How do you solve a problem like Elon Musk?

The “chameleon” tech billionaire is one of the most powerful politically connected people in the world. Europe’s governments are still working out how to deal with being on his bad side.

NO CHAMELEON HE IS A FASCIST


Elon Musk has no compunction about lambasting serving administrations and throwing his weight behind opposition movements on the populist right. 

| POOL photo by Toby Melville/AFP via Getty Images

January 3, 2025 
By Emilio Casalicchio, James Angelos, Eliza Gkritsi and Joshua Berlinger

POLITICO EU

LONDON — He’s a billionaire firebrand at the forefront of green tech, owns a powerful political media platform — and has the ear of the incoming president of the United States.

So it’s little wonder governments across Europe are in turmoil over how to navigate Elon Musk, while dodging his erratic and often ill-informed criticisms about their domestic politics.

The Tesla and X owner — tapped up to lead a government efficiency drive in Donald Trump's second U.S. presidential term — has no compunction about lambasting serving administrations and throwing his weight behind opposition movements on the populist right. That's despite him complaining about foreign interference when others attempt to get involved with U.S. politics.

His biggest beef appears to be with the British Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But he has sharply criticized German Chancellor Olaf Scholz too and endorsed hard-right movements in both nations.

Other European leaders have attempted to court Musk in the hope of avoiding his ire and smoothing their relations with Trump, who Musk helped into office via millions of dollars in campaign funding.

French President Emmanuel Macron invited the Tesla and Twitter owner to the re-opening of Notre-Dame cathedral and wants him at an upcoming tech summit.

Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni has built her own bond with Musk. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was forced to play nice with him during a post-election call with Trump, despite sharp disagreements over the response to Russia's full-scale invasion.

Leaders from further afield, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also increased their dealings with the businessman as the U.S. election loomed, to avoid the kind of harsh treatment meted out to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Musk appeared to endorse Trudeau's Conservative rival this week to boot.

Those who put the time in are being vindicated.
Advertisement

Advertisement



Trump rewarded the SpaceX mogul with his cost-cutting government appointment and has rarely been seen without Musk at his side since the election, cementing his influence on the coming administration.

Among his political allies and enemies, a consensus has formed that Musk is one of the most powerful people in the world — if not the most powerful. Getting on his bad side can have dire consequences.

"As a chameleon, you never know which version of Elon Musk is showing up," said one former U.K. government adviser who dealt with Musk and was granted anonymity to speak candidly about him. "He's a dangerous figure. And it's in no one's interests to have him as an enemy."

Elon Musk's biggest beef appears to be with the British Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

Just ask Keir Starmer

Musk launches social media attacks at Starmer with near-obsessive routine.

He has backed the Reform U.K. movement led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage — a long-standing friend of Trump who met Musk last month and discussed a potential overseas donation.

In recent days, Musk has also thrown his weight behind far-right rabble-rouser Tommy Robinson — a step too far even for Farage. He did so while peddling claims Starmer failed to take the issue of child grooming gangs seriously while he was head of the British prosecution service.

The latest Musk musings on X earned a rebuke from Labour minister Andrew Gwynne. “Elon Musk is an American citizen and perhaps ought to focus on issues on the other side of the Atlantic,” he told LBC radio.

But Gwynne’s boss, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, offered the Tesla chief an olive branch in a later interview — demonstrating the tension in the British government over whether or not to rile the billionaire further.

Streeting said Musk's criticisms were “misjudged and certainly misinformed,” but stressed the British government is keen to cooperate with tech giants to tackle child sexual exploitation, Musk's latest crusade and a campaign point for Farage.

“We’re willing to work with Elon Musk, who I think has got a big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries to tackle this serious issue,” Streeting told ITV News. “If he wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we'd welcome that.”

But Musk shows no signs of backing down and the U.K. government's refusal to invite him to a crucial investment summit last October may have sealed its reputation with the tech mogul.

For its part, Starmer's Downing Street studiously avoided commenting on Musk's latest attacks, even as Musk branded the prime minister “complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN" and demanded a fresh election.

Starmer's MPs — nervously eyeing a challenge from Farage's party — were less circumspect.

One, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, lamented that "at a time when communities need to come and work together, we have someone with a lot of influence sowing divisions and spreading hate."
Germany gives the middle finger

In Germany, mainstream political leaders are increasingly concerned about what Musk’s endorsement of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could mean for relations between the Trump administration and Germany’s next coalition government

.

The center-left Chancellor Scholz — a Musk bête noire — called a snap election for Feb. 23. | POOL photo by Soeren Stache/AFP via Getty Images

And they have been less shy than the U.K. government about taking on Musk directly.

The center-left Chancellor Scholz — a Musk bête noire — called a snap election for Feb. 23 and has found himself in a struggling campaign against the entrepreneur as well as his domestic political opponents.

In an interview with Funke Mediengruppe published in recent days, Social Democratic co-leader Lars Klingbeil compared Musk’s interventions in the German election to the influence operations backed by the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Both want to influence our elections and specifically support the AfD's enemies of democracy,” said Klingbeