A physician friend just yesterday asked me where her donations would have the most impact for stopping Musk-Trump. She was thinking of a couple of nationally known nonprofits. I didn’t have an answer but said I would try to get her one. There are likely many more of you who would send cash to fight the Muskovites if you knew best where to send it.
Here are two lists of pending court cases against the Musk-Trump self-coup:
But the two long lists of court cases linked above are a diverse mix of governments not set up for directed donations and private groups that may be. The name-brand nonprofits my friend mentioned are not among them. There are too many NGOs, and it’s hard to know where to focus fire.
Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) spotlighted several groups involved in just one of the lawsuits launched against against the Muskovites, but also key players like Democracy Forward fighting behind the scenes:
Democracy Forward is part of a group, Democracy 2025, formed last year to challenge Trump’s assault on democracy.
So the plaintiffs are here because they have standing and because they’ll be able to tell compelling stories about the injury they’ve suffered. Democracy Forward will be doing the heavy lifting of fighting this legally.
One reason I’m making this point is to emphasize the import of civil society, including groups that have been preparing for these legal challenges for months. As I and others have pointed out, the battle over fascism often centers on the battle over pre-existing networks of civil society, networks that often are not themselves political.
And sustain or build your networks. Not just your political networks, the folks with whom you’ve worked to try to elect Kamala Harris or restore reproductive rights. But your other networks, too. Sometimes, after fascists break political networks, it’s the choirs or the knitting clubs where civic discourse can regrow.
The very first thing authoritarians try to break are the networks of civil society, because isolated people are easier to terrify. So make sure yours are as strong as they can be before the wrecking crew comes.
Here, civil society stood up, asserted its membership in a society linking small businesses in rural communities to aging LGBTQ people, and succeeded, for now, in pausing Trump’s attack on parts of civil society that Russ Vought and Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth are attacking.
In those moments you’re feeling particularly helpless, you might focus your energy on shoring up the strength of civil society within your own local community, even if it’s no more than the knitting club.
Self care is going to be important to keep from burning out.
I read and post for maybe four hours each morning. Then I go to half a dozen social media sites to punch back against the failed Republican candidate and his attorneys who are in court trying to steal a state Supreme Court seat they lost to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, the Democrat. After that, I spend several miles walking it off. The end of the cold snap that kept me inside for weeks means a reduction in my stress level.
Manage yours as best you can. Send money. I’ve got to text my friend.
Why not kick off Superbowl Weekend by watching some sports movies? I’ve put together a list of 10 personal faves for you. Hey…save some of that guac for me (no double dipping).
Bend it Like Beckham– Writer-director Gurinder Chadha whips up a cross-cultural masala that entertainingly marries “cheer the underdog” Rocky elements with Bollywood energy. The story centers on a headstrong young Sikh woman (Parminder Nagra) who is upsetting her tradition-minded parents by pursuing her “silly” dream to become a UK soccer star. Chadha weaves in subtext on the difficulties that South Asian immigrants face assimilating into British culture. Also with Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
Breaking Away – This beautifully realized slice of middle-Americana (filmed in Bloomington, Indiana) from director Peter Yates and writer Steve Tesich (an Oscar-winning screenplay) is a perfect film on every level. More than just a sports movie, it’s an insightful coming of age tale and a rumination on small town life.
Dennis Christopher is outstanding as a 19 year-old obsessed with bicycle racing, a pretty coed and anything Italian. He and his pals (Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley) are all on the cusp of adulthood and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Barbara Barrie and Paul Dooley are warm and funny as Christopher’s blue-collar parents.
Bull Durham– Jules and Jim meets The Natural in writer-director Ron Shelton’s funny, sharply-written and splendidly acted rumination on life, love, and oh yeah-baseball. Kevin Costner gives one of his better performances as a seasoned, world-weary minor league catcher who reluctantly plays mentor to a dim hotshot rookie pitcher (Tim Robbins). Susan Sarandon is a poetry-spouting baseball groupie who selects one player every season to take under her wing and do some special mentoring of her own. A complex love triangle ensues.
