I'm just back from a surprisingly large Hands Off! protest in Lisle, Illinois, organized around the Tesla dealership and stretching block after block after block. I felt just a little bit bad for the transport truck driver who had to deliver the Tesla cars to the dealership right then. There were only two cars on the truck. Must not be moving them off the lot very fast.
No pictures. But here are some from elsewhere...
Perhaps that's what the worm is telling him.How did a man who admitted he has brain damage from a worm and who has spent decades spreading deadly disinformation about the efficacy of modern medicine become the head of our nation’s health services?
RFK Jr. has done what we all knew he would do. On Tuesday, mass layoffs gutted HHS, threatening everything from the CDC to the FDA to programs like Meals on Wheels.
These are moves that will make Americans less safe and healthy. Our food will be more dangerous. Diseases we might have cured in the not-so-distant future will go under-researched for years. Loved ones will get sick and die. And medicine that should have been available will be stuck in an understaffed and underfunded regulatory pipeline.
Before this, he had already driven out some of HHS’s top scientists, who have warned about the damage his views on healthcare and medical research will do. Under his watch, measles has killed two Americans, and numerous children have been diagnosed with Vitamin A toxicity after their parents followed Kennedy’s recommendation that it be used as a treatment.
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He has argued that SSRIs, taken for depression and other mood disorders, are addictive and has suggested they’re responsible for mass shooting events in the U.S. He offers dangerous dietary advice and has expressed doubts over whether HIV leads to AIDS. Perhaps most bizarrely, he believes Wi-Fi is a source of toxicity, telling Joe Rogan: “Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier and so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain.”
Liberal Currents
Exactly. It's insane. HE's insane. MAGA is insane. The GOP is insane.And it’s here I want to turn to Nazi science. This is not as abrupt a transition as it might seem. Part of the madness of the Nazi regime was the imposition of their deranged and deadly scientific approaches on the whole population.
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Just as paranoia and irrationality now dominate America’s health science decisions, our economy is running not on rational self-interest but a kind of psychosis.
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We are now in the stage of Trumpism where economic decline and the loss of personal financial security are worthy sacrifices in the name of Donald’s grand, incoherent, vision.
The markets, however, have finally reacted with some genuine alarm to Trump’s sweeping protectionist agenda. The DOW dropped over 1,600 points in the twenty-four hours after Trump’s announcement. The NASDAQ has seen its biggest loss since the pandemic. CEOs and business [analysts] are pulling their hair out.
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The United States is self-immolating on the world stage, and it is doing so by destroying both its private and public sectors. [...] We are bleeding out from Washington, D.C. to rural Iowa.
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What is happening is that our reality is being remade before us in the image of an irrational, chaotic, despotic, and unscientific worldview.
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MAGA is a project of delusion, both personal and political, and it has absolutely unmoored American society.
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[W]e are now seeing sexual, ethnic, and religious minorities portrayed as degenerate by MAGA. So, too, is anyone who speaks up for the rights of such people or opposes Trump’s agenda.
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This is how you get a Minnesota legislator introducing a bill to define “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness. And because projection is a running theme of this essay, that legislator, Justin Eichorn, was arrested in mid-March for soliciting a minor.
That last detail should be shocking, but lately such news is all too common. We aren’t only witnessing an unspooling of our institutions and public decision making. We seem beset by a kind of generalized moral insanity—only its locus is the GOP.
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Too many assessments of this moment still underestimate the danger. And far too many commentators spent the preceding years tut-tutting those of us who dared to call Trump’s movement fascism, or who suggested he would run and win again, or who say now that he really is considering forcibly annexing another country.
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Will Trump attempt to have a third term in office as he has repeatedly stated he wants to do? “No,” people will say, “he can’t do that. That’s insane.”
Not so much to compel loyalty, although that is a factor, but to exert power over them; make them bow to their master.Trump’s economically inexplicable moves on tariffs make sense when they are viewed as part of our throughline that watches Trump continue to seize power for himself. As Sen. Chris Murphy astutely explains, Trump’s tariffs — probably the biggest global development of the week, which has already caused calamity in the markets — made no sense as a matter of economics; rather, they are yet another “tool to collapse our democracy.” As with Trump’s efforts to make law firms, universities, government contractors, and others adopt his views, Tariffs give Trump the unilateral power to punish and reward businesses as he sees fit.
Murphy points out that these tariffs are a “means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.”
Contrarian
Yeah, yeah, MAGA, we know. It wasn't a filibuster technically. It was just a speech.He concludes, “The tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry."
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Trump continues to follow the “playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.”
