I don’t think people have yet absorbed the degree to which the tech-bro influence on the MAGA movement is dictating some very radical policies. The giddiness around the AI revolution is fueling a lot of the chaotic cutting that’s going on, pleasing both the old school government haters like Russ Vought who want to blow the whole thing up and the starry-eyed geeks like Musk who think the world is a science fiction movie.
The U.S. DOGE Service is using a new artificial intelligence tool to slash federal regulations, with the goal of eliminating half of Washington’s regulatory mandates by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and four government officials familiar with the plans.
The tool, called the “DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool,” is supposed to analyze roughly 200,000 federal regulations to determine which can be eliminated because they are no longer required by law, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post that is dated July 1 and outlines DOGE’s plans. Roughly 100,000 of those rules would be deemed worthy of trimming, the PowerPoint estimates — mostly through the automated tool with some staff feedback. The PowerPoint also suggests the AI toolwill save the United States trillions of dollars by reducing compliance requirements, slashing the federal budget and unlocking unspecified “external investment.”
The tool has already been used to complete “decisions on 1,083 regulatory sections” at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in under two weeks, according to the PowerPoint, and to write “100% of deregulations” at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Three HUD employees — as well as documents obtained by The Post — confirmed that an AI tool was recently used to review hundreds, if not more than 1,000, lines of regulations at that agency and suggest edits or deletions.
This is being done under the auspices of the silicon valley ethos of “move fast and break things” as if the U.S government is no more complex than a Twitter or a car company. They have no idea what they are doing.
This is predictable. They think white people and evangelicals are suffering from discrimination which is simple bullshit and they ludicrously believe that men are more discriminated against than women.
I do find it interesting that Republicans admit that immigrants and transgender people are discriminated against, as well as those who are Hispanic, Black and Muslim. Apparently they just believe they should be? They certainly don’t support measures to protect any of them from it.
I would imagine that if they’d asked, the Republicans would say that the people who face the most discrimination in America are … Republicans. Their grievances know no bounds.
In the spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided not to promote a senior Army officer who had led troops over five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq because Mr. Hegseth suspected, without evidence, that the officer had leaked sensitive information to the news media, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
When Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II was cleared of the allegations, Mr. Hegseth briefly agreed to promote him, only to change course again early this month, the officials said. This time, Mr. Hegseth maintained that the senior officer was too close to Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom President Trump has accused of disloyalty.
Mr. Hegseth’s sudden reversal prompted a rare intervention from Gen. Dan Caine, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He urged Mr. Hegseth to reconsider, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Mr. Hegseth met with General Sims one final time but refused to budge. General Sims is expected to retire in the coming months after 34 years in the military, officials said. Through a spokesman, General Sims and General Caine declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Hegseth’s role
Hegseth’s Pentagon Purge is all based upon race, gender and loyalty. I shudder to think what’s going to be left of the military’s high command when this drunken lout is done with it. What’s going to happen when he and Trump inevitably order the military to take illegal actions?
Look at that image. It doesn’t say what they think it says. As one Twitter wag quipped:
But I actually find the photo a fitting metaphor: America, depicted as the dying Roman Empire. The collapse of our once great nation— our flag in tatters, and a narcissistic, sociopathic Nero Trump
Before we get to the casual violence of Donald Trump’s MAGA administration, let’s quickly review the administrative kind.
“President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” FCC Chair Brendan Carrtells told CNBC on Friday. “The media industry across this country needs a course correction.” Trump 2.0 means to “correct” CBS via its parent company, Paramount.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez accused Paramount of cowardice in its confrontation with the Trump administration. She accused the FCC itself of “never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”
Smell the fascism, indeed. The party that once abhorred government “picking winners and losers” is now an authoritarian movment intent on making losers of media outlets that dare criticize Dear Leader. It not only can happen here. It is happening here.
“You’ve got no rights here” in Florida
Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, a U.S. citizen, was on his way to his landscaping job in North Palm Beach on May 2 when the car driven by his mother was stopped by the Florida Highway Patrol. The Border Patrol arrived soon after Laynez-Ambrosio’s two friends admitted to being undocumented.
Laynez-Ambrosio’s mother was driving the company van below the speed limit but on a suspended license. Laynez-Ambrosio does not know why they were stopped.
He was watching “a silly TikTok” and began recording the encounter. Footage captures the sound of officers using a stun gun on one of his colleagues, The Guardian reports:
Video footage of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men*, two of whom are undocumented. They appear to use a stun gun on one man, put another in a chokehold and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio: “You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests, calling the stun gun use “funny” and quipping: “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”
What happened next is becoming an everyday occurrence in the supposed “land of the free”:
Laynez-Ambrosio said that his friend was not resisting, and that he didn’t speak English and didn’t understand the officer’s commands. “My friend didn’t do anything before they grabbed him,” he said.
In the video, Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard repeatedly telling his friend, in Spanish, to not resist. “I wasn’t really worried about myself because I knew I was going to get out of the situation,” he said. “But I was worried about him. I could speak up for him but not fight back, because I would’ve made the situation worse.”
Laynez-Ambrosio can also be heard telling officers: “I was born and raised right here.” Still, he was pushed to the ground and says that an officer aimed a stun gun at him. He was subsequently arrested and held in a cell at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) station for six hours.
Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. “You’re funny, bro,” one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter.
