as eyes, lips, jaw, face shape, and face slimness—features that often require medical intervention to alter in real life

Read that again. The complaint admits that “it can be difficult for teenagers to remain cognizant of the use of filters” and that kids struggle to distinguish between edited and authentic images.

That’s not a legal problem. That’s a curriculum problem.

A competent school system would read that paragraph and immediately start developing age-appropriate digital literacy programs. Media literacy classes. Critical thinking exercises about online authenticity. Discussions about self-image and social comparison that have been relevant since long before Instagram existed.

Instead, NYC read that paragraph and decided the solution is to sue the companies rather than teach the kids.

This is educational malpractice masquerading as child protection. If you run a million-student school system and your response to kids struggling with digital literacy is litigation rather than education, you should resign and let someone competent take over.

They’re also getting sued for… not providing certain features, like age verification. Even though, as we keep pointing out, age verification is (1) likely unconstitutional outside of the narrow realm of pornographic content, and (2) a privacy and security nightmare for kids.

The broader tragedy here extends beyond one terrible lawsuit. NYC is participating in a nationwide trend of school districts abandoning their educational mission in favor of legal buck-passing. These districts, often working with the same handful of contingency-fee law firms, have decided it’s easier to blame social media companies than to do the hard work of preparing students for digital citizenship.

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what schools are supposed to do. We don’t shut down the world to protect children from it—we prepare children to navigate the world as it exists. That means teaching them to think critically about online content, understand privacy and security, develop healthy relationships with technology, and build the cognitive skills to resist manipulation.

Every generation gets a moral panic or two, and apparently “social media is destroying kids’ brains” is our version of moral panics of years past. We’ve seen this movie before: the waltz would corrupt young women’s morals, chess would stop kids from going outdoors, novels would rot their brains on useless fiction, bicycles would cause moral decay, radio would destroy family conversation, pinball machines would turn kids into delinquents, television would make them violent, comic books would corrupt their minds, and Dungeons & Dragons would lead them to Satan worship.

As society calmed down, eventually, after each of those, we now look back on those moral panics as silly, hysterical overreactions. You would hope that a modern education system would take note that they have an opportunity to use these new forms of media as a learning opportunity.

But faced with social media, America’s school districts have largely given up on education and embraced litigation. That should terrify every parent more than any Instagram filter ever could.

The real scandal isn’t that social media exists. It’s that our schools have become so risk-averse and educationally bankrupt that they’ve forgotten their core purpose: preparing young people to be thoughtful, capable adults in the world they’ll actually inherit.

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I didn’t like Charlie Kirk. His morals and principles, as expressed through his rhetoric and actions, disgusted me. I’ve no reason to mourn his death—and no plans to celebrate it.

Kirk was killed in what is most likely an act of politically inspired violence. He was shot during one of his usual speaking events; at the moment before he was shot, he was trying to link transgender people to mass casualty shootings in a way that statistics don’t bear out. His death will galvanize conservatives, who will claim that political violence is “not the answer” and “Democrats caused this” but who refused to condemn—and sometimes mocked—the attack against Paul Pelosi that was motivated by conservative rhetoric.

This brief essay isn’t necessarily about conservative vs. liberal, Republican vs. Democrat, or whatever other sociopolitical dichotomy you might have in your head. Sure, it would be easy to take that route, especially with Donald Trump as the head of the Republican table. What this essay is about is violence.

For months now, in this site’s comments sections, I’ve been mocked for (and pressured to give up) a stance I hold with complete sincerity: Violence should be the absolute last resort for any issue, especially sociopolitical ones. My stance has been erroneously likened to suicidal pacifism. I don’t believe in such a thing and I would never ask others to believe in it. What I do believe is that violence, like the murder of Charlie Kirk, creates more problems than it solves.

