We’ve spent yearscalling out what a hypocrite Elon Musk is on free speech. But sometimes the universe Elon hands you a gift: three tweets in the span of a little over a week that demonstrate the entire con more clearly than any deep dive ever could. Let’s start with this one:
That’s Elon announcing that:
Falsely labeling non-violent people as “fascist” or “Nazi” should be treated as incitement to murder
Which is, to be clear, an extreme anti-free speech position. It’s an extremely censorial stance.
Statements indicating a political opponent is a Nazi or coward are “odious and repugnant” and far too common in today’s political discourse. But they are not actionable defamation “because of the tremendous imprecision of the meaning and usage of such terms in the realm of political debate.” In other words, being called a Nazi or coward are not verifiable statements of fact that would support a defamation claim
So, already, we see that Elon is taking an anti-free speech stance with that tweet. Political hyperbole, even of the Nazi-calling variety, is protected speech. Always has been.
Now keep that tweet in mind as we head into the next one.
Because over the weekend… Elon Musk pretty clearly falsely called the EU Commission (which just fined him)… Nazis.
If you can’t see that, it’s Elon retweeting someone who posted an image of the EU flag being pulled back to reveal a Nazi flag. The original poster says “The Fourth Reich” and Elon’s quote tweet says: “Pretty much.”
So, let’s recap: falsely calling non-violent people Nazis is, according to Elon, “incitement to murder” and yet here he is… falsely calling non-violent people Nazis. Just a week after that original statement.
And then there’s the third act that ties it all together. I know he’s said this one before in similar forms, but this weekend he also claimed that the “Surefire way to figure out who the bad guys are is by looking who wants to restrict freedom of speech.”
So, uh, yeah. Just a week after Elon says that labeling a non-violent person a Nazi should be considered “incitement to murder” (an inherent attempt to suppress speech of critics), he claims that the easiest way to figure out who are “the bad guys” is to see who wants to suppress speech.
According to Elon’s own standard: he is the bad guy. He is saying that we should suppress speech of those who call him a Nazi. And therefore, he is a bad guy. By his own logic.
The pattern is obvious. Elon’s entire incoherent “free speech” framework collapses into a single, coherent principle: speech I like is protected, speech I don’t like should be punished. He wants the freedom to call the EU Commission Nazis. He wants to criminalize anyone who calls him one. He proclaims that those who restrict speech are “the bad guys” while simultaneously arguing that calling him a Nazi should be treated as incitement to murder—a severe restriction on speech. And when he or his allies do actual Nazi-like things? Well, you better not mention it, or you’re inciting violence.
This is what happens when someone who has never understood the actual principles of free speech tries to cosplay as a free speech absolutist. The mask doesn’t just slip—it falls off entirely, and all that’s left is the naked self-interest underneath.
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The president, who drapes himself in the flag so inappropriately you’d think it would be filing HR complaints on a daily basis, is now preventing some the best potential US citizens from becoming US citizens.
Ever since Trump’s unexpected second appearance in the Oval Office began, it was immediately clear the bigoted efforts he fired up during his first term were only a prelude to the incessant cruelty he’s engaged in now. Trump leveraged a tragedy into an opportunity to shut down migration efforts from 10 countries. A few days later, the DHS (via dog-killing frontmouth Kristi Noem) said the racist plague had expanded to cover another nine countries.
While this took place, Trump converted his personal animus towards political opponents into truly racist invective targeting an entire country:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he did not want Somali immigrants in the U.S., saying residents of the war-ravaged eastern African country are too reliant on U.S. social safety net and add little to the United States.
[…]
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump told reporters near the end of a lengthy Cabinet meeting. He added: “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
Trump continues to insist there’s no better place in the world than the United States. Then he makes it clear the only people welcome to avail themselves of his version of American exceptionalism are whites who probably already live here. Everyone else from anywhere else can go fuck themselves… if they can find time to do so between being persecuted/tortured to death in their countries of origin.
Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall Thursday — known as the country’s cradle of liberty — for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn’t proceed due to their countries of origin.
The same situation is playing out at naturalization events across the country as USCIS directed its employees to halt adjudicating all immigration pathways for people from 19 countries deemed to be “high risk”.