Another officer says, “They’re starting to resist more now,” to which an officer replies: “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”
Laynez-Ambrosio’s lawyer alleges he was detained and charged with obstruction without violence in retaliation for filming the incident and refusing to delete the footage as police demanded.
You’ve got no rights in Texas either
The Vermont Asylum Assistance Project on July 24 issued a statement on the detention of another American citizen on his return from visiting family in Nicaragua:
On July 22, 2025, Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria—a proud U.S. citizen of color—was detained and questioned by federal agents for four and a half hours at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Despite holding valid travel documents and a Global Entry pass, he was neither told why he was being held nor given any explanation when his pass was subsequently revoked by email. Read VAAP’s comments to Vermont Public here.
In the hours before he was released, Chavarria said he was told he had no rights while being threatened and questioned by at least five interrogators.
“When four of them were in front of me, standing while they had me sitting down, they said that I do not have rights, that my constitutional rights don’t matter at a port of entry and that I should stop talking about rights,” Chavarria said.
Better start memorizing phone numbers again. You know, like the good old 1950s.
When Chavarria asked to make a phone call, he was told “‘No, we’re not going to do that, give us a phone number,'” he said. “I said let me access my phone so I can give you a phone number, and they said ‘No, just tell us. Why won’t you tell us?’ But, like, people don’t just memorize their contact list.”
During the interrogation, Chavarria said the unidentified individuals attempted to threaten and manipulate him into giving them access to his professional devices, containing information about students in the Winooski School District.
“I was threatened with being referred to the FBI. The FBI was mentioned multiple times,” Chavarria said. “They also threatened to stain my record so I would never get a job again. They also threatened with an extended detention if I didn’t give them the passwords to the student information or to my district files.”
Chavarria said when he was released, a plainclothes officer “shook [his] hand and said that he admired [Chavarria’s] resilience and the fact that [he] was protecting student information.” Chavarria said he felt dehumanized by the comment.
Chavarria appeared Friday night with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.
A black lab named Raider is on a mission. He’s what you’d call a “morale dog” from a San Diego nonprofit organization named Shelter to Soldier, where rescue dogs are trained to become emotional support animals for military veterans.
And now, he’s training to set sail on the U.S. Navy ship, the USS Makin Island next year, a first in the program. “Raider is a one-year-old lab mix adopted from Labs and More Rescue currently in training with Shelter to Soldier as a shipboard Morale Dog through our Canine Ambassador program,” the Shelter to Soldier program said in a June 26 Facebook reel that highlights Raider’s training.
“This initiative is designed to support the emotional wellness, morale, and mental health of sailors and marines.” The USS Makin Island is the first to partner with Shelter to Soldier, which occurred after the program’s director, Nicky Moore, began to bring therapy dogs to Navy ships, NBC San Diego reported. “Every single time it was like, ‘I really wish we had a dog that stayed on board.’ Like, ‘Can we take this dog on deployment with us?’
They said yes! Raider is going on the USS Makin Island “offering support through structured interaction, presence, and engagement,” and he’s set to have his own room on the ship along with five handlers.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr: "President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape, and the way he's doing that is when he ran for election he ran directly at these legal broadcast media outlets. For years government officials allowed those entities to dictate the political… pic.twitter.com/23eFxg5wiN
I’m sure the free speech warriors like Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi will be right on this:
CNBC: When the FCC's Anna Gomez writes that 'you're imposing never been seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment in direct violation of the First Amendment,' you say what?
CNBC: Colbert is a comedian. You keep talking about journalism and fairness in news, but we all remember Carson and Jay Leno giving Reagan the business. Where does that fit in?
FCC CHAIR BRENDAN CARR: Frankly, the media industry across this country needs a course correction pic.twitter.com/6VY2VImZb9
FCC Chair Brendan Carr: "We're gonna continue to see consequences over the coming months and years as this industry sees a pretty big reshuffle take place." pic.twitter.com/3Fd6SstrdL
Since 2010, Orbán’s government has promoted hostility to migrants and LGBTQ+ rights, distrust of the European Union, and a belief that Hungarian-American financier George Soros — who is Jewish and one of Orbán’s enduring foes — is engaged in secret plots to destabilize Hungary, a classic antisemitic trope.
Such messaging has delivered Orbán’s party four consecutive two-thirds majorities in parliament and, most recently, the most Hungarian delegates in the EU legislature.
But according to Péter Krekó, an analyst and head of the Political Capital think tank in Budapest, Orbán has created “an almost Orwellian environment” where the government weaponizes control of a majority of news outlets to limit Hungarians’ decisions.
“Hungary has become a quite successful informational autocracy, or spin dictatorship,” Krekó said.
The restriction of Hungary’s free press directly affects informed democratic participation. Opposition politicians have long complained that they only get five minutes of air time every four years on public television, the legal minimum, to present their platforms before elections.
In contrast, public television and radio channels consistently echo talking points communicated both by Fidesz and a network of think tanks and pollsters that receive funding from the government and the party. Their analysts routinely appear in affiliated media to bolster government narratives, while independent commentators rarely, if ever, appear.
During the campaign in May, Hungary’s electoral commission issued a warning to the public broadcaster for repeatedly airing Fidesz campaign videos during news segments, a violation of impartiality rules. The broadcaster carried on regardless.
We’re not there yet. But if Trump and Carr have their way, we will be soon. They are bringing the corporate media under their thumbs. It’s only a matter of time before social media is too.
