Kategorie: Englisch

  • Gallup’s latest approval polling was conducted from 1-14 April, during a period of market turbulence in response to Trump’s trade tariffs. But the reading of 44% does not indicate an immediate change to Trump’s polling, which has been stable during the first quarter of his second term. As with previous presidents, the latest polling was based on no fewer than 1,000 interviews.


    Title: Trump’s first 100 days – in numbers
    URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-17e9c07b-93f4-45b3-9558-7590b9eaf3ad
    Source: News
    Source URL:
    Date: April 29, 2025 at 07:02PM
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  • Three U.S. citizen children from two different families were deported with their mothers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the early hours of Friday morning. One of them is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer who was deported without medication or the ability to contact their doctors, the family’s lawyer said.


    Title: Three U.S. citizens, ages 2, 4 and 7, swiftly deported from Louisiana
    URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/26/us-citizen-children-deported-ice/
    Source: Washington Post – Politics
    Source URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com
    Date: April 27, 2025 at 12:10AM
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  • When it comes to the presidency, a consequential start does not in any way equate to long-term success.


    Title: Trump’s First 100 Days Are Paving His Path to Failure
    URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/opinion/trump-100-days-approval.html
    Source: NYT > Top Stories
    Source URL: https://nytimes.com
    Date: April 21, 2025 at 06:18PM
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  • Barack Obama urged Americans to resist President Donald Trump’s bullying. Joe Biden warned that Trump is wrecking the “sacred promise” of Social Security. Bill Clinton decried the emphasis on grievances and the need to dominate.

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    In an extraordinary stretch of just over two weeks, three former presidents have taken to the public stage to sound the alarm against the current occupant of the White House, despite the tradition that former presidents generally refrain from publicly criticizing their successors.


    Title: Three ex-presidents denounce the current one in a two-week stretch
    URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/19/trump-presidency-obama-biden-clinton/
    Source: Washington Post – Politics
    Source URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com
    Date: April 19, 2025 at 09:24PM
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  • Title: To Understand Global Migration, You Have to See It First
    URL: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/17/opinion/global-migration-facebook-data.html
    Source: Pinboard (popular bookmarks)
    Source URL: https://pinboard.in/popular/
    Date: April 19, 2025 at 09:11AM
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  • President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 10, 2025 in Washington, DC.

    Michael Roth, Wesleyan University’s first Jewish president, says the Trump administration is using antisemitism as a "cloak" to get universities to be loyal to the president.

    (Image credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)


    Title: Wesleyan University president says Trump’s antisemitism fight doesn’t protect Jews
    URL: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/17/nx-s1-5366667/trump-defunding-university-antisemitism-wesleyan
    Source: NPR Topics: Education
    Source URL: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1013
    Date: April 17, 2025 at 06:43PM
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  • Harvard University has refused to make changes in hiring, admissions and DEI programs.

    The government announced it is freezing more than $2.2 billion, hours after the university refused to make changes it said would "dictate what private universities can teach."

    (Image credit: Brian Snyder)


    Title: Trump administration freezes more than $2.2 billion after Harvard rejects its demands
    URL: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/14/nx-s1-5364829/trump-administration-freezes-funds-after-harvard-rejects-dei-demands
    Source: NPR Topics: Education
    Source URL: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1013
    Date: April 15, 2025 at 04:33AM
    Feedly Board(s): Schule

  • For a brief moment last week, Donald Trump acknowledged what everyone already knew — that the US government could bring Abrego Garcia home from the El Salvador torture facility known as CECOT, where he was wrongly sent in what the administration claims was an “administrative error.” But within days, Trump’s administration was back to mocking demands to secure Garcia’s return, refusing to take even basic steps while hiding behind twisted interpretations of both the Supreme Court’s ruling and constitutional authority.

    On Friday, we noted that the Supreme Court gave a ruling mostly in support of Garcia, saying that a US court can order the executive branch to “facilitate” a return of Garcia, but then playing word games to say that it can’t “effectuate” such a return, because that’s a matter of foreign policy between the US government and the foreign sovereign of El Salvador. That makes the order sound good, but leaves tons of loopholes, and the administration seems eager to exploit every loophole.

    This was even as Donald Trump initially said that if the Supreme Court said Garcia should be brought home, he should obviously be brought home:

    Trump: “If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court.”

    Reporter: “And the lower court as well…?”

    Trump: “Oh no, no. I’m not talking about the lower court. I have great respect for the Supreme Court.”

    That is, as Garcia’s lawyers quickly told the court, an admission that Trump knows he can and should bring Garcia back to the US.