Sure, Kirk is dead, and he will never again spread his brand of vile rhetoric anywhere. But now Kirk is being turned into a martyr to a cause and a party for which he likely didn’t intend to die; those who believe in the MAGA movement will use his death as a rallying cry for going after the “enemies” of that movement (and its leader). His murder is likely to beget more violence, which will cause more pain and more strife, which will further fracture our already fragile society. No social good is served by him being murdered in an act of political vigilantism.

My beliefs about violence are driven by the idea that the use of violence curtails any chance of a situation being solved peacefully. Violence always makes a conflict worse, especially when it becomes the go-to “answer” for conflict resolution instead of the last resort. But I recognize that violence can sometimes become a necessity—which is why I say that people should forgo the use of violence unless all non-violent paths to resolve a conflict have either been exhausted or taken off the table. Even then, one should only use as much violence as is necessary to stop a situation from getting worse. Lethal violence is the line that should only be crossed when it, too, is the last available option. Once someone is dead, you can’t bring them back, so you better be goddamn sure that killing them is the only way to save yourself from them.

Charlie Kirk is dead and nothing will bring him back. We are all a little worse off for his death—not because he was a good person, but because his death is likely to inspire more violence. That will cause far more problems than murdering him could ever hope to solve.

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For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated.

And it appears to be getting worse as Musk (and other companies, like Amazon) launch more LEO satellites. A new study (hat tip, Gizmodo) found that all of the launched satellites exceed brightness limits established by the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky (CPS), harming scientists’ ability to conduct scientific research:

“Although there are no official regulations in place, the CPS established recommendations for maximum acceptable brightness for satellites orbiting below 341 miles (550 kilometers). The IAU established a maximum brightness of +7 magnitude for professional astronomy and below +6 magnitude as the aesthetic reference so it does not impact the public’s ability to stargaze without interference from satellites.”

Again, it’s worth reiterating that Musk initially stated this would never be a problem. While the study found that the brightness levels of Starlink satellites have improved some, the lower orbiting altitude of some of the newer Starlink satellites means the brightness impact is actually worse.

Despite Musk’s endless whining about “burdensome regulations,” the U.S. doesn’t really regulate this sort of thing. And the damage goes well beyond astronomy.

Last June scientists warned that low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites constantly burning up in orbit could release chemicals that could undermine the progress we’ve made repairing the ozone layer. Researchers at USC noted that at peak, 1,005 U.S. tons of aluminum will fall to Earth, releasing 397 U.S. tons of aluminum oxides per year to the atmosphere, an increase of 646% over natural levels.

Starlink’s about to get a big boost by taxpayers, too. Republicans are rewriting the 2021 infrastructure bill to redirect billions in subsidies to Elon Musk and Starlink, despite the service’s high costs, congestion problems, and increasingly problematic environmental impact. And, of course, Starlink is just one of several emerging competitors in the LEO space, all jockeying for a huge boost in taxpayer subsidies.

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We’ve talked plenty about how Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) was always more about performative cruelty than actual efficiency. But a new Senate report reveals just how spectacularly DOGE failed at its supposed core mission while causing immeasurable human suffering in the process. The entire concept blew up more spectacularly than one of Musk’s Starships.

The numbers are damning. The report from the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations shows that DOGE wasted at least $21.7 billion in just six months—between January 20 and July 18, 2025. But hey, at least they got to feel like they were “draining the swamp,” right?

As Senator Richard Blumenthal put it in the report’s release:

“This report is a searing indictment of DOGE’s false claims. At the very same time that the Trump Administration is cutting health care, nutrition assistance, and emergency services in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘savings,’ they have enabled DOGE’s reckless waste of at least $21.7 billion dollars.”

To recap the “efficiency”: Musk promised to save trillions, actually wasted over $21 billion. That’s some galaxy-brain efficiency right there.

To be fair, much of that “waste” comes from Musk’s Twitter-style “resign now and we’ll pay you for many months” plan to rid the government of employees. As the report notes, that cost the government $14.8 billion in salaries of people who couldn’t actually do any work and then another $6.1 billion from people DOGE fired. And I’m sure that DOGE-supporting MAGA types will try to claim that this is fine, because it’s a one-time cost and will lower government expenses going forward.

