SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
associated press
Memo to Washington Insiders: Stop Pretending That Trump Is Normal!
Refusals to comply with Supreme Court decisions equal a constitutional crisis.
Apr 16, 2025
I was at an event last week where a prominent GOP pollster who often appears on CNN was discussing the details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s political profile as we approach the 100-day mark of his administration. The back and forth was interesting to me and my fellow political nerds. However, during the presentation, my inner voice sounded like Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: “This is not normal.”
Unfortunately, far too many political insiders are acting as if Trump is a normal if a little eccentric president. They think that they can negotiate with him on issues and influence his staff to move him in their direction. No matter what Trump does, they see it as just a negotiating tactic.
April 14, 2025 should go down in American history as the day when Trump’s steps in the direction of authoritarianism made it clear to all that this is not a normal presidency. After Monday’s events, there can be no more debate about what Trump is and where he is taking America.
Let’s break down what happened. In a meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, President Trump openly defied a 9-0 Supreme Court decision that said that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident wrongly deported to El Salvador, must be returned to the United States. As The New York Times put it:
The meeting in the Oval Office on Monday was a blunt example of Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts. The president and his top White House officials said the decision over Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would have to be made by [El Salvador President] Mr. Bukele.
If this was not enough, President Trump went on to outline plans for sending American citizens convicted of crimes to El Salvador. More from The New York Times:
President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February.
“I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”
Another sign that we are in a constitutional crisis happened just outside the Oval Office on Monday. President Trump had barred The Associated Press from covering certain White House events because they had refused to use his preferred nomenclature for what the White House refers to as the “Gulf of America.” Last week, a federal judge ordered the White House to restore AP access to White House events. The federal judge who ruled in this case was Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee. In his decision, McFadden wrote that:
No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints... The Constitution requires no less.
On Monday, the White House blocked the AP reporter from attending the Oval Office press conference with President Trump and Bukele. Again, Trump failed to obey a court order.
Now, barring a reporter from the Oval Office may not seem to be a big deal. However, it is the government telling the media what it can report on. Plus, the courts ruled directly in the AP’s favor. The lines are clearly drawn here.
President Trump in the Oval Office on Monday openly defied decisions of the judicial branch. One was a 9-0 ruling of the Supreme Court and the other ruling was by a federal judge he appointed. As a nation, we are clearly in a constitutional crisis. This is not something theoretical or something that might happen sometime in the future. The crisis is at hand. The fabric of the American republic is being torn in two.
What we need is bold opposition from Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. If the current leadership is unwillingly to respond, they need to step aside. The first action that each of us can take to protect the American experiment is to stop pretending that Trump is a normal president.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In Spite of Court Order, Trump White House Keeps 'Contemptuous' Ban on AP
"Is it a constitutional crisis yet?" asked one journalist.
Apr 15, 2025
Despite a federal court ruling last week, journalists with the Associated Press were blocked from reporting on several White House events on Monday, leading to fresh accusations that President Donald Trump is openly violating court orders as well as core constitutional protections, in this case freedom of speech and the press.
"Our journalists were blocked from the Oval Office today," said Lauren Easton, an AP spokesperson, following a press event with Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. "We expect the White House to restore AP's participation in the pool as of today, as provided in the injunction order."
A pair of AP photographers were later allowed to attend an event on the South Lawn, but a print journalist was barred from entry.
According to the AP:
Last week's federal court decision forbidding the Trump administration from punishing the AP for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico was to take effect Monday. The administration is appealing the decision and arguing with the news outlet over whether it needs to change anything until those appeals are exhausted.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit set a Thursday hearing on Trump’s request that any changes be delayed while case is reviewed. The AP is fighting for more access as soon as possible.
"Is it a constitutional crisis yet?" asked Missouri-based journalist Steve Lambson in response to the latest developments.
"More contemptuous behavior by this administration," added attorney Bernadette Foley. "What will the courts do about it? What will GOP do?"
In the federal court ruling last week, the presiding judge wrote that access to presidential events "must be reasonable and not viewpoint-based," though the White House has been clear the decision was a punitive response to editorial decisions by AP with which it disagreed.
"While the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office," the judge said, "it does have a right to not be excluded because of its viewpoint. … All the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump-Appointed Judge Rules White House Can't Retaliate Against AP Over Gulf of Mexico Dispute
A spokesperson for the news agency said the ruling "affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation."
