Oh, FFS

 

Our world has become so absurd, it's just almost impossible to take it seriously.

More tools in the push to rig elections

 

And, adding to the fascist takeover of the country...

UPDATE 03/22/2026:

Trump's war on non-white-male people expands

 

Trump losing in court

And...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally approved the deportation of five student activists last year after receiving memos largely describing their participation in pro-Palestinian protests and their writings about the war in Gaza, according to internal government documents unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday.

The documents reveal new details about how the Trump administration decided to target the activists, who were all foreign students visible in campus protests. They had been in the United States legally but were arrested and threatened with deportation last spring.

[...]

Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, ruled last year that the Trump administration had illegally targeted the students for deportation based on their speech — in particular their opposition to the Israeli government and its military operations in Gaza.

[...]

[The documents] also show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech.

[...]

In one set of documents with the referrals, officials acknowledged that almost no grounds existed for deporting the students other than a rarely used 1952 law that says the secretary of state may deem noncitizens deportable for reasons related to foreign policy.

[...]

In justifying the attempt to deport the students, Mr. Rubio and other administration officials repeatedly asserted that they had supported terrorist organizations.

[...]

The students have denied that charge. They sued over their arrests, and judges last year ordered each of them released, citing concerns that their arrests had been based on protected speech.

The case before Judge Young, brought by two national academic organizations, argued more broadly that the arrests had chilled academic speech on the nation’s college campuses. Judge Young agreed, describing the behavior of Mr. Rubio and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, as an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “pick off” a few students with an eye to “violating” the free speech rights of thousands of noncitizen scholars.

  NYT

Mainstream keeps bending the knee

 

I would like to think Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes would quit simultaneously and start up their own YouTube channel.

America has lost its way

 

And, so what if there were?  Universities offer all kinds of scholarships unavailable to every student.

Hostile takeover

Last week, the White House released an “AI Action Plan” and three executive orders on artificial intelligence: “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack,” and “Preventing Woke AI In the Federal Government.” The overall goal is to develop AI as fast as possible by removing bureaucratic impediments and export controls on chips and other equipment, placing data centers on federal land, promoting energy production to power them (as long as it isn’t renewable energy), and integrating AI systems into the federal government. All that’s asked of the AI companies themselves is to make sure their large language models (LLMs) promote a Trump-friendly view of the world.

[...]

“So from this day forward, it'll be a policy of the United States to do whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence,” he said. “Such an important thing happening. This is really something that nobody expected. It just popped out of the air, and here we are.”

And of course, Trump contrasted his approach with that of President Biden, about whom he said, “You would've spent a lot of money and you wouldn't have been able to win. They didn't allow you to win. But we have a plan which only admires and respects the winners.”

[...]

“If you are operating under 50 different sets of state laws, the most restrictive state of all will be the one that rules,” he said. “So you could have a state run by a crazy governor, a governor that hates you, a governor that's not smart, or maybe a governor that's very smart, but decides that he doesn't like the industry and he can put you out of business because you're going to have to go to that lowest common denominator.”

  Public Notice

Hmmmmm...Dobbs? CASA?

Trump also endorsed the AI companies’ desire to utilize copyrighted works without compensating the authors.

“You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for. ‘Gee, I read a book. I'm supposed to pay somebody,’” he said. “And we appreciate that, but you just can't do it because it's not doable.”

Proof by assertion.

But the really good stuff — at least as far as Trump and his movement are concerned — is in the “Preventing Woke AI” executive order.

In order to stamp out “pervasive and destructive” DEI ideology, the order insists that AI models must be free of “incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism.” Only banishing those ideas will demonstrate a sufficient “commitment to truth” and ensure “reliable AI.” The order does note that its ambitions are limited: “While the Federal Government should be hesitant to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace, in the context of Federal procurement, it has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.” It also insists that “LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI.”

Isn't that non-neutral in itself? Sorry, I keep trying to insert logic.

This leaves AI companies with a choice: Either create two sets of AI systems — one for general use, and a right-wing version for government — or just make all their systems Trump-compliant.

Fascism picking up steam

UPDATE 08:11 am:

It's an administration full of despicable degenerates

 

Good God

Fear tactics are now affecting private companies.

This is some real Nazi shit.  

I've never been a fan of Cracker Barrel offerings, but perhaps I'm going to have to patronize them now.