That’s right. People who have spent years jumping through all the citizenship hoops (which includes a test 99% of natural-born American citizens couldn’t pass) are being fucked out of their effort by a bunch of racists who have been given the keys to the American Dream kingdom.
This is heartbreaking. And it’s just as heartbreaking even if you don’t often engage with recent American citizens or migrants doing everything they can to remain in this land of opportunity. And it’s obviously targeted. The whole process didn’t get shut down. It only targeted the people this administration feels are more worthless than others.
“People are devastated and they’re frightened,” Breslow told GBH News. “People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony.”
This is where I get personal, mainly because there are still too many commenters willing to wade in and spew stereotypes and bad faith arguments all over the the comment thread.
Outside of Techdirt, I am otherwise employed. Most of my recent work experience involves manufacturing. My current job spreads that to things like meat processing and food prep. I have had the privilege to work beside some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever encountered. And few of those people were white, natural-born US citizens.
I have witnessed the sheer joy of coworkers returning from citizenship ceremonies like these. I have seen them struggle with not only the weirdness of the American language, but the subsets created by heavy industry without ever seeing any one of these amazing people express any desire to give it all up.
I have watched an absolute fireball of a young man — an El Salvadoran refugee — work 100+ hours week after week to turn his dreams into a reality. I also had the pleasure of watching this person obtain his US citizenship after being jerked around by the bureaucracy that always makes this sort of thing more difficult than it should be, even when not overseen by a cadre of white Christian nationalists. I also saw this man turn his hours of servitude to multiple employers into the most impractical of second vehicles: a 2019 Maserati GT, which is not the sort of car one would expect anyone to buy in a state that spends 4 months a year covered in snow. (To be fair, his primary vehicle is a 2014 Ford F-150.)
These immigrants are amazing. And their work ethic embodies the American ideal of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Meanwhile, the more privileged in our midst have been buying “rolling coal” flip switches and turning the American flag into something that can be brandished with ill intent, completely erasing its long history as a symbol of hope. On top of it all, there’s the new Trump administration, which sees bootstraps as Achilles tendons and immediately starts slashing away at them.
Many of the best people I know weren’t born here. The people I do know who make the most noise about patriotism are mainly hypocrites whose claims about using their Second Amendment rights to protect the rest of the Constitution are as empty as their claims that it’s always everyone but them to blame for the shithole Trump is desperate to turn this country into.
We are ruled by people who have never truly engaged with anyone who doesn’t completely align with their views and preconceptions. The real world is filled with people who are wonderful and open and giving and never ask for anything more than to be treated as fellow human beings. This administration wants those people gone and, if possible, scrubbed from history. But these are the people I would go full “ride or die” for: the people who have seen the worst the world has to offer and still remain optimistic and helpful and considerate despite having lived through things most Americans can’t possibly imagine.
The people running the government have never experienced joy. The only way they can interact with optimism is by pushing the narrative that the glass is half-empty and insisting it’s the “others” among us who have taken the best part of the glass’s content and left us to deal with what’s left over. It’s all lies. And yet it will always work because, while it’s impossible to get a majority of Americans to agree on a hero, it’s insanely easy to get most Americans to agree on a scapegoat.
Last week Netflix announced a $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, after elbowing out rival acquisition bids (for now) by Comcast/NBC and Paramount/CBS. But as we noted then, the deal still needs regulatory approval from Trump, who has already stated several times that he’d prefer it if his billionaire bestie new owner of CBS, Larry Ellison, comes away victorious. And the Ellison family, via Paramount (with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Saudi money), have made a hostile takeover bid.
Over the weekend, Trump was again asked about the deal, and again hinted at the fact that he’ll be the one who decides who can buy Warner Brothers (this is, in case it’s not clear, not how regulatory autonomy is supposed to work):
“speaking with reporters on the red carpet of the Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington, D.C., said Netflix’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. studios and streaming business will require a review, and said, “I’ll be involved in that decision.”
Despite the fact the Paramount hostile takeover bid features his own son in law, the Saudis, and a billionaire bestie who shares his authoritarian policies, Trump and right wing media outlets like the Wall Street Journal are desperately trying to pretend this is going to be a neutral process:
“According to Trump, Sarandos visited the Oval Office last week. The Netflix exec is “a fantastic man,” the president said. “I have a lot of respect for him, but it’s a lot of market share.”
