Where do Ammon Bundy’s beliefs come from? Historian in Q&A explains his ideology

Ian Max Stevenson, The Idaho Statesman - 

On Nov. 8, incumbent Gov. Brad Little, who won the Republican nomination in the primary, faces an insurgent candidate with national name recognition.

Ammon Bundy, a Nevada native, switched to independent on the ticket earlier this year and has run a campaign to abolish property and income taxes, cut welfare programs and privatize public lands. In campaign ads, he has also called abortions in the U.S. the greatest genocide in history, suggested “liberals” are in a cult and said he would help them leave the state.

Bundy has become widely known in Idaho since the start of the pandemic in his fight against business closures, vaccine mandates and public health precautions. He has been arrested at the Idaho Capitol multiple times, and was sued by St. Luke’s Health System for protesting state custody of a child believed to be in ill health, which led the hospital to shut down for over an hour.

But Bundy was known before the pandemic, too. In 2014, after Bundy’s father, Cliven Bundy, refused to pay public land grazing fees for over two decades, federal agents with the Bureau of Land Management attempted to remove his cattle. Members of militias and others from across the country gathered in Nevada to protest the removal, and an armed standoff ensued.

After protesters aimed guns at outnumbered police and federal agents, the agents stood down. Ammon, Cliven and other Bundy family members faced several federal charges. The case was dismissed in 2018, after a judge said prosecutors withheld important evidence from the defense.

In 2016, Bundy led a group of armed protesters to take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Following weeks of occupation, one protester — LaVoy Finicum — was shot and killed after trying to drive through a police roadblock and, according to the FBI, reaching for a weapon inside his coat.

Ammon and his brother, Ryan, were among those who faced federal charges for the takeover. Later that year, they were acquitted.

In her 2019 book, “American Zion,” Betsy Gaines Quammen, an environmental historian, examines how the history of settlement in the West by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints connects to the Bundy family’s views of land ownership, property rights and the role of government.

Last year, Gaines Quammen was a writer-in-residence at the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House and Preserve in Ketchum to work on a new project, “True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America.” In it, the writer, who lives in Bozeman, Montana, is exploring rising polarization in the West, and looking for ways to reconcile people with different political ideologies and bring them back into relationship with each other.

She spoke to the Idaho Statesman recently. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Bundy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Could you tell me a bit about your research on the Bundys and how the family’s history connects to the history of the West?

“I’m very interested in how people perceive landscape based on their religious points of view. I began to look at the LDS settlement in the West and what ideas were brought with settlement. There was a real effort to establish a place that this new religion could practice without feeling oppression. In terms of the way land is viewed now, it’s important to understand that package of things that were bundled in the idea of Zion.”

How did the Bundys then fit into that picture?


“There’s a lot of layers here. There’s the religious significance of the U.S. Constitution. There is the idea that as a landscape is considered promised, what that means in terms of a religious obligation to utilize it. There are also texts or revelations that you can find in Mormon history that it’s incumbent upon a member of the church to be the hero, to protect the Constitution. You have prophecy, you have religious significance of the Constitution, you have the way that land is utilized, which all have religious implications. The Constitution is essentially part of a sacred canon. I think you’re seeing that in Idaho — and it’s not just LDS — but it is a part of what informs the Bundy family.”

Who is Cliven Bundy and what are his views of land and how it should be used, settled or otherwise?

“He doesn’t feel like the government is entitled to own land. He really sees his area that he operates in as being his. It’s interesting to think about what is religious and what has just become the way the family sees the government. There is a real anti-government history in the church. They were trying to escape the U.S. government.

There were real reasons why they had experienced bigotry. When they went to the Great Basin, it was Mexico. And so they really felt like they were going to have this autonomy. I think it informs the way they see land, that you have this history of anti-government sentiment that continued throughout generations, especially in rural places in these areas that were settled by Mormons. There’s a history of anti-government sentiment, there is a history of generation, after generation, after generation of Mormon land use. There is a belief that if you cultivate land, you are actually pleasing the eye of God.

The idea of undeveloped land or wilderness is an antithesis to what Mormon worldview sees as appropriate ways to utilize land. And then you have the fact that there were environmental laws passed. Some of these acts like (the National Environmental Policy Act), (the Federal Land Policy and Management Act), the Endangered Species Act, there was a real response across the West. It wasn’t just LDS, but this was land that they had been utilizing without any regulations, and all of a sudden regulations were coming in and impacting the way that they ranched.