Apr 08, 2025
A federal judge appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term ruled Tuesday that the White House cannot cut off The Associated Press' access to the Republican leader because of the news agency's refusal to use his preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico.
"About two months ago, President Donald Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Associated Press did not follow suit. For that editorial choice, the White House sharply curtailed the AP's access to coveted, tightly controlled media events with the president," wrote Judge Trevor N. McFadden, who is based in Washington, D.C.
Specifically, according to the news outlet, "the AP has been blocked since February 11 from being among the small group of journalists to cover Trump in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One, with sporadic ability to cover him at events in the East Room."
The AP responded to the restrictions by suing White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, "seeking a preliminary injunction enjoining the government from excluding it because of its viewpoint," McFadden noted in his 41-page order. "Today, the court grants that relief."
The judge explained that "this injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events. It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the president or nonpublic government spaces. It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones' questions they answer. And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views."
"The court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints," he stressed. "The Constitution requires no less."
McFadden blocked his own order from taking effect before next week, giving the Trump administration time to respond or appeal. Still, AP spokesperson Lauren Easton said Tuesday that "we are gratified by the court's decision."
"Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation," Easton added. "This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the U.S. Constitution."
NPR reported that "an AP reporter and photographer were turned back from joining a reporting pool on a presidential motorcade early Tuesday evening, almost two hours after the decision came down."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Today's Social Media Are No Longer Safe for Journalism
This existential moment calls for a global social media platform for independent news media.
Mar 21, 2025
Hannah Arendt, the German-American political theorist who studied totalitarian regimes, noted in 1974 that “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed?”
Fifty years later, we have nearly reached that moment. This is existential for all independent (i.e., not allied with a political party or authoritarian regime) news organizations and their ability to reach audiences in the social media space.
Social media like Twitter (now X) and Facebook became important environments for the news media to enter two decades ago because they are where millions of people congregate online. For journalism organizations, the goal has been to post interesting stories and get referrals—those users who click through to the news site and boost web page views.
Yet, that relationship has fallen apart. Ultimately, tech companies are not interested in helping journalism or aiding civil discourse. The annual Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism digital news report for 2025 notes “big falls in referral traffic to news sites from Facebook (67%) and Twitter (50%) over the last two years.”
The even bigger problem for independent news media is that most social media platforms are increasingly antithetical to freedom of the press.
There are millions of people in the social media space, and journalism shouldn’t leave them behind.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and turned it into X, it’s become the disinformation-drenched social platform of the Donald Trump administration. This year, genuflecting to Trump, Meta (corporate parent of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp) announced it would drop its independent fact-checking program in the U.S. in favor of an anemic, crowd-sourced “community notes” system, which has already been a failure at X. Another popular news platform, TikTok, has serious disinformation problems, security liabilities and an uncertain future.
Several news organizations around the globe decided they won’t take it anymore. NPR stopped posting on X in 2023, after the platform insisted on designating it as “U.S. state-affiliated media.” More recently, The Guardian announced it would stop posting on X, concluding it is “a toxic media platform.” Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper of record, Le Monde, the French newspaper of record, and La Vanguardia, the leading newspaper in Barcelona, quit X, too. The European Federation of Journalists, representing about 320,000 journalists, did the same. “We cannot continue to participate in feeding the social network of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists,” EFJ president Maja Sever wrote.
But, simply quitting X only eliminates the worst option and settles for the slightly less bad options that remain.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are millions of people in the social media space, and journalism shouldn’t leave them behind. For example, 54% of Americans get their news often or sometimes from social media. Adults 18-29 are the heaviest users of social media platforms. They deserve a social media platform that respects and informs them.
That’s why legitimate news media should band together and regain the autonomy they ceded to third-party social media. Independent news organizations–large and small–should cooperatively create and control their own social media platform that amplifies news and public information, encourages links to member news organizations, and excludes misinformation and disinformation.
Journalism has been so beaten down by big tech that it’s hard to imagine a different way of doing things.
The model for this is something almost as old as modern journalism, too: The Associated Press, an international cooperative nonprofit news agency. As the AP tells its founding story, “In 1846, five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War north faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.” The problem with social media is similar–if it’s not working, work collectively to build another way. And, like the AP, it could be a global cooperative.
Journalism has been so beaten down by big tech that it’s hard to imagine a different way of doing things. But, a news-controlled social media platform could develop features that would demonstrate the multimedia ability of news organizations and enable the audience to create social connections in new and entertaining ways. Users could adjust their feeds to focus on local, regional, national, or international news, or whatever mix and topics makes sense to them, so all legitimate news organizations of any size get to be part of the platform.