Trump also said of Sarandos, “He’s a great person… He’s got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you’re talking about, but it is a big market share. There’s no question about it. It could be a problem.”
But despite the claims by useful idiots like Matt Stoller, that was never true; the administration has caused generational harm to consumer protection and corporate oversight. And the efforts to “rein in big tech” wound up with tech executives putting their full support behind an authoritarian government and behaving worse than ever.
Of course, here the only thing Trump is interested in is in helping his billionaire ally further dominate media. And if he can’t have that, he’ll be satisfied with Netflix executives debasing themselves repeatedly if they want DOJ approval of the pending merger. Trump’s FCC and DOJ have repeatedly violated the law and abused the merger process to curry favor from feckless companies (see: Verizon, CBS).
As noted, Paramount is now angling to appeal directly to investors with a a hostile takeover bid. With Netflix’s deep pockets and a $5.8 billion breakup fee on the line, that fight is certain to be an extended one, even with the personal help of Trump and his corrupted courts. It could, potentially, even outlast the Trump administration itself.
While the Netflix acquisition likely will be bad for markets or consumers (consolidation typically is), the alternatives (Comcast and Larry Ellison) would be significantly worse, with likely significantly more layoffs. Still, there’s absolutely nothing the Trump administration does that’s in good faith, and the administration’s sudden concern with “market power” are as hollow as a dollars store chocolate Easter bunny.
That, of course, won’t be detailed by the consolidated media outlets covering this deal journalistically, who’ll play along with Trump happily if it means getting their own shitty mergers approved.
In mid-November, we talked about yet more chaos occurring under RFK Jr., this time at the FDA. At issue was George Tidmarsh, who joined the FDA in July as the agency’s chief drug regulator. Tidmarsh had been accused of using his position to exact a vendetta campaign against a former business partner, Kevin Tang, and companies related to him. Tang had pushed Tidmarsh to resign from three companies years back and Tang recently sued Tidmarsh, claiming he’d dangled the approval of a drug ingredient over his head unless he made monetary payments to an organization associated with Tidmarsh for decades.
Tidmarsh resigned amidst the accusations, putting his tenure at the FDA at less than half a year. In his place came Richard Pazdur, an FDA veteran of over 25 years. His appointment was received well by many in the medical community, seen as a consummate professional stepping into the role. For example:
Cancer Nation applauds the choice of Dr. Richard Pazdur as the Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We can think of no better person than Dr. Pazdur for this position, as he will bring scientific rigor, evidence-based regulatory review, and a commitment to patients to his work as CDER head.
“We are grateful that someone with both scientific rigor and lived compassion will be leading CDER, and we look forward to continuing our shared work to make sure every survivor gets the care they need to live well,” said Shelley Fuld Nasso, Cancer Nation CEO.
Unfortunately for all those feeling the warm fuzzies about Pazdur’s appointment, Padzur decided last week to retire entirely from the FDA. While he will serve in the role through December, his resignation comes a mere two-and-a-half Scaramucci’s after his appointment. (For the uninitiated, a Scaramucci is 11 days, termed due to the length of time Anthony Scaramucci served as White House Communications Director in Trump’s first administration.)
Why is Pazdur retiring so soon after his appointment to be the top drug regulator for the FDA? Simple: his professionalism is at complete odds with the Kennedy-appointed assclowns with whom he’d have to work.
Just days on the job, Pazdur expressed deep concerns about the legality and public health risks of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s plans to overhaul and expedite agency operations. On November 21, the Post reported that Pazdur disagreed with Makary’s plans to reduce the number of studies needed to make drug-related decisions, such as label changes. Pazdur was further concerned that Makary’s plan to shorten drug review times was not sufficiently transparent and could be illegal. Pazdur also pushed back on Makary’s plan to exclude agency career scientists from some drug review processes deemed political priorities.
The immediate tensions led Pazdur to first consider retirement last month, according to the Post’s sources. He has now filed paperwork to retire at the end of this month, according to Stat News, which was first to report his planned departure. The outlet noted that he could still change his mind as the retirement plan is not finalized. But a source for the Post said such a reversal is unlikely.
“This is a very sad day for science and for patients,” Ellen Sigal, chairperson and founder of advocacy group Friends of Cancer Research, told the Post. “Rick was our guiding light and this loss is profound.”
