A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
*”Continual” means repeated with interruptions, like continual rain showers, while “continuous” means without any breaks or pauses, like a continuous flow of water; use continual for things that happen frequently but stop and start, and continuous for things that are unbroken and constant, like a non-stop sound or line.
May 8, 2025
Alarm appears to be rising about how the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is consolidating data about Americans. Hannah Natanson, Joseph Menn, Lisa Rein, and Rachel Siegel wrote in the Washington Post today that DOGE is “racing to build a single centralized database with vast troves of personal information about millions of U.S. citizens and residents.” In the past, that information has been carefully siloed, and there are strict laws about accessing it. But under billionaire Elon Musk, who appears to direct DOGE although the White House has said he does not, operatives who may not have appropriate security clearances are removing protections and linking data.
There are currently at least eleven lawsuits underway claiming that DOGE has violated the 1974 Privacy Act regulating who can access information about American citizens stored by the federal government.
Musk and President Donald Trump, as well as other administration officials, claim that such consolidation of data is important to combat “waste, fraud, and abuse,” although so far they have not been able to confirm any such savings and their cuts are stripping ordinary Americans of programs they depend on. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told the Washington Post reporters that DOGE’s processes are protected by “some of the brightest cybersecurity minds in the nation” and that “every action taken is fully compliant with the law.”
Cybersecurity experts outside the administration disagree that a master database is secure or safe, as DOGE is bypassing normal safeguards, including neglecting to record who has accessed or changed database information. The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School explains that data can be altered or manipulated to redirect funds, for example, and that there is substantial risk that data can be hacked or leaked. It can be used to commit fraud or retaliate against individuals.
The Ash Center also explains that U.S. government data is an extraordinarily valuable treasure trove for anyone trying to train artificial intelligence systems. Most of the data currently available is from the internet and is thus messy and unreliable. Government databases are “comprehensive, verified records about the most critical areas of Americans’ lives.” Access to that data gives a company “significant advantages” in training systems and setting business strategies. Americans have not given consent for their data to be used in this way, and it leaves them open to “loss of services, harassment, discrimination, or manipulation by the government, private entities, or foreign powers.”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests Musk’s faith in his AI company is at least part of what’s behind the administration’s devastating cuts to biomedical research. Those who believe in a future centered around AI believe that it will be far more effective than human research scientists, so cutting actual research is efficient. At the same time, Marshall suggests, tech oligarchs find the years-long timelines of actual research and the demands of scientists on peer reviews and careful study frustrating, as they want to put their ideas into practice quickly.
If the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is an example of what it looks like when a tech oligarch tries to run a government agency, it’s a cautionary tale. Under Trump the FAA has become entangled with Musk’s SpaceX space technology company and its subsidiary Starlink satellite company, and it appears that the American people are being used to make Musk’s dream come true.
Musk believes that humans must colonize Mars in order to become a multiplanetary species as insurance against the end of life on Earth. On Monday he explained to Jesse Watters of the Fox News Channel that eventually the Earth will be incinerated by an expanding sun, so humans must move to other planets to survive. In 2016, Musk predicted that humans would start landing on Mars in 2025, but in the Watters interview he revised his prediction to possibly 2029 but more likely 2031.
Critics note that while it is true the sun is expanding, the change is not expected to affect the Earth for another 5 billion years. As a frame of reference, humans evolved from their predecessors about 300,000 years ago.
But getting to Mars requires lots of leeway to experiment, and Musk turned against the head of the FAA under President Joe Biden, Mike Whitaker, after Whitaker called for Musk’s SpaceX company to be fined $633,009 over safety and environmental violations. Musk complained that the FAA’s environmental and safety requirements were “unreasonable and exasperating” and that they “undercut American industry’s ability to innovate.” Musk continued: “The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!”
Musk endorsed an employee’s complaint on social media that Whitaker required SpaceX “to consult on minor paperwork updates relating to previously approved non-safety issues that have already been determined to have zero environmental impact,” reposting it with the comment: “He needs to resign.” Musk spent almost $300 million to get Trump elected, and Whitaker resigned the day Trump took office.
