Amazon’s voice assistant is hanging on by a thread. And that thread is generative AI—or, in Amazon’s case, Alexa+.
Amazon hasn’t had a problem getting people to buy cheap, Alexa-powered gadgets. However, the Alexa in millions of homes today doesn’t make Amazon money. It’s largely used for simple tasks unrelated to commerce, like setting timers and checking the weather. As a result, Amazon’s Devices business has reportedly been siphoning money, and the clock is ticking for Alexa to prove its worth.
Alexa+, a subscription-based generative AI service ($20 per month or included with Prime, which starts at $15/month), is supposed to solve Amazon's woes with Alexa. More conversational and powerful than the original Alexa, Alexa+ is designed to play a more central role in user transactions, enabling, in theory, Amazon to finally make money from voice assistants after 11 years.
Google owner Alphabet today agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit that President Trump filed against YouTube in 2021. Trump sued YouTube over his account being suspended after Trump supporters' January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Alphabet agreed to pay $22 million "to settle and resolve with Plaintiff Donald J. Trump... which he has directed to be contributed, on his behalf, to the Trust for the National Mall, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall, to support the construction of the White House State Ballroom," a court filing said. Trump recently announced plans for the 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
The settlement notice, filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California, said Alphabet will also pay $2.5 million to settle claims with plaintiffs the American Conservative Union, Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory, and Naomi Wolf. Under the settlement, Alphabet admits no wrongdoing and the parties agreed to dismiss the case.
Meta is making humanoid robots its next massive "AR-sized bet," investing billions into a project led by top roboticists. The focus will be less on hardware and more on software dexterity, aiming to license its robotics platform to manufacturers much like Google licenses Android. The Verge reports: During a recent conversation at Meta's headquarters, CTO Andrew Bosworth said he stood up a robotics "research effort" earlier this year at the direction of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The team's existence has been reported on before, but Bosworth hadn't discussed its strategy in-depth until our interview. "I don't think the hardware is the hard part," he told me ahead of Meta's recent Connect conference. "I'm not saying the hardware isn't also hard, but it's not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the software."
To demonstrate, Bosworth picked up my glass of water from a table between us. "If you know robotics, one of the biggest problems that you have is dexterous manipulation," he said. "These robots, they can stand, they can run, they can do a flip, because the ground is a super stable thing." By contrast, a robot trying to pick up the glass of water would likely "immediately crush it or spill all the water." While Meta is currently building its own humanoid, or "Metabot" as it's called internally, Bosworth envisions the company licensing its software platform to other robot manufacturers. "I don't care about us being the hardware manufacturers," he explained.
yup, this program has been abused for private profit and needs some serious overhaul
Senators are demanding answers from Big Tech companies accused of "filing thousands of H-1B skilled labor visa petitions after conducting mass layoffs of American employees."
In letters sent to Amazon, Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft—among some of the largest sponsors of H-1B visas—Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) requested "information and data from each company regarding their recruitment and hiring practices, as well as any variation in salary and benefits between H-1B visa holders and American employees."
The letters came shortly after Grassley sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requesting that DHS stop "issuing work authorizations to student visa holders." According to Grassley, "foreign student work authorizations put America at risk of technological and corporate espionage," in addition to allegedly "contributing to rising unemployment rates among college-educated Americans."
Things are bad for farmers. President Donald Trump’s mass deportations are decimating their workforce, his trade wars are restricting key markets like China, and his inflationary policies are making harvesting less profitable.
None of this is new. We saw much of it during Trump’s first term. Yet, in 2024, farmers doubled down and backed him even harder. He’s repaid that loyalty with industry-wide devastation.
You’d think they’d take their lumps. After all, the GOP is supposedly the “personal responsibility” party. They love to talk about the “heartland,” about “real America” pulling itself up by its bootstraps, about “rugged individuality.” They sneer at the cities that subsidize them and demonize Black and brown Americans all while obsessing over which bathroom someone uses.
So they got what they wanted. Why can’t they stop whining?
Take Eric Euken, a seventh-generation Iowa farmer. He grows corn and soybeans, raises cattle and pigs, and voted for Trump even knowing tariffs were coming. “I didn’t anticipate it being as bad as it is,” he told CNN.
That’s a him problem, not an us problem.
“It is a tough situation right now with the lack of markets that we have, or places to market our crop,” Euken said. “And it’s kind of the government that put us in that situation.”
Yes, it’s “the government” that has created this mess—but not the one that existed under former President Joe Biden. But who put that government there? He and his neighbors helped lead the charge. Again—a them problem, not an us problem.
Then he added: “So I hate to pin it on the American taxpayer, but if they want us to survive, we are going to need some help.”
Haha, what? Why would we want them to survive?
For decades, American agriculture has enjoyed bipartisan subsidies, liberals never complaining about the charity they sent to rural America. In return, too many farmers smeared the cities footing the bill as “fraud and waste,” while tolerating and amplifying racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic garbage. They voted for the very embodiment of that bigotry, assuming he’d hurt others. Now that the pain is theirs, we’re supposed to care? I don’t.