Cliven told me that, essentially, Jesus wrote the Constitution, and it’s divinely inspired. That means that your rights are somehow sacred, and you have this layer that it’s important as a LDS member of the church to fight to protect the Constitution. Cliven has over and over again suggested that his effort is part of a holy war. It’s a bundle of things. It’s libertarianism, it’s this very, very specific way of seeing Mormon worldview.

I think it’s important to say, they do not represent the church. And in fact, the church has at times, during the Malheur takeover, they really came out and said, don’t use scripture to justify what you’re doing. You have these notions that this is my right and it’s my right because it’s God-given, and I also want to graze my cows here.”

Ammon Bundy is running for Idaho governor. But he was a national figure well before this. I wondered if you could tell me a bit about why he’s a national figure, what he stands for and some of these views you were describing Cliven having — whether you think Ammon basically agrees with those or whether there are any kind of key differences between the two of them.

“I think he really reflects his father’s beliefs. The battle of Bunkerville, which was the Nevada standoff, that was something that I think really galvanized the militia movement.

The Malheur takeover was not supported by most militia groups that had participated in the Nevada standoff. The death of LaVoy Finicum changed the way the Oregon takeover was viewed in this culture — suddenly it validated the idea that the federal government was the oppressor. Although Finicum resisted arrest, some saw his death as murder that legitimized the occupation. It gave Ammon’s actions credibility.

Ammon, I think, he’s very mission driven. And I think that’s partially — well, I think that’s a lot — religious. He was looking for his next thing. He was involved with a family that was being evicted (in Idaho), he put out the word, but then he realized that the family had for a long time not been paying their mortgage. And so he abandoned that. He had established People’s Rights Network before COVID, but the membership swelled with the COVID stay-at-home, shelter-in-place measures. COVID became a central thing. Now it’s running for governor.

I think he’s looking for his mission, and he keeps turning towards ways that he can fulfill these both religious and political, what he sees as obligations.”

You’ve been researching militia and anti-government movements in the West. What influence do you think Bundy has in those circles and how do these ideas connect to some of these other movements in the West, whether they’re Christian nationalist or other kinds of movements?

“They very much connect because the militia movement has really been inspired by the actions of the Bundy family. The Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, they both had a presence in Nevada at the standoff, and I think the Bundy family has inspired them. They see themselves protecting people’s rights, and they feel like the Bundy family’s rights have been violated.

Think of you renting an apartment. Your landlord comes to you one day and says, ‘You gotta move out, but I’ll pay you.’ That’s really what happened. And so this wasn’t a violation of rights. Actually they were being compensated to give up what’s not even an inherent right. The militia movement was galvanized over people who were being compensated to give up a lease.”

After Nov. 8, we’ll know who won the governor’s race in Idaho. Even if Bundy loses, what do you think the future holds for figures like him and the movement he leads?

“I feel like they still have momentum. I feel like they’re gaining power. They definitely have people’s attention.

You now have Dorothy Moon who is head of the Republican Party. She very much is part of this network of figures that includes Ammon Bundy. As long as the Idaho Freedom Foundation and organizations like it continue to have power, you’re going to continue to see figures like Ammon Bundy be in the public eye in some capacity.”

©2022 The Idaho Statesman. Visit idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

'We need to rebel': climate change needs radical response says XR activist

David McBrayer
November 05, 2022

Protesters linked to XR demonstrating against Dutch oil company Shell in South Africa in December 2021 RODGER BOSCH AFP/File

Soup on Vincent van Gogh paintings, mashed potatoes on a Monet masterpiece: climate activists are taking increasingly daring action to grab headlines -- and it's working.

In the latest such stunt, activists from the Last Generation group splashed pea soup on Van Gogh's 1888 painting "The Sower" in Rome on Friday.

While the Extinction Rebellion (XR) was not behind the recent art attacks, it is known for disruptive street protests and flamboyant costumes.

The group's co-founder Gail Bradbrook said such bold action is needed to draw attention to the "polycrisis" that threatens to tip the world into climate catastrophe and devastating biodiversity loss.

Bradbrook said when people act together they can make a real difference.

The scientist spoke to AFP ahead of the 27th round of United Nations climate negotiations opening Sunday -- branded by Greta Thunberg as "greenwashing" amid concerns that campaigners will be blocked from attending.

The interview has been edited for length and flow.