    Yesterday, President Trump confirmed that the United States has the power to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from prison and return to the United States: “If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that. … I respect the Supreme Court.”1 Of course, that is precisely what the Supreme Court did when it ruled that this Court’s injunction “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” Noem et al. v. Abrego Garcia et al., 604 U.S. ____, 2025 WL 1077101, at *1 (Apr. 10, 2025). The Government should be required to comply with the Supreme Court’s order that it “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” by taking all available steps to release and return Abrego Garcia to Maryland.

    District Court judge Paula Xinis demanded answers from the government regarding Garcia’s whereabouts and what steps had been taken to get him back to the US. But, when the DOJ lawyer on the case said he couldn’t provide more details, the only consequence from the judge was demanding daily status reports with answers to three specific questions:

    (1) the current physical location and custodial status of Abrego Garcia;

    (2) what steps, if any, Defendants have taken to facilitate his immediate return to the United States;

    (3) what additional steps Defendants will take, and when, to facilitate his return

    The DOJ’s response to the court’s demands for information has made it quite clear they have no intention of complying with the judge’s demands and (more importantly) they’re not even interested in trying to bring Garcia back. The first status report merely confirmed Garcia’s location while attempting to wash the government’s hands of responsibility and even the authority to do anything:

    It is my understanding based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.

    The second status report managed to be even less helpful, answering none of the court’s questions while introducing new, unsubstantiated claims to justify the government’s inaction.

    Although Abrego-Garcia has an order of removal issued by an immigration judge, I understand that he should not have been removed to El Salvador because the immigration judge had also granted Abrego-Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador. However, I also understand that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization

    Again, the government itself has already admitted that Garcia was trafficked to El Salvador based on an administrative error. To come back now and try to claim it was legitimate to traffic him this way is beyond obnoxious.

    This, also, should be extremely troubling. No one has presented any evidence that Garcia is a member of MS-13. Indeed, the evidence mentioned in the past has been beyond flimsy (basically some other random dude just said Garcia was a member). The US government suggesting that it can just flat out ignore protection orders by declaring someone a member of a group with no due process is just more crazed fascist bullshit.

    Meanwhile, as for Trump’s claim that if the Supreme Court says Garcia should be brought back to the US (as it has), he sorta walked that back later in the weekend in the weirdest way possible, by talking about his planned meeting today with El Salvador’s ruthless authoritarian dictator Nayib Bukele… and then saying that the people the US has handed over to Bukele to shove in his concentration camp are under El Salvador’s “sole custody.”

    In case you can’t see the image, it’s a Trump Truth Social post saying:

    Looking forward to seeing President Bukele, of El Salvador, on Monday! Our Nations are working closely together to eradicate terrorist organizations, and build a future of Prosperity. President Bukele has graciously accepted into his Nation’s custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the World and, in particular, the United States. These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation, and their future is up to President B and his Government. They will never threaten or menace our Citizens again!

    Except, if we’re talking about Garcia, he wasn’t sent to El Salvador under the “alien enemies” act, but under a different authority. And we also know the claim of “sole custody” is bullshit for a variety of reasons (some we already discussed).

    More importantly, Trump’s claim about El Salvador having “sole custody” of Garcia is demonstrably false. The Associated Press has published snippets from the agreement between the US and El Salvador that show the US maintains significant control:

    “The Republic of El Salvador confirms it will house these individuals for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on their long term disposition,” wrote El Salvador’s ministry of foreign affairs in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

    That same report confirms that the US is paying El Salvador $20k per year to house each prisoner and has sent an initial $6 million with another $15 million likely to follow soon. If, as the agreement notes, the US gets to decide “their long term disposition” that certainly means the US can determine that El Salvador needs to send Abrego Garcia back.

    Furthermore, the fact that Trump and Bukele are meeting seems like the exact time when Trump — who again just days ago said we should bring Garcia back — can and should just straight up ask Bukele about sending Garcia back. And any political reporter who is in the room is committing journalistic malpractice if they don’t ask Bukele and Trump about this.

    But it seems unlikely to happen. In another filing in the district court, the Justice Department put forth the argument that the court simply can’t order the Executive Branch to ask El Salvador to send Garcia back, because that’s “foreign policy” and the exclusive purview of the Executive:

    Defendants understand “facilitate” to mean what that term has long meant in the immigration context, namely actions allowing an alien to enter the United States. Taking “all available steps to facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia is thus best read as taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here. Indeed, no other reading of “facilitate” is tenable—or constitutional—here.