We can get our cheap food from overseas. Unless Iowa wants to bail out its own residents (which would require—gasp!—higher taxes), Eric’s survival is between him and the free market that his candidate supposedly worships.
And even he knows Trump won’t bail them out this time: “The last time when we had bailouts, it was to his benefit to bail us out for future votes,” Euken said. “Buying a future vote is not going to help him one bit.”
Now he realizes Trump doesn’t give a shit about him? Trump literally told them so—all this farmer had to do was listen!
Trump: Do you feel the breeze? I don't want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care. pic.twitter.com/IirvQs123c
Under this Supreme Court, only Democrats are limited by the law. The GOP can ignore whatever they want.
The Supreme Court yesterday allowed President Trump to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission and will decide whether to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that says the president cannot fire an FTC commissioner without cause.
Trump fired Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in March with a notice that said her "continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my administration's priorities." Trump did so despite the 1935 ruling in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.
An appeals court reinstated Slaughter three weeks ago, with judges finding that "the government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent." But on September 8, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay that temporarily blocked the lower-court ruling against Trump.
40% of U.S. employees have received "workslop" -- AI-generated content that appears polished but lacks substance -- in the past month, according to research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab. The survey of 1,150 full-time workers found recipients spend an average of one hour and 56 minutes addressing each incident of workslop, costing organizations an estimated $186 per employee monthly. For a 10,000-person company, lost productivity totals over $9 million annually.
Professional services and technology sectors are disproportionately affected. Workers report that 15.4% of received content qualifies as workslop. The phenomenon occurs primarily between peers at 40%, though 18% flows from direct reports to managers and 16% moves down the hierarchy. Beyond financial costs, workslop damages workplace relationships -- half of recipients view senders as less creative, capable, and reliable, while 42% see them as less trustworthy.
Yep Disney is not nearly scared enough of their liberal customer base. They decided that only conservative feelings matter, so they can see what life is like with only conservative dollars.
In 2024, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled to defend a pretty obvious idea about free speech: viz., that the government cannot punish people or companies simply for saying things that government officials dislike or disagree with. Being a media organization, this principle is of fundamental importance to Ars Technica.
Unfortunately, nearly one year on, the government is routinely trying to censor voices it doesn't like. The recent blow-up surrounding late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel is just one of the most obvious examples of the new censorship regime. But the case also shows that, even where courts do not act, the public can still successfully push for change.
Disfavored speech
Here's how Justice Sonia Sotomayor put the basic free speech principle last year:
Infinite pettiness is the rule under Trump and the GOP
The Trump administration has barred Iranian diplomats based in or visiting New York from shopping at wholesale club stores like Costco and purchasing luxury goods in the United States without specific permission from the State Department.
In notices to be published this week in the Federal Register, the department’s Office of Foreign Missions determined that diplomatic memberships in wholesale club stores as well as diplomats’ ability to buy items such as watches, furs, jewelry, handbags, wallets, perfumes, tobacco, alcohol and cars are a “benefit” requiring U.S. government approval.
However, the only country whose diplomats were specifically targeted is Iran. Stores like Costco have been a favorite of Iranian diplomats posted to and visiting New York because they are able to buy large quantities of products not available in their economically isolated country for relatively cheap prices and send them home.
The move is another step in the Trump administration’s crackdown on visas, including for leaders and diplomats seeking to serve as representatives at the United Nations. While world leaders are gathering this week for the high-profile annual meeting at the international body, the new U.S. restrictions permanently apply to any Iranian diplomats representing their country at the U.N. year-round.
The determinations, which were posted online Monday and to be printed Tuesday, said Iranian diplomats and their dependents must “obtain approval from the Department of State prior to: obtaining or otherwise retaining membership at any wholesale club store in the United States, to include but not limited to Costco, Sam’s Club, or BJ’s Wholesale Club, and acquiring items from such wholesale club stores through any means.”
In addition, Iranian diplomats in the U.S. must also receive permission to purchase luxury items valued at more than $1,000 and vehicles valued at more that $60,000, said Clifton Seagroves, the head of the Office of Foreign Missions.
The items defined as “luxury goods” include watches, leather apparel and clothing accessories, silk apparel and clothing accessories, footwear, fur skins and artificial furs, handbags, wallets, fountain pens, cosmetics, perfumes and toilet waters, works of art, antiques, carpets, rugs, tapestries, pearls, gems, precious and semi-precious stones or jewelry containing them, precious metals, electronics and appliances, recreational sports articles, musical instruments, cigarettes and cigars, wine, spirits and beer.
Earlier this month, U.S. officials said they were considering the restrictions, which Seagroves signed on Sept. 16 and 18.
The Trump administration has already denied visas for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and his large delegation to attend the U.N. General Assembly. In addition to Iran, the administration also was considering restrictions to be imposed on delegations from Sudan, Zimbabwe and Brazil.
whack jobs only complain when their "Science" doesn't result in the results they've already decided on
Health Secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday evening announced that the use of Tylenol (aka acetaminophen, paracetamol) during pregnancy is linked to autism—an unproven assertion that had previously sent Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies into a rage.