- Climate protesters have recently thrown soup over a Van Gogh painting and mashed potato over a Monet. Do shock tactics work?

In a media-saturated environment that doesn't want to tell important stories, it's hard to get attention. So people go and do something frankly quite dangerous and daft like getting on the motorway. That's agitation, and it does get a story in the mainstream consciousness. Evidence, from, for example, research by Colin Davis at the University of Bristol, suggests people may dismiss the activists involved, but their focus on the issues increases. In other words, it works from an awareness-raising perspective.

The next bit is to really inspire people that change is possible. And the third bit is acting together to make sure that the change happens. We need to rewire our economy and upgrade our democracy.


- How much can individuals do?

There's an honor in doing what you can. We can understand that for so many miles driven in a car, there's so much carbon emitted, and therefore, so much ice will melt.

But at the same time, this is systemic and what the system wants you to do is tie yourself up in a knot. It is a very stressful system that we live in. It's not by accident that BP introduced the idea of carbon footprinting.


The whole system was founded on extraction, exploitation, especially of our family in the Global South. It needs to go.

- Why did you set up Extinction Rebellion?

It was from a sense of determination to see change happen. It was more, "well, what else do you want to do with your life?"


We chose the name because we are in the sixth mass extinction event. The polycrisis that we're in, it's a climate and ecological emergency, a health crisis and inequality crisis and so on. It has many root causes. There's an elite class of people who we need to rebel against, who are not taking sufficient action, and in some cases, taking us in the wrong direction.

Climate change weather extremes are already happening. Look at Bangladesh and Pakistan. Essentially, what the world is saying is "tough". It's disgusting.

- What do you think motivates action?


One of the first things that we did with Extinction Rebellion was to move into emergency mode messaging. You tell people the bitter and brutal truth. And then you talk about why it is like that, and therefore what can be done. And then you talk about what that person can do themselves and as part of their group, so there's a sense of agency.

It's a bit like if you had a lump somewhere on your body and you go to the doctor. At the end of the day, the grown-up in you needs to know what the risks are, what the treatment is.

The good news is, it starts with being a human being, the best side of being a human being, where we feel part of life.


People have done really incredible things in times of war, for example. Human beings are really amazing, they're really up for acting selflessly, and on behalf of the collective. It is hardwired into us.

- And what stops people?

If there is no leadership telling you there's an issue, and if you get mixed messages, then you don't act.


There have been active forces at play to stop us from wanting to do anything. We know that there were large sums of money spent on climate denial.

After climate denial -- not that it is fully done with -- what is the next phase to stop us doing anything? It is these delay stories: Technology is going to save us. It's all for consumers to sort out. Or, what about China?

They're all psychological tools to give people a story to say to themselves: "I can let this go because it's too stressful to face".


© 2022 AFP

Why is UW still working with this controversial charter school network?
Ruth Conniff, Wisconsin Examiner
November 05, 2022

School students reading from a book (Shutterstock)

Controversy surrounding Hillsdale charter schools led the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University in Wisconsin to threaten to sever ties last month with Lake Country Classical Academy — Wisconsin’s first Hillsdale-affiliated charter school. The tribe cited “inflammatory, derogatory, and racist comments captured by hidden camera” by the president of Hillsdale College, Larry Arnn. Arnn’s comments, which made headlines after they were leaked from a private meeting he had with Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, also led to the collapse of a plan to launch several Hillsdale charter schools in that state.

In Wisconsin, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University and the conservative, Christian academy always seemed like strange bedfellows. I covered their partnership back in a December 2021 Examiner story exploring how the tribal college — which runs one other charter school emphasizing Ojibwe language and culture — came to authorize an academy whose curriculum centers the greatness of Western civilization and soft-pedals slavery and the genocide of Native American people.

While it received 3% of the taxpayer funds that followed each student to the school under its contract, the tribal college took a laissez faire attitude toward the actual running of the school, which was located at the other end of the state and did not serve any Lac Courte Oreilles children.

But Arnn’s inflammatory comments, which the Examiner reported on Oct. 3, disrupted the easy-going relationship between the school and the tribal college, which issued its denunciation on Oct. 4. Despite the strong language in the tribal college’s statement, Arnn’s secretly recorded comments actually didn’t have much to do with race. Instead, they focused on teachers, whom Arnn said are “trained in the dumbest part of the dumbest colleges in the country.” But a flurry of reporting on Arnn and Hillsdale around the same time also cited the Hillsdale K-12 curriculum’s criticism of the civil rights movement and its “emphasis on the history and traditions of American citizens as the inheritors of Western civilization,” as the Lake Country Classical Academy website puts it.