    This reading follows directly from the Supreme Court’s order. Order, at 2 (holding any “directive” must give “due regard” to the Executive Branch’s exclusive authorities over “foreign affairs”). It tracks longstanding executive practice. Id. at 4 (Statement of Sotomayor, J.) (describing ICE Policy Directive as the “well-established policy” of the United States). And it comports with how the federal courts have understood the outer bounds of their own power. See Reply in Support of Application to Vacate the Injunction, at 5-7 (Sup. Ct.) (No. 24A949) (collecting authorities).

    On the flipside, reading “facilitate” as requiring something more than domestic measures would not only flout the Supreme Court’s order, but also violate the separation of powers. The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner. That is the “exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.” United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 320 (1936). Such power is “conclusive and preclusive,” and beyond the reach of the federal courts’ equitable authority. Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 607 (2024).

    Plaintiffs’ additional relief runs headlong through this constitutional limit.

    The DOJ’s sudden concern for constitutional limits would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical. This is the same administration that has repeatedly trampled constitutional rights — from due process to equal protection — in its broader campaign of human trafficking. Now, when asked to help correct its own admitted “administrative error,” it discovers a passionate devotion to separation of powers?

    But even setting aside this rank hypocrisy, the DOJ’s argument completely misrepresents what the Supreme Court actually said. The Court’s order was crystal clear:

    The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador

    The emphasis on Garcia’s “release from custody in El Salvador” makes it impossible to pretend this was just about domestic procedures. The Court clearly expected the US government to take meaningful action to secure Garcia’s freedom.

    But step back from the legal parsing for a moment and consider what the DOJ is really saying here: Even with clear authority under the US-El Salvador agreement, even with millions of dollars in leverage, even after admitting Garcia was wrongly sent there, they are deliberately choosing to leave him in a torture camp rather than simply ask for his return.

    This has nothing to do with ordering El Salvador to do anything or to infringe upon their sovereignty. It is telling the US to take actions which are well within its power and control, to ask El Salvador to send him back, which seems well within the agreement the two countries signed.

    But, even as Trump has said that’s what should happen, now the Trump admin is saying it won’t even ask El Salvador to do this.

    This is pure evil. It made a mistake, human trafficking someone who was legally protected, to a torture concentration camp in another country with no due process. And when asked to correct that admitted mistake, the US government is saying “we won’t even ask” even though it’s clear that they could get him back.

    That is sociopathic behavior.

    As for the courts, Judge Xinis needs to stop accepting these paper-thin status reports and start demanding that officials with actual knowledge appear in her court immediately. The administration’s continued obstruction makes a mockery of judicial authority.

    And when this case inevitably returns to the Supreme Court, as it must, Chief Justice Roberts will face a stark choice about his legacy. He can continue treating this as just another technical legal dispute about executive authority, or he can recognize the horrifying historical parallel unfolding before him: while Nazi Germany deliberately placed its concentration camps outside judicial review, Roberts risks going even further — using the power of judicial review itself to legitimize America’s own offshore torture camps.

    The Chief Justice has always been acutely conscious of his place in history. He should consider that his legacy may well be remembered as the jurist who gave constitutional blessing to concentration camps used by the American government to disappear anyone they dislike. No amount of careful legal parsing can obscure that devastating truth.


    Title: Trump Admits US Can Get Abrego Garcia Back From Torture Camp He Was Accidentally Sent To; But DOJ Makes Clear It Won’t Even Ask
    URL: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/14/trump-admits-us-can-get-abrego-garcia-back-from-torture-camp-he-was-accidentally-sent-to-but-doj-makes-clear-it-wont-even-ask/
    Source: Techdirt
    Source URL: https://www.techdirt.com
    Date: April 14, 2025 at 06:34PM
    Feedly Board(s): Englisch

  • For the first weeks of the new administration, it was possible to believe, whatever anyone thought of the specific initiatives and actions, that President Donald Trump and his team had a plan of action with specific goals in mind and the discipline to implement it. So much for that.

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    As Trump nears the 100-day marker of his second term in office, his opening months have been rife with mistakes, overreach and the hubris that goes with a team that interprets a slender popular vote victory as a sweeping mandate.


    Title: Trump is pursuing a radical agenda. Does he have a strategy, or is he winging it?
    URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/13/trump-policies-tariffs-doge/
    Source: Washington Post – Politics
    Source URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com
    Date: April 13, 2025 at 11:08AM
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  • We’re all having to master a vocabulary that was once the preserve of specialists. Now everyone needs to know their tariffs from their treasuries, their levies from their yields. But there’s one more term from the realm of economics that urgently needs to enter our lexicon. Given what Donald Trump is doing to the world economy – and the world – we need to talk about opportunity cost.