In a press event alongside Trump, Kennedy said that the Food and Drug Administration will work to update the drug's safety label and notify physicians of the concerns. At the same time, the administration also touted leucovorin (folinic acid) as a potential treatment for autism, though there is scant evidence behind its use for autism.
Before the announcement, news reports revealing Kennedy's plan angered his anti-vaccine followers.
Nope, not til they decide the first amendment is a thing.
Disney CEO Bob Iger has been under fire for several days now for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air "indefinitely," with Disney+'s cancellation page actually crashing a couple of times from all the traffic as people rushed to make their displeasure known. So what better time for the studio to release the first teaser trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu, a feature film spinoff from its megahit Star Wars series TheMandalorian? Grogu and Mando, together again on an exciting space adventure, will certainly be a crowd-pleaser.
Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) won viewers' hearts from the moment he first appeared onscreen in the first season of The Mandalorian, and the relationship between the little green creature and his father-figure bounty hunter has only gotten stronger. With the 2023 Hollywood strikes delaying production on S4 of the series, director Jon Favreau got the green light to make this spinoff film.
Major U.S. corporations are mandating more office time but seeing minimal compliance changes. Companies now require 12% more in-office days than in early 2024, according to Work Forward data tracking 9,000 employers. Yet Americans continue working from home approximately 25% of the time, unchanged from 2023, Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom's monthly survey of 10,000 Americans shows.
The New York Times ordered opinion and newsroom staff to four days weekly starting November. Microsoft mandates three days beginning February for Pacific Northwest employees. Paramount and NBCUniversal gave staff ultimatums: commit to five and four days respectively or take buyouts. Amazon faced desk and parking shortages after its full-time mandate, temporarily backpedaling in Houston and New York. Nearly half of senior managers would accept pay cuts to work remotely, a BambooHR survey of 1,500 salaried employees found.
Bingo. Have some self sufficiency and stop expecting for your foreign markets to be bailed out with US taxpayer money.
President Donald Trump decimated the soybean and wider farming industry during his first go-around in the White House, requiring a massive $28 billion federal bailout, which was shouldered mostly by blue states, the nation’s main economic drivers. It is red America that sucks the rest of the country dry.
So having seen first-term tariffs drive China’s insatiable soybean demand to Brazil, and watching Trump in 2024 promise even more tariffs, what did these farmers do? They voted for him again last year.
We recently checked in on Arkansas’ soybean farmers, begging the feds to help them out.
“I think the tariffs are the ice cream on the cake of a perfect storm,” one said at a public meeting where they whined about the consequences of their votes. “When you try and sell a product, okay, U.S. soybeans leaving New Orleans without the tariff to China are cheaper than Brazilian soybeans, at the current market. But when you put the tariff on top of them, Brazilian beans are cheaper.”
We should note how these farmers are not following their president’s edict for them to “Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”
In reality, there’s nary a hint of “fun” in any of these stories, like this one in Nebraska where Republicans strongly denounced “socialism” … except when they called it “safety nets,” which they very much felt they deserved.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks to farmers in North Carolina in 2020.
Not a lot of fun in this well-done article by the Tennessee Lookout, either. Volunteer State soybean farmers are faring about as well as their colleagues in other states. “We’re in a significant and desperate situation,” said Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council Executive Director Stefan Maupin. “None of the crops that farmers grow right now return a profit. They don’t even break even.”
Wow, that sounds terrible. Why can’t they break even? There’s inflation, of course, courtesy of Trump’s tariffs. And these farmers have been hit with a double whammy since China has shifted much of its soybean purchases to Brazil in response.
And these farmers should’ve known better. Tennessee soybean farmers lost $40 million during Trump’s 2018 tariff chaos, even after federal bailout money, according to a University of Tennessee Agriculture Extension study. But when a trans kid might dare to participate in school sports on the other side of the country—why, they had no choice!
“Right now this year and looking like going into next year, the crop will not cash flow,” Maupin said, noting that even if Trump managed to secure a trade deal with China, farmers will still have to borrow against their assets to survive, driving themselves into debt if they want to keep farming.
Yes, this is all a pitch for more government aid. Farmers are hoping for more of that sweet, sweet federal socialism (just don’t call it that). Why should they care anyway? Blue states will be the ones bailing them out yet again.
But they’re also eyeing new markets, pinning hopes on states, like California and Washington, that are setting new fuel standards. Unfortunately for them, those states are moving in the opposite direction.
California’s Air Resources Board has been drafting new standards, and one of its goals is “[d]ecreasing role for biomethane as a transport fuel.” While the agency acknowledges a role for biofuels in hard-to-decarbonize sectors (like heavy industrial trucks), it explicitly prefers “waste-based feedstocks”—or used oils—over virgin crops. And even then, CARB has proposed a hard 20% aggregate cap on biofuels, which has agricultural trade groups howling.
