The Real Reason Musk Is Mad at Us
Plus: Trump Once Fired Him for Palling Around with White Nationalists. Now, Darren Beattie Is Back.
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SARAH LONGWELL: The Real Reason Musk Is Mad at Us
ELON MUSK, OUR NEW UNELECTED OVERLORD, is mad at Bill Kristol. Very, very mad. And because this is the world we live in now, his hordes of online minions are mad, too.
Let me explain. This week, Elon has been amplifying several tweets alleging (falsely) that the Defending Democracy Together Institute, a group Bill and I run, received funding from USAID. The real story is this:
BENJAMIN PARKER: Musk Hates the Woke Agenda. X Is Pitching Advertisers on It.
AS ELON MUSK LEADS THE TRUMP White House’s clampdown on “woke” social issues, one of his companies has been pitching prospective advertisers on running campaigns based on events celebrating racial diversity and trans Pride.
X, formerly known as Twitter, has produced a “2025 multicultural tentpole calendar,” which the pitch described as “a great resource for planning your multicultural campaigns this year.”
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CATHY YOUNG: Trump Once Fired Him for Palling Around with White Nationalists. Now, Darren Beattie Is Back.
EVEN BY THE LOW, LOW STANDARDS of the second Trump administration, Darren Beattie, appointed last week as acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in the State Department, is a controversial pick. It’s not just that Beattie founded and ran a website, Revolver News, that specializes in January 6th conspiracy theories including claims of an FBI frame-up, or that he recently repeated those conspiracy theories on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast. No, the truly notable part of Beattie’s record is that in 2018, he lost his job as a speechwriter in the first Trump administration following the revelation by CNN that he had been a speaker at a 2016 alt-right conference featuring prominent white nationalists. (Beattie was reportedly fired after he refused to resign, insisting that he was not a racist and had done nothing wrong.)
WILL SELBER: ‘If They Detain Me, Can I Give Your Number to My Children?’
OVER THE LAST FOUR YEARS, as the United States effortlessly turned its back on its promise to our Afghan allies, a small cadre of volunteers has paused their lives to honor the pledge.
Since the fall of Afghanistan in August 2021, I’ve lost so many Afghan brothers and sisters that I cannot even remember their names. The Taliban murdered some. Others have been kidnapped and gang raped by the Islamic State. While American volunteers have shouldered a tsunami of moral injury, it’s the Afghans who have suffered the most. According to press reports, tens of thousands of Special Immigrant Visa applicants (many interpreters), P1/P2 refugee applicants (many of them former Afghan commandos), and others will have their pathway to America closed because of President Donald Trump.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
In my old backyard… Alexandria and ‘neigh’boring jurisdictions help rescue escaped horses on Telegraph Road. (ALXnow)
A bullet train to the dark place… JVL joins John Heilemann on his pod to discuss how we’re already in a Constitutional Crisis.
Sarah on Deadline: White House: “You have got to go on offense and explain to the American people they are being made less safe every day by the incompetence of this administration.”
☢️If DOGE Goes Nuclear… The risk of messing with the wrong computer system (Ross Andersen, The Atlantic🎁)
CREW is tracking… Trump’s unprecedented corruption (again)
“If you're a current or former federal employee, contractor, implementer or grantee…” and you're worried about your online safety, Nina Jankowicz of the American Sunlight Project wants to help.
C.I.A. Sends White House an Unclassified Email… With Names of Some Employees (NYT🎁)
Elon will determine… If there are conflicts to his, uh, “work” the WH says… (Bloomberg)
We Beat the Dream Team… A new doc for you basketball fans about the biggest upset you likely haven’t heard of.
Three Months After Missouri Voted to Make Abortion Legal… Access Is Still Being Blocked (ProPublica).
“It’s become clear that this administration is intent on destroying the FBI and eschewing the rule of law….” Former FBI and CIA Director William Webster warns Chuck Grassley… But will Chuck listen?
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