Downhill Racer – This underrated 1969 gem from director Michael Ritchie examines the tightly knit and highly competitive world of Olympic downhill skiing. Robert Redford is cast against type, and consequently delivers one of his more interesting performances as a talented but arrogant athlete who joins up with the U.S. Olympic ski team. Gene Hackman is outstanding as the coach who finds himself at loggerheads with Redford’s contrariety. Ritchie’s debut film has a verite feel that lends the story a realistic edge. James Salter adapted the screenplay from Oakley Hall’s novel The Downhill Racers.
Fat City – John Huston’s gritty, low-key character study was a surprise hit at Cannes in 1972. Adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, it’s a tale of shattered dreams, desperate living and beautiful losers (Gardner seems to be the missing link between John Steinbeck and Charles Bukowski). Filmed on location in Stockton, California, the story centers on a boozy, low-rent boxer well past his prime (Stacey Keach), who becomes a mentor to a young up-and-comer (Jeff Bridges) and starts a relationship with a fellow barfly (Susan Tyrell).
This film chugs along at the speed of life (i.e., not a lot “happens”), but the performances are so fleshed out you forget you’re witnessing “acting”. One scene in particular, in which Keach and Tyrell’s characters first hook up in a sleazy bar, is a veritable masterclass in the craft.
Granted, it’s one of the most depressing films you’ll ever see (think Barfly meets The Wrestler), but still well worth your while. Masterfully directed by Huston, with “lived-in” natural light photography by DP Conrad Hall. You will be left haunted by Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make it Through the Night”, which permeates the film.
Hoop Dreams– One of the most acclaimed documentaries of all time, with good reason. Ostensibly “about” basketball, it is at its heart about perseverance, love, and family; which is probably why it struck such a chord with audiences as well as critics.
Director Steve James follows the lives of two young men from the inner city for a five-year period, as they pursue their dreams of becoming professional basketball players. Just when you think you have the film pigeonholed, it takes off in unexpected directions, making for a much more riveting story than you’d expect. A winner.
North Dallas Forty– Nick Nolte and Mac Davis lead a spirited cast in this locker room peek at pro football players and the political machinations of team owners. Some of the vignettes are based on the real-life hi-jinks of the Dallas Cowboys, replete with assorted off-field debaucheries. Charles Durning is perfect as the coach. Peter Gent adapted the screenplay from his novel. This film is so entertaining that I can almost forgive director Ted Kotcheff for his later films Rambo: FirstBlood and Weekend at Bernie’s.
Personal Best – When this film was released, there was so much ado over brief love scenes between Mariel Hemingway and co-star Patrice Donnelly that many failed to notice that it was one of the most realistic, empowering portrayals of female athletes to date. Writer-director Robert Towne did his homework; he spent time observing Olympic track stars at work and play. The women are shown to be just as tough and competitive as their male counterparts; Hemingway and (real-life pentathlete) Donnelly give fearless performances. Scott Glenn is excellent as a hard-driving coach.
Slapshot– Paul Newman skates away with his role as the coach of a slumping minor league hockey team in this puckish satire (sorry), directed by George Roy Hill. In a desperate play to save the team, Newman decides to pull out all the stops and play dirty.
The entire ensemble is wonderful, and screenwriter Nancy Dowd’s riotously profane locker room dialog will have you rolling. Newman’s Cool Hand Luke co-star Strother Martin (as the team’s manager) is a scene-stealer. Perennially underrated Lindsey Crouse (in a rare comedic role) is memorable as a sexually frustrated “sports wife” . Michael Ontkean performs the funniest striptease in film history, and the cheerfully truculent “Hanson Brothers” are a hoot.
This Sporting Life – Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 drama was one of the “angry young man” films that stormed from the U.K. in the late 50s and early 60s, steeped in “kitchen sink” realism and working class angst. A young, Brando-like Richard Harris tears up the screen as a thuggish, egotistical rugby player with a natural gift for the game who becomes an overnight star. Former pro rugby player David Storey adapted the screenplay from his own novel.
Consumer sentiment fell about 5% in the University of Michigan’s preliminary February survey of consumers to its lowest reading since July 2024. Expectations of inflation in the year ahead jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3%, the second month in a row of large increases and highest reading since November 2023.