Hillsdale’s explicitly political project is no secret. Arnn was appointed by Trump to lead the 1776 Commission, created to promote a positive vision of America, in what Politico called “a direct challenge to The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which explored how racism and inequality shaped the founding of the country.”

A recent Facebook ad hawking Betsy Ross flags as a fundraiser for Hillsdale College quotes the Declaration of Independence and states, “Throughout most of our nation’s history, Americans learned about and revered these ideas. Sadly, because of the Left’s hijacking of history education in so many of our schools, this is no longer true.”

If the Lac Courte Oreilles is ending its relationship with a Hillsdale charter school because of such provocative political statements, why is the UW System now considering becoming a Hillsdale charter authorizer in Wisconsin?

The UW System’s Office of Educational Opportunity is reviewing another proposed Hillsdale charter school, the North Shore Classical Academy. The school’s founder was part of a failed recall effort to unseat four school board members in Mequon-Thiensville, a high-achieving, mostly white district in the suburbs of Milwaukee, based in part on claims that the schools were teaching “critical race theory.”

On Oct. 17, at a community meeting to gather public input on the school, the director of the OEO, Vanessa Moran, said the academy has already passed the first phase of a five-phase process for approval by UW System. During the public meeting in Mequon, Jenni Hofschulte, a member of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, says she spoke with Moran, who praised the academy and also had positive things to say about Lake County Classical Academy. Acknowledging that the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University is cutting ties with Lake Country, Moran told Hofshulte she had visited the school and that she felt it was doing great things. While UW System had not yet committed to authorize either Hillsdale school, according to Hofshulte, Moran said she was excited about the prospect that the two Hillsdale charter schools could form a “professional community.”

Moran did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls requesting comment on the matter. But according to a UW System public information officer, Lake Country Classical Academy has not yet applied for authorization through the UW System.

For now, Wisconsin has one Hillsdale charter school whose authorizer has threatened to leave unless it meets a series of demands that include dropping its affiliation with Hillsdale and sending all of its staff and board members to Ojibwe/indigenous cultural sensitivity training — conditions it seems unlikely the school will meet.

And then there’s the North Shore Classical Academy, which, curiously, describes itself on its website as “the first in the state of Wisconsin to be a Hillsdale Curriculum School” (Lake Country Classical Academy’s website states that it is a “Hillsdale College Member School” and promotes its status as a “licensed user of the Hillsdale K-12 curriculum.”)

North Shore’s founder, Cheryl Rebholz, in addition to running in the recall election for the Mequon-Thiensville school district last fall, is a former school board member and the owner of a “boutique shooting range” in Mequon, according to a video produced by the right-wing Badger Institute. The video, titled “An Epidemic of Decline,” features Rebholz describing her disillusionment with the Mequon school district and her decision to launch the new charter school because of a breakdown in discipline and the way “politics” has invaded public school classrooms. “I don’t care what your politics are, they stop at the threshold. It is an epidemic of decline, and we need to restore it,” she says.

The video, which opens with a statement about independent charter schools and private voucher schools receiving “thousands less per student” than public schools, ends with Rebholz saying emphatically, “I want the same amount of money a public schooler gets in-district! That money should follow the child, period.”

This statement sums up the debate in Wisconsin and across the country about the privatization of public schools. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels promised during his campaign that he would create a universal school choice system in Wisconsin, removing all enrollment and income limits on vouchers.

One private school parent who attended the public meeting on the North Shore Classical Academy voiced opposition to the movement toward unlimited taxpayer funding for what is essentially a publicly funded system of private schools. “How many of these can we afford?” asked Mequon resident Beth Bauer. “Public school is for the public, not for every individual parent. … If you want private school, we have plenty of them around here.”

The UW System’s involvement in the expansion of charter schools like Hillsdale adds fuel to the fire that is consuming Wisconsin’s public education system.

The Office of Educational Opportunity was created by the Wisconsin Legislature in 2015, and its director is appointed by the UW System president.

The whole point of the office is to give charter schools that don’t get a green light from local school boards another shot at setting up shop, drawing money out of local school districts without local citizen input.

“Circumventing local school boards diminishes local control, thwarts transparency and damages democracy,” says Hofshulte.