No, the blue states shouldn’t bail these farmers out—whether through federal bailouts or biofuel mandates. After decades of subsidies repaid with contempt and the blight of Trumpism, they can fuck off.
This is, after all, exactly what they overwhelmingly voted for.
The Federal Trade Commission sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster on Thursday, alleging that the companies tacitly worked with scalpers to profit from jacking up ticket prices on the secondary market.
As the FTC alleged in a press release, Ticketmaster's years of turning a blind eye to scalpers violated the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, costing customers "billions in inflated prices and additional fees." Further, artists' efforts to keep event costs low were repeatedly frustrated by executives' greedy bid to drive Ticketmaster revenue by reaping as many additional fees as possible, the FTC alleged.
Rather than blocking scalping, Ticketmaster allegedly provided tech support to help so-called brokers exceed "fake" ticket limits that seemingly only applied to genuine customers buying tickets to see events.
Days after someone revealed the news on social media, Samsung confirmed today that it is showing advertisements on some US customers’ smart fridges. Samsung said the ads showing on some Family Hub-series fridges are part of a pilot program, but we suspect that they may become more permanent additions to Samsung fridges and/or other types of screen-equipped smart home appliances.
In a statement sent to Ars Technica, Samsung confirmed that it is “conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the US market.”
Samsung currently lists nine Family Hub refrigerators in the US, which have MSRPs ranging from $1,800 to $3,500. Family Hub fridges have 21.5- or 32-inch screens, which, until now, users have had autonomy over for displaying helpful or fun things, like photos and videos, memos, weather, timers, and a web browser. Some of those abilities require a Wi-Fi connection or a Samsung account.
This is also why the GOP insists on defunding all studies about gun violence
After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the US, and “they should be put in jail.”
“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.
Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”
Let’s be clear about what just happened: Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent late-night comedian, was just taken off the airwaves because the Trump administration didn’t like what he had to say — and threatened his employer until they shut him up.
The Trump administration, it appears, has learned to effectively weaponize the regulatory powers of the federal government to punish speech it doesn’t like from people it doesn’t like. This is a favored weapon of modern autocrats; its deployment against Kimmel is a qualitative escalation even above the administration’s previous acts of censorship (like targeting the author of a pro-Palestine op-ed for deportation).
What just happened, in short, shows how far down the authoritarian road the United States has traveled in just eight months.
Jimmy Kimmel and the abuse of state powers
Kimmel’s downfall began with some admittedly ill-advised speculation in Monday’s monologue: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
At the time, the evidence suggested the shooter very likely was not a MAGA believer (and evidence released the next day showed that he almost certainly was on the political left).
“It’s time for them to step and say this garbage…isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities,” he said.
Carr’s threat should have been toothless. The FCC is prohibited by law from employing “the power of censorship” or interfering “with the right of free speech.” There is a very narrow and rarely used exception for “news distortion,” in which a broadcast news outlet knowingly airs false reports. What Kimmel did — an offhand comment based on weak evidence — is extremely different from creating a news report with the intent to deceive.
But months before the shooting, Carr had begun investigating complaints under this exception against ABC and CBS stations, specifically allegations of anti-conservative bias. Stations had to take Carr’s threat seriously — even though Carr himself had declared (in a 2024 tweet) that “the First Amendment prohibits government officials from coercing private parties into suppressing protected speech.”
Hours after Carr’s Wednesday threat, Nexstar — the largest owner of local stations in America — suddenly decided that Kimmel’s comments from two nights ago were unacceptable. Nexstar, it should be noted, is currently attempting to purchase one of its major rivals for $6.2 billion — a merger that would require express FCC approval.
“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse,” Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said in a statement. “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time.”
Without access to Nexstar’s roughly 200 stations — covering about 39 percent of the national market, the maximally allowed cap — Kimmel would suffer an enormous ratings blow. And so, shortly after Nexstar’s announcement, ABC/Disney announced that he’d be suspended indefinitely.
Trump has had it in for Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent critic, for a very long time. After CBS axed fellow late-night Trump critic Stephen Colbert earlier this year, the president repeatedly said that Kimmel was “next.” Kimmel’s Kirk comments, which both an FCC commissioner and (reportedly) ABC executives considered well within bounds, seem like a pretext — taking advantage of the pervasive climate of fear and censorship in the wake of Kirk’s death to punish a prominent name on the president’s enemies list.
The weaponization of seemingly neutral “good government” rules, like broadcast regulation, to punish the enemies of the current president is a familiar turn in the story of democratic backsliding. It was one of the principal tools used by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to batter his country’s press into submission, ultimately forcing independent outlets to sell to government-aligned conglomerates who transformed their editorial stance.
It would take quite a bit more work for Trump to consolidate Orbán-levels of control over the media. But what’s so striking about the Kimmel case is how swiftly Nexstar (and ABC) rolled over. They didn’t even try to put up a fight to defend their own ability to control what goes on their airwaves. They instead apparently decided that fighting the government is costly and risky, putting licenses or even a valuable merger at risk, and that risking that isn’t worth it for Jimmy Kimmel.