Which news organizations and journalists could be part of such a social media cooperative?
Reporters Without Borders, the international journalism nonprofit, already has a powerful statement for fostering global information spaces for the common good, where “information can only be regarded as reliable when freely gathered, processed and disseminated according to the principles of commitment to truth, plurality of viewpoints and rational methods of establishment and verification of facts.” This would enable a broad range of journalism organizations to participate, and draw a bright line to exclude media propagating disinformation.
The challenge of creating a social media space for journalism is bigger than any single news organization can handle.
From a business perspective, journalism organizations, not third-party social media, would retain analytic data and any advertising revenue. The social media app could be free for any person with a subscription to any member news organization (e.g., a local newspaper, a national magazine of opinion, or digital news site), or with a nominal subscription fee, to provide built-in authentication and help prevent bot accounts. There are also strong global standards for content moderation through the International Fact-Checking Network, which was formed in 2015 and has a nonpartisan code of principles and more than 170 fact-checking groups around the world.
What would such a social media platform cost to create?
Clearly, $44 billion is too much. Bluesky, which has gained favor as an X alternative in recent months, offers a case for comparison. It started internally with just a handful of workers at then-Twitter in 2019. In the past two years, it’s received $23 million in seed funding to get it where it is today.
Bluesky may be the current favorite of many journalists, and has many advantages over other social media platforms, but its worthy purpose to encourage a less toxic space for public conversation does not primarily serve the goals of globally disseminating independent journalism.
Collectively building a nonprofit, cooperative global news-based social media platform would put verified news back in the center of public discourse.
The challenge of creating a social media space for journalism is bigger than any single news organization can handle. There has been talk for several years about Europe having its own social media platform to highlight democracy, diversity, solidarity, and privacy, and to avoid “foreign information manipulations and interference” from platforms based in the U.S. that have fallen into Trump’s power orbit and China-based platforms as well.
But, a nongovernmental platform, with a consortium of democracy-minded news organizations, may be most resistant to nationalisms and authoritarianism. The project could be built on an open-source structure like ActivityPub (the infrastructure behind Mastodon) or the AT Protocol (behind Bluesky), which would give more power to users.
Collectively building a nonprofit, cooperative global news-based social media platform would put verified news back in the center of public discourse. The alternative is the independent press’s passive acceptance of whatever social media ecosystems Silicon Valley plutocrats or authoritarian governments decide to make, which is bad news for a free press.Keep ReadingShow Less
Jeff Bezos Is Greasing America’s Slide Toward Autocracy
Titans like Bezos who control mainstream media are pandering to Trump in ways that compromise their publications.
Feb 26, 2025
Billionaires controlling key elements of the media are helping U.S. President Donald Trump establish an authoritarian regime. Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, has become a poster child for the phenomenon.
American democracy may be a casualty.
From the beginning of Trump’s political career, Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcasting, and other right-wing outlets have spread his propaganda. But now titans who control mainstream media are pandering to Trump in ways that compromise their publications.
Once a Hero
Not so long ago, Bezos was on the correct side of a historic struggle. In August 2013, he bought The Washington Post and boosted its investigative reporting staff. After Trump won the 2016 election, the Post adopted the first slogan in the paper’s 140-year history: Democracy Dies in Darkness.
In May 2016, Bezos discussed his reasons for buying the paper: “I think a lot of us believe this, that democracy dies in darkness, that certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light.”
For the next eight years, the Post honored that mission relentlessly. The paper fact-checked Trump’s assertions and documented his lies. By its count, Trump had made more than 30,000 “false or misleading claims” during his first four-year term alone.
Prior to the 2020 election, the Post’s editorial page had characterized Trump as a threat to the American democratic experiment. The editorial board described Trump as “the worst president of modern times” and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden to replace him.
The board continued:
Mr. Trump’s negative example has demonstrated how essential in a president are decency, empathy, and respect for other human beings.
…
Democracy is at risk, at home and around the world. The nation desperately needs a president who will respect its public servants; stand up for the rule of law; acknowledge Congress’ constitutional role; and work for the public good, not his private benefit.
And Now a Sycophant
All of the Post’s criticisms of Trump in 2020 were even more on point in 2024. Shortly before the 2024 election, the Post’s editorial board had signed off on the paper’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. But it never ran. Bezos personally killed it and, for the first time in decades, The Washington Post did not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate.