But that is untrue. Part of the problem here is that—contrary to the popular belief in MAGA circles—most people in the government were actually doing important work that the government needs to do. Firing all of them doesn’t change that. Every few weeks there are another set of stories about how the Trump admin has to scramble to try to rehire the people that DOGE fired.

Doing things that way almost certainly increases costs, because of the level of painful inconsistency and the need to convince workers to come back to this shitshow after being treated so horribly. And, when they won’t come back, then the government has to go out and find new people to fill those roles, which is also a very expensive proposition—and one the report didn’t even explore.

Not only was much of this wasteful, it was wasteful for the stupidest of reasons: much of this destruction was based on conspiracy theories that Musk found on social media.

As Don Moynihan documented in his analysis:

The destruction of USAID was remarkable in that it did not reflect any sort of broad-based consensus. While other actors in Trump’s political environment—such as the Project 2025, or the budget blueprint from the Center for Renewing America, led by Trump’s budget chief Russ Vought—called for reductions in USAID spending, they did not seek to eliminate it. The assault on USAID seemed disproportionately driven by the beliefs of one person, Musk. And those beliefs were largely disconnected from the reality of what USAID did.

For example:

*Musk said that 90% of USAID spending never reaches communities, implying that most funding was wasted. But this claim demonstrates a misunderstanding of the budget. While 10% of the budget goes to direct payments to local organizations, another 46% goes to funding to multilateral agencies and 31% to American companies and nonprofits, much of which goes to direct provision, such as HIV programs, anti-malaria products, and emergency food services.**Musk claimed that $50 million was spent to send condoms to Hamas. Trump repeated this false claim, as did members of Congress. The organization that receives the funds does provide family planning, but its USAID funds were providing emergency health support to refugees in Gaza.**Musk has repeated other conspiracy theories about USAID found online including that it helped to create COVID-19, is rigging elections, and manufacturing media consent.*Musk elevated claims that USAID was protected by journalists because it had been secretly funding the media, based on government subscription services to media outlets.

Musk was not atypical of the broader Trump movement, which held conspiratorial worldviews about other parts of government it labeled as “the deep state,” but the effect on USAID was the most immediate and consequential. Such views could have been easily debunked, had DOGE been willing to talk to and trust career officials. But Musk displayed deep distrust of civil servants, labeling USAID “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” and “a criminal organization.”

Musk elevated these conspiracy theories to the mainstream on his social media platform X, reposting a small group of fringe accounts on X and promoting posts from Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official and key voice behind USAID conspiracy theories. Benz has argued that “USAID is notorious for funding the darkest, most controversial, most horrifying projects known to all of mankind” and Musk believed him. In the space of a year, Musk engaged with or elevated Benz’s messaging 160 times. Unsurprisingly, Benz has also embraced white supremacy politics.

The richest man in the world, put in charge of government efficiency, made life-and-death decisions based on conspiracy theories from fringe social media accounts. What could go wrong?

Well, everything, as it turns out.

DOGE’s crown jewel achievement was completely destroying USAID based on—and I feel the need to repeat this—conspiracy theories. A study published in The Lancet found that USAID had prevented 92 million deaths between 2001 and 2021. The agency’s destruction is now projected to cause 14 million avoidable deaths over the next five years, including 4.5 million children under age 5.

This is blood on the hands of Musk and the ridiculous nonsense peddlers he believed, rather than talking to actual experts.

Reports from the ground show the immediate human cost. As ProPublica documents:

In the southeastern African country of Malawi, U.S. funding cuts to the United Nations’ World Food Programme have “yielded a sharp increase in criminality, sexual violence, and instances of human trafficking” within a large refugee camp, U.S. embassy officials told the State Department in late April.

[….]

