I’m watching the horror show of US politics unfold from Western Europe, where I know every outrageous step that Trump takes, unchallenged, will only empower and encourage those would-be dictators who are attempting to take over and possibly dismantle our political systems too. But to call this “important news” isn’t really a fair description. It’s an opinion piece, which at surface level (hopefully) echoes the opinions of many readers who are recoiling in horror about the apparent destruction of democracy before their very eyes; however it is also a propaganda piece from one extremist celebrity leader against another, probably just as selective in its facts as all the guff that comes from the “other side”. The solution to right-extremism is not left-extremism, the real question is how can we talk reasonable people at both ends of the spectrum back from the ledge and attempt to form a new era of collaborative politics that aims for balance and fairness?
The biggest problem is that we'd like our leaders to be exceptionally smart in order to efficiently govern the country, but at the same time we don't want the leaders to outsmart the voters. These two expectations are mutually exclusive, and most democracies just end up praying that whatever politicians get elected, they turn out to be benevolent, instead of focuing on self-interest. Whoever wields the power, how do we keep them in check, and what kind of power do we use for that?
In the US they have the check & balances mechanism to ensure against "Who will watch the watchmen" problem. Still with the current president they are already being put through their paces. The constitution could be weakened by amendments or even disregarded if you have enough power in your grip.
Musk was on stage with Trump and said he wanted to slash spending and the US people voted them in winning every swing state. Not sure it's a good idea but that's what 'we the people' chose.
If the democrats earnestly cared about USAID they wouldn’t have painted a giant target on it by treating it as a slush fund for partisan pet projects.
Trump and Musk were crystal clear ahead of the election that they intended to stop exactly this type of partisan funding, and the public agreed at the election.
While I can appreciate there are some legal ambiguities around the specific techniques used to enact that mandate, the left appear to be attacking the mandate itself, which is undemocratic and risks creating the impression that they are attending to subvert the will of the public.
Watch this [0] interview with a former USAID diector. He states you dont blow up the organization and attack the non-political civil servants, you install a director that works with you on your policies. Also their IG was investigating starlink, which may be related and is certainly a conflict of interest [1].
The Starlink contract is almost certainly immaterial. It's only a temporary arrangement to support Ukraine and the contract value is under $1 million per year.
If you remember Starlink even initially provided the hardware and services to Ukraine for free.