The fallout was immediate. Prominent columnists resigned, and more than 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions.
A few hours after Bezos’s “no endorsement” decision became public, officials from his Blue Origin aerospace company, which has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA, met with Trump. Bezos claimed that he didn’t know about that meeting.
In December, Bezos flew to Mar-a-Lago where he and his fiancée dined with President-elect Trump. A few weeks later, another Bezos company—Amazon—paid $40 million to license a documentary about Melania Trump, who personally will receive $28 million. At Trump’s inauguration, she told CEOs in attendance that they could be mentioned as “sponsors” at the end of the film and receive invitations to the yet-to-be-produced film’s premiere. The price: $10 million each.
And on February 26, Bezos announced a new rightward shift: The Post would now advocate for “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics.
The paper’s opinion section editor, David Shipley, resigned in response to the change.
A Dangerous Anti-Democratic Theme
Bezos is not alone among the moguls who are helping Trump along the road to autocracy. In future posts, I’ll discuss some of Trump’s other major media accomplices.
Meanwhile, on February 25, Trump announced that he would break decades of precedent and handpick the media outlets that would be allowed to participate in the presidential press pool—the small, rotating group of reporters who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public. Previously, the White House Correspondents’ Association, a 111-year-old group representing journalists who cover the administration, determined which reporters would participate in the daily pool. Most often, the pool has consisted of journalists from major organizations such as CNN, Reuters, The Associated Press, ABC News, Fox News, and The New York Times.
Except, of course, in early February Trump banned the AP from the Oval Office and Mar-a-Lago because it continued referring to the “Gulf of Mexico” instead of Trump’s new name for that body of water, the “Gulf of America.”
Democracy dies in sunlight too.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In Latest Attack on Media, Trump White House Takes Control of Press Pool
"This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States," said the head of the White House Correspondents' Association. "In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps."
Feb 25, 2025
As part of U.S. President Donald Trump's long-running war with the news media, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Tuesday that the administration will now decide which outlets get to participate in the presidential press pool.
The widely condemned announcement came just a day after U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, declined to lift the White House's ban on Associated Press reporters attending press briefings and Air Force One flights because the outlet refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" in line with the president's January executive order.
The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) has managed the press pool since the 1950s. While the group has faced its share of criticism, journalists and others also weren't buying Leavitt's attempt to frame the Trump takeover of the responsibility as an effort to include reporters previously denied the significant access to the president that pool members have.
"This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps," WHCA president Eugene Daniels said in a Tuesday statement.
As Daniels detailed:
For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents' Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA's membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.
Since its founding in 1914, the WHCA has sought to ensure that the reporters, photographers, producers, and technicians who actually do the work—365 days of every year—decide amongst themselves how these rotations are operated, so as to ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of all readers, viewers and listeners.
To be clear, the White House did not give the WHCA board a heads-up or have any discussions about today's announcements. But the WHCA will never stop advocating for comprehensive access, full transparency, and the right of the American public to read, listen to and watch reports from the White House, delivered without fear or favor.
His remarks followed reporting that the WHCA was trying to quietly resolve the dispute with the AP. CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter said on social media last week: "So why aren't more reporters and media outlets speaking out more vehemently to help the AP? In part, I'm told, it's because the WH Correspondents' Association is trying to work out a solution behind the scenes."
The WHCA did file a motion on Sunday seeking to submit an amicus brief in the AP case before McFadden. The document states that "the government should never interfere with the operation of an independent press, nor should it demand that reporters adopt the government's messaging, framing, and, indeed, ideological worldview. Such conduct is wholly at odds with the Constitution and cannot be permitted to persist."
boy i'll tell you, it does not seem like the white house correspondents' association read this well at all
[image or embed]
— Alex Kirshner ( @alexkirshner.com) February 25, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Daniels was far from alone in blasting the Trump administration's decision on Tuesday. The AP reported that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it "a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government."
Bruce D. Brown, the group's president, said that "the White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency."
The Committee to Protect Journalists said on social media that it "is alarmed by the White House's decision to pick who can be part of the press pool. Given the White House's decision to ban the AP from pool activities in retaliation for an editorial choice, it is concerning that the administration will now exert yet more control over which outlets are able to access the president and events he attends."