“It’s very rare to see a full percentage point jump in inflation expectations,” said Joanne Hsu, who oversees the survey. Republicans have come off a postelection surge in confidence, she said, and Democrats and Independents also seem to believe that economic conditions have deteriorated since last month.
Morning Consult’s recent index of consumer confidence, too, fell between Jan. 25 and Feb. 3, driven primarily by concern over the country’s economic future.
“I don’t like the turbulence. I don’t like the chaos in the market,” said Paul Bisson, a 58-year-old, who writes proposals for a flight safety company and co-owns a dog daycare in San Antonio. Bisson voted for Trump, but feels “his policies have led to that chaos.”
Bisson is hoping to retire in the not-too-distant future, and is worried that won’t be possible if Trump follows through with his tariff threats rather than just using them as a negotiating tactic.
“That will make the economy worse, and that’s not what we signed up for.”
Yes it is what you signed up for you moron. He said tariffs were his favorite word in the English language! He talked about them incessantly! They aren’t a negotiating tactic as we just found out when he backed down once Canada and Mexico told him they agree to do what they’d already planned to do before he became president. He just likes to throw his weight around and, in his mind, they’re a way to make the country rich like it was in the 1890s. Whether he follows through on any of them time will tell but you can bet he’ll be issuing more threats and causing more turmoil in any case.
If these people like Trump and voted for him because he owns the libs (which is the real reason they like him) they should just admit it. Saying they didn’t sign up for him to wreck the economy is ridiculous. That’s exactly what they signed up for — and much, much worse. he didn’t try to hide it.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating San Francisco-based KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions in San José last month, sparking concerns from press freedom advocates and drawing right-wing backlash to the radio station.
In an interview on Fox News, Trump-appointed commission chair Brendan Carr said he opened the investigation after KCBS shared the live locations and vehicle descriptions of immigration officials on Jan. 26.
“We have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter, and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations,” Carr said.
First Amendment advocates worry the FCC investigation will have a chilling effect on news organizations reporting on the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.
“Law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest,” said David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition. “People generally have the right to report this on social media and in print and so on. So it’s very troubling because it’s possible the FCC is potentially being weaponized to crack down on reporting that the administration simply just doesn’t like.”
Loy worried that the move could deter other news organizations from pursuing reporting critical of the Trump administration.
Ya think?
This is certainly an infringement on the First Amendment but that doesn’t matter. It’s being done to intimidate the media into second guessing its coverage of the Trump administration, and Carr is particularly focused on the local press. He knows that’s a place where he can throw his weight around and get to the TV and radio stations that the FCC actually regulates.
Musk has a lot of opinions lately about things he’s never expressed any interest in or knowledge of before. Via CNBC we find out why:
Until recently, Elon Musk seldom posted about the U.S. Agency for International Development on X, where he is wont to share his thoughts on nearly every subject.
Then on Sunday came a flurry of posts wherein the world’s richest person, the Trump-appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, described USAID, the foreign humanitarian assistance agency, as “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” “evil” and “a criminal organization.”
“Time for it to die,” Musk posted. […]
Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.
A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. The pattern is similar to one that played out with the so-called Twitter Files in 2022, when selectively framed narratives and out-of-context internal documents were weaponized to fuel allegations of a grand government censorship conspiracy. And it is one likely to continue under Trump and Musk, who have histories of trafficking in falsehoods.
[…]
A key voice behind both the Twitter Files and the USAID conspiracy theories is Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official-turned-conservative researcher whom Musk has promoted and interacted with on X more than 40 times in the past week.
Benz, a self-described cybersecurity expert who briefly worked as an assistant deputy for international communications for the State Department under Trump, started tweeting about USAID in 2022. He framed its funding of a handbook on disinformation from a nonprofit democracy consortium as evidence of an agency-run global internet censorship program.
Over the next two years, he posted waves of tweets and dozens of hours of video presentations marked with highlighted texts and red notes, scribbles, circles and arrows, flicking at a sprawling narrative of USAID as a covert operations division of the CIA in which staff members sought to enrich themselves, spread leftist ideology at home and abroad and harm Trump. The theory alleged that USAID was behind the mass censorship of Americans, as well as global efforts to manipulate social media, rig elections and quash dissent.