This is what it looks like when a society’s elite rolls over in the face of authoritarianism. It never ends well.
During a brief Q&A with the press ahead of his trip to the United Kingdom on Tuesday, defamation lawsuit loser President Donald Trump attacked ABC News’ White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. Karl had asked for Trump’s thoughts on alarming comments made by Attorney General Pam Bondi on what she considers “hate speech.”
"We should probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It's hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart,” Trump said. “Maybe I’ll come after ABC? Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they'll have to go after you. Look, we want everything to be fair. It hasn't been fair. And the radical leftist[s] does tremendous damage to the country. But we're fixing it."
Trump then pivoted into his well-worn, semi-coherent, prattle about how America is “the hottest” country and was “dead” before he returned to office and how he “fixed” Washington.
In December, the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC News, agreed to settle Trump’s egregious defamation lawsuit. The settlement justifiably frustrated many employees, and since then, Trump has continued to target and pressure media outlets with additional lawsuits and demands for more concessions, all in an effort to enrich himself while silencing criticism of him or his administration.
From national parks to major museums, President Donald Trump has turned erasing America’s often unsavory history into a core part of the MAGA agenda. And now his administration just ordered park officials to pull a famous 1863 photograph of an enslaved man’s whip-scarred back—part of Trump’s broader effort to strip references to slavery and racism from public view.
Four people familiar with the decision told The Washington Post that the National Park Service has begun pulling exhibits featuring “The Scourged Back,” the iconic photograph of Peter, the likely name of an escaped enslaved man whose keloid scars became one of the most powerful pieces of visual evidence for abolitionists during the Civil War. National Park Service officials say they are following Trump’s March executive order, which directed the Interior Department to eliminate “corrosive ideology” that highlights the more uncomfortable side of American history.
“The Scourged Back,” a photograph from 1863, depicts the scarred back of escaped enslaved man likely named Peter.
“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” National Park Service spokeswoman Rachel Pawlitz told People in a statement.
But this erasure of American history goes far beyond a single photograph. Interior officials have reportedly issued new policies ordering employees to flag signage, exhibits, and even gift shop items that reference racism or discrimination.
At Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, where abolitionist John Brown led a raid to arm enslaved people, staff have reportedly been told to review displays for compliance. In Philadelphia, the President’s House Site—where George Washington enslaved several workers—has also been found noncompliant with Trump’s orders.
Trump’s cultural purge isn’t limited to parks, either. The White House recently launched a sweeping review of Smithsonian museums to ensure they reflect Trump’s skewed view of American history. His March 27 order directs Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to strip “divisive, race-centered ideology” from exhibits, research centers, and even the National Zoo.
Trump has been explicit about his goals. In an Aug. 19 post on his Truth Social platform, he accused the Smithsonian of being “OUT OF CONTROL” and too focused on how “horrible our Country is.”
“Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote, vowing to “go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities.”
This push fits into Trump’s broader pattern of whitewashing history.
The Trump administration reversed the renaming of Fort Gregg-Adams—previously named for two Black veterans—back to Fort Lee, functionally restoring the name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, though the administration claims it is now named after Private Fritz Lee, who fought in the Spanish-American War. And last month, the National Park Service announced it would reinstall a statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike in Washington, D.C., five years after protesters toppled it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brushed off monument removals as the work of “woke lemmings.”
People visit the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington in 2019.
The scale of Trump’s moves is striking. His officials have even encouraged park visitors to report noncompliant exhibits—a tactic that has drawn comparisons to government informant programs. According to the Post, most of the reports they received criticized the administration’s policy and praised the existing exhibits.
Taken together, the removals represent an unprecedented federal intervention into how Americans learn their nation’s history. They are also politically useful for Trump, allowing him to portray himself as the defender of “real” America against elites who, in his telling, want to shame the country for its past.
In reality, Trump is simply erasing the truth about our nation’s history. By scrubbing mentions of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism from public spaces, he’s reshaping the nation’s memory and making it easier to pretend those injustices never happened.
This is the MAGA version of history: The brutality of slavery, the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement, and the fight for equality is pushed to the margins—and replaced with a glossy, whitewashed story of America. This isn’t just revisionism. It’s an attempt to rewrite the country’s story from the ground up.
Again, they never believed anything about the first amendment. They just want to use it as a club for their own bigotry and political project.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday declared that “hate speech” against the late right-wing activist is illegal and that the government will go after those who criticize Kirk—a blatantly unconstitutional action that Kirk himself would have disagreed with.
"There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society," Bondi said in an interview with Katie Miller, the podcasting wife of odious White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Bondi added, "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."
Of course, hate speech—while socially unpalatable—is not illegal. The First Amendment protects your right to be hateful as long as you do not threaten anyone with violence, incite violence, or veer into defamation.
Even Kirk said hate speech is constitutionally protected.
"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment," Kirk wrote in May 2024 in a post on X. "Keep America free."
