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'Best Minds'? Hegseth Taps Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich to Lead 'Future of Warfare' Project
"A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military," said one observer. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Sep 30, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that three men—none of whom have served in the military and two who make billions of dollars from it—will help lead a new Pentagon project on the “future of warfare," even as he moves to eliminate hundreds of senior armed service leadership position, including many generals and admirals.
Hegseth unveiled Project Meridian during his “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The 120-day initiative will examine emerging technologies that the Department of Defense believes will be critical in future warfare.
"America's best minds" will be brought together to “reimagine what warfare will look like in the future,” Hegseth said.
To that end, the defense secretary said that "Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation's best minds, Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich."
Musk, the world's wealthiest human, is already deeply involved in US national security infrastructure through SpaceX—the recipient of billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts—and other businesses. He was previously part of the administration as the de facto leader of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Luckey, who like Musk is a major Trump donor, is the co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries. Last year, he said that Anduril planned to produce “large numbers" of cruise missiles, fighter jets, and other artificial intelligence-powered weapons systems.
“If we have to fight Iran, and China, and Russia all at the same time, we are screwed,” Luckey said in pushing for more arms production.
Gingrich is a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who had been pushing for war with Iran since at least 2005. Like President Donald Trump, he has been accused of dodging the draft during the Vietnam War by receiving numerous deferments; in Trump's case for bone spurs, and for Gingrich because he was a student and a father.
"Those three great Americans are going to be joined by a team of senior leaders, hand-picked private sector leaders, and subject matter experts from across our nation's unmatched innovation, academic, and policy ecosystems," said Hegseth—whose Senate confirmation last year was so contentious due to concerns about him being unfit for office that it required a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance.
The defense secretary also announced the creation of an Autonomous Warfare Command—or Autowarcom—"a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force."
The appointments come as Hegseth simultaneously pursues a major reduction in the military’s senior leadership. He announced Wednesday that the Pentagon would eliminate 20% of its roughly 800 general and admiral positions by January—doubling a previously announced 10% reduction. Hegseth described the cuts as necessary to eliminate “redundant force structure” and “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”
The reductions follow the removal or early departure of more than two dozen senior military and civilian defense officials since Hegseth became defense secretary.
The contrast has drawn criticism from lawmakers and military observers, who expressed alarm at the prospect of removing experienced officers while handing an influential role in planning future war to warfare technology executives and a hawkish former lawmaker who is no longer accountable to the public.
"Interesting. A board loaded with defense contractors and one draft-dodging war hawk will decide the future of the US military," NewBlue USA executive Marty Taylor said on social media. "What could possibly go wrong?"
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If the AI Executives Are Driving Drunk, We Should Nail Them for It
Remember, these industry leaders are doing what they do for money—and lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price.
Sep 28, 2026
Amidst all the talk of the need for government regulation of AI, there has been too little discussion of the simplest route: criminal liability. The basic story is that the AI companies are being irresponsible in dealing with a product they know to be dangerous. The companies and the people who run them need to know that they face serious monetary risk from letting their little models run wild, and possibly criminal prosecution and jail time.
To be clear, sensible regulation of AI would be desirable. But let’s be serious. We have Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, and RFK Jr. all running major government departments. Do we really think having someone like this overseeing AI development would be an improvement?
We do already have laws to deal with harms caused by AI; we just need to be prepared to use them. Again, no one would expect President Trump’s personal lawyer and Attorney General Todd Blanche to take criminal or civil actions against AI in the public interest. If there was a major incident, he would most likely look to initiate a prosecution in pursuit of a payoff for dropping the case. But the law does not begin and end with Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
This isn’t a question of vindictiveness. We all know, the AI boys more than anyone, that AI is potentially very dangerous. If they opt to push full speed ahead, without necessary safeguards, they have to be prepared to face the consequences.
If we can forget about the extinction events that keep our pundits busy, and focus instead on the millions of far more likely disasters that AI could cause, there will almost certainly be plenty of room for state-level prosecutions, as well as civil suits.
To take some hypothetical cases, suppose an AI system manages to hack into a city’s traffic control system, and the resulting chaos leads to a number of car crashes, causing serious injuries and death, in addition to property damage. To take another case, suppose AI falsifies clinical trial data, leading a drug to be approved even though the trials show it to be ineffective or dangerous. Or suppose AI gets inside a bank’s computers and makes a total mess of its records in a way that they cannot be reconstructed. (I know banks almost certainly have backups, but our super-intelligent AI can surely get into the backup records as well.)