“We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025,” Landis said. On a recent visit to a facility treating malnourished children younger than 5, she said she saw kids who were “walking skeletons like I haven’t seen in a decade.”

Meanwhile, Science magazine’s reporting from affected HIV programs shows medical professionals watching decades of progress collapse in real time:

Makwindi says the termination of funding “was a shock” that baffles him to this day. He takes a generous view of the U.S. motivation: “I still believe that someone didn’t do due diligence and just terminated us.” Nuha Ceesay, Eswatini country director for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), has a harsher assessment. What the Trump administration has done is akin to saying, “I am going to unplug this life support machine from you,” he says. “It is up to you to find an alternative, and whether you perish or not, that’s not my business.”

The “efficiency” here is breathtaking. Rather than deliver emergency food supplies to starving people, the Trump administration chose to incinerate them instead. According to the Senate report, $110 million worth of food aid and medical supplies are spoiling in warehouses, with some literally being trucked to France to be burned at taxpayer expense.

The waste caused by lost investment is perhaps most starkly illustrated by supplies purchased by USAID sitting in warehouses around the globe that sat rotting rather than supporting their intended recipients. In February, the USAID Office of Inspector General warned that hundreds of thousands of tons of goods were at risk of spoilage as a result of DOGE’s attempt to shutter the agency. By May, 66,000 metric tons of food valued at $98 million remained warehoused at multiple facilities in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston. Recent reporting indicated that a portion (approximately 622 metric tons) of the 1,100 metric tons of food aid stored in Dubai was spared from destruction in June but the remaining 496 metric tons valued at $793,000.00 are to be “turned into landfill or incinerated” at a cost of $100,000.00 to taxpayers. Additionally, as of June, USAID had abandoned approximately $12.4 million worth of “contraceptives and HIV-prevention medications” in Belgium and Dubai. Approximately $9.7 million of these contraceptives stuck in Belgium were being “trucked to France” to be incinerated at a cost of $160,000.00 because USAID allegedly refused to sell or otherwise transfer them to a third-party distributor at anything less than “full market value.”

But wait, there’s more! The report details how DOGE’s bureaucratic “Defend the Spend” initiative—supposedly designed to eliminate waste—actually created massive new forms of red tape. NASA employees were forced to write “several detailed paragraphs, across multiple rounds of emails” just to purchase simple fastening bolts. The FAA required written justifications for window-washing and buying pens and pencils.

Efficiency!

And let’s not forget the comedy gold of forcing nearly a million federal employees to send weekly “5-things” emails justifying their existence. The Senate report estimates this pointless exercise wasted $155 million in lost productivity. The best part? OPM had no intention of actually reviewing these emails and eventually sent auto-replies saying its mailbox was full.

The demand for weekly accomplishment reports was an unnecessary waste of time, primarily because OPM, as an external agency outside the management chain of command, is ill-equipped to meaningfully assess the work of other agencies’ employees. Moreover, employees would be forced to redact or omit any specific details to avoid confidentiality concerns, further diminishing the utility of these reports. Beyond what should have been immediately apparent, the pointlessness of this exercise was underscored when OPM briefed agencies that it intended to do nothing with the emails, and then a few weeks later, sent automatic replies back to employees stating that its “mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now.” Although the project continued through May, approximately 13 weeks in, news emerged that this project was “dying a slow, quiet death” across the government with agencies no longer requiring weekly reports.

Want to see a bunch of inefficient waste created by DOGE?

This is what happens when you put conspiracy theorists in charge of complex systems. DOGE didn’t just fail at its stated mission—it actively made government less efficient while causing humanitarian catastrophes on a massive scale. And that’s just with USAID. We’re not even looking most of the other cuts. And the report only briefly mentions the likely impact on the economy of some of these slash and burn efforts:

The full extent of the waste and harm caused by DOGE’s disruptive activities is difficult to quantify because costs remain hidden and many of the consequences have yet to fully materialize. While some analyses, such as an independent review of DOGE’s cuts at just seven agencies—CFPB, NIH, USDA, USAID, IRS, ED, and DOJ—determined that these actions could result in over $10 billion in lost economic activity in the U.S., these figures only scratch the surface

They also note that they’re not even counting the legal costs incurred from the long and ever-growing list of lawsuits DOGE’s cuts have spurred, many of which have already resulted in losses for the federal government in court.