    Put simply, opportunity cost is the value of opportunity lost. It’s the benefit you could have had if you had chosen a different path. For an economist, the opportunity cost of the Mars bar you bought is the Twix you didn’t.

    But the principle extends beyond money. It applies to time, too. The hour you spent scrolling on your phone cost you the hour you could have had walking in the park. It can apply to anything, including our energy and attention.

    Enter Trump. For weeks, the resources of governments and businesses around the world have been focused squarely on the White House and its whipsawing, on-again-off-again series of tariffs imposed on enemies and friends alike.

    Last week, it was Trump as gameshow host in the White House Rose Garden, proudly unveiling his Price is Right table of import duties, listing each country alongside the percentage by which it was about to get whacked. He called it “liberation day”. This week, it was the 90-day “pause” – climbdown would be another word – for everywhere except China, which got hit with extra levies. Throughout, people in every ministry and trading floor on the planet held their breath, along with the boardroom of every company that buys or sells overseas, as they watched to see what Trump would do next to the global economy currently held hostage in the Oval Office. With a gun to the temple of the world trading system, Trump’s every twitch has commanded humanity’s attention.

    And, my, how he loves it. You could see his pleasure as he told a Republican dinner on Tuesday that the world’s nations were “kissing my ass” to negotiate a deal that would spare them tariff pain. For him, the uncertainty is all part of the fun. As the Economist rightly observed, he relishes “being the focus of a planetary guessing game”. Trump used to get his dopamine hit from a mention in the gossip columns of the New York tabloids; now he’s tasted the thrill of commanding an audience in the billions and he’s hooked.

    But consider the price we are all paying. I don’t (only) mean those trillions of dollars wiped out at a stroke through tumbling stocks, or even the investments put on hold as businesses decide that, amid all this uncertainty, now is not the right time to open that new factory or launch that new product, thereby delaying, perhaps for ever, the jobs or wages that would have found their way to people who need them.

    I mean instead the opportunity cost: the action the world could be taking if it were not forced to monitor, adjust to and accommodate the whims of one man, whose ideas on economics were formed five decades ago and were wrong even then.

    Right now, all the capacity governments have is devoted either to saving or replacing a global trading system that was, however imperfectly, functioning. Huge intellectual and political energy is, and will be, dedicated to ensuring that national economies can survive now that that system has been upended and a previously indispensable trading partner has gone off the rails.

    There are already some strong ideas. Gordon Brown has called for an “economic coalition of the willing” that would mobilise the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to protect the poorest nations and coordinate action on both interest rates and credit for companies in trouble. That approach fits with the suggestion that the likes of Japan, Canada, South Korea and Australia join forces with Britain and the EU to form a free trade alliance minus the US.

    I would embrace both those developments. But just think where all that collective energy could be going if it were not having to confront a crisis started so needlessly by Trump. Those same powers would be free to act together to tackle the climate emergency, to name the most obvious example. Europe has just experienced its warmest ever March, 1.6C hotter than pre-industrial levels, while figures released this week show that Arctic sea ice reached its lowest extent for March since satellite records began.

    Naturally, no one expects Donald “Drill, baby, drill” Trump to care about that, not when he actively wants to see the world burning more, not fewer, fossil fuels. But much of the rest of the world does care about the climate crisis. Of course, it would be naive to imagine that, absent Trump, they would be devoting every waking hour to reducing carbon emissions. But what little capacity the international system has for collective action has been gobbled up by a crisis that was not born of natural disaster or pandemic, but the caprice and vanity of one man.

    Witness the plight of Sudan. Figures are hard to come by, but a monitoring lab at Yale puts the number of dead in the civil war that has raged there since 2023 as high as 150,000, with the UN accusing both sides of “harrowing” crimes, including mass rape and torture. International action is essential. Instead, say campaigners, there’s been a “loss of leadership, coordination and money”, traceable to the day Trump took office.

    Part of that is down to Elon Musk’s dismantling of the lead US aid agency, but part of it is other governments having their hands full managing the Trump hurricane. As Kate Ferguson of Protection Approaches told me, the gutting of USAid and “the anxiety triggered by tariffs” mean US funding to on-the-ground emergency response rooms – health clinics and the like – has collapsed, “and other states are hesitant to fill the gap”. Next week there’s a chance to put that right, as foreign ministers gather in London on Tuesday to discuss Sudan. But it’s hard to be hopeful. David Lammy won early plaudits for highlighting the bloodshed in Sudan, but in recent weeks, the foreign secretary’s focus has necessarily been elsewhere. You can say the same of Gaza or Ukraine, forced down the list of international priorities by a trade war that did not have to happen.

