Contributing Writers

President Trump has ordered a freeze on all foreign aid to South Africa in an executive order he signed Friday, claiming that a new land reform law amounts to “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” The country’s white minority still owns the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid rule.

We look at how Elon Musk’s executive branch agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, known as ”DOGE,” is wreaking havoc, with young male software engineers slashing government services and funding in what legal experts are saying could amount to a “constitutional crisis.” Most of the DOGE staffers are pulled from Musk-linked tech companies and have limited work and educational experience.

The Trump administration is planning to shutter the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the Environmental Protection Agency and has placed nearly 170 employees on administrative leave. “I’m very concerned about the deregulation and the focus on corporate profits,” says Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former head of the environmental justice program at the EPA.

A lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions Thursday prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s group has already gained access to sensitive files and computer systems across other key agencies as part of a push to restructure much of the federal government.

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California about the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the federal bureaucracy and the gutting of various agencies, led by the president’s unelected billionaire adviser Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“No DOGE employee should have access to any of Americans’ sensitive, confidential information, and they should not have access to be able to stop payments,” he says.

As the Trump administration, led in part by his unelected adviser Elon Musk, sets its sights on cutting the Department of Education, we speak to longtime educator Jesse Hagopian about what he calls an “extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.” Hagopian, whose new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, traces the history of racist educational censorship, adds, “This isn’t about protecting children.

The Trump administration is planning to shutter the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the Environmental Protection Agency and has placed nearly 170 employees on administrative leave. “I’m very concerned about the deregulation and the focus on corporate profits,” says Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former head of the environmental justice program at the EPA.

A lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions Thursday prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s group has already gained access to sensitive files and computer systems across other key agencies as part of a push to restructure much of the federal government.

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California about the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the federal bureaucracy and the gutting of various agencies, led by the president’s unelected billionaire adviser Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“No DOGE employee should have access to any of Americans’ sensitive, confidential information, and they should not have access to be able to stop payments,” he says.

As the Trump administration, led in part by his unelected adviser Elon Musk, sets its sights on cutting the Department of Education, we speak to longtime educator Jesse Hagopian about what he calls an “extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.” Hagopian, whose new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, traces the history of racist educational censorship, adds, “This isn’t about protecting children.

As the Trump administration, led in part by his unelected adviser Elon Musk, sets its sights on cutting the Department of Education, we speak to longtime educator Jesse Hagopian about what he calls an “extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.” Hagopian, whose new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, traces the history of racist educational censorship, adds, “This isn’t about protecting children.

The Trump administration is planning to shutter the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the Environmental Protection Agency and has placed nearly 170 employees on administrative leave. “I’m very concerned about the deregulation and the focus on corporate profits,” says Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former head of the environmental justice program at the EPA.

A lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions Thursday prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s group has already gained access to sensitive files and computer systems across other key agencies as part of a push to restructure much of the federal government.

We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California about the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the federal bureaucracy and the gutting of various agencies, led by the president’s unelected billionaire adviser Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“No DOGE employee should have access to any of Americans’ sensitive, confidential information, and they should not have access to be able to stop payments,” he says.

We speak with Karla Gilbride, the former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who was fired by President Trump in late January along with two commissioners at the federal agency that enforces civil rights law in the workplace.

As the Trump administration, led in part by his unelected adviser Elon Musk, sets its sights on cutting the Department of Education, we speak to longtime educator Jesse Hagopian about what he calls an “extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.” Hagopian, whose new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, traces the history of racist educational censorship, adds, “This isn’t about protecting children.

We speak to Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart about his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, which is “addressed to my fellow Jews” and criticizes what he characterizes as the increasing privileging of Zionism as a part of Jewish identity.

World leaders are rebuking Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip, ethnically cleansing the region of Palestinians. “There’s no question that even though the entire region would reject it … the fundamental reality is that we are heading to the complete destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza as a matter of status quo,” says our guest Omar Baddar.

We speak with Karla Gilbride, the former general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who was fired by President Trump in late January along with two commissioners at the federal agency that enforces civil rights law in the workplace.