The broader lesson here is one we’ve seen repeatedly: when you prioritize performative cruelty over actual governance, you get neither efficiency nor effectiveness. You get waste, chaos, and suffering.

DOGE should go down in history as one of the most grotesquely incompetent government initiatives ever attempted. An agency supposedly created to eliminate waste that managed to waste billions in six months, create tremendous inefficiencies in the workforce, while destroying programs that actually worked and saved lives.

The only thing it efficiently accomplished was proving that putting conspiracy theorists and tech bros in charge of life-and-death decisions with no oversight, guardrails, or expertise is a recipe for disaster on an unprecedented scale.

But hey, at least Musk got to feel important for a few months while millions of people faced death and suffering. Efficiency!

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A new study from researchers at X-Lab shows that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service lacks the capacity to put a serious dent in U.S. broadband. Despite recent efforts by the Trump administration to rewrite a $42 billion subsidy program with an eye on giving Musk billions in taxpayer dollars.

The researchers found that given the limited nature of satellite physics, the more people that use Starlink, the slower the network is going to get. That’s not a surprise to users who have increasingly seen slowdowns on the network over the last four years, resulting in speeds that often don’t even meet the FCC’s fairly weak definition for broadband (100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up).

The researchers estimated that pushing the network past any more than 6.7 Starlink customers per square mile results in significant slowdowns that will get worse. That’s why, they note, it’s a terrible idea for the Trump administration to redirect infrastructure bill grant money from more reliable (often fiber-based and locally owned) ISPs and instead give it to Elon Musk:

“Many State Offices are concerned that Starlink proposals may be the lowest bid and alternative proposals may not be within the 15% window for consideration. What this analysis presents is that across many geographic areas Starlink may not be a qualified bidder as it may be unable to attain the required 100/20 Mbps service level (and, in deploying Starlink services, may actually degrade pre-existing users’ services to the point that they no longer receive minimal broadband speeds).”

Techdirt has been noting for years how Starlink is a niche service. The nature of satellite physics and capacity means slowdowns and annoying restrictions are inevitable, and making it scale to permanently meet real-world demand will be challenging if not impossible.

Some Wall Street analysts have been talking about the Starlink capacity crunch since at least 2001 (and mostly getting ignored). Those same analysts have raised questions about whether Starlink can meet its satellite launch goals in order to meet projected targets (spoiler: no).

But Starlink has also been criticized for harming astronomical research and the ozone layer. Starlink customer service is largely nonexistent. And the service is also too expensive for the folks most in need of reliable broadband access. It’s getting even more expensive as Starlink applies up to $750 “congestion charges” in areas where it knows it can’t meet demand.

This is all before you get to the fact the company’s CEO is an overt white supremacist who basically purchased his own authoritarian U.S. government before his ego ruined the fun.

So yeah, Starlink is a good option if you’re in the middle of nowhere with no other access, can afford it, and have no qualms about doing business with a white supremacist.

It’s not so great if you care about the environment, like to shop ethically, are on a fixed budget, or want to use taxpayer money to ensure widespread broadband availability. Still, because many Republicans still worship at the feet of Elon Musk, they tend to view Starlink as almost akin to magic, helping them justify throwing billions in undeserved subsidies at their billionaire benefactor.

The first Trump FCC tried to give Musk nearly a billion dollars in subsidies to deliver Starlink to some traffic medians and airport parking lots. The Biden FCC reversed the funding, stating (correctly) that Starlink’s bid gamed the system and they weren’t sure that Starlink could consistently meet program speed requirements.