That same day, the administration froze the hiring of all federal employees, including air traffic controllers, although the U.S. Department of Transportation warned in June 2023 that 77% of air traffic control facilities critical to daily operations of the airline industry were short staffed. The next day, January 21, Trump fired Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Pekoske, and administration officials removed all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which Congress created after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. The Trump administration vacated the positions with an eye to “eliminating the misuse of resources.”
Today Lori Aratani of the Washington Post reported that in February, shortly after the deadly collision of an American Airlines jet and a U.S. Army helicopter in the airspace over Washington, D.C., administration officials also stopped the work of an outside panel of experts examining the country’s air traffic control system.
After President Trump blamed the crash on diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices, career officials quit in disgust, according to Isaac Stanley-Becker of The Atlantic. As they left, an engineer from Musk’s SpaceX satellite company arrived. He had instructions from Musk to insert equipment from Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, into the FAA’s communications network. On the social media platform X, Musk warned that the existing communications system for the FAA “is breaking down very rapidly” and was “putting air traveler safety at risk.” In fact, the government had awarded a 15-year, $2.4 billion contract to Verizon in 2023 to make the necessary upgrades.
Starlink ties into Musk’s plans for Mars. In November 2024, SpaceX pitched NASA on creating Marslink, a version of Starlink that would link to Mars, and Starlink’s current terms of service specify that disputes over service on or around the planet Earth or the Moon will be governed by the laws of Texas but that “[f]or Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
In early March, debris from the explosion of one of Musk’s SpaceX starships disrupted 240 flights. On April 28, air traffic controllers lost both radio and radar contact with the pilots who were flying planes into Newark, New Jersey, Liberty International Airport, for about 90 seconds. In the aftermath of the incident, aircraft traffic in and out of Newark was halted, and four experienced controllers and one trainee took medical leave for trauma.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former Fox Business host, suggested the Biden administration was to blame for the decaying system. His predecessor as transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, dismissed the accusation as “just politics,” noting that he had launched the modernization of the systems and reversed decades of declining numbers of air traffic controllers.
On Monday the White House fired Alvin Brown, the Black vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the agency that investigates civilian aviation accidents. Former FAA and NTSB investigator Jeff Guzzetti told Christopher Wiggins of The Advocate: “This is the first time in modern history that the White House has removed a board member.”
Musk has the power of the United States government behind him. In December, Trump nominated Musk associate and billionaire Jared Isaacman to become the next head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Senate has not yet confirmed Isaacman, but the Republican-dominated Senate Commerce Committee advanced his nomination last week. The president’s proposed budget, released Friday, calls for cutting about 25% of NASA’s funding—about $6 billion—and giving $1 billion of the money remaining to initiatives focused on Mars.
Yesterday the FAA granted permission for SpaceX to increase the number of rocket launches it attempts from Boca Chica, Texas, from 5 to 25 per year after concluding that additional launches would have “no significant impact” on the environment near the launchpad. The first test of a SpaceX rocket launch there in 2023 caused the launchpad to explode, and the spaceship itself blew up, sending chunks of concrete into the nesting and migration site of an endangered species and starting a 3.5-acre fire. In their hurry to rebuild, SpaceX officials ignored permitting processes. According to Texas and the Environmental Protection Agency, the company then violated environmental regulations by releasing pollutants into bodies of water.
Musk is trying to make Starlink dominate the Earth’s communications, a dominance that would give him enormous power, as he suggested last month when he noted that Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.” In April, Trump delayed the rural broadband program in what appeared to be an attempt to shift the program toward Starlink, and today Tom Perkins of The Guardian reported that the administration is going to end federal research into space pollution, which is building up alarmingly in the stratosphere owing in part to Musk’s satellites.
Today Jeff Stein and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post reported that the administration has been telling nations that want to talk about trade that it will consider “licensing Starlink” as a demonstration of “goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses.” India, among other nations, has rushed through approvals of the satellite company. Just 1% of India’s consumer broadband market could produce almost $1 billion a year, the authors report.
In a statement, the State Department told Stein and Natanson: “Starlink is an American-made product that has been game-changing in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity. Any patriotic American should want to see an American company’s success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors.”