The retention of talent is typically a primary metric by which those in management are judged. And during Kennedy’s time at DHS, retention is best used as a word for delivering a punchline. Susan Monarez was also CDC Director for a mere three weeks, or two-and-a-half Scaramuccis, before being fired by Kennedy, reportedly over her refusal to rubber stamp Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer nonsense.
Whatever you think of RFK Jr., even if you’re a huge fan, this draining of talent over his management style and his anti-scientific bullshit is having a deleterious effect on American health. And that’s sort of the opposite of what a Secretary of HHS should be hoping to achieve.
This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune and the Texas Newsroom and co-published with ProPublica. Republished under the Texas Tribune’s republish feature.
Months after fighting to keep secret the emails exchanged between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s companies, state officials released nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom.
The records, however, reveal little about the two men’s relationship or Musk’s influence over state government. In fact, all but about 200 of the pages are entirely blacked out.
Of those that were readable, many were either already public or provided minimal information. They included old incorporation records for Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, a couple of agendas for the governor’s committee on aerospace and aviation, emails regarding a state grant awarded to SpaceX and an application from a then-Musk employee to sit on a state commission.
One is an invitation to happy hour. Another is a reminder of the next SpaceX launch.
The documents were provided in response to a public records request by The Texas Newsroom, which asked Abbott’s office for communications with Musk and the businessman’s employees dating back to last fall. Abbott’s and Musk’s lawyers fought their release, arguing they would reveal trade secrets, potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges or confidential legal and policymaking discussions.
Abbott’s spokesperson, Andrew Mahaleris, said the governor’s office “rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and releases any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure.”
Open government experts say the limited disclosure is emblematic of a larger transparency problem in Texas. They pointed to a 2015 state Supreme Court decision that allowed companies to oppose the release of records by arguing that they contain “competitively sensitive” information. The ruling, experts said, made it harder to obtain records documenting interactions between governments and private companies.
Tom Leatherbury, who directs the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, said companies took advantage of the ruling. Among the most prominent examples of the ruling’s effect on transparency was McAllen’s refusal to disclose how much money was spent to lure pop star Enrique Iglesias to the city for a concert. The city argued that such disclosures would hurt its ability to negotiate with artists for future performances. Eventually, it was revealed that Iglesias was paid nearly half a million dollars.
The problem has been exacerbated, Leatherbury added, by the fact that the Office of the Attorney General, which referees public records disputes, does not have the power to investigate whether the records that companies want to withhold actually contain trade secrets.
“Corporations are willing to assert that information is confidential, commercial information, and more governmental bodies are willing not to second-guess the company’s assertion,” Leatherbury said. (Leatherbury has performed pro bono legal work for The Texas Newsroom.)
Musk and his companies’ representatives did not respond to questions about the records.
As part of an effort to track Musk’s clout in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom on April 20 asked Abbott’s office for communications with employees from four of the businessman’s companies: SpaceX, car manufacturer Tesla, the social media site X and Neuralink, which specializes in brain nanotechnology.
The governor’s office said it would cost $244.64 to review the documents, which The Texas Newsroom paid. After the check was cashed, lawyers representing Abbott’s office and SpaceX each sought to keep the records secret.
SpaceX’s lawyer sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dated June 26, saying that publicly releasing the emails would hurt its competitive advantage.
Abbott’s public information coordinator, Matthew Taylor, also asked Paxton’s office for permission to withhold the documents, arguing they included private exchanges with lawyers, details about policymaking decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Taylor said some of the records were protected under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consisted of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public.”
Releasing the Musk emails, he said, would have a “chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”
Ultimately, Paxton’s office mostly sided with Abbott and Musk. In a Aug. 11 opinion, Assistant Attorney General Erin Groff wrote that many of the documents could be withheld. Groff, however, ordered the release of some records determined to be “either not highly intimate or embarrassing” or of “legitimate public interest.”
A month later, the governor’s office released 1,374 pages of records, the vast majority of which were completely redacted.
Some records included a note that appeared to explain why. A note on page 401, for example, cited the exemption for competitive bidding records for 974 redacted pages. Names and emails of Musk’s employees were also removed.