Bondi's comment about hate speech wasn't the only absurd threat she made on Monday. She also vowed to prosecute companies that refused to make posters about Kirk.
"If you want to go and print posters with Charlie's picture on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that," Bondi said in an appearance on Fox News, adding that she had the Justice Department’s “civil rights unit looking at that.”
But that, too, is incorrect. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that a cake baker in Colorado was constitutionally allowed to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Other right-wing commentators also criticized Bondi's misunderstanding of the First Amendment.
Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks at his group’s summit in Washington in 2019.
"Someone needs to explain to Ms. Bondi that so-called 'hate speech,' repulsive though it may be, is protected by the First Amendment. She should know this," Fox News analyst Brit Hume wrote in a post on X.
"In the last 24 hours, the Attorney General of the United States declared hate speech is prosecutable and the DOJ will target small businesses that do not want to work with individuals whose views they dislike. She must think she is the Attorney General of the United Kingdom," right-wing radio host Erick Erickson wrote in a post on X.
The backlash to Bondi's idiotic comment was so swift that Bondi had to issue a rare walk-back, though one filled with her own brand of incendiary rhetoric.
"Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over," Bondi wrote in a post on X on Tuesday, which clarified little and still demonstrated that she doesn't understand the law.
Of course, Bondi isn’t the only Republican threatening people who have criticized Kirk for spreading misinformation and bigotry.
Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana said he would introduce legislation to ban anyone who "belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk" from social media.
"If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down," Higgins wrote in a post on X. "So, I’m going to lean forward in this fight, demanding that big tech have zero tolerance for violent political hate content, the user to be banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER."
Dozens of other House Republicans, led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, are demanding a congressional committee to probe progressive groups that they baselessly blame for Kirk’s death.
And Vice President JD Vance sat for a podcast on Monday in which he said anyone who criticizes Kirk should be fired from their jobs.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder … call their employer,” Vance said.
For years, Republicans have railed against “cancel culture.” But they are proving that they oppose cancel culture only when it is against people on their side.
The Republican Party’s commitment to free speech has never been full-throated. Rather, their approach has been more of a “free speech for me but not for thee” sort of thing at the best of times. But in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death, even the nominal lip service conservatives give to the First Amendment is wholly out the window. In its place, we now have pretty much every textbook violation of the First Amendment you can imagine. Lucky us.
Fam, can the government demand that you be banned from privately owned social media platforms because you engaged in speech that it doesn’t like? No, it cannot, but that would probably be news to Rep. Clay Higgins, who made that threat just a day after Kirk was killed. Higgins was one of the biggest self-styled free-speech types, but apparently that’s irrelevant now.
Well, how about the government conducting a wide-ranging congressional investigation into liberal groups under the pretext that they engaged in some sort of coordinated attack that resulted in Kirk being murdered? Such a comically broad investigation would be absurd and abusive even if there was any evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Given that it looks like Kirk’s death was at the hands of someone who seems to have been motivated by being extremely online and whose political philosophy, such as it is, is largely incoherent.
There’s also the part where saying less-than-complimentary things about Kirk is neither a civil nor criminal issue that Congress needs to address. There is no First Amendment carveout whereby people are not allowed to say anything negative about Charlie Kirk simply because GOP elected officials are whipping themselves into a frenzy. But President Donald Trump is eager to get to the bottom of who, exactly, is funding all this alleged nefarious liberal slander of Kirk.
Everyone, including Trump, knows that the answer is that there is no coordinated spending effort behind the misguided machinations of Kirk’s alleged killer. They just don’t care. However, the GOP's desire to force left-wing groups to reveal all their funding streams doesn’t really hold up, given that the GOP also wholly embraces the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and its progeny. Money is speech, baby! Free, free speech, and you can’t make anyone reveal who is paying for it.
How about if your employer fires you for simply lightly paraphrasing one of Kirk’s racist rants about how Black women were not sufficiently intelligent enough to be, say, Supreme Court justices? That’s what happened to columnist Karen Attiah at The Washington Post. Well, there is such a thing as at-will employment, of course, and WaPo is a private employer. That said, it sure looks like the Post fired its last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist for the well-known workplace violation of being rude enough to highlight Charlie Kirk’s own views. How dare she!
Hmm. That one might be more of a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, if that Reconstruction-era amendment is still even functional under the current regime.
As out of pocket as Republicans are being on this, no one is more out of pocket than sitting Vice President JD Vance. On Monday, Vance took over Kirk’s show and, from the White House, told people they should call the employers of anyone they think isn’t being nice enough about Charlie Kirk. If you are thinking it doesn’t seem very free speech-ish to have the second-most-powerful person in the world trying to whip up his supporters against people and get them fired for the content of their speech, you are correct—but Vance absolutely does not care.
Normally, the federal courts might be counted on to stand firm against these sorts of depredations by the executive branch. But the court appears all-in on the Trump-as-dictator project, so there’s no reason to think his lackeys on the bench will rein the administration in on this—or anything else, really. It sure would be cool if the First Amendment applied to everyone in the country, but it apparently depends on your political affiliation.