    This is how it is. Political bandwidth is limited. I’ve been told often that governments can handle only one crisis at a time, two at most. Now a huge chunk of that capacity has had to be diverted to dealing with something that decision-makers could previously take for granted: relations with the US and the functioning of the global trade system. Currently, both are in a state of permanent crisis. Britons have seen this movie before, when Brexit consumed several years of political and policymaking energy, and the entire apparatus of the UK state was forced to deal with an issue that never needed to arise, energy that could have gone on real problems that desperately needed solving.

    To repeat, Trump will lose no sleep over any of this. He likes the thought that his foes – and even his allies are foes – will be snarled up, trying to untangle knots he’s created: it’s a tactic he’s used since the 1970s, when he liked to tie up opponents in lawsuits. He loves tariffs especially, because they give him the power to exempt countries or even individual companies he favours – those who “kiss his ass” – in a system that all but invites bribery and corruption. He loves these games. But they cost everyone else dear – until, that is, the rest of the world decides to stop playing.


    Title: What’s the true cost of Donald Trump? All the crises around the world that we’ve no time to fix | Jonathan Freedland
    URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/11/true-cost-donald-trump-crises-us-president
    Source: Business | The Guardian
    Source URL: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/business
    Date: April 12, 2025 at 12:18AM
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  • Trump is seeking to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop his administration from imprisoning anyone it wants, anywhere in the world.


    Title: Trump’s Gulag Archipelago
    URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/opinion/trump-deportations-gulag-prison.html
    Source: NYT > Most Popular
    Source URL: https://www.nytimes.com
    Date: April 9, 2025 at 02:48PM
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  • David Remnick, in a fine short piece for The New Yorker on Signalgate:

    This is an Administration that does not have to slip on a Signal
    banana peel to reveal its deepest-held prejudices and its painful
    incapacities. You get the sense that we would learn little if we
    were privy to a twenty-four-hour-a-day live stream of its every
    private utterance. Part of what was so appalling about Trump and
    Vance’s recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky was not
    just their penchant for channelling the world view and negotiating
    points of Vladimir Putin but their comfort in expressing
    them, barking them, at the Ukrainian President in front
    of reporters in the Oval Office.

    Stupidity and ignorance as a governing style. That’s it. They are exactly who they claim they are, and in private speak how they do in public. There is no secret plan.

    These idiots do not believe polluting the atmosphere with carbon emissions has caused calamitous damage to our climate, despite the fact that experts, decades ago, almost universally predicted it would. Few issues in science had as much expert consensus.

    These idiots think vaccines — one of the great breakthroughs in the history of science and medicine — are a bigger health risk than the diseases they immunize against. Now there are unvaccinated American kids dying from measles, a disease that was effectively wiped out in the modern world by the time I was born.

    These idiots think the universe is 4,000 years old.

    Now they’re bringing the same sort of idiocy, unbound by critical thinking, history, or anything recognized as economic expertise, to trade policy.

    Link: newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/07/the-greater-scandal-of…


    Title: The Spectacle of Incompetence
    URL: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/07/the-greater-scandal-of-signalgate
    Source: Daring Fireball
    Source URL: https://daringfireball.net/
    Date: April 7, 2025 at 12:26AM
    Feedly Board(s): Schule

  • This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write by Taffy Brodesser-Akner defies easy explanation but is very much worth reading. “Does a life have to be meaningful? Can’t it just be a life?”


    Title: This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write by Taffy…
    URL: https://kottke.org/25/04/0046582-this-is-the-holocaust-sto
    Source: kottke.org
    Source URL: https://kottke.org/
    Date: April 6, 2025 at 10:33PM
    Feedly Board(s): Englisch

  • Hundreds of thousands of people signed up to attend over 1,300 “Hands Off!” protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk yesterday. Today, estimates from groups involved in planning the protests suggest the protesters in the US and abroad may have actually numbered in the millions.

    Activist group MoveOn is “estimating millions of attendees” went to the 1,300-plus scheduled events, with more than 100,000 turning out for the Washington, DC protest, Britt Jacovich, the group’s communications director, told The Verge via email. A press release published on the official Hands Off! website yesterday tells the same story:

    Millions of people flooded the streets today at over 1,300 “Hands Off!” peaceful protests across all 50 states, U.S. territories, and a dozen locations globally, demanding an end to the authoritarian overreach by Trump and Musk.