We will be decades restoring

 As if we were in an actual war and had to rebuild.

Next stop: Trump's judges

 

He'll be running to SCOTUS.

“Have we no shame?” Judge William Young asked, in an unmistakeable echo of attorney Jack Welch, who famously punctured Joe McCarthy’s popularity with his simple plea for decency.

[...]

[Trump] declared that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and branded “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex” as discriminatory against women and girls.

  Public Notice

Not in their name, asshole.

This is a radical misstatement of the law. No court in the land has ever held that DEI — whatever that means — constitutes racial discrimination, or that allowing trans people to participate in society amounts to gender discrimination. It also defies the medical and scientific consensus about sex, gender, and biology. But no matter! The president redefined reality by executive fiat, and then instructed his minions to carry out a purge consistent with his edict.

[...]The administration immediately moved to kick trans service members out of the military, reorient the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to focus on “DEI-related discrimination at work,” and pulled down websites on everything from baseball icon Jackie Robinson to transgender health care.

But while the government was busy deleting pronouns from civil servants’ signature lines, it also slashed thousands of federal grants because some DOGE bro (or possibly an AI) decided that the recipient was vaguely “woke” — whatever that means. At NIH, more than a $1 billion of funding was cut because of its supposed association with “woke” ideologies.

[...]

A coalition of 16 blue states sued, and the case was joined with a similar one filed by several public health and labor groups. They argued that NIH “adopted a series of directives that blacklist certain topics — e.g., ‘DEI,’ ‘gender,’ or ‘vaccine hesitancy’ — that the Administration disfavors.”

All the impoundment cases, which involve money appropriate by Congress which the Trump administration simply refuses to disburse, recite a now-familiar set of legal claims. And indeed the plaintiffs here, too, argue that the president is violating the Spending Clause and the separation of powers — essentially that he is stealing Congress’s power over the federal budget. They also call the grant terminations “arbitrary and capricious,” in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.

[...]

Judge Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1985, called the terminations “arbitrary and capricious.” But he went further than other judges in the many impoundment suits, calling the administration out for its flagrant animus against racial and sexual minorities.

“I am hesitant to draw this conclusion — but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it — that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community,” he said, according to Politico. “That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.“

[...]

“Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore rather than seriously examine biological realities,” [DOJ lawyer Thomas Ports Jr.] said. ”It is an improvement to eliminate these.”

“Where’s the support for that?” Judge Young shot back. “I see no evidence of that.”

Of course, there is no such evidence of that, which is why the government never presented any. Instead it pointed to Trump’s executive orders, insisting that the president gets to make his own reality. [...] Ports wasn’t even able to define “DEI” when pressed by the court.

“You are bearing down on people of color because of their color,” the judge hammered on. “The Constitution will not permit that.”

[...]

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Judge Young fumed. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Just wait, judge.

No DEI in the oval

 

Trump 2.0 - Erasing history

 

Another protest resignation

The chair of the Naval Academy History Department resigned after reportedly being ordered by the academy’s superintendent to remove a previously approved paper from the list of those to be presented at an upcoming symposium.

Tom McCarthy, in a letter dated June 3, cited the removal of a paper “for reasons having nothing to do with scholarship.” He resigned to avoid being involved in what he called a violation of trust and the possibility of harming the department’s reputation.

[...]

McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment. It is unclear what the paper he resigned over is about.

  Baltimore Sun

In light of the recent removal of "DEI" materials from the Naval Academy library, I think we can guess.

[...]

The elimination of the paper and McCarthy’s resignation adds to a dizzying six months at the Naval Academy as its curriculum, the literature available in its library and its admissions policy have been caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion purge.

In April, the academy released a list of 381 books and literary works removed from its library as part of a review of DEI materials, following directives from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to evaluate and eliminate works focused on DEI.

Among the works that were removed were “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou. Copies of “Mein Kampf” remained available.

[...]

Last month — after an additional Pentagon-ordered review — most of the nearly 400 books that were removed from a Nimitz Library closet and held under lock and key were placed back on the shelves.

Hateful and bigoted

 

    source

Jesus Christ.  Unfuckingbelievable.

May 28, 1963

 The early days of Civil Rights Activism.

MAGA 

How long will this be allowed to be taught?

Trump 2.0 - Inferior races

 

They're all so ignorant

 

Trump 2.0 - Up is down, black is white, war is peace