RFK Jr. taps former border patrol agent as senior adviser
Chris Clem could help Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will have a role in immigration policy as health secretary, manage deportations.
Today's Liberal News
It’s a Model of Government Efficiency, but DOGE Wants It Gone
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last night that seeks to give more power to Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cleave through the supposed “waste, bloat, and insularity” in the federal government. The team is being given broad permission by Trump to disrupt work at key agencies and cut jobs.
Why the health care industry is letting RFK Jr. cruise to confirmation
From drugmakers to doctors, few health care groups are asking senators to block Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming HHS secretary.
DOGE Raises Red Flags for National Security
“Having the best spies, the best collection systems, and the best analysts will not help an intelligence service if it leaks like a sieve,” the former CIA speechwriter Charles E. Lathrop remarked in The Literary Spy, a book of quotations about espionage that he compiled. Lathrop, who wrote under a pseudonym, was making a point about counterintelligence—the flushing out of enemy spies and leakers who might compromise a spy agency’s precious secrets.
Donald Trump Is Very Busy
Let us pause the various constitutional crises, geopolitical showdowns, and DOGE dramas to make a simple observation: Donald Trump seems kind of busy, no?
In recent days, he kicked off what the media have dubbed “Tariff Week” by declaring Sunday, February 9, to be Gulf of America Day. This occurred as he flew to New Orleans to become the first-ever sitting U.S.
Diet drug boom weighs heavily on state budgets
Policymakers are scrambling to find ways to reduce costs — or even dropping coverage.
Tariq Ali on Trump’s Embrace of Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza & Global Rise of the Far Right
Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.
“Are We Sleepwalking into Autocracy?” Trump Embraces Authoritarian Playbook of Hungary’s Orbán
Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks and balances.
Elon Musk Will Personally Profit from Dismantling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Ex-CFPB Official
President Trump has given yet more power to Elon Musk, who is now leading the effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB helps enforce consumer financial laws for mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. We speak to a former CFPB staffer, Julie Margetta Morgan, who says the consumer watchdog has helped recover $21 billion lost to financial fraud and abuse in its decade-plus of existence.
Americans Are Actually in a Position to Make Elon Musk Feel Our Rage
His car company is in a precarious spot.
Trump Has Promised to Lower Prices. It Will be Impossible Without Private Equity Reform.
You can’t promise lower prices while backing away from regulations.
The Most Controversial Super Bowl Ad Was Also One of the Worst. The Best One Nobody Saw Coming.
Even Patrick Mahomes couldn’t outflop these ads.
You’re Not Going to Like What Happened to the Super Bowl Ad
Companies are so invested in making their Super Bowl ads a success that we’ve lost something in the process.
Trump’s Trade War Ends Before It Can Begin
The wildly high tariffs on Canada and Mexico have been called off.
First lawsuit targets Trump’s foreign aid freeze
The groups said the freeze violates Congress’ wishes and is endangering lives in developing countries.
Judge temporarily blocks Trump cuts to health research grants
The cuts would slice $4 billion from the budgets of universities and research organizations.
Susan Collins says Trump’s research cuts violate the law, as judge temporarily blocks them
The Maine Republican, the Senate’s top appropriator, said she has HHS nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s commitment to “re-examine” the cuts.
Is Aziz Ansari Sorry?
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
Your Opinions on Her Wardrobe Are Probably Unwelcome
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
What Role Does HR Play in the #MeToo Era?
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Trump’s spending freeze spreads chaos across US
Supporters of climate, infrastructure, mortgage, tech, health, veterans’ and other projects expressed alarm as tens of thousands of programs appeared possibly at risk.
Lael Brainard’s ‘Crisis Management Agency’ — and Her Warning For Trump
Joe Biden’s top economic adviser opens up on harrowing moments from her time in the White House, and what makes her nervous about the Trump agenda.
Stephen Miran is Trump’s pick to lead Council of Economic Advisers
Miran has called for a sweeping overhaul of the Fed to ensure greater political control over the central bank, including giving the president the power to fire board members at will.
What Trump Is Getting From Eric Adams
What a glorious time to be an ethically challenged politician. President Donald Trump began yesterday by pardoning Illinois’s eminently corrupt former Governor Rod R. Blagojevich, who’d tried to auction off a U.S. Senate seat. Last night, Trump extended his mercies to the indicted New York Mayor Eric Adams. The message is twofold and rather elemental: Prosecutors are not to be trusted. And bowing to Trump will yield rewards even for newly minted loyalists.
The World’s Most Powerful Unelected Bureaucrat
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During his most recent presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to “put unelected bureaucrats back in their place.” Apparently, that place is in the federal government, doing what they want with little accountability.
Trump Says the Corrupt Part Out Loud
Amid the flurry of changes to the face of American government—the president may or may not have the right to unilaterally eliminate agencies; engaging in insurrection has been decriminalized while prosecuting it has become grounds for termination; wars of conquest are now on the table—you could be forgiven for missing the news that bribery is basically legal now, as long as you support, or are, Donald Trump.
The False AI Energy Crisis
Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump has positioned himself as an unabashed bull on America’s need to dominate AI. Yet the president has also tied this newfound and futuristic priority to a more traditional mission of his: to go big with fossil fuels. A true AI revolution will need “double the energy” that America produces today, Trump said in a recent address to the World Economic Forum, days after declaring a national energy emergency.