“Benz runs the same playbook every time,” said Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University and author of a book about how fringe creators, including Benz, increasingly influence public opinion. “He picks a villain, pretends it has ties to the CIA or some ‘deep state’ and acts as if he has inside knowledge when he’s really just decontextualizing public content. The remarkable thing is that the masters of the universe seem to repeatedly fall for it.”
Few seemed to question Benz’s qualifications, and fewer still seemed to be aware of his identity as a former alt-right vlogger, a self-described white identitarian who posted videos under the alias Frame Game alleging a mass censorship conspiracy against white people, with links to Jewish organizations, the U.S. government and social media companies. (After NBC News published an article connecting Benz, who is Jewish, to Frame Game in 2023, he said the account was a covert effort intended to somehow combat the antisemitism it espoused.)
This guy is now making big bucks on the wingnuts freak show circuit. So Elon Musk is destroying the US government on the word of some conspiracy hustlers on Twitter who are little better than QAnon.
It would still be terrible if Musk were the genius he pretends to be and was doing what he was doing. But it’s worse that he’s actually a drug-addled fool who’s gone down the idiotic Twitter rabbit hole. To see a country destroyed by such puerile bullshit is almost too much to bear.
From the book, “Character Limit” about Musk’s takeover of Twitter:
Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: "The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn't that easy to do. But I opened it up and it's pouring… pic.twitter.com/UcHiv8uZRe
I like the bit at the end where he claims that his own plane uses a completely different air traffic control system from another country because it is better. https://t.co/8xPb5Kd8IV
Josh Marshall has been pushing the idea that the best opportunity for Democrats to stop Trump/Musk’s wrecking ball is in the upcoming budget and debt ceiling negotiations that have to be done my March. It’s almost impossible for the GOP to pass anything without Democratic help and the wild, extreme nature of what Musk is doing is having the effect of making Democrats band together. He writes:
The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
That’s it. No nuance….
If you’re concerned about the constitutional crisis, I would use every opportunity to convey to lawmakers that a flat “no” on any assistance until the criminal conduct stops is the only acceptable position. It is the right thing to do, the constitutional thing to do and it is the only path that holds the possibility of meaningfully changing the situation in the short to medium term. It also demonstrates and shows an understanding of how to use power. And that is something the opposition desperately needs. Make them come to you.
I more or less said the same thing actually a while back only I phrased by saying they haven’t o get rid of Musk and DOGE, period. I think it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Trump is very exercised about the debt ceiling and very angry that they didn’t raise it before he took office. That’s the leverage point. People are waking up to the chaos and the consequences of a government shutdown will accrue to the Republicans (as if always does) because they are in charge and should be able to get it done without the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Republicans still can’t agree on whether to do one big bill or two. Here’s the state of play from Punchbowl News:
As Johnson and the House Republican Conference search for common ground between unyielding conservative hardliners and everyone else, the Senate has gotten tired of waiting.Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) announced that he’s going to mark up his own $300 billion budget resolution next week, throwing a massive wrench into Johnson’s plans. Graham announced the budget-resolution markup as Johnson insisted that the House needs to move first.
The Senate’s budget plan won’t look at all like what the House is envisioning. Graham’s proposal would include $150 billion for the Pentagon and other defense programs, plus $150 billion for border security, including Trump’s border wall. There’ll also be energy policy provisions. Graham says the new spending will be offset by cuts to mandatory programs, but he didn’t say which ones.
Graham and Senate Majority Leader John Thune want to hand Trump an early win on the border, defense spending and energy policy — something the president might find attractive. Senate GOP leaders plan to return to extension of the 2017 tax cuts later this year with a second reconciliation package. If the Senate passes its budget resolution before the House moves, it would put the Senate in the driver’s seat in dictating the legislative contours of the 119th Congress.
Meanwhile, Johnson, House Ways and Means ChairJason Smith (R-Mo.) and Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) want a single reconciliation package that includes the totality of Trump’s agenda, everything from border security to energy to tax cuts. House Republicans think one bill is easier to pass than two.