The attempt to gain control over artificial intelligence and human communication networks regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans might have a larger theme. As technology forecaster Paul Saffo points out, tech oligarchs led by technology guru Curtis Yarvin have called for a new world order that rejects the nation states around which humans have organized their societies for almost 400 years. They call instead for “network states” organized around technology that permits individuals to group around a leader in cyberspace without reference to real-world boundaries, a position Starlink’s terms of service appear to reflect.
Mastering artificial intelligence while dominating global communications would go a long way toward breaking down existing nations and setting up the conditions for a brave new world, dominated by tech oligarchs.
May 6, 2025
In a follow-up story to last night’s information about the Trump family’s cryptocurrency corruption, MacKenzie Sigalos of CNBC reported today that 58 crypto wallets have made more than $10 million each on Trump’s meme coin, gathering a total of $1.1 billion in profits. But 764,000 wallets, mostly owned by small holders, have lost money. Meanwhile, since January the meme’s creators have pocketed more than $324 million in trading fees.
In other news today, reality is crashing into the ideology of the Trump administration.
MAGA ideology was on full display in a meeting of the House Committee on Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, when Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem refused to answer a question from the ranking member—that is, the highest-ranking Democrat—of the committee, Representative Lauren Underwood (D-IL), about whether she believes that “the Constitution gives everyone in our country the right to due process.” The right to due process is clearly established in that foundational document, but Trump refused to acknowledge it in an interview that aired Sunday. Now Noem, too, is refusing to acknowledge it.
Later, at a meeting of a task force overseeing the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, 2026 World Cup, Noem said to Trump: “Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you so much for dreaming big dreams and doing unprecedented things. Your entire life you have stood for doing things that other people thought they couldn’t do and accomplishing unprecedented events and achievements.” Trump announced today that Andrew Giuliani, the son of former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, will head the task force.
But MAGA’s adherence to Trump and MAGA ideology is running up against reality. Charlie Savage and Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times reported today that U.S. intelligence agencies did not believe that the administration of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro was colluding with the criminal gang Tren de Aragua (TDA) when the Trump administration used that claim to justify invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to render Venezuelan migrants to a terrorist prison in El Salvador. A newly declassified memo from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence states: “While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
Savage and Barnes note that when the New York Times made a similar report in March, the Department of Justice under Trump called that reporting misleading and harmful, and opened a criminal investigation. A month later, when the Washington Post published similar coverage, the department redoubled its focus on stopping leaks. Attorney General Pam Bondi used the coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post as justification to roll back protections for the press in investigations of leaks.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard replied to the New York Times story: “It is outrageous that as President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some in the media remain intent on twisting and manipulating intelligence assessments to undermine the president’s agenda to keep the American people safe.”
At a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hemmed and hawed his way through an answer to a question from Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI), “Who pays tariffs?” clearly trying to avoid the increasingly obvious answer: consumers.
Trump also blustered his way through tariffs at a meeting today with Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney. After Carney told Trump to his face that Canada is not for sale, the president answered, “never say never.” Over tariffs, Trump changed his previous claims. When Trump announced his new high-tariff regime in April, the administration said it would negotiate new trade deals with the rest of the world, initially claiming it would make 90 deals in 90 days.
Yesterday Treasury Secretary Bessent told the House that the administration could announce deals as early as this week, but today Trump told reporters:
“We don’t have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now…if we wanted. We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market. So we can just sit down, and I’ll do this at some point over the next two weeks, and I’ll sit with [Commerce Secretary] Howard [Lutnick] and [Treasury Secretary] Scott [Bessent] and with our great vice president…and [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio], and we’re going to sit down, and we’re going to put very fair numbers down, and we’re going to say, here’s what this country, what we want, and congratulations, we have a deal. And they’ll either say, great, and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, ‘Not good, we’re not going to do it.’ I said, “That’s okay, you don’t have to shop.” Now, we may think, well, they have a right, you know, that maybe we were a little bit wrong, so we’ll adjust it. And then you people will say, ‘Oh, it’s so chaotic.’ No, we’re flexible. But we’ll sit down and we’ll, at some point in some cases, we’ll sign some deals. It’s much less important than what I’m talking about. For the most part, we’re just going to put down a number and say, this is what you’re going to pay to shop. And it’s going to be a very fair number. It’ll be a low number. We’re not looking to hurt countries. We want to help countries.”