This should be interesting, if the entire economy weren't hanging on it
Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook.
A long-simmering showdown over whether President Donald Trump may seize control over the Federal Reserve appears to be entering its endgame. It is highly likely that the Supreme Court will weigh in on this dispute either Monday evening or Tuesday.
If the Court does side with Trump, that would be one of the most consequential economic policy decisions in the federal judiciary’s history. And it could potentially have disastrous consequences both for investors and for the US economy broadly.
The Fed is one of several federal agencies that are labeled as “independent” from the president. Though the president chooses who will serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors, these governors must be confirmed by the Senate, and they serve 14-year terms. By law, the president may only remove a member of the Fed’s board “for cause,” unlike most agency leaders who serve at the pleasure of the president.
The Supreme Court’s Republican majority, however, subscribes to a theory known as the “unitary executive,” which claims that it is unconstitutional for Congress to shield agency leaders from presidential control. If you care about the details of this theory, I’ve writtenmoreexplainers on it than I can count, but the gist of it is that the Constitution places all “executive” power in the hands of the president. So any agency leader who wields authority that the Court deems to be “executive” in nature must be fireable at will by the president.
For most of the past two decades, the Republican justices have slowlyexpanded the president’s power to fire officials under this theory. And they kicked this process into overdrive shortly after Trump took office for his second term. But, in a May decision, the Court did signal that it was spooked about giving Trump the authority to fire members of the Federal Reserve.
Although the Court’s May decision in Trump v. Wilcox was cryptic, it’s not hard to suss out why some of the justices feel torn between their loyalty to both Trump and the unitary executive theory on the one hand, and a desire to preserve Fed independence on the other.
The Fed essentially has the power to inject cocaine into the US economy. When the Fed lowers interest rates, it makes it easier for businesses to borrow money that they can use to begin new projects and hire new workers. But it also risks spiking inflation rates. Thus, if the president controls the Fed, he can engineer a short-term, politically advantageous boost to the economy — but at the cost of much greater economic turmoil down the road.
Nor is this concern merely hypothetical. In advance of his reelection bid in 1972, President Richard Nixon successfully pressured Fed chair Arthur Burns to lower interest rates. The economy boomed that year as a result, and Nixon won in an historic landslide. But Burns’s capitulation is often blamed for years of “stagflation,” slow economic growth and high inflation, during the 1970s.
In any event, a lawsuit known as Cook v. Trump is now barreling toward the Supreme Court, and is likely to land on the justices’ doorstep as soon as Monday night. Trump has asked the courts to weigh in on this case on an exceedingly expedited basis, in the hopes that he can gain the power to fire Federal Reserve governors in advance of an important Fed meeting that begins Tuesday.
As of this writing, Cook is pending before a federal appeals court. Trump asked that court to issue its decision “by the close of business on Monday, September 15, 2025.” If the appeals court does not comply, however, Trump will almost certainly attempt to bypass it and seek review from the Supreme Court in advance of the Tuesday Fed meeting.
So we are likely to find out very soon if the Court’s Republican majority intends to place the Fed under Trump’s control.
What is Cook v. Trump about?
Last month, Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022.
Trump claims he fired her because she allegedly committed mortgage fraud by claiming two separate properties as her principal residence — and thus he is firing her “for cause” — but this claim is an obvious pretext. Trump has raised similar allegations against several of his political foes, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James. And, in any event, the allegation against Cook was later revealed to be false.
Nevertheless, Trump claims that he is allowed to fire Cook anyway. In briefs filed in a federal appeals court, Trump’s lawyers argue that the president’s false determination that Cook committed mortgage fraud “is not subject to judicial second-guessing,” and thus no court can prevent Trump from firing her based even on a transparently made-up pretext.
Under Trump’s legal theory, he could have justified firing Cook “for cause” by accusing her of being responsible for the 1881 assassination of President James Garfield, or for causing the fall of Rome. Trump is asking the Court to neutralize the law protecting Fed governors from political firings in its entirety.
What stands in Trump’s way is the Court’s decision last May in Wilcox, which indicated that the Fed is exempt from the unitary executive theory, and that Trump may not fire its leaders at will.
Admittedly, the opinion in Wilcox was gobbledygook. It claimed that the Fed is special because it “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States” — whatever that means. Numerous legal experts, including the Republican chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, have questioned whether there is actually a principled way to distinguish the Fed from other independent agencies.
Ultimately, however, the question of whether the Court’s decision in Wilcox rests on a principled distinction is academic. This Court frequently hands down bizarre or incomprehensible decisions, and those decisions are no less binding than cases that rest on sound legal reasoning.
The important thing is that, just four months ago, this Court handed down a decision indicating that Trump cannot fire members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. If the Republican justices reverse course after such a recent decision, either by overruling Wilcox explicitly or by defining the term “for cause” so narrowly that it becomes meaningless, that wouldn’t just have stunning implications for the US economy.
It would also be an unusually loud signal that this Court has decided to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization.