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said that "the president does not get to handpick his news coverage, and he cannot condition access to the White House on an outlet's speech alone. The First Amendment protects the rights of outlets to make their own editorial decisions, but this decision opens the door for government punishment of outlets that don't comply with the White House's editorial demands. This is not just about silencing reporters but about dodging accountability and keeping the American people in the dark about important news that impacts each and every one of them."
Some journalists pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker, warned that the Trump White House is "on the way to establishing its own version of a Kremlin press pool, approved media only."
Glasser co-authored the book Kremlin Rising with her husband, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. He said Tuesday that "having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin's reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access."
"The message is clear," Baker continued. "Given that the White House has already kicked one news organization out of the pool because of coverage it does not like, it is making certain everyone else knows that the rest of us can be barred too if the president does not like our questions or stories."
MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend—who served as chief spokesperson for former Vice President Kamala Harris—suggested that "the reporters should refuse to comply and should continue the precedent of deciding the pool themselves."
"Do I wish I could have picked the reporters in the press pool who were covering the VP when I worked at the White House? Some days… yes," she said. "But that is not how this works."
This article has been updated with comment from the ACLU.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Refusing to Help DOGE 'Dismantle Critical Public Services,' 21 Tech Experts Resign
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations," they wrote. "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments."
Feb 25, 2025
Over 20 U.S. federal tech workers who were forced into President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned in protest on Tuesday, according to a joint letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The 21 data scientists, engineers, and product managers were initially part of the United States Digital Service, established during the Obama administration. However, one of Trump's first executive orders states that it "is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."
As the AP detailed, "earlier this month, about 40 staffers in the office were laid off," leaving about 65 employees who "were integrated into DOGE's government-slashing effort." About a third of the spared workers—who previously worked for companies such as Amazon and Google—joined the mass resignation.
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations," wrote the 21 staffers, according to the news agency. "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments."
"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," they explained. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."
Their resignation letter sounds the alarm about recent interviews conducted by Musk loyalists that "created significant security risks," noting that "several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability."
The letter also criticizes the recent USDS layoffs that "focused on people in roles like designers, product managers, human resources, and contracting staff," according to the AP, which cited interviews with current and former staff.
"These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans' services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services," the letter states. "Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American's data less safe."
The firings at USDS are just part of Musk and Trump's sweeping effort to slash government spending and the federal workforce.
"Musk clearly loves to depict DOGE as a lean, mean efficiency machine," Intelligencer columnist Ed Kilgore wrote last week. "But it seems increasingly obvious that its efforts to reduce personnel levels and spending mostly reflect an ideology that treats whole areas of government as illegitimate and completely arbitrary reductions in force as a valuable end in themselves."
Fueling such arguments, the AP revealed Tuesday that nearly 40% of the federal contracts the Trump administration has canceled won't save any money. The Musk-led effort "published an updated list Monday of nearly 2,300 contracts that agencies terminated in recent weeks across the federal government," the news agency reported. "Data published on DOGE's 'Wall of Receipts' shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 794 in all, are expected to yield no savings."
Reporting on DOGE's failures and the mass resignation came amid mixed messaging about a Saturday email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government's human resources agency, ordering federal workers to respond by the end of Monday with five bullet points listing what they did last week. Musk said on his social media platform X that "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."
Then, Politico and The Washington Post reported Monday that the Trump administration had told federal department heads that they could direct staff to ignore the list requirement and Musk's threat, and emails from agency leaders informing workers they should not respond began circulating on social media.
Further adding to the confusion, the president told reporters Monday afternoon that anyone who doesn't reply would be "sort of semi-fired—or you're fired," and Musk later wrote on X: "Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."
Meanwhile, a Monday guidance from OPM states in part that responses to the initial Saturday email "should be directed to agency leadership," who "may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion."
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that has pushed back on DOGE initiatives, said in a Monday statement that "Elon Musk's latest email fiasco is yet another example of the chaotic and callous treatment of federal employees that has been the hallmark of Trump's second term."
"It was nothing but a cynical attempt to demean federal workers and terrorize them into quitting," Kelley continued. "To be clear, federal employees report to the agencies who employ them through established chains of command. They do not report to OPM, 'DOGE,' and definitely not to Elon Musk."
"I'm glad reality is teaching them the lessons they refuse to teach themselves on how to run a functional civil service," the union leader added. "Make no mistake we will continue to hold Elon Musk and the entire Trump administration accountable for their illegal actions."