If the OEO decides to become a Hillsdale authorizer, it will also mean the UW System is making Wisconsin taxpayers pay to support the right-wing, anti-public-school movement.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.

U.S. rail union representing 4,900 workers narrowly approves contract
Reuters
November 05, 2022


By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A labor union representing about 4,900 rail workers said on Saturday that members narrowly ratified a tentative contract agreement with freight railroads in the United States.

The union representing locomotive machinists, roadway mechanics, and facility maintenance personnel is the seventh of 12 to approve the deal, while two unions previously voted to reject the national deal announced in mid-September.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 19 said 59% of the membership voted and it was approved by 52% of voting members after an initial unsuccessful ratification attempt last month.

The union said it was "confident that this is the best deal for our members" and said it "will continue to amplify the deficiencies in the carriers’ sick leave and attendance policies."

IAM looks "forward to sitting down with the carriers to find a solution to the overtime policies in our industry."

The National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC), which represents freight railroads in labor talks, said unions "have repeatedly agreed that short-term absences would be unpaid in favor of higher compensation for days worked and more generous sickness benefits for longer absences."

Last month, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS) union, representing more than 6,000 members, voted against the deal as did the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED), which represents 11,000 workers.

BMWED could initiate a work stoppage as early as Nov. 19. The rail deal included a 24% percent wage increase over a five-year period from 2020 through 2024 as well $1,000 lump sum payments in each of the next five years.

The unions represent 115,000 workers at railroads including Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern and Kansas City Southern.

A rail shutdown could freeze almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoke inflation, cost the American economy as much as $2 billion per day and unleash a cascade of transport woes affecting U.S. energy, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and retail sectors.

Last week, more than 300 groups including the National Retail Federation and National Association of Manufacturers on urged President Joe Biden's involvement to help avoid a potential rail strike.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis; editing by Grant McCool)

How Elon Musk is changing Twitter


In his first full week as CEO, Musk is already drastically reshaping the social media platform.

By Shirin Ghaffary Updated Nov 4, 2022,

Elon Musk has been making major changes to Twitter’s workforce, company culture, and product roadmap after buying the company in late October. 

Patrick Pleul/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk has only been in charge of Twitter since late October. But already, he’s turned the company and its platform upside down.

In the days after Musk took over, he booted top executives, slashed rank-and-file headcount, pushed engineers to work harder, and began fast-tracking a hodgepodge of potentially revenue-generating features, including charging users to get or keep a verification check mark.

And while Musk didn’t immediately change any of Twitter’s policies against offensive content, in the hours after Musk took over there was a notable surge in hate speech on the app. Some of the users posting felt emboldened by Musk’s “free speech absolutist” attitude, and actively tried to test the limits of what they could say on Twitter under the company’s new leadership.

Many current and former employees, social media academics, and human rights advocates are concerned that Musk could change Twitter for the worse, turning it into an even more intense cesspool of negative content than it already is. But others hope Musk can breathe new life into a platform that was already bleeding its most prolific users and, for years, has struggled to turn a profit.

Here are some of the most significant ways Musk has changed the company so far.

Gutting Twitter’s staff

Musk began his reign as Twitter’s chief by firing top executives. Within hours of the deal closing, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde were shown the door.

The week after he took over, Musk continued firing executives, including Twitter’s ad chief, general manager of core tech, and chief marketing officer Leslie Berland (who just a few days earlier sent a cheery note announcing that Musk was visiting the San Francisco offices). He also pulled in more than 50 Tesla engineers to work for Twitter and assembled his own circle of trusted advisers.

Now, Musk is moving on to gutting Twitter’s rank-and-file staff. He has reportedly laid off an estimated 50 percent — upward of 3,700 employees — from the company. Twitter informed its staff that layoffs would happen by 9 am PT on Friday in a company-wide email. By late Thursday evening, several employees told Recode or posted publicly on Twitter that they had already been locked out of their work email and Slack accounts without any formal notice of whether they had been laid off.

The ridiculous but important Twitter verificationdebate, explained

These cuts are the largest in Twitter’s history, and several current and former employees Recode spoke with are concerned that as a result Twitter’s operations as a platform could be at risk. Musk has also reportedly planned to slash $1 billion from Twitter’s infrastructure costs, such as server space, according to a report from Reuters, furthering those concerns.

While Musk hasn’t addressed employees directly about the cuts, on Friday afternoon Musk discussed the layoffs at an investor conference. He framed the layoffs as necessary because before the deal, “Twitter was having pretty serious revenue challenges and cost challenges,” according to the New York Times.