    The protests were laser-focused on Musk and Trump, but the concerns that drove yesterday’s demonstrations are wide-ranging, covering everything from Trump’s trade war and DOGE’s relentless federal agency cuts and layoffs, to LGBTQ+ and other civil rights issues, to the war in Ukraine. More than 150 groups participated in their organization, including those mentioned in this story, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, and labor unions like the AFL-CIO and those representing federal workers, such as the National Treasury Employees Union.

    Indivisible, another of the more than 150 organizations involved in planning the protests, gives a similar estimate to MoveOn’s in a statement reported by Common Dreams, in which it says that “at virtually every single event the crowds eclipsed our estimates.” From Common Dreams:

    “This is the largest day of protest since Trump retook office,” the group added. “And in many small towns and cities, activists are reporting the biggest protests their communities have ever seen as everyday people send a clear, unmistakable message to Trump and Musk: Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy.”

    Other reported estimates from yesterday are smaller. The Guardian, The Hill, and Al Jazeera each put the number in the hundreds of thousands. Even so, millions doesn’t seem implausible. According to Axios, over 45,000 people gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the outlet reports more than 100,000 people demonstrated both in Washington, DC and New York City. Organizers say more than 30,000 showed up in Chicago, writes WBEZ Chicago.

    We’re building a #PeoplesMovement. Today, over 3 million people across the country stood up to say HANDS OFF our democracy.
And history shows that when just 3.5% of the population engages in sustained, peaceful resistance—transformative change is inevitable.#50501movement #HandsOff #April5

    50501: The People’s Movement (@50501movement.bsky.social) 2025-04-06T00:00:04.412Z

    One of the most specific numbers reported so far comes from the social media accounts of 50501, one of the most prominent protest movements that have sprung up in the wake of Musk’s actions as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The group posted late yesterday that “over 3 million people across the country stood up to say HANDS OFF our democracy.”


    Title: ‘Millions’ may have protested Trump and Musk yesterday
    URL: https://www.theverge.com/news/644237/millions-protested-hands-off-estimates-trump-musk-doge
    Source: The Verge – All Posts
    Source URL: https://www.theverge.com
    Date: April 6, 2025 at 05:29PM
    Feedly Board(s): Technologie

  • protesters hold signs, including a large 'Hands Off!' sign

    protesters hold signs, including a large 'get out of my uterus' sign

    protesters holding signs marching down the street in NYC

    On Saturday, millions of Americans flooded the streets of cities, small towns, and every other sized municipality in the nation to protest the illegal and damaging actions of the Trump regime. These photos published by a number of media outlets show the scale, enthusiasm, and creativity of these peaceful protests, in the US and around the world.

    Tags: 2025 Coup · Donald Trump · Elon Musk · photography · politics · USA


    Title: Photos of the Hands Off! Protests
    URL: https://kottke.org/25/04/photos-of-the-hands-off-protests
    Source: kottke.org
    Source URL: https://kottke.org/
    Date: April 6, 2025 at 08:31PM
    Feedly Board(s): Englisch

  • Law firms and universities do not need to capitulate. Here’s how they can fight back.


    Title: A Playbook for Law Firms and Colleges to Stand Up to President Trump
    URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/06/opinion/trump-law-firms-universities.html
    Source: NYT > Opinion > Editorials
    Source URL: https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/editorials
    Date: April 6, 2025 at 07:12AM
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  • President Trump has upended the international order to promote his “America First” agenda. He has thrown countries and their leaders around the world off balance with his radical departure from decades-old United States foreign policy. With so many changes going in different and sometimes seemingly opposing directions, Jamie Coomarasamy tries to get behind what’s driving the President’s agenda, and looks at how the world is adjusting to a new reality.


    Title: Donald Trump’s new world order
    URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0l2k0n9
    Source: The Documentary Podcast
    Source URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nq0lx
    Date: April 6, 2025 at 02:33AM
    Feedly Board(s): Englisch

  • As the Trump administration threatens universities, the former president suggested schools shouldn’t be intimidated. But he also offered a critique of campus culture, saying it had too often shut out opposing voices.


    Title: Obama Calls for Universities to Stand Up to Trump Administration Threats
    URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/obama-trump-college-speech.html
    Source: NYT > Top Stories
    Source URL: https://nytimes.com
    Date: April 5, 2025 at 01:57AM
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  • Die Universitäten, denen die Regierung etwa wegen ihrer Diversitätsprogramme Mittel entzieht, sollten ihre Stiftungsgelder einsetzen oder Kosten einsparen, statt vor Trumps Forderungen zu kapitulieren. Obama sagte, er sei auch besorgt, dass die Regierung Universitäten bedrohe, die ihre Studenten nicht aufgeben wollten, die ihr Recht auf Redefreiheit wahrnehmen würden.