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Trump’s appetite for dominance continues to drive the ongoing evisceration of the federal government and the essential services it provides. This week saw devastating cuts at all the national health agencies. They threaten public health and risk squandering the work of this generation of scientists, dismissing hard-won expertise and damaging the quality of healthcare and scientific research, while preventing young people from embarking on their careers.
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To make matters worse, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., acknowledged Thursday that they are making mistakes, “At DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning...we're going to do 80 percent cuts, but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we'll make mistakes." The uncertainty and the chaos are a feature, not a bug.
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On Monday, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the main source of federal funding for public libraries, put its entire staff on leave. Libraries serve as the centers of communities. They foster education and a love of learning, they provide internet access to people who cannot otherwise have access, and they are hubs for community engagement. Great civilizations cherish libraries as centerpieces of their culture, going back to the great library of Alexandria—and history tells us that destruction of these houses of books marks the decline of civilizations.
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Despite the last two months of brutal headwinds, Americans have shown they are not demoralized; rather, we have witnessed a rejuvenation of democratic spirit and righteous fight. The election results in the Wisconsin judicial race were staggering. The favored choice of Trump and Elon Musk, Brad Schimel, resoundingly lost to Susan Crawford, in an election that featured the highest turnout for any Wisconsin Supreme Court race in history. Ten counties that voted for Trump in 2024 voted for Crawford.
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We also saw perseverance personified this week in Sen. Cory Booker’s historic filibuster.
It wasn’t just Booker’s endurance that impressed—after all, Sen. Ted Cruz previously led a 21-hour filibuster during which he started reading the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham. Instead, Booker spent those 25 hours outlining the dangers Trump and his allies have wrought.
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Amidst his soaring and inspiring rhetoric, perhaps the most important moment was a humble admission. “I confess that I have been imperfect,” Booker said. “I confess that I’ve been inadequate to the moment. I confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say, ‘We will do better.’”
Find a rally near you. There are even rural events.
Keep calling/writing your representatives - especially in red states.
This won't go away with one rally. There will be more.
The final count will be well over the number who signed up.The “Hands Off!” rallies are taking place in more than 1,000 cities across all 50 states, and nearly 400,000 people have signed up to attend them, according to the progressive organization Indivisible, which is one of the almost 200 groups partnering to organize the movement.
Other partner organizations include the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and various advocacy groups focusing on issues like climate change and voting rights.
The Hill
LOL. I guess he couldn't say Musk is leaving to spend more time with his family since he carries that kid with him wherever he goes.Donald Trump has informed close advisers and his Cabinet that Elon Musk will soon be stepping back from his prominent role as a key adviser.
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Trump's alleged remarks come after weeks of speculation over Musk's potential role in the administration—speculation that ramped up following the defeat of a Trump-endorsed judicial candidate in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Musk, who had heavily funded and promoted the campaign, was blamed by some political analysts and GOP strategists, who pointed to his polarizing public image as one of the key factors in the loss.
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Trump said "Elon is fantastic" but that he has "a number of companies to run."
Newsweek
And it will be complete when Musk becomes a liability. Like, right about now.Musk's influence within the administration has extended far beyond DOGE. He has regularly attended Cabinet meetings and frequently used his X platform to share policy decisions. However, his off-the-cuff announcements and lack of coordination have increasingly caused friction inside the White House.
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Meanwhile, Musk is also facing mounting pressure from Tesla shareholders. The company's sales fell 13 percent in the first quarter of 2025—its worst performance in nearly three years—as public backlash over his political involvement intensified.
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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the report on Wednesday, calling it "garbage" and emphasizing that both Musk and Trump have agreed he will step down once his work at DOGE is complete.
Who will win the war between Trump and American "defense" contractors?Poder Aereo reports: “Portugal’s Minister of National Defence, Nuno Melo, announced that the country will not acquire F-35 fighters from the United States, considering the current geopolitical context and the unpredictability of US policy.”
“The minister emphasized that … allied predictability is a crucial factor in deciding on the replacement of combat aircraft.”
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In an interview with Publico, Melo also commented: “And this ally of ours, which for decades has always been predictable, may bring limitations in use, maintenance, components, everything that has to do with ensuring that aircraft will be operational and will be used in all kinds of scenarios.”
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About a month ago, CBC reported: “The government’s facing calls to reconsider or cancel major Canadian contracts with the U.S. including a more than $19-billion deal to buy 88 F-35 fighter jets with U.S. defence company Lockheed-Martin.”
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[New Liberal leader Mark] Carney has not commented specifically on the planned F-35 purchase yet, but in early-February, CBC reported that: “Carney said 80 per cent of defence purchases made by this country involve the U.S. and that has to change.”
PBI