“The fact that a governmental body can redact more than 1,000 pages of documents that are directly related to a major business’s activities in Texas is certainly problematic,” said Reid Pillifant, an attorney specializing in public records and media law. (Pillifant has represented a coalition of media outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, in lawsuits seeking the release of public information related to the May 2022 mass shooting at an Uvalde elementary school.)
He and other experts said such hurdles are becoming more common as legislation and court decisions have weakened the state’s public records laws.
Four years after the 2015 Supreme Court decision, legislators passed a new law that was meant to ensure the release of basic information about government deals with private businesses. But open government experts said the law did not go far enough to restore transparency, adding that some local governments are still objecting to the release of contract information.
Moreover, lawmakers continue to add carve-outs to what qualifies as public information every legislative session. Just this year, for example, legislators added the following exceptions to public records and open meetings laws: information relating to how government entities detect and deter fraud and discussions during public government meetings about certain military and aerospace issues.
Even with the increasing challenges of accessing public records, Leatherbury and Pillifant were stumped by the governor’s decision to release thousands of pages only to black them out fully. Leatherbury said that the governor’s office may have wanted to show the volume of records responsive to the request.
“They wanted you to see what little you could get in the context of the entire document, even though that’s kind of meaningless,” he said.
The Texas Newsroom has asked the Office of the Attorney General to reconsider its decision and order the release of the Musk emails. There is little other recourse to challenge the outcome.
If a member of the public believes a government agency is violating the law, they can try to sue. But the experts noted that a recent Texas Supreme Court decision made it more difficult to enforce the public records law against the governor and other executive officers. Now, Leatherbury said, it’s not clear how challenging such a records decision would work.
“Every Texas citizen should care about access to these kinds of records because they shed light on how our public officials are making big decisions that affect the land where people live and how their taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Pillifant said.
Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT News in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.
Last week Netflix announced a $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, elbowing out rival acquisition bids (for now) by Comcast/NBC and Paramount/CBS. But the deal still needs regulatory approval from Trump, who has already stated several times that he’d prefer it if his bestie new owner of CBS, right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, comes away victorious.
“The tender offer is for $30 per share, all in cash, a contrast to Netflix’s offer, which is a $27.75 mix of cash and some stock, with shareholders also getting a stake in the linear TV spinout. Netflix is also only buying WBD’s streaming and studios business, while Paramount is pursuing the whole company, making for a complicated comparison, depending on how you value the linear TV business.”
Curiously omitted from Paramount’s press release is the fact that the $108 billion bid includes money from Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners, as well as funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. This is pretty clearly part of the Ellison family bid to dominate the entirety of U.S. media after their successful acquisition of CBS and Paramount.
If that’s not clear enough: one of the president’s top billionaire donors and son in law are working alongside Saudi Arabia and other foreign autocrats in a bid to dominate the shitty remnants of U.S. mainstream media. It sounds hyperbolic and alarmist when you say it out loud, but it’s no less true.
To be clear, any media consolidation, including a Netflix acquisition of Warner Brothers, is likely bad for the sector, consumers, and labor. The huge debt accumulated from these deals always involves a ton of layoffs, corner cutting, quality erosion, and price hikes as the remaining company tries to dig out from under the debt while still providing Wall Street its demand for impossible quarterly growth.
The correct antitrust play here, which wouldn’t happen under either U.S. political party (but is even less likely under Trump), is to put an end entirely to harmful, pointless consolidation to protect labor, consumers, and market competition, and to viciously protect independent, diverse media ownership.
But in a country too corrupt to engage with serious antitrust enforcement, of the three bidders for Warner Brothers, Netflix is likely the least bad option.
They’ve historically been the least lodged up the Trump administration’s colon (though that will change as they curry favor for regulatory approval), and their lack of as many redundant business units means there theoretically should be fewer layoffs.
Ellison ownership of CBS, CNN, HBO, Warner Brothers, Paramount, and a part of TikTok could prove to be significantly more problematic. And not just because of consolidation. The Trump administration and Ellison clearly want to build an authoritarian-friendly propaganda machine propped up by its infotainment arm. Think Fox News and Fox, but somehow worse and even less ethical.
They’re following the media domination playbook seen in other authoritarian-led countries like Hungary. Consolidate and acquire everything, and steadily replace already shaky journalism with gibberish and agitprop ahead of efforts to permanently retain power. The only upside here is that many of these zealots and nepobabies may not have the competency to pull it off.