Graham’s gamble —and it is one — may not make it through the House. Graham and Thune admitted as much during the Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, according to multiple Republican senators who attended the session. Yet Graham and Thune insisted that something had to be done, adding that they had little faith in Johnson or House GOP leaders.
This Senate drama shows how badly Johnson is getting squeezed on every side, just weeks after he barely survived a vote to be speaker. And that was only because of Trump’s direct intervention. Conservative hardlinersspoke up in a closed party meeting Wednesday, telling Johnson that they want two reconciliation bills, not one. A number of conservative hardliners — Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and others — are backchanneling with Senate Republicans to urge them to spoil the speaker’s plans.
So far, Trumphas deferred to Johnson’s one-bill strategy. But the president has left the door open to the idea that two bills may be easier. And there are White House aides who privately agree with Graham, not Johnson.
House and Senate Republicans are sniping at each other with some worried that if they don’t do their precious tax cuts early they could find themselves backed against a wall next fall when they run out. It’s a big mess and there is no reason on earth that Democrats should even think of bailing them out under these circumstances.
Puck reported this a couple of days ago:
Senator Patty Murray usually flies under the radar—she’s not a social media hyperventilator—relying on her considerable power as the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to talk for her. So it was notable that, while news cameras flocked to outraged Democrats protesting Elon Musk, Murray firmly told Punchbowl that it would be “extremely difficult” for Democrats to agree on a spending bill when the president was “illegally blocking” funding approved by Congress. “Democrats and Republicans alike,” she warned, “must be able to trust that when a deal gets signed into law, it will be followed.”
For those versed in Murray-ese, her commentary could be interpreted only as a shutdown threat. Given their margins, House Republicans can’t pass spending bills without Democratic votes unless they achieve near total unity within their conference—a mathematical reality that gives otherwise powerless Democrats their only serious leverage. Indeed, Murray’s seemingly dry statement caught a lot of attention around the Hill.
It would not be the Democrats shutting anything down. The Republicans have the majority. If they can’t round up enough votes to pass their agenda that’s on them. If they want Democrats to help them out they have to give them something in return and Democrats want this DOGE bullshit to stop. If Republicans don’t want that then they can figure out some other way to pass their bills.
Unfortunately, the press is characterizing this as the Democrats “telegraphing a possible willingness to play chicken with the global economy” but they really shouldn’t care about that. This is too important.
Of course, when Republicans make such threats, they typically extract a few concessions, dutifully cave, and wind up dealing with the opposition to pass a compromise bill. Threats, as Donald Trump will tell you, are just jumping-off points to start negotiations. (See: tariffs.) But there are reasons to take Murray more seriously than the more prolific blusterers of the Senate. She’s the most senior Democratic senator, at the peak of her powers. She’s a close ally of minority leader Chuck Schumer, and she’s not known to go rogue. When Murray speaks, it should be assumed the entire caucus is behind her. She is, moreover, one Democrat that Republicans actually listen to. And whatever the fate of spending negotiations in March, she has crystallized how Democrats see their dispute with Musk: as a war for Congress’s very survival as an independent branch of government.
I have a sneaking suspicion there are a few Republicans who will be glad to see the Democrats take a hard line on this. They’re too cowardly to buck Trump but I believe they’ll play the game to the Democrats’ advantage if they see it could result in shutting down DOGE.
Keep in mind that Trump isn’t really into all this cutting business. It was never his thing. He thinks if he can do tariffs and drill, baby, drill he’ll get enough growth to erase the deficit without having to cut anything. But he’s willing to let Musk run with this for the moment because he’s bought into the shock and awe strategy. I just have a feeling that’s not going to last. Musk is getting too much attention and he’s making Trump look sort of weak and pathetic.
REPORTER: Do you have a reaction to the new Time Magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your resolute desk?
TRUMP: No. Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know that. Elon is doing a great job. pic.twitter.com/AUXoNOed5F
As Paul Krugman said Friday, what the Musk and Trump are attempting is a self-coup with “the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.”
“The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, told The New York Times:
“We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.”