Social media, but not guns, or religion, or mormonism, or rural grievance.
The conservative broadcaster/provocateur Charlie Kirk—murdered this week during a visit to a Utah college—had tweeted some life advice this summer: "When things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it’s important to stay grounded. Turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, and remember internet fury is not real life. It’s going to be ok."
Kirk was not himself always a great role model for staying grounded, thoughtful, or caring to others. He was better known for "look at me" stunts like offering completely unsolicited commentary upon Taylor Swift's engagement, calling the singer a "cat lady" and telling her to "engage in reality more," to "reject feminism," and to "submit to your husband" because "you're not in charge."
But his advice itself isn't all bad. Social media so often feeds most hungrily upon our darker emotions; constant reinforcement of anger, fear, frustration, and even jealously (FOMO, anyone?) cannot possibly be good for us to marinate in so often. Maintaining a connection to the physical world and the physical presence of others can be immensely stabilizing—sometimes even helpfully "boring"—after we become too addicted to the rush of emotions caused by one more Internet outrage.
Every one of these fuckheads should be forced to answer for this at every public appearance for the rest of their lives. They were itching to use Kirk's death as an excuse to declare war on the left, and it turns out their own guy pulled the trigger. Judgment that poor must have consequences.
A group of right-wing House Republicans on Thursday said they want Speaker Mike Johnson to form a new select committee to probe the "radical left," which they baselessly accuse of being responsible for activist Charlie Kirk's assassination on Sept. 10.
Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and 22 House Republicans sent a letter to Johnson, as well as the GOP chairs of the House Oversight and the House Judiciary committees, proposing that the new panel focus on "the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law.”
"In the wake of numerous attacks on our way of life, the destruction of the rule of law, and the murder of innocent Americans, prominent and unknown alike, we must take every step to follow the money and uncover the force behind the NGOs, donors, media, public officials, and all entities driving this coordinated attack," the lawmakers wrote, specifically referencing right-wing boogeyman George Soros and the Southern Poverty Law Center as groups they want to see probed.
The group—which includes some of the most extreme GOP lawmakers, such as Mary "Hitler was right on one thing" Miller of Illinois, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado—sent the letter before a suspect had been captured, and seemingly without any information on the shooter’s motivations, which are still not publicly known as of this article’s writing.
But that didn’t stop them from placing blame and calling for action in the best way they know how—the formation of a useless select committee that will waste taxpayer resources and not accomplish anything.
Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks at his group’s summit in Washington in 2019.
"Enough is enough,” the Republicans wrote. "We must follow the money to identify the perpetrators of the coordinated anti-American assaults being carried out against us and take all steps under the law necessary to stop them. The best option is a full, stand-alone committee with complete authority to elevate and investigate these matters. However, I respectfully request that we establish such a committee. It should be comprised of Members and staff with prosecutorial and/or law enforcement backgrounds, and we should grant it full subpoena powers and authority to deliver results."
Of course, political violence happens to members of both parties.
It was just over two months ago that a far-right extremist assassinated Democratic former Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and critically wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.
But the committee these Republicans lawmakers are demanding doesn’t mention the prevalence of right-wing terrorists or the groups that radicalize those violent extremists.
House Republicans, for their part, love forming committees to help fuel conspiracy theories that rile up their gullible base.
Who can forget the Benghazi committee that spent millions of taxpayer dollars only to find that nothing could have saved the American diplomats who were killed at the American embassy in Libya in 2012?
Or that Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, spent years probing now-former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, only to come up with a big fat nothingburger? In fact, Comer is still wasting everyone’s time and money by investigating Biden, even though he is no longer in office.
On Friday, President Donald Trump downplayed the seriousness of violence from right-wing extremists, saying that their violence is okay because it is well intentioned.
Trump made the comment in an interview with "Fox & Friends," after host Ainsley Earhardt correctly pointed out that there are "radicals on the right as well" and asked Trump "how do we fix this country?" following the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
That's when Trump made his vile comment.
"I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem," Trump said.
Of course, right-wing extremists are a massive problem in the United States.
According to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years.”
Meanwhile, the Brookings Institution reported in 2023 that, “Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, far-right extremists have killed 130 people in the United States, more than any other political cause, including jihadists.”
Indeed, right-wing radicals have carried out some of the most disturbing acts of violence in this country.
A Trump-supporting lunatic shot and killed Democratic former Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and shot Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, who miraculously survived.
In 2019, a right-wing radical killed 23 people in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The attacker, Patrick Crusius, targeted Hispanic people because said he was motivated by Trump’s call to stop the "invasion" of immigrants into the U.S.
And who can forget the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, where hundreds of Trump supporters violently attacked law enforcement officers as they broke into the building to stop the transfer of power from Trump to then-President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump, however, is fine with violence when it benefits him. It's why he pardoned the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, many of them violent offenders, because he was okay with violence being committed if it benefitted him. And why he's now using Kirk's assassination to justify going after Democrats—who he's been targeting for retribution since he reentered office.