The Netflix Warner Brothers bid includes a $5.8 billion breakup fee, suggesting that Netflix is likely to fight tooth and nail against any hostile takeover bids or any sort of strange, pro-Ellison shenanigans by the Trump administration and its Saudi allies (which as we noted last week, were going to be all but guaranteed in the months and weeks to come).
The hostile takeover bid guarantees months or years of legal fighting. But it also guarantees months of performative bullshit by Trump, Ellison, Kushner and right wing media about how Netflix ownership would be a woke antitrust nightmare, but letting the Saudis, Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David dominate U.S. media would be a delightful, populist spritzer.
Expect a lot of shitty establishment corporate journalism on this that normalizes and helps prop up the phony gambit by Ellison and Trump. And a lot of kayfabe from all of these authoritarian-enabling assholes, suddenly pretending they appreciate “robust regulatory scrutiny” and a “healthy debate on market impacts based on the merits,” despite having a violent disdain for both.
But if Netflix truly digs in and doubles down (again probably the best of a bunch of bad options), it’s a fight that could outlast an unhealthy Trump and his increasingly unpopular administration entirely.
You want to see actual government censorship in action? And have it done by people claiming they’re doing it to stop censorship? Check out last week’s revelation (originally reported by Reuters) that the US State Department will now start denying H-1B visas for anyone who has anything to do with trust & safety, fact checking, content moderation, or mis- or disinformation research. The government is now punishing people for speech—specifically, punishing them for the false belief that their work constitutes censorship.
The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be traveling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said.
It’s like JD Vance’s “the rules were you weren’t going to fact check me” taken to a new level.
This policy censors non-censors for not doing the thing that the White House and MAGA folks are actively doing every day. MAGA knows content moderation is necessary—they’re super eager to have it applied when it’s speech they don’t like. As we’ve recently discussed, they’ve suddenly been demanding social media companies stop foreign influence campaigns and remove anything mean about Charlie Kirk. At the same time, the White House itself is engaged in a twisted version of what it claims is fact checking and demanding that media orgs hire MAGA-friendly censors.
The hypocrisy is the point. But it’s also blatantly unconstitutional. As Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to this news:
People who study misinformation and work on content-moderation teams aren’t engaged in ‘censorship’— they’re engaged in activities that the First Amendment was designed to protect. This policy is incoherent and unconstitutional.
Incoherent and unconstitutional is being too kind.
The real work that trust & safety professionals do makes this policy even more perverse. As trust & safety expert (and occasional Ctrl-Alt-Speech guest host) Alice Hunsberger told (the recently defunded) NPR:
“Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it,” she said. “Bad actors that target Americans come from all over the world and it’s so important to have people who understand different languages and cultures on trust and safety teams — having global workers at tech companies in [trust and safety] absolutely keeps Americans safer.”
So the administration is now barring entry to people whose work includes stopping child sexual abuse material and protecting Americans from foreign bad actors—all while claiming to oppose censorship and demanding platforms remove content about Charlie Kirk. The only way this makes sense is if you understand what the actual principle at work is: we get to control all speech, and anyone who might interfere with that control must be punished.
There are no fundamental values at work here beyond “we have power, and we’re going to abuse it to silence anyone who stands in our way.”
Now that congressional members on both sides of the aisle have decided it might be worth taking a look at the Defense Department’s “murder people in boats” program, we’re finally learning more than the Trump administration has been willing to share about these extrajudicial killings.
The administration’s lawyers have cobbled together justifications for these actions — OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos that rely heavily on claims that trafficking drugs (whether or not those drugs ever end up in the United States) is the same thing as engaging in a conventional war against the US government and its citizens.
All that’s really happening is this: the US military is sinking boats in international waters it claims are loaded with drugs. That alone would be horrific enough, especially since drug interdiction processes have historically always involved the seizure of alleged drug boats and their occupants, not justified-after-the-fact drone strikes.
Most legal experts believe these actions are illegal. No court has ruled otherwise, which means Trump will keep doing them until (and, most likely, after) they’ve been found to be illegal.