The GOP has not only rejected democracy, as David Frum predicted tardily six years ago., but the American experiment itself. The very idea of it. All that’s left of the Republican Party is crumpled bunting. It’s not clear if their goal now is the return of the monarchy or feudalism. Oligarchy is too soft a term. Trump wants to be king. He’s always wanted to be king. But Musk? He and his Silicon Valley chums want to be gods. Ill-tempered ones at that.
And a large faction of our neighbors, both the complacent and the violent, are prepared to allow it.
This week has felt like one of those nightmares in which you’re trying to run from a pursuer but your legs don’t seem to work.
What’s stunned us (even those who warned what was coming) is the speed and nastiness of Trump 2.0. Trump with his vengeance-palooza and Musk with his deep hatred of people who spend their lives in public service not trying to maximize their wealth. Trump thinks they’re losers out to get him. (He thinks the world is out to get him.) Musk, as evidenced by his palling around with racists and a eugenecist, really does seem to embrace a “master race” ethos. He wants inferiors not just out of the government but out of the gene pool. He’s as gleeful about his work as a Bond villain mowing down the hired help. (He’d find the comparison flattering.)
Musk is malware burrowing deep into the software of the United States, and no one is quite sure what he’s doing in there.
Also stunning is how Senate Democrats (unless I missed it) did not make more of an issue of Pam Bondi’s confirmation evasions by drawing a direct, very public parallel with Bill Barr’s confirmation and tenure as Trump AG. Barr elided through his grinning teeth during direct Senate questioning and then went to work serving as Trump’s personal attorney instead of guardian of the law. No one should have missed that that’s just what Pam Bondi would do the moment she was sworn in. But they missed the opportunity to state the obvious. Now that she’s launching investigations into a list of enemies she swore her department would never have, it simply looks like for Democrats it was fool me twice, shame on me.
I had been somewhat pessimistic about what I was seeing from congressional Democrats on this front. But starting yesterday they began to change their tune and started saying explicitly that the budget and debt ceiling were a key lever for them in handling the situation. That’s real progress. But I think the terms need to be sharpened a lot. The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
The long wait is over. After more than 20 months of pregnancy, Rose-Tu, a 30-year-old Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo, gave birth at 4:29 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Staff are keeping their distance to give the pair time to bond, but the calf appears to be a healthy, strong female, weighing in the vicinity of 200 pounds.
“We couldn’t be happier with how everything is going so far,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s elephant program. “This was one of the smoothest births I’ve ever seen. Rose knew just what to do. She helped her baby up right away. The kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes and took her first steps soon after that.”
Zoo staff had been on baby watch since Jan. 29, when Rose-Tu’s progesterone levels dropped to near zero, indicating labor should begin soon. Rose experienced early labor throughout the day on Feb. 1 and began showing signs of active labor a little after 3 p.m.
Veterinary staff have yet to conduct their first check-up, but once Rose and her calf are ready, they’ll weigh the baby and confirm its sex. Based on their observations so far though, everything is going very well. “Rose is a fantastic mom,” Lefave said. “She’s so gentle and protective, and the calf is already nursing well. These are signs that they will have a strong bond, which is exactly what we want to see. We’re ready to help if needed, but so far mom and baby are doing just fine on their own.”
It might take a little time before the new baby is ready for visitors, Lefave says, but once they’re feeling comfortable they’ll spend time in Forest Hall, where guests can catch a glimpse of the smallest member of the herd. “We want to make sure the calf continues to do well and that Rose-Tu is calm and comfortable with people around,” Lefave said. “And we also want to give the baby a chance to bond with the rest of the elephant family.”
Considered highly endangered in their range countries, Asian elephants are threatened by habitat loss, conflict with humans and disease. It’s estimated that just 40,000 to 50,000 of them remain in fragmented populations from India to Borneo, and their home range overlaps with some of the most populous human areas on the planet — 20% of people worldwide live in or next to Asian elephant habitat.
The Oregon Zoo is recognized worldwide for its elephant care program, which has spanned more than 60 years. The zoo supports a broad range of efforts to help wild elephants and has established a $1 million endowment fund supporting Asian elephant conservation.