While DOGE has
hit some legal snags thanks to challenges from unions and other critics, the Trump administration has demonstrated a willingness to defy court orders and congressional Republicans are already targeting some federal judges with articles of impeachment for impeding the president's agenda.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Judge Denies AP's Emergency Request to Lift Trump Ban Over Gulf of Mexico Spat
However, the Trump-appointed federal judge said he would expedite the case due to its importance.
Feb 24, 2025
A U.S. federal judge on Monday rejected an emergency request by The Associated Press to lift the White House's ban on its reporters for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America"—but said he would fast-track the important case.
U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden—an appointee of President Donald Trump—said that the AP is not facing "the type of dire situation" that would warrant issuance of the temporary restraining order sought by the wire service, according to The New York Times.
However, Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney said that McFadden "has ordered expedited consideration of the matter given the weighty issues at the heart of it."
Earlier this month, Trump indefinitely banned AP reporters from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to fully adopt the president's new name for the Gulf of Mexico. The news agency responded by suing three Trump administration officials over the blocked access: White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
"The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government," the AP said in its lawsuit. The AP has explained that because the gulf is an international body of water, it will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico, while referencing Trump's name change, because Mexico and other countries do not recognize the new appellation.
The White House welcomed the ruling with video screens reading "Victory" and "Gulf of America" in the James S. Brady Briefing Room, where press conferences are held.
"As we have said from the beginning, asking the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right," the White House said in response to McFadden's ruling.
"We stand by our decision to hold the Fake News accountable for their lies, and President Trump will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press," the White House statement added. "This is the most transparent administration in history."
Dozens of media organizations—including pro-Trump outlets like Fox News and Newsmax—urged the White House to lift its ban on the AP.
In an extraordinary move earlier Monday, interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin used his official account on X, Elon Musk's social media site, to erroneously describe federal prosecutors as "President Trump's lawyers."
"We are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our president and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first," Martin wrote.
Martin's post drew a sharp rebuke from Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who retorted that "the U.S. attorney for D.C. is not 'President Trump's lawyer' and its job is not to 'protect his leadership' nor prosecute people who 'refuse to put America first.'"
Keep ReadingShow Less
AP Sues Trump Officials for Retaliatory Blocking of Reporters
The news outlet has been barred from presidential events for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico by the president's chosen name, "the Gulf of America."
Feb 21, 2025
Accusing the White House of a "targeted attack" on editorial independence that "strikes at the very core of the First Amendment," The Associated Press on Friday filed a lawsuit against three Trump administration officials over its blocked access to all presidential events.
The administration announced earlier this month that AP reporters would not be permitted to cover press events at the White House, Mar-a-Lago, or on Air Force One due to its editorial decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico by the name that has been internationally recognized for more than 400 years.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January stating that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America. Trump has the authority to change a body of water's name for official government purposes, and some bodies of water are called by different names in different countries—for example, the Gulf of California is known as the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.
The AP said it would acknowledge Trump's chosen name for the body of water, but continue officially referring to it as the Gulf of Mexico.
"The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government."
As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said this month as she threatened to sue Google for changing the Gulf of Mexico's names in its maps feature, the U.S. does not have sovereignty over the body of water, and Trump cannot unilaterally order other entities to call it by his chosen name.
The AP on Friday said in its lawsuit that "the press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government."
The suit names White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who has said in briefings that it is "a fact" that the body of water off the western coast of Florida and the southern coasts of several other states is called the Gulf of America.
The news outlet called on the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to stop the White House from blocking its journalists from gathering news at presidential events.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Probes Reveal Depth of Big Tech Complicity in Israel's AI-Driven Gaza Slaughter
"Many nations are looking to Israel and its use of AI in Gaza with admiration and jealousy," said one expert. "Expect to see a form of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon-backed AI in other war zones soon."
Feb 18, 2025
Several recent journalistic investigations—including one published Tuesday by The Associated Press—have deepened the understanding of how Israeli forces are using artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems sold by U.S. tech titans for the mass surveillance and killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
The AP's Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick, and Garance Burke found that Israel's use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology "skyrocketed" following Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
"This is the first confirmation we have gotten that commercial AI models are directly being used in warfare," Heidy Khlaaf, chief artificial intelligence scientist at the AI Now Institute and a former senior safety engineer at OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, told the AP. "The implications are enormous for the role of tech in enabling this type of unethical and unlawful warfare going forward."