In contrast to Trump’s insistence he can simply dictate terms to other nations, after three years of negotiations India and the United Kingdom have agreed to a “landmark” trade deal that will lower tariffs on clothing and footwear, cars, food, and jewelry and gems coming from India and lower tariffs on gin and whisky, cosmetics, electricals and medical devices, and cars coming from the U.K. India’s prime minister Narendra Modi described the deal as “ambitious and mutually beneficial.” The business secretary for the U.K., Jonathan Reynolds, said the benefits for the U.K. would be “massive.”
Also today, president Xi Jinping of China said his country would work to forge closer ties with the European Union. Although Xi did not mention Trump by name, at a meeting in Beijing with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain, he said: “China and the EU must fulfill their international responsibilities, jointly safeguard the trend of economic globalization and a fair international trade environment, and jointly resist unilateral and intimidating practices.” Sánchez did not mention Trump either, but the U.S. president was clearly on his mind when he agreed that “[t]he complex global landscape makes it necessary for us to bet on more dialogue, cooperation, and a strengthening of our relations with other countries and regional blocs.”
On Sunday, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro, who apparently was the brains behind the tariff walls, called Britain a “compliant servant of communist China” and warned it would have its “blood sucked” dry. Political editor David Maddox of The Independent reported that after the story broke, a White House advisor told him: “Navarro is crazy and most people in the White House see him as a dangerous influence on the president.”
Trump is still standing behind scandal-plagued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, perhaps because Hegseth both believes in MAGA ideology and, with his emphasis on fighting, appears to embody it. Yesterday, Haley Britzky and Natasha Bertrand of CNN obtained a memo from Hegseth ordering cuts of at least 20% to the number of four-star generals and admirals in the senior ranks of the military. Hegseth says he wants “less generals, more GIs.” In a podcast earlier this year, Hegseth claimed that senior officers will “do any social justice, gender, climate, extremism crap because it gets them checked to the next level.” In February, Hegseth fired the chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Navy, as well as the Judge Advocates General, or JAGs, for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Meanwhile, a second $60 million Navy jet was lost today off the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. The circumstances are unclear.
Reuters reported today that earlier this year Hegseth ordered a pause in military aid to Ukraine without an order from Trump and without telling officials in the State Department or the Pentagon. The White House reversed the pause and hushed the matter up, although resuming the flights cost an additional $2.2 million.
Also today, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy told Fox News Channel host Martha MacCallum that the Pentagon is not responding to his questions about why an Army helicopter was flying above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last week, forcing two commercial passenger jets to reroute.
Finally, perhaps the day’s biggest news is that India launched strikes against Pakistan in what it said was retaliation for a militant attack last month in which gunmen killed 26 people at a popular tourist destination in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan condemned the strikes, which killed eight people, and vowed to answer accordingly. Later, Pakistan said it had shot down two Indian jets.
This kind of a crisis between two nations with nuclear capabilities is one that, in the past, U.S. diplomacy has been key to defusing. When asked about the conflict today, Trump responded: “It’s a shame. We just heard about it, just as we were walking in the doors of the Oval. I just heard about it. I guess people knew something was going to happen, based on a little bit of the past. They’ve been fighting for a long time. You know, they’ve been fighting for many, many decades—and centuries, actually, if you really think about it. No, I just hope it ends very quickly.”
Secretary of State Rubio posted on X that he was monitoring the situation closely and echoed Trump’s hope that the conflict would end quickly. He said he would engage the leadership of both countries to press for a peaceful resolution.
Katherine Long and Alexander Ward of the Wall Street Journal reported today that high-ranking officials who work under Director of National Intelligence Gabbard have ordered intelligence-agency heads to gather intelligence about Greenland. In a statement after the story appeared, Gabbard said: “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information. They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”
In his victory speech, newly elected Canadian PM Mark Carney referenced the turmoil created by U.S. tariffs, saying, “These are dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust.”
• “America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form.”
“We didn’t ask for this fight, but Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.”
Here’s what to know about the new Canadian PM:
Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and attended Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor’s in economics in 1988, according to his Bank of Canada bio.
His 13-year career with Goldman Sachs took him to London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto before he transitioned to public service.