- Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 8, 2025
Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made it clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to slash the federal government and to privatize its current services. …Bessent’s comments reveal that the White House is beginning to feel the pressure of the unpopularity of its policies. Trump’s rejection of 80 years of U.S. foreign policy in order to prop up Russia’s Vladimir Putin has left many Americans as well as allies aghast. Trump’s claims that Putin wants peace were belied when Russia launched massive strikes at Ukraine as soon as Trump stopped sharing intelligence with Ukrainian forces that enabled them to shoot down incoming fire.
The administration’s dramatic—and likely illegal and unconstitutional—cuts are infuriating Americans who did not expect Trump to reorder the American government so completely. While billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump repeatedly say they are cutting only “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the government, that insistence appears to be rhetorical rather than backed by fact. And yesterday, new cuts appeared to continue the gutting of government services that generally appear to be important to Americans’ health, safety, and economic security.
- The Red “X” of Arrogance: How Snopes and France 24 Got Lazy and Let a Pro-Russian Hack Rewrite History
- ‘Oh Freedom’
A Reason To Smile - The time for a spine
Democrats who censured Rep. Al Green are as clueless as they are feckless. - Don’t Sleep On These Protests As Americans Storm Tesla Showrooms
A sign of eroding support for Trump as people are protesting Tesla showrooms and peacefully marching in the streets and on the sidewalks in protests around the country. - Fired Trumpers Struggle with Cognitive Dissonance
Trump supporters fired by DOGE cope with the cognitive dissonance by claiming that they still support “efficiency” — but just, not like this. - The FAA’s Troubles Are More Serious Than You Know
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“The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” urged the email, sent to all federal workers.
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Initially, that included about 100 air-traffic controllers who replied to the email, threatening a crucial and already-understaffed component of the workforce. Interest in the offer among air-traffic controllers was alarming, agency officials told me, because an internal FAA safety report had found that staffing at the air-traffic-control tower at Reagan airport was “not normal” at the time of January’s deadly crash.
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As hundreds of career officials depart, the FAA has a fresh face in its midst: Ted Malaska, a SpaceX engineer who arrived at the agency last month with instructions from SpaceX’s owner, Elon Musk, to deploy equipment from the SpaceX subsidiary Starlink across the FAA’s communications network. The directive promises to make the nation’s air-traffic-control system dependent on the billionaire Trump ally, using equipment that experts say has not gone through strict U.S.-government security and risk-management review. - Oops, Scientists May Have Miscalculated Our Global Warming Timeline
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Regardless of the percentage, one thing is certain—climate change is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. In order to save the planet for future habitability, humans need to curtail emissions immediately—after all, the sea sponges are telling us so. - How Trump’s threats have changed everything about Canada’s politics
- “What if in the future the two nuclear powers decided to divide the world?”: how Charles de Gaulle justified a French nuclear plan independent of the US and the USSR 65 years ago
- On Columbia in the crosshairs
The world is complicated, and the following things can all be true:
ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University protests, his lawyer says - Chaos at the V.A.: Inside the DOGE Cuts Disrupting the Veterans Agency
Clinical trials have been delayed, contracts canceled and support staff fired. With deeper cuts coming, some are warning of potential harms to veterans. - The MAGA Culture War Comes for Georgetown Law
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Even a first-year law student knows that the federal government cannot dictate the viewpoint and curriculum of a private Christian school, yet here was a federal prosecutor opening an inquiry into a Jesuit school’s protected speech. - Trump Declines to Rule Out Recession as Tariffs Begin to Bite
President Trump said that Americans would be better off in the long run from his tariffs, which he said would prevent the country from being “ripped off.” - Top US health agency makes $25,000 buyout offer to most of its employees
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most of the 80,000 federal workers responsible for researching diseases, inspecting food and administering Medicare and Medicaid under the auspices of the Health and Human Services Department were emailed an offer to leave their job for as much as a $25,000 payment as part of President Donald Trump’s government cuts.