Ahead of the layoffs, some employees were fighting to keep their jobs and prove their value to the company by working on special high-priority projects, many of them at Musk’s direction.

Several Twitter employees told Recode that some colleagues worked 12-hour shifts over the weekend and slept on sofas in the office in order to make Musk’s grueling deadlines.

“We’re trying to shoot our shot,” said one Twitter employee.

But many employees who were pulled into special projects and worked grueling shifts were still laid off, sources told Recode.

One Twitter employee described the morale at the company after the layoffs as low, and said that many colleagues who survived this round of cuts wish they had gotten laid off and gotten severance instead. Twitter is giving many laid-off employees full pay and benefits through at least January, although it’s not clear if this applied to all employees, particularly those outside the US, sources said.

Shortly after the cuts, a group of five employees sued Twitter in a class-action lawsuit, alleging the company failed to notify them of the impending layoffs as required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, that requires certain employers to give a 60-day notice for mass layoffs in the US.

Emboldening the trolls

Musk has said his primary reason for buying Twitter was to make it a haven for free speech. He’s echoed conservatives’ longstanding concerns that Twitter is politically biased against right-wing speech despite the lack of evidence of that bias.

Conservative politicians like former president Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have celebrated Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter as a major win, with Trump saying he’s happy that Twitter “will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs.”

But Musk’s more laissez-faire philosophy on content moderation has also caused another group of people to celebrate: trolls spreading racist, sexist, and otherwise hateful speech.

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Quitting Elon

One example: There was a 500 percent increase in uses of the n-word on Twitter in the 12 hours after Musk’s deal was completed, according to a study from the Network Contagion Research Institute, even though none of Twitter’s rules have changed on the matter.

Twitter has said it’s working on reducing the visibility of these posts. But data points like this have spooked several major advertisers that don’t want their brand affiliated with offensive content, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Audi, and Pfizer — who have are waiting to see more about what direction the company will take under Musk’s leadership before they resume ads.

Musk has tried to calm down advertiser concerns by tweeting a public note saying that he doesn’t want Twitter to turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.” On Thursday, Musk spoke with leaders of civil rights groups like the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and Color of Change, promising them that Twitter takes hate speech seriously, and that he won’t reinstate any banned accounts (e.g., Trump) until after he sets up a content moderation advisory council, which he said will at least take several weeks.

Musk also told civil rights leaders he would reverse his decision to limit the amount of staff who can access content moderation systems, another one of their concerns.

But by Friday morning, civil rights leaders organizing under he banner “#StopToxicTwitter Coalition” said that Musk had failed to hold true to his promises — and ramped up their demands for major advertisers to pause all ads on the platform, Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter had a “massive drop in revenue” due to “activist groups” who he accused of trying to “destroy free speech in America.”

It’s not just advertisers that are leaving Twitter because of Elon; there are also early signs that Elon’s takeover and the resulting negativity are causing some users to leave.

One report in MIT Technology Review estimated some 877,000 accounts were deactivated in the week after Musk’s deal closed. That’s more than double the usual number in that same time period, according to data from the firm Bot Sentinel that MIT Tech Review cited.

Of course, these are all estimates, and only from a short window of time. Twitter has also been losing its most valuable “heavy tweeters” in droves for a while now, according to a leaked internal report covered by Reuters, and that predates Musk’s takeover. But time will tell whether Musk exacerbates Twitter’s existing problem of users fleeing the platform.

Shaking up Twitter’s internal culture

Musk has been running Twitter in his own way, similar to how he runs his other companies: in an ad hoc and intense fashion. Rather than talking to his employees first, Musk often tweets whatever he’s thinking, including his plans for the company.

Twitter staff have received little official communication, such as emails or corporate-wide Slack messages, so far from Twitter’s executive leadership since Musk officially took over. One employee who spoke with Recode on the condition of anonymity called it an “information vacuum.”

That’s been an adjustment for many Twitter employees who are used to a more measured, communicative, and structured work culture. One anonymous Twitter employee told the Washington Post that the work atmosphere under Elon was like “working in Trump’s White House.”

Employees are turning to private or anonymous communication platforms like Blind, Signal, and Discord to commiserate, several employees told Recode, since they no longer feel they can be candid on internal Slack or email.

Another major change Elon is making to Twitter’s internal culture is to drastically ramp up the pace at which new features are developed.