    Die ehemalige Vizepräsidentin und demokratische Präsidentschaftskandidatin Kamala Harris äußerte sich ebenfalls erstmals seit längerer Zeit zur Regierung. In einer Rede vor Frauen  sagte sie, sie sei sich bewusst, dass Trumps Rückkehr ins Oval Office »ein großes Gefühl der Angst« ausgelöst habe. Sie rief zu Mut auf. Es habe viele Dinge gegeben, von denen die Menschen gewusst hätten, dass sie passieren würden, sagte Harris. »Ich bin nicht hier, um euch zu sagen, dass ich es gesagt habe«, sagte sie lachend.


    Title: Barack Obama ruft Amerikaner zu mehr Widerstand gegen Donald Trump auf
    URL: https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/barack-obama-ruft-amerikaner-zu-mehr-widerstand-gegen-donald-trump-auf-a-5ddf7f3e-fed2-44bb-b8bb-b81bf0722fc7
    Source: DER SPIEGEL
    Source URL:
    Date: April 5, 2025 at 02:29AM
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  • Trump’s speech announcing a huge increase in tariffs on American trading partners was riddled with falsehoods and misleading statements on trade that he has made for years. But now they are determining policy that will increase the costs of goods for many Americans. Here’s a quick sampling, in the order in which he made them. We’re sure we missed some — and some claims still require more checking.


    Title: The false things Trump said about tariffs during his announcement
    URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/03/trump-tariffs-falsehoods-fact-checker/
    Source: Washington Post – Politics
    Source URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com
    Date: April 3, 2025 at 12:08PM
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  • Ultra-tall high-rises against dark skies. A huge distance between the rich and the poor. Robber barons at the helm of large-scale industrial operations that turn man into machine. Machines that have become intelligent enough to displace man. These have all been standard elements of dystopian visions so long that few of us could manage to imagine a grim future without including at least a couple of them. We’ve all seen these elements used before, and they owe much of their staying power to the impact they first made in Fritz Lang’s cinematic spectacle Metropolis, which premiered 98 years ago. Many imitations have since passed through popular culture, most of which haven’t mastered the techniques that gave the original its power.

    “Set in a futuristic urban dystopia, the film portrays a divided society where the wealthy elite live in luxurious skyscrapers while the oppressed working class toil underground,” writes Pruethicheth Lert-udompruksa at the IAAC blog. “The film explores themes of class struggle, social inequality, and the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.”

    One of those theme’s strongest icons is the Tower of Babel, a looming skyscraper that “symbolizes the stark division between the privileged and the oppressed.” As Paul Batters writes at the Silver Screen Classics blog, “like the ziggurats of Ur, the pyramids and temples of Egypt,” that building and other elements realized by the film’s groundbreaking visual design add up to a titular “city that dominates humanity.”

    The loss of humanity is the prime concern of the Junkies video essay at the top of the post, which explains several ways Lang and his collaborators convey that phenomenon through light, shadow, and perspective — light, shadow, and perspective being the main tools available to a black-and-white silent film. The One Hundred Years of Cinema video essay just above covers more such aspects of the picture’s construction, as well as its historical context: “In nineteen-twenties Europe, a radical form of nationalism called fascism was coming to prominence, and six years after the film’s release, Lang found himself exiled to America for his refusal to join the Nazi party.”

    For quite some time, the versions of Metropolis that people could see were censored or otherwise incomplete cuts; only in 2008 did it undergo a complete restoration. But now, it’s easier than ever to see that its “winning combination of camera shots and angles, lighting contrasts, and shot composition really do well to depict humanity as becoming subservient to technology. And so, perhaps today, more so than in 1927, it is easier to read the message that Lang is trying to portray through the cinematic devices he employs.” Watching the impoverished workers of Metropolis become part of the machine they work for, while its idle rich “become part of the machine by submission [to] pleasure,” we might reflect upon the astuteness of the choice to set the film’s story in the year 2026.

    Related content:

    Fritz Lang First Depicted Artificial Intelligence on Film in Metropolis (1927), and It Frightened People Even Then

    Watch Metropolis’ Cinematically Innovative Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intended It to Be Seen (1927)

    Behold Beautiful Original Movie Posters for Metropolis from France, Sweden, Germany, Japan & Beyond

    Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metropolis (1927)

    Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

    Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.