That rollback by the Biden FCC resulted in no limit of crying and teeth-gnashing by Elon Musk and Republicans, who have since dedicated themselves to throwing billions more at the billionaire.

There’s always waste in these programs. But some of the money being directed toward Elon Musk’s congested and expensive satellite service is money directed away from popular community-owned and operated fiber providers, or many local small businesses with a genuine, vested interest in bettering the local communities they serve. In short, it has the very real potential to actually make U.S. broadband worse. Under the pretense that we’re fixing the problem for good.

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When you’re shooting for 3,000 arrests a day, it seems kind of pathetic to complain about being mildly bruised a few times a week.

DHS and ICE have constantly used a supposed massive increase in assaults on ICE officers to justify ICE’s tactics: the masks, the unmarked vehicles, the refusal to present IDs or warrants, and untargeted raids of any place the DHS (and its assembly of federal law enforcement officers from the FBI, ICE, CBP, HSI, US Marshals Service, ATF, DEA, and even the fucking IRS) feels its might find some Latino-looking foreigners.

ICE and DHS insist on using only percentages in their press releases and official statements on preferred government jawbone, X. It’s far more impressive to say there’s been a 700% increase in assaults than to say there have been 69 more assaults on ICE officers during the first six months of this year as compared to the same time period last year.

Another 14 assaults have allegedly occurred, which means the increase in assaults now tops 800%. This will only alarm the willfully ignorant, which is pretty much who it’s meant to alarm: the chorus of bigots who fully support an administration composed mainly of bigots.

But those numbers are pathetic, especially given how many officers are in the field. ICE has about 20,000 officers (although not all of them do field word) and is being assisted by another few thousand federal officers pulled from several agencies, in addition to the another few thousand military troops. And yet, as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick points out on Bluesky, regular police officers are being assaulted far more frequently than ICE officers and no one’s issuing daily press releases about that:

We now know that an “830% increase” is an increase from 10 assaults in 6 months to 93 assaults in 6 months, at a time when DHS has *massively* increased at-large arrests and officers deployed in the community.For comparison, NYPD is averaging 194 assaults on officers per MONTH.

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2025-07-15T20:06:55.459Z

As this post points out, NYPD officers have been assaulted nearly 200 times per month since the beginning of the year. That’s according to the NYPD’s stats, which are reported in its usual alarmist fashion by the NY Post. According to that reporting, NYC law enforcement officers have been assaulted 970 times since the beginning of the year. Even at its pre-pandemic lows, NYPD officers were getting assaulted far more often (595 times in five months in 2019) than this supposed War on ICE that federal officials keep tweeting about.

And let’s not forget that the word “assault” is extremely slippery when used to reference attacks on officers. According to the government’s own representations and reports about “violence” perpetrated against federal officers (including ICE), the term covers everything from actual violence resulting in injury to things that just might be mildly annoying for federal cops.

Among more than a dozen other allegations facing protesters, federal officers say one person shined a “high-powered handheld laser” in their eyes and that people have kicked tear gas canisters back at them. One criminal complaint says a protester “fell back and donkey-kicked’ (an agent) in the shin.”

While there have been an extremely small number of truly violent attacks on immigration enforcement officers, there’s been far more incidental contact — something that has been provoked by officers seeking to escalate situations, as well as by officers who look more like criminals than cops when they carry out raids and arrests.

The amount of ICE activity has increased exponentially over the past six months. Assaults on officers have only increased incrementally, even given the expansive definition of “assault” law enforcement officers deploy to generate criminal charges against people who have done nothing more than come into contact with ICE against their will.

And that’s why ICE and DHS officials will continue to use the percentage, rather than the actual numbers, when issuing press releases and public statements. 830% sounds impressive. Ninety-three total alleged assaults — against a combined force seeking to perform 3,000 arrests per day — sounds like a rounding error.

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