Normally, product changes like the ones that Musk is proposing — such as charging users for verification — would take months or even years to implement at Twitter. Now, employees are being asked to execute them almost overnight.

This could drive the kind of innovation that Twitter, a money-losing business, might need. But it could also leave staff demoralized, or worse, compromise the reliability and security the app provides to its hundreds of millions of users. Twitter already has existing problems on this front: Former Twitter head of security and internal whistleblower Peiter Zatko warned that the platform “was over a decade behind industry security standards” in September.

Making people pay for blue check marks

The first official product change that Musk confirmed after taking over Twitter was to start charging $8 per month for “blue check marks” — or the verification badges that Twitter currently gives to public figures like journalists, politicians, and celebrities.

The idea is that verification would be part of a premium “Twitter Blue” subscription that people pay for, which includes other benefits like fewer ads and more visibility for your Twitter replies to other people’s threads. Musk wants to open up verification to more people — not just journalists, politicians, and celebrities — as long as they’re willing to pay that price.

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The ridiculous but important Twitter verification debate, explained

This has caused major debate among people who are currently verified — many of whom said they aren’t willing to pay to keep their verification. After the famous author Stephen King complained about the original $20-a-month price tag being floated around, Musk jumped in his replies to negotiate down to $8. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) gave her own critique of the plan, mocking Musk’s “power to the people” framing of what’s ultimately a paid feature.

Twitter verification was designed to make sure people really are who they say they are online. This does a service to Twitter’s user base by reducing scams, helping to verify trusted news sources, and stopping people from falling for impersonations. Musk’s plan to let anyone pay their way into verification (and per the New York Times, Twitter is considering getting rid of ID checks, so that anyone can be whoever they want) could run the risk of undermining the trust verification is supposed to provide.

Throwing other ideas at the wall

Aside from charging for Twitter verification, Musk has been planning a whole new set of changes to the platform. While none of these are confirmed yet, they’re reportedly in the works or being tested.

Those changes include making people pay for certain types of “high risk” video content (many are speculating it would be adult video content), according to the Washington Post; bringing back Vine, the short-form video app Twitter acquired and later shuttered; changing the login page to the explore page; and charging people for sending DMs to high-profile users.

For now, it seems like Elon is throwing a bunch of ideas out to see which ones work. As one investor in Musk’s deal, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, said at the Web Summit conference in November, he expects only 10 percent of Musk’s ideas “will stick.”

So far, many of Musk’s ideas (like Vine and paid videos) are old ones that Twitter has already tried — and failed at.

Over time, it will become clear if Musk will be able to successfully resurrect these old ideas — and his new ones, like paying for a check mark — with a very different work culture and staff than Twitter had before.

We’ll keep updating this post as Musk continues to shape Twitter, for better or worse.

Rocket Lab's Latest Try to Catch a Rocket Booster With a Helicopter Doesn't Connect

Rocket Lab made its second attempt to snag -- and hold on to -- the first stage of an Electron rocket.

Eric Mack

Nov. 4, 2022 

A line and hook attached to a helicopter moving in to snag a falling Electron rocket and parachute.

Rocket Lab

Space startup Rocket Lab's second attempt at catching a booster with a helicopter didn't go as hoped on Friday. 

Just minutes after one of Rocket Lab's Electron vehicles blasted off from New Zealand to loft a scientific research satellite to space for the Swedish National Space Agency as part of the aptly named "Catch Me If You Can" mission, the first stage began its return to Earth. The booster deployed a series of parachutes to slow its descent while a modified Sikorsky S-92 helicopter waited nearby. 

It's not yet clear what happened, as the rocket never came into view on the livestream of the recovery attempt. A little over a quarter hour after launch, the company announced that the Electron first stage would be splashing down in the Pacific Ocean instead. 

"Unfortunately it looks like we are not going to bring Electron home dry today, but we do have the back up option of an ocean splashdown so we'll bring you updates on that operation in the hours to come," the company said via Twitter.

The original plan was for the chopper to snag the one-ton booster by its parachute cord using a hook and long line attached to the helicopter. Instead it will be plucked from the ocean and cleaned up for possible reuse.

A May attempt to pull off this unorthodox rocket recovery method saw the company manage to snag its booster using a long line attached to a chopper, but after just a few seconds the pilot let go of the load. The booster splashed down in the ocean and was recovered.

You can rewatch Friday's mission below:

First published on Nov. 3, 2022 at 8:52 a.m. PT.