I know that each of these disasters is extremely unlikely, but all of them are millions or even billions of times more likely than the extinction events we hear about in the media. And given that there are probably millions of disasters like these that AI could possibly cause, there is a pretty good chance that we will see some serious disaster in the not-too-distant future.
As I noted in an earlier piece, a mistaken report from AI led the Navy to put helicopters in the air to board a Chinese cargo ship that they wrongly believed was carrying parts for Iran’s nuclear program. Fortunately, the information was checked, and the helicopters were called back before there was an actual confrontation, but this was luck. Sooner or later we will see a mistake that is not caught.
It would, of course, be best if an AI disaster never happens, but one practice that will substantially reduce the risk is that Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the rest of the boys understand that their companies will be fully liable for any harm caused and they personally may face criminal liability. In other words, they may not just lose all their money; they may have to spend much of the rest of their lives in prison.
This isn’t a question of vindictiveness. We all know, the AI boys more than anyone, that AI is potentially very dangerous. If they opt to push full speed ahead, without necessary safeguards, they have to be prepared to face the consequences.
Drunk driving is really an appropriate analogy. Everyone should understand that if they get behind the wheel when they are intoxicated, they hugely increase the probability of an accident. That is why we throw people in jail for it. The same standard should apply to OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest. If they push ahead with testing without appropriate safeguards, they should be prepared to pay the price, including potential criminal penalties.
Remember, they are doing this for money, lots of it. They are choosing to endanger the property and lives of others for personal profit. If they mess up, they should be forced to pay a very high price. Incentives matter.
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$2.2 Trillion: The Collective Net Worth of 'Big Tech Oligarchs' Invited to Trump-Xi Dinner
US Sen. Bernie Sanders noted that the expected dinner attendees "have nearly doubled their wealth since Trump's election."
Sep 24, 2026
The combined net worth of the tech executives expected to attend US President Donald Trump's private dinner Thursday night with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is around $2 trillion, underscoring the staggering wealth and political influence of the small group of moguls poised to profit immensely from rapid developments in artificial intelligence—which researchers and industry insiders say is a threat to humanity.
The dinner attendee list is expected to include Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the world's richest man; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Google CEO Sundar Pichai; and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. A Forbes analysis released earlier this week estimated that the tech executives are worth a combined $2.2 trillion.
The Trump White House has published the dinner menu for the event but has not released any details on what will be discussed on Thursday night. Given the expected guest list—and intensifying competition between the US and China on AI development—artificial intelligence is expected to be a major topic of discussion.
Earlier this week, during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Trump dismissed efforts to regulate AI and said he plans to "encourage" the technology, "not rein it in."
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who introduced legislation earlier this week that would ban AI superintelligence and pause advanced AI development, wrote in a social media post on Thursday that "the function of AI must be to improve life for all humanity, not just make a handful of billionaires even richer."
Sanders pointed to the guest list for the Trump-Xi dinner and noted that the expected attendees "have nearly doubled their wealth since Trump's election."
Trump invited 10 Big Tech Oligarchs to his private dinner with President Xi of China.
They have nearly doubled their wealth since Trump's election & are now worth almost $2 trillion. Here's how much richer each of them got since Trump was elected:
Elon Musk: ⬆️ $658 billion…
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 24, 2026
Bloomberg reporter Jonathan Tamari argued that the Trump-Xi dinner shows how the US president has "treated Silicon Valley execs almost like an extension of his administration."
Other executives expected to attend the dinner are Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Apple's Tim Cook.
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'Take the Open Shot': Democrats Rebuked for Refusing to Target Elon Musk Over $100 Million Midterm Spending Spree
"Standing up to Elon Musk should be an easy layup for any Democrat."
Sep 22, 2026
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reportedly plans to spend at least $100 million to help Republicans in the 2026 midterms, and some critics are questioning why Democrats aren't doing more to highlight the efforts of the far-right billionaire—so central to President Donald Trump's destructive second term—to buy elections and further corrupt the nation's political process.
A Monday report from NBC News highlighted how Musk has taken a quieter approach to campaigning for the GOP than he did in 2024, when he personally appeared at campaign rallies and promised $1 million checks to voters.