One recent boat strike has not only undercut the Trump administration’s justifications for these attacks, but has exposed the ruling party as bloodthirsty thugs willing to cross the line into war crimes just because it can.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. military on Sept. 2 to kill all 11 people on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea because they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists who U.S. intelligence and military officials determined could be lethally targeted, the commander overseeing the operation told lawmakers in briefings this past week, according to two U.S. officials and one person familiar with the congressional briefings.
[…]
The detail that the 11 people on the boat were on an internal U.S. military target list has not previously been made public. It adds another dimension to the Sept. 2 operation that has been mired in controversy over the military’s decision to launch a second strike after the first left two survivors in the water.
It’s that last sentence that’s raising an issue here even Republican representatives are having difficulty defending. The recording of the September boat strike (which has yet to be released to the public) shows two survivors of the first strike clinging to the boat wreckage and waving their arms in hopes of being rescued.
The administration has made a couple of claims about what’s shown in this recording. First, it claims the survivors were waving to their compatriots, hoping to be rescued along with whatever drugs had survived the first strike. It also insists this “waving” is indicative of drug traffickers who wish to remain “in the fight.” In other words, the government is insisting any boat strike survivors who refuse to immediately die are only interested in delivering their drug payload, rather than simply being the byproduct of violent acts: the people who somehow manage to live through a government attack designed to kill them.
For nearly an hour, DoD personnel — including Admiral Bradley — discussed what to do with these impertinent “traffickers” who had somehow survived the initial strike. According to Bradley, he ordered a second strike. When that failed to sink the wreckage the survivors were clinging to, he ordered two more strikes, ceasing his attack only after the boat was sunk and both survivors were definitively dead.
The head of the Defense Department — Pete Hegseth — continues to claim he neither ordered the additional strikes, nor had any knowledge there had been survivors of the first strike. This simply cannot be true given his position and access to boat strike footage. Furthermore, both the administration and Hegseth himself released truncated recordings of this boat strike while bragging about their willingness to engage in extrajudicial killings in international waters.
There’s no reason to believe this boat strike program is legal. Pretty much everyone outside of the administration and Trump’s MAGA gravitational pull have stated as much. The administration itself is still struggling to generate legal rationale for these strikes. What it has produced so far is just as incoherent as its defense of this “double tap” attack that targeted shipwreck survivors, including its absurd claim that the less threatening these alleged traffickers appear to be, the more the administration is justified in killing them and removed the obligation for Trump to approach Congress to ask permission to continue the extrajudicial killings.
It is considered a war crime to kill shipwrecked people, which the Pentagon’s law of war manual defines as people “in need of assistance and care” who “must refrain from any hostile act.” Although most Republicans have signaled support for President Donald Trump’s broader military campaign in the Caribbean, the secondary strike on September 2 has drawn bipartisan scrutiny — including, most consequentially, a vow from the Senate Armed Services Committee to conduct oversight.
While the laws surrounding the executive branch deployment of military force have been significantly diluted since 2001 (the current Authorization of Use of Military Force [AUMF] is still in effect, 25 years later but was only supposed to be in response to terrorists connect to the 9/11 attacks), the administration can’t simply wave awayliteral war crimes by claiming people just trying to survive the sinking of their boat constituted a clear and present threat to the United States that demanded three additional US military strikes to ensure they were dead and their boat was completely destroyed.
And if you still think none of the above is persuasive, there’s also this fact: the boat hit by four military strikes wasn’t even headed towards the United States. It was headed to another South American country that usually serves as a transport point for drugs headed away from the US.
The alleged drug traffickers killed by the US military in a strike on September 2 were heading to link up with another, larger vessel that was bound for Suriname — a small South American country east of Venezuela – the admiral who oversaw the operation told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his remarks.
[…]
US drug enforcement officials say that trafficking routes via Suriname are primarily destined for European markets. US-bound drug trafficking routes have been concentrated on the Pacific Ocean in recent years.
It’s immediately apparent that this boat strike program has nothing to do with deterring trafficking and everything to do with the administration’s desire to destroy anything and anyone coming from countries south of our southern border. I mean, it’s already made it clear it won’t prosecute military troops or officials for engaging in illegal activities related to its boat strike program.
With that deterrent removed, the only constraint left is the consciences of those asked to carry out the administration’s orders. And anyone with a functional sense of right and wrong will find themselves out of a job during the next Trump administration purge cycle until there’s no one left to refuse to do Trump’s dirty work.
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