Presidents Day certain hits otherwise this yr. The lengthy weekend is meant to rejoice the presidency and, in an even bigger sense, our nation’s lengthy custom of peacefully transferring energy between political events.
As a substitute, President Donald Trump kicked off the festivities by evaluating himself to French dictator Napoleon and implying his unlawful try to fireplace hundreds of presidency staff is above the legislation.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he posted on social media Saturday.
Yeah, the vibes are undoubtedly off.
Trump’s historic battle towards authorities staff accelerated this week, although a lot of the nation’s main information retailers selected to focus as an alternative on the sideshow in Congress, the place Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard turned the most recent incompetents to win a federal paycheck.
The circus round Trump’s nominees has labored splendidly as a smokescreen to masks his administration’s historic efforts to dissolve the Division of Schooling, a longtime conservative aim. That play labored so properly that Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to guide the division, didn’t face a single severe media interview this week. She’ll now coast into this week’s deliberate affirmation listening to having confronted no severe press scrutiny.
What a mess. Let’s dive into two extra massive tales the mainstream media missed this week.
Trump’s battle on faith
Hundreds of thousands of Republicans view Trump as a savior “anointed by God” to save lots of the world from evil. However the religion leaders who lead a number of the nation’s largest homes of worship disagree—and as Lisa Needham experiences for Each day Kos, over two dozen Jewish and Christian spiritual teams at the moment are suing Trump over his excessive immigration reforms.
Twenty-seven spiritual organizations—together with the Mennonite Church, the Central Convention of American Rabbis, the Episcopal Church, the Latino Christian Nationwide Community, and North Carolina Council of Church buildings—allege that Trump’s order permitting ICE brokers to raid church buildings violates these teams’ spiritual freedom. Paradoxically, the church buildings are suing for violations underneath the Non secular Freedom Restoration Act, a legislation handed by Republicans with the intention of defending homes of worship from Democrats. Go determine!
As Needham factors out, “RFRA is a conservative fan favorite. Indeed, two powerhouse conservative legal organizations, the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Becket Fund, were founded after RFRA’s passage just to litigate religious freedom cases, usually for evangelical Christians.” Now that RFRA is getting used to advertise Christian inclusion, although, conservative media retailers have gone fully silent on the significance of spiritual freedom.
The velocity and severity of Trump’s inhumane immigration orders has performed one thing surprising: united lots of America’s mainstream Christian church buildings towards the Republican Occasion for the primary time in many years. As Christianity Right now experiences, religion leaders have by no means felt extra divorced from the GOP’s nationwide insurance policies. That creates a gap for Democrats to start constructing a brand new electoral coalition. Sadly for Democrats, the spiritual world’s large political realignment hasn’t but captured the curiosity of cable information’ editorial administrators.
Battle of the tech bro billionaires
One benefit of getting media trade CEOs on velocity dial is that it turns into alarmingly straightforward to regulate what protection even makes it to the headlines. That’s undoubtedly the case for the most recent feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his on-again, off-again pal Elon Musk. Musk initiated the brawl along with his unsolicited, $97 billion supply to purchase OpenAI out from underneath Altman. Within the weeks since, the tech titans’ large battle has quietly consumed each Washington and Silicon Valley.
Solely the Wall Avenue Journal devoted feature-length protection to Musk and Altman’s battle to regulate the way forward for America’s AI trade, and would you consider they fumbled the ball fully? As a substitute of digging into the massive energy Musk would amass by controlling OpenAI and its predominant product, ChatGPT, the Journal as an alternative centered on the excessive drama of two wealthy dudes at battle. The media can’t assist however flip a combat over the way forward for American info safety into another piece of vapid horse race protection.
Musk’s acquisition of OpenAI would make him undeniably essentially the most highly effective tech tycoon on this planet. Extra importantly for Musk’s goals, it might additionally put him accountable for the world’s largest and best-funded generative AI platform at a time when disinformation and misinformation are main threats—and judging by Musk’s personal Grok AI platform, precedence No. 1 would contain shifting ChatGPT’s ideology sharply to the precise and filling it with pro-Republican coaching information.
A wholesome democracy may rely upon federal regulators to research any potential sale of OpenAI to Musk. That’s not the case on this hollowed-out Trump administration, the place Alex Samuels experiences that Musk has amassed much more management of federal policymaking. With out safeguards just like the Federal Commerce Fee to maintain Musk from utilizing federal affect to bully his rivals into promoting their companies, it’s anybody’s guess who owns OpenAI by this time subsequent yr. If it’s Musk, prepare for a tidal wave of disinformation crashing onto Individuals’ screens simply in time for the 2026 midterms. Yeesh.