Republican operatives who spoke with NBC said they worried that Musk getting more publicly involved in the campaign could backfire, with one consultant saying it could be a "mistake" if the South African-born billionaire became "the story" in the closing weeks of the election.
While Republicans might want to keep Musk's campaign contributions quiet, critics pointed out that Democratic candidates are under no obligation to do the same.
In a Tuesday social media post, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse expressed bewilderment that Musk was not a central issue for many Democratic campaigns, despite the fact that he's spending tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat them.
"Many Democrats just refuse to take the open shot at Musk," wrote Kruse. "He's a ripe, rich target, and an obvious way to dramatize key issues and mobilize key voters, but some of them are still sitting on their hands. Not sure if they're cowards who don't want to take him on or if they're complicit in taking money from him and people like him, but it's staggering."
"Standing up to Elon Musk," Kruse emphasized, "should be an easy layup for any Democrat."
Journalist Julian Sanchez endorsed Kruse's analysis, describing Democrats' reluctance to go all in against Musk as "a weird unforced error," while pointing to polling showing that the SpaceX CEO is "almost as unpopular" as Trump.
Sanchez also offered up a mock response for any Democratic candidate targeted by Musk's money cannon.
"You’ve probably seen some ads lying about my position on trans issues," Sanchez wrote, imagining a Democratic ad. "Maybe you’re wondering why the campaign is about a tiny fraction of the population when a failed illegal war is skyrocketing gas prices. It’s because a weird billionaire hates his trans daughter and can't shut up about it."
As reported by journalist Judd Legum on Tuesday, Musk's super political action committee has been obsessively attacking transgender rights by "blanketing the internet with digital ads falsely accusing Democratic Senate candidates of supporting 'taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids.'"
Daily Kos reporter Oliver Willis argued that Democrats' reluctance to put Musk front and center raises red flags about how they'll govern should they re-take Congress
"The refusal to go after Musk is a serious validator of the notion democrats have no real interest in winning," Willis wrote. "No serious party would let someone like him emerge as a major funder of the opposition and just… not say anything about it."
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Will Universal Studios, Owned by Comcast, Decide to Withhold Elon Musk Documentary?
"Have I mentioned lately that oligarch-owned media consolidation is bad?" said one critic.
Sep 17, 2026
Filmmaker Alex Gibney's scathing four-hour documentary about SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has received rave reviews since its debut at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, but it could soon be without an international distributor.
According to a Wednesday report from The Hollywood Reporter, Comcast-owned Universal Pictures, which holds distribution rights to the film outside the North American market, is getting "cold feet" about releasing it.
"The company has not dated the movie," explained The Hollywood Reporter, "has not communicated with the filmmaking team about its plans, and generally appears to be rethinking the release of a project that it once showed high enthusiasm for but is now politically sensitive for parts of the Trump administration."
Two sources told the publication that they wouldn't be surprised if Universal decided to not release the movie and returned its distribution rights to the filmmakers, even though doing so would require the studio to pay a kill fee.
The Hollywood Reporter noted, however, that it's unlikely that the film would be without an international distributor for long because "distributors in individual countries have been salivating over the film ever since the four-hour project began gaining buzz in recent weeks."
Slate culture writer Sam Adams pointed out in a social media post that independent distributor Bleecker Street "is holding steady on releasing Musk in the US, and actually moved up the opening to October 9."
Emmy Award-winning sports broadcaster Brian Webber noted that there is past precedent for Hollywood studios coming under pressure to not release a movie that is critical of a wealthy oligarch.
"William Randolph Hearst famously tried to... suppress Citizen Kane from being released," Webber explained in a social media post. "Hollywood had more guts in the 1940s—probably because there was real competition among the studios and not today's oligopoly problem."
Tech journalist Karl Bode reacted with dismay to news that Universal might spike its release of the documentary.
"Have I mentioned lately that oligarch-owned media consolidation is bad?" he asked rhetorically.
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A Tiny 3% Tax on Global Billionaires Could Save 30 Million Lives by 2030: Lancet Study
"With donor countries facing growing indebtedness and increasingly reallocating resources towards military spending, funding humanitarian assistance via the taxation of large fortunes was one of the most viable strategies."