    Title: In 1927, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home
    URL: https://www.openculture.com/2025/04/fritz-langs-metropolis-created-a-dystopian-vision-of-what-the-world-would-look-like.html
    Source: Open Culture
    Source URL: https://www.openculture.com/
    Date: April 2, 2025 at 12:20PM
    Feedly Board(s): Schule

  • Amid outrage over sharing military details, we’re forgetting to scrutinize why the US is bombing Yemen in the first place

    The revelation that top members of Donald Trump’s administration disclosed top-secret US military plans against the Houthi militia in Yemen in a private group chat that included a prominent journalist has generated predictable outrage in Washington. Democrats are calling for a congressional investigation and the resignation of some of the officials involved in the breach, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

    In an article published on Monday, the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, outlined how he was able to follow the conversation among members of Trump’s cabinet over two days leading up to a series of US airstrikes on 15 March. But in the widespread outrage over the sharing of military information on a Signal chat, one essential question is getting lost: why is Trump bombing Yemen in the first place? Five consecutive US presidents and administrations (George W Bush, Barack Obama, the first Trump administration, Joe Biden and the second Trump administration) have ordered military attacks on Yemen, which is the poorest country in the Middle East.

    Continue reading…


    Title: The Trump team group chat news is obscuring an essential question | Mohamad Bazzi
    URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/28/trump-cabinet-military-signal-chat-yemen
    Source: Opinion | The Guardian
    Source URL: https://www.theguardian.com/us/commentisfree
    Date: March 27, 2025 at 03:22PM
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  • Josh Marshal, writing at Talking Points Memo:

    Especially in the national security domain, many things the
    government does have to remain secret. Sometimes those things
    remain secret for years or decades. But they’re not secrets from
    the U.S. government. The U.S. government owns all those
    communications, all those facts of its own history. Using a Signal
    app like this is hiding what’s happening from the government
    itself. And that is almost certainly not an unintended byproduct
    but the very reason for the use. These are disappearing
    communications. They won’t be in the National Archives. Future
    administrations won’t know what happened. There also won’t be any
    records to determine whether crimes were committed.

    This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able
    to accept: that the U.S. government is the property of the
    American people and it persists over time with individual
    officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with
    administering an entity they don’t own or possess.

    Think this is hyperbole? Remember that when Trump held his
    notorious meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2019 he
    confiscated his translator’s notes and ordered him not to divulge
    anything that had been discussed. Remember that Trump got
    impeached over an extortion plot recorded in the government record
    of his phone call with President Zelensky. An intelligence analyst
    discovered what had happened and decided he needed to report the
    conduct. These aren’t hypotheticals. They’ve already happened. And
    he’s even been caught. Which is probably one reason there’s so
    much use of Signal.


    Title: OPSEC Isn’t Even the Worst Part of ‘SignalGate’
    URL: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/signalgate-is-bad-but-opsec-isnt-even-the-worst-part-of-it
    Source: Daring Fireball
    Source URL: https://daringfireball.net/
    Date: March 25, 2025 at 09:40PM
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  • Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic (News+ link):

    The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15
    that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

    I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that
    the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete
    Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at
    11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons
    packages, targets, and timing.

    This is going to require some explaining. […]

    The notion of a journalist being accidentally included in a war-planning group of national security leaders — and the very notion that U.S. national security leaders would use Signal to conduct such a group, using their personal phones — is so preposterous that Goldberg had assumed the group was a hoax, with the intention of embarrassing him. But it was real.

    Earlier today, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his
    Signal account. I also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe,
    Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some
    of my questions: Is the “Houthi PC small group” a genuine Signal
    thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on
    the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I
    was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I
    removed myself from the group? Do senior Trump-administration
    officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? Do the
    officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger
    American personnel?

    I’ll add: Do they sniff glue and eat paste?

    There’s so much chaos at the moment resulting from the Trump administration’s actions during these first two months that it’s easy to overlook one salient fact: Trump has chosen to surround himself with idiots.

    Link: theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump…


    Title: The Trump Administration Accidentally Included Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor of The Atlantic, in a Signal Group Chat That Revealed War Plans for Yemen
    URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/
    Source: Daring Fireball
    Source URL: https://daringfireball.net/
    Date: March 24, 2025 at 07:19PM
    Feedly Board(s): Schule

  • Six Voice of America journalists — including the outlet’s former White House bureau chief — sued members of the Trump administration Friday, accusing officials of unlawfully shuttering a federally funded media outlet that has delivered news coverage to millions across the globe since its founding during World War II.


    Title: Voice of America journalists sue Trump officials for dismantling the outlet
    URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/22/voice-america-lawsuit-trump-kari-lake/
    Source: Washington Post – Politics
    Source URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com
    Date: March 22, 2025 at 11:47PM
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