"Your 'yes' to God requires your 'no' to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor..." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In honor of the holiday, I’ll defer detailed discussion of the gobsmacking corruption of Donald Trump’s new “Palace in the Sky” — a gift from his Qatari chums, who have a preternaturally keen understanding of the price of this presidency. Apparently, we’re not supposed to trouble ourselves with questions about “emolument clauses” or other Constitutional niceties from the Before Times (although you might want to check out the footnotes on today’s newsletter.)1
Happy Mother’s Day.
In today’s podcast, Tom Nichols and I dive into the “death of expertise,” at a time when America is increasingly run by the egregiously unqualified and the absurd. We explore the geopolitical and moral implications of the first American pope — and whether history might actually be rhyming. Finally, we reflect on Trump’s staggering corruption in plain sight and the collective numbness it’s fostered. You can watch or listen right here or on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
Pardon My Geekness
This. Is. So. Good.
It probably helps if you’re a Star Wars fan, but it’s not strictly necessary to appreciate the power of the speech delivered by Senator Mon Mothma in the latest episode of Andor. The whole second season has been a masterful portrayal of authoritarianism, disinformation, brutality, and resistance; but this episode is extraordinary for its timeliness and its eloquence.
Airing on Disney+ the same day a Drudge Report headline became the latest to warn of “America’s Slide Into Authoritarianism,” the acclaimed drama series featured a sequence where the courageous politician Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) risks her life to deliver a speech before the Galactic Senate where she furiously attacked Emperor Palpatine and his Imperial forces. But one can also easily imagine her words being said by a politician on C-SPAN right now.
This is what she says:
"Fellow senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries, I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I stand this morning with a difficult message.
“I believe we are in crisis.
“The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.
“When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped form our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.
“This chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman plaza. What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide.
“Yes, genocide. And that truth has been exiled from this chamber. And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we helped create, the monster who will come for us all soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine."
WATCH THIS EDITED VERSION BY THE TALENTED GENIUSES AT SWFT HERE: (Spoiler alerts… footage/music added):
BONUS:
Nota Bene:
Precisely measuring the budgetary effects of the Musk experiment remains difficult, but we can begin by looking at the claims made by DOGE itself. In late February, its website claimed to have achieved $55 billion in annual-spending reductions. However, its “wall of receipts” detailed only $16.5 billion of this total. Half of that figure came from a typo claiming $8 billion in savings from terminating an $8 million contract. As The New York Times has reported, that was far from the only accounting error. Once such mistakes as false contract cancellations, triple counts of the same reform, and the inclusion of contracts that expired decades ago were fixed, verified budget savings stood at just $2 billion.
The DOGE website now claims $165 billion in savings. However, it still details only a fraction of the supposed cuts, and earlier accounting errors have given way to new ones. A common sleight of hand is canceling a “blanket purchase agreement”—in which the recipient had been given the equivalent of a credit limit to incur necessary costs on a project—and then claiming savings of the full credit limit rather than the (in many cases substantially lower) amount that was actually spent. Even assuming that the website’s stated savings have become twice as accurate as they were in February, annual savings would reach perhaps $15 billion, or 0.2 percent of federal spending.
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Left-wing censorship is still censorship - by Nick Cohen
Artistic freedom is being threatened across the West. Its traditional enemies in the authoritarian state are preparing an assault. Donald Trump is already dismantling the US National Endowment for the Arts and threatening to defund public service broadcasting. Nigel Farage says he will abolish the BBC, if he wins power – which given our run of bad luck here in the UK, he just might do.
They will find fatally weakened institutions that are unable to put up a fight.
For years, sinister elements within the left have been preparing the ground for censorship. So comprehensive was their attack on liberal principles that when Trump or Farage comes along, they will be able to say that bullying progressives showed them the way.
The level of fear is covered in a new report “Afraid to Speak Freely” by the Freedom in the Arts campaign.
I haven’t been so depressed by a description of British culture in years. The report reveals a kind of progressive McCarthyism, indirectly funded by public money, and presided over by cultural bureaucrats who are too weak or complicit to stand up for basic human rights….
“We have to be careful,” one writer told the researchers. “I’ve seen colleagues removed from projects, funding quietly withdrawn, and careers stalled because they rocked the boat. It sends a clear message: stay in line or be forced out.”
The authors warn of the absence of “viewpoint diversity” in the arts. You will never see a drama at the National Theatre critical of the left from a conservative perspective, for example (although you might see one from a far-left perspective).
But the culture of conformity is much more oppressive than that. It does not just censor artistic content on stage or in print — it censors artists’ minds.
Happy Mother’s Day
Miss you every day.
Sunday dogs
I think the dogs were exhausted by all the news this week.
In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar -- a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News.
The gift is expected to be announced next week, when Trump visits Qatar on the first foreign trip of his second term, according to sources familiar with the plans.
And that emoluments/bribery issue? the Trump lawyers are circling the wagons.
Sources told ABC News that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Trump's top White House lawyer David Warrington concluded it would be "legally permissible" for the donation of the aircraft to be conditioned on transferring its ownership to Trump's presidential library before the end of his term, according to sources familiar with their determination. . . .
Both the White House and DOJ concluded that because the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it does not constitute bribery, the sources said. Bondi's legal analysis also says it does not run afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on foreign gifts because the plane is not being given to an individual, but rather to the United States Air Force and, eventually, to the presidential library foundation, the sources said.
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In completely unrelated news (sarcasm emoji): The Associated Press reported on April 30:
The Trump family company struck a deal Wednesday to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar in a sign it has no plans to hold back from foreign dealmaking during a second Trump administration, despite the danger of a president shaping U.S. public policy for personal financial gain.
The project, which features Trump-branded beachside villas and an 18-hole golf course to be built by a Saudi Arabian company, is the first foreign deal by the Trump Organization since Donald Trump took office and unlike any done in his first term. Back then, he forswore foreign deals in an extraordinary press conference surrounded by stacks of legal documents as he pledged to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest.
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