Sep 15, 2026
With international aid programs facing an unprecedented cash crunch thanks in large part to foreign aid cuts ordered by US President Donald Trump, a recent study published The Lancet suggests that taxing the ultrarich would be the simplest way to plug funding gaps faced by crucial life-saving programs.
Specifically, the peer-reviewed study found that a hitting the world's billionaires with a 3% wealth tax would raise enough money to save up to 29.5 million lives in the world's most vulnerable populations over the next four years leading into 2030.
Lucio Exposito, senior economist of the study and researcher at the ICESI School of Economics and University of East Anglia School of Global Development, told Euronews that a global wealth tax was the most plausible way to undo the damage done by international aid cuts, many of which were caused by billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025 under the direct orders of Trump.
"With donor countries facing growing indebtedness and increasingly reallocating resources towards military spending," Exposito explained, "funding humanitarian assistance via the taxation of large fortunes was one of the most viable strategies."
The study's introduction notes that wealth inequality has reached unprecedented heights in recent years, growing especially acute in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Today, the top 10% of the global population owns approximately 75% of global wealth, while the bottom 50% holds only 2%, with absolute income inequality steadily increasing over the past three decades," the study explains. "Moreover, the wealthiest 0.002% of the global population... controls an estimated $37.1 trillion in global wealth, surpassing the gross domestic product of the world's largest economy—the USA."
Even as the world's richest people have seen their wealth grow by bounds, official development assistance (ODA) to the Global South has been slashed significantly.
According to a study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released earlier this year, ODA spending in 2025 fell by 23% compared to 2024, with the US responsible for 75% of the global decline.
A 2025 study published by The Lancet estimated that the elimination of USAID would lead to 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030.
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Trump: An Instrument of the Age
He is the personification of a time when the evolution of capitalism institutionalizes class divisions, universally degrades morality, and threatens global extinction.
Sep 14, 2026
Donald Trump is an instrument of this age, a force propelling capitalism and the global economy into a critical stage of their historical development. Since the beginning of village life some 10,000 years ago, commerce among villages and rural economies intensified as cities emerged and over centuries forged trade networks across regions into a global system of commerce. At the same time, from the beginning of markets, traders, merchants, industries, and governments engaged in the struggle for control of local, regional, and inter-regional markets.
Today this struggle continues, but now with devastating consequences: the concentration of wealth on a global scale; the vast productive power and technological innovation; the multiplying flow of market-related information, and the explosive potential of artificial intelligence. Each of these factors is channeling private and public resources to elites, and spurring worldwide trade wars, technological dependency, and military confrontations that threaten humanity's survival.
No longer is it an intra-regional conflict between Greeks and Trojans over control of the grains produced in the basin of the Black Sea. Now it is a global conflict over control of international markets and supply chains, driven by the competition between transnational corporations and national governments over geopolitical objectives, a competition that is apocalyptically violent. And, at the head of the largest economic and military power is a pathological, impulsive, and phenomenally wealthy businessperson.
The emergence of Donald Trump is not wholly surprising in a global economy teetering on the edge of military annihilation and worldwide environmental collapse. He is the personification of a time when the evolution of capitalism institutionalizes class divisions, universally degrades morality, and threatens global extinction.
If citizens fail to contain the juggernaut of corporate-authoritarian forces unleashed in recent decades, our children will likely live in a wholly dystopian world.
Clearly, the global economy has reached a critical stage in the accumulation of wealth and its social impacts. Today transnational corporations have achieved historic levels of economic power and political influence throughout the world. But governments, with their enormous borrowing capacities and acquisition of capital through taxation, are a chief target for privatization of public wealth. They are the last bastion of enormous resources that concentrated private commercial interests need to overcome, to disarticulate the state in order to access the vast capital reserves that governments represent. Thus the virtually ineluctable privatization of government services from social programs to space exploration and military production proceeds unabated by social controls. Of course corporations and an elite class must retain tax revenues collected by governments while private corporations siphon off these resources through government contracts. As part of this privatization project, regulation of private entities and activities must be undermined. From the Department of Government Efficiency led by the world's richest individual to the edicts expunging from records the words and documents indicating that the direction of national priorities is misdirected and dangerous, the Trump administration is aggressively, relentlessly attacking any obstacle to privatization of public resources.