As Biesecker, Mednick, and Burke noted:
Israel's goal after the attack that killed about 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages was to eradicate Hamas, and its military has called AI a "game changer" in yielding targets more swiftly. Since the war started, more than 50,000 people have died in Gaza and Lebanon and nearly 70% of the buildings in Gaza have been devastated, according to health ministries in Gaza and Lebanon.
According to the AP report, Israel buys advanced AI models from OpenAI and Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. While OpenAI said it has no partnership with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in early 2024 the company quietly removed language from its usage policy that prohibited military use of its technology.
The AP reporters also found that Google and Amazon provide cloud computing and AI services to the IDF via Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021. Furthermore, the IDF uses Cisco and Dell server farms or data centers. Red Hat, an independent IBM subsidiary, sells cloud computing services to the IDF. Microsoft partner Palantir Technologies also has a "strategic partnership" with Israel's military.
Google told the AP that the company is committed to creating AI "that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security."
However, Google recently removed from its Responsible AI principles a commitment to not use AI for the development of technology that could cause "overall harm," including weapons and surveillance.
The AP investigation follows a Washington Post probe published last month detailing how Google has been "directly assisting" the IDF and Israel's Ministry of Defense "despite the company's efforts to publicly distance itself from the country's national security apparatus after employee protests against a cloud computing contract with Israel's government."
Google fired dozens of workers following their participation in "No Tech for Apartheid" protests against the use of the company's products and services by forces accused of genocide in Gaza.
"A Google employee warned in one document that if the company didn't quickly provide more access, the military would turn instead to Google's cloud rival Amazon, which also works with Israel's government under the Nimbus contract," wrote Gerrit De Vynck, author of the Post report.
"As recently as November 2024, by which time a year of Israeli airstrikes had turned much of Gaza to rubble, documents show Israel's military was still tapping Google for its latest AI technology," De Vynck added. "Late that month, an employee requested access to the company's Gemini AI technology for the IDF, which wanted to develop its own AI assistant to process documents and audio, according to the documents."
Previous investigations have detailed how the IDF also uses Habsora, an Israeli AI system that can automatically select airstrike targets at an exponentially faster rate than ever before.
"In the past, there were times in Gaza when we would create 50 targets per year. And here the machine produced 100 targets in one day," former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi told Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine, a joint Israeli-Palestinian publication, in 2023. Another intelligence source said that Habsora has transformed the IDF into a "mass assassination factory" in which the "emphasis is on quantity and not quality" of kills.
Compounding the crisis, in the heated hours following the October 7 attack, mid-ranking IDF officers were empowered to order attacks on not only senior Hamas commanders but any fighter in the resistance group, no matter how junior. What's more, the officers were allowed to risk up to 20 civilian lives in each strike, and up to 500 noncombatant lives per day. Days later, that limit was lifted. Officers could order any number of strikes as they believed were legal, with no limits on civilian harm.
Senior IDF commanders sometimes approved strikes they knew could kill more than 100 civilians if the target was deemed important enough. In one AI-aided airstrike targeting one senior Hamas commander, the IDF dropped multiple U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, which can level an entire city block, on the Jabalia refugee camp in October 2023. According to the U.K.-based airstrike monitor Airwars, the bombing killed at least 126 people, 68 of them children, and wounded 280 others. Hamas' Qassam Brigades said four Israeli and three international hostages were also killed in the attack.
Then there's the mass surveillance element. Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein recently wrote for Middle East Eye that "corporate behemoths are storing massive amounts of information about every aspect of Palestinian life in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and elsewhere."
"How this data will be used, in a time of war and mass surveillance, is obvious," Loewenstein continued. "Israel is building a huge database, Chinese-state style, on every Palestinian under occupation: what they do, where they go, who they see, what they like, what they want, what they fear, and what they post online."
"Palestinians are guinea pigs—but this ideology and work doesn't stay in Palestine," he said. "Silicon Valley has taken note, and the new Trump era is heralding an ever-tighter alliance among Big Tech, Israel, and the defense sector. There's money to be made, as AI currently operates in a regulation-free zone globally."
"Think about how many other states, both democratic and dictatorial, would love to have such extensive information about every citizen, making it far easier to target critics, dissidents, and opponents," Loewenstein added. "With the
far right on the march globally—from Austria to Sweden, France to Germany, and the U.S. to Britain—Israel's ethno-nationalist model is seen as attractive and worth mimicking.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy