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Via Wired YouTube Channel: “Professor and authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about dictators and fascism. Why do people support dictators? How do dictators come to power? What’s the difference between a dictatorship, an autocracy, and authoritarianism? What are the most common personality traits found in tyrants and dictators? …
404 Media – Using the Freedom of Information Act, 404 Media has obtained several memos that government agencies were required to create by President Trump in order to comply with his “Defending Women” executive order. The memos explain exactly how different agencies are seeking to purge the notion that trans people exist. Many of the …
The New York Times unlocked: “The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” …
Science: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Friday told staff members it has canceled subscriptions carried by its National Agricultural Library as part of a drive by President Donald Trump’s administration to cut federal spending. The move appears to drop nearly 400 of the library’s roughly 2000 journals, including many prominent in various agricultural …
Big Think: A study of 323 uprisings against repressive regimes yields stunning insights. No democracy movement has ever failed when it was able to mobilize at least 3.5 percent of the population to protest over a sustained period At that scale, most soldiers have no desire to suppress protesters. Why? Because the crowd includes their …
Mother Jones, David Corn: “Now that he’s back in the White House—after his humiliating 2020 defeat—Trump has embarked on a revenge-a-thon that goes beyond what we might have expected even from a vengeance junkie. He has removed security protection from past aides who pissed him off—including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security …
Judd Legum: “Yesterday, we launched the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker. This new tool authoritatively demonstrated that Elon Musk had been grossly overstating the cuts implemented by DOGE. While Musk claimed that DOGE had made $105 billion in cuts, the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker revealed that just $8.6 billion of those cuts were verifiable. Within hours, …
National Security Archive: “Official email Monday night ordered classified and personnel files into burn bags Shredding party at the Reagan Building tries to erase history and accountability. Washington, D.C., March 12, 2025 – The acting executive secretary of the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday night [March 10, 2025] ordered the destruction of classified records …
ProPublica: “Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood, according to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, …
Christina Pagel – Diving into Data & Decision making: “The attacks on science and universities are neither random nor new. This isn’t chaos—it’s a deliberate war on science and academic freedom. In just six weeks, the Trump administration has slashed research budgets, purged health and scientific agencies, censored research, and threatened universities. Making a list …
Above the Law: “Last week, Perkins Coie was called out by the Trump administration for retribution. They were the subject of an executive order that purported to revoke security clearances for employees of the firm, called for the termination of government contracts with the firm, and called for a review of the DEI policies of Perkins Coie …
Trump administration puts US civic freedoms under severe threat – CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist: “The United States of America (USA) has been added to our Watchlist as the country faces increasing undue restrictions on civic freedoms under President Donald Trump’s second term. Gross abuses of executive power raise serious concerns over the freedoms of peaceful assembly, …