On one level none of this is new. The British East India Company in the 18th century controlled 80% of the trade from Asia to Europe and governed India with its private court system and army of 250,000. It used a portion of its wealth to buy parliamentarians responsible for its regulation. Today, however, the aggregate wealth and power of tech giants dwarfs that of the East India Company. According to Oxfam America, Elon Musk has more wealth than 46% (3.8 billion) of the world's population. He spent nearly $300 million to help Trump win the 2024 presidential election. Musk and other Big Tech companies—key tech, social media, and AI entities—spent $41.8 million in the second quarter of 2026 lobbying the government. Big Tech receives in excess of $45 billion in government contracts. The combined capitalization of the top five US tech companies is greater than the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 193 countries, trailing only the economic output of the United States and China.
The impact of such outrageous distortions in the global economy is wide-ranging. The convergence of private business interests and money with public policy and governance breeds corruption. Trump reported $2 billion in income in the first year of his second term, tripling the income he reported in the previous year. Much of Trump's new wealth comes from cryptocurrency, a business field in which Trump's family is deeply invested, taking in $1.4 billion through its cryptocurrency ventures in just one year. At the same time, Trump is engaged in the wholesale deregulation of digital assets like cryptocurrency. He disbanded the Biden-era National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, directing the Justice Department to end its enforcement of regulatory violations and to close all ongoing investigations. He directed Attorney General Todd Blanche to refrain from charging violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and to end charging violations of the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Commodity Exchange Act.
According to the American Bar Association, the lack of corporate regulation subverts democracy: “These transactions—ranging from donor-driven federal appointments to dropped investigations, lucrative business deals, and foreign gifts—have enriched Trump and his allies while undermining long-standing ethical norms and public trust in democratic institutions.” Another instance of a proposed initiative that is blatantly unethical, anti-democratic, and politically corrupt is the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to reward Trump's political allies including the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2020.
The development of corporate capitalism has always been anti-democratic to one degree or another. Private boards of elite shareholders decide corporate policy and virtually all decisions are aimed at increasing profits. Corporate elite have historically fought against workers' organized power. The corruption and assumption of executive power at the center of the current American government reflect the intrusion of rank corporate values and ethos central to modern markets. Donald Trump runs the presidential office as a mafia organization with a pay-for-play ethos, the raw corruption expected when corporate elite are untethered from social supervision and management. As corporate policies and investments become existential threats, they cannot afford a citizenry awakened to the catastrophic direction of the American and global economy.
Desperate to continue profiting from a degraded natural and social environment, those with the most resources work to keep the truth about looming disasters from influencing public discourse. Trump is the harbinger of a totalitarian state that is the likely outcome of unregulated corporate investment and planning, one in which the flow of information must be managed. So, he attacks the media and censors reports and even words and phrases that are based in research and backed by skeins of evidence. To ensure authority over information flow, Trump values loyalty as the fundamental qualification of his appointees. Attorney General Todd Blanche exemplifies just how corrupted executive appointments throughout the administrative agencies and cabinet-level departments actually have become. As with other presidential nominees and appointments, Blanche was obviously selected for his fealty to Donald Trump. Just how much he identifies with supporting the president was revealed in a hearing for his confirmation in the Senate. While being questioned by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) about his relationship to Trump, Blanche stated, "I'm his lawyer—was his lawyer," before correcting himself, saying that he was now the deputy attorney general.
The ongoing general attack on American democracy stems directly from the presidential office and his friends in business. The impunity with which Trump aggrandizes himself through specious, if not illegal, projects is clearly a wide-ranging assault on citizens' rights to democratic decision-making theoretically safeguarded by the US Constitution. The decision to destroy the East Wing of the White House and construct a ballroom is one example. Numerous other projects dismissive of congressional approval also exist. To list just a few: planning an 'Arc of Trump'; adding his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with only the approval of his hand-picked board; negotiating no-bid contracts such as the one repainting the Reflecting Pool; receiving a luxuriously outfitted plane from a foreign government. These are examples of his many mundane acts of corruption. More far-reaching and pernicious anti-democratic actions also abound: expending American lives and resources in wars with Iran and supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza; instituting universally costly tariffs; restricting and censoring public reports on various issues affecting the health and livelihood of Americans everywhere; abducting—even killing—immigrants to achieve quotas of deportation without legal recourse; and on and on.
One of the most egregious assaults on democracy is the proposed proliferation of data centers. It reveals how insidious the march toward corporate elite dominance actually is. Polls indicate that 80% of Americans oppose the construction of data centers yet Trump supports Big Tech's drive to establish data centers across the country. Data centers are environmental and human health disasters. Not only do they tax the electrical grid and use unsustainable amounts of water, through massive data collection and deep analysis they also have the very real potential to construct a totalitarian state through government contracts in which algorithms of artificial intelligence are applied in projects ranging from facial recognition to autonomous military and police personnel. Without democratic control of industry and governance, the power of Big Tech to control our lives into the future presents a rapidly escalating existential threat.
At this stage in the historical evolution of capitalism it is the people who must resist being alienated from their own governance, from the power to construct a sustainable economy and to restore their responsibility to each other and the environment. If citizens fail to contain the juggernaut of corporate-authoritarian forces unleashed in recent decades, our children will likely live in a wholly dystopian world. But it doesn't have to be that way. Organized and sustained political protests, progressive reform movements, and mass mobilizations have saved the nation and other nations from the worst excesses and transgressions of powerful elites and their destructive capitalist practices and designs.
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Doctors Without Borders Says Trump Aid Cuts Fueling Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan
"War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response."
Sep 08, 2026
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday that the Trump administration's destruction of the US Agency for International Development has contributed to the collapse of the war-torn nation's healthcare system, forcing clinics to close and leaving millions of people without access to lifesaving treatment.
The organization, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said the closure of USAID last year at the behest of President Donald Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, left many healthcare providers in Sudan "unable to find alternative funding to continue providing services," leaving facilities with no option but to shut down in the midst of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
"War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response,” Muhammad Ibrahim, MSF's head of mission in Sudan, said in a statement on Tuesday. “MSF’s work in Sudan is privately funded. But when funding disappears from other health services, clinics close, patients have fewer places to go, and pressure shifts to the facilities that remain, including ours.”
MSF said its hospital in Um Rakuba, a refugee camp in eastern Sudan, is now "the only lifeline left" for locals and refugees.
"The cuts here go well beyond healthcare," emphasized Fabrizio Locuratolo, MSF humanitarian affairs manager. "Food rations are shrinking and protection programs are being dismantled, pulling away the last safety nets and leaving refugees completely exposed.”
The dismantling of USAID by Musk's wrecking crew at the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency has already killed hundreds of thousands of people—most of them children—according to experts tracking the impacts on humanitarian aid around the world. Musk and the Trump administration have continued to deny that the aid cuts have killed any children.
A study published in The Lancet earlier this year estimated that the gutting of USAID—whose surviving programs were mostly transferred to the US State Department—could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by the end of the decade. The US Department of Agriculture took over USAID's Food for Peace program—and subsequently omitted Sudan from the list of countries that would receive shipments of US grain.
MSF said Tuesday that "just as health providers faced the impending removal of US support, many European governments also reduced their assistance to people in Sudan."
The results have been horrific. MSF said that "malaria and malnutrition cases are already rising despite limited rainfall, ahead of the peak of the rainy season—and we expect numbers to increase as the rain intensifies."
"In August, our teams admitted 191 children under five with severe malnutrition to our inpatient feeding center, and nearly 22% also tested positive for malaria," the group said Tuesday. "The UN reports that 825,000 children under five are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition and 19.5 million people faced crisis-level hunger earlier this year. Yet the UN’s $2.87 billion response plan is barely 41 per cent funded, and 37 per cent of Sudan’s health facilities are estimated to be completely out of service."
"As world leaders gather at the UN General Assembly, governments and institutional donors must protect funding for essential health services in Sudan and provide flexible transitional financing where facilities are at risk of closure," the organization pleaded.
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Far-Right Alternative for Germany Thanks Elon Musk After Regional Election Win
"The far-right rampage is not slowing down, but accelerating instead."
Sep 07, 2026
The far-right Alternative for Germany party thanked the world's richest man, Elon Musk, after decisively winning a key regional election on Sunday, sparking alarm across Europe and around the globe.
Ulrich Siegmund, AfD's lead candidate in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, praised Musk—who has openly advocated for the far-right, xenophobic party—for his support and "clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time—including here in Germany." Siegmund wrote that if AfD ends up leading the state government, the party "would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation," adding that "Germany would once again be a place worth investing in."
Siegmund's post on the social media platform X, which Musk owns, came after AfD won just over 44% of the vote in the Saxony-Anhalt election, trouncing the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz. CDU finished a distant second with 17.1% of the vote.
"Well done!" Musk wrote, in German, following AfD's election win. The mega-billionaire has called AfD "the only hope for Germany."
US President Donald Trump, a political ally of Musk, posted to Truth Social a screenshot of exit polls showing AfD leading the regional election on Sunday afternoon.
"Leave it to Trump to celebrate the victory of a far-right German party that shows sympathy for the Nazis, downplays the Holocaust, and flirts with Putin," Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on social media in response to the US president.
The Associated Press noted that "to win an absolute majority, AfD needed to clinch 42 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, but the party appeared on track to win 39. Depending on the ultimate make-up of parliament, it could still end up leading the state government." Siegmund would be the first far-right leader to govern a German state since 1945.
But other German parties have refused to work with AfD, raising doubts about its ability to form a government in Saxony-Anhalt, which has a population of around 2.1 million people.
David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, wrote that the election "sent a clear message, to Germany as to all of Europe, that the far-right rampage is not slowing down, but accelerating instead."
AfD focuses heavily on immigration, vowing "deportation from minute one" and calling for abolition of "the fundamental right to asylum."
"In addition to deporting immigrants, the party has proposed cutting funding for public broadcasters, banning gay pride flags in schools, and teaching more Russian, as well as tax breaks for large families and free childcare," The New York Times reported. The newspaper noted that Siegmund declined to condemn supporters who "chanted his surname... in the style of the Nazi salute, 'Sieg Heil.'"
European officials voiced deep concern about AfD's surge in the regional election, with France's Europe minister calling the results "a serious moment."
"Nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution," said Benjamin Haddad. "We must listen with humility to the anger, the concerns, the fears, and respond to them. We cannot forget our history. That is the meaning behind the choices made by France and Germany.”
Spanish Julen Bollain wrote on social media that "the far-right is managing to turn discontent, economic insecurity, and disaffection into votes."
"AfD is doing something that should especially worry the left: transforming precarity, frustration, and disaffection into political identity and votes," Bollain added. "And if we don't manage to give a collective response to the existing social discontent, someone always shows up ready to turn it into fear, hate, and scapegoats. And there they beat us, because they move like fish in water."
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'We Don't Have to Let It Happen': Casar Says Progressives Must Fight AI Oligarchs' 'Dystopic' Vision
"We know that they are trying to get rid of a huge number of people's jobs."
Sep 06, 2026
The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Sunday urged Americans to push back on the vision of the future being presented by the oligarchs who run the artificial intelligence industry.
In an interview with MeidasTouch, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) addressed the backlash against Big Tech, which has included a nationwide movement to oppose the construction of AI data centers.
"Everyday folks right now, they're pissed," said Casar, who last week joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce legislation to ban AI models capable of surpassing human cognition. "They know [OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman is not actually out there to help you... We know that they are trying to get rid of a huge number of people's jobs."
Casar: And then in Silicon Valley, basically their policy proposal is that they will give out a little bit of UBI to make that high unemployment rate more tolerable. I see that as a bad idea. Going towards 10 or 20% unemployment, just so these guys could be super rich, is… pic.twitter.com/AUIezlGZK3
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 6, 2026
Casar then mocked the remedy to mass joblessness being pitched by tech titans like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has proposed a universal basic income (UBI) program.
"In Silicon Valley, basically their policy proposal... is that they will give out a little bit of UBI to make that high unemployment rate more tolerable," he said. "I see that as a bad idea. Of course, everybody getting a little bit of money could be a good thing. Yeah, people being able to work fewer hours is, of course, a good thing. But going toward 10%, 20% unemployment just so these guys can be super rich is completely dystopic."
Casar emphasized that, despite tech industry claims, there is nothing inevitable about their plans to profit by putting millions of people out of work.
"We don't have to let it happen," he said. "Just look at our history from over 100 years ago: You had the Gilded Age, you had a few of these robber barons who tried to get all the money, capture the government, buy the presidency... And then people woke up, fought back."
"We have to be headed on a path," Casar continued, "where we reclaim our power, as a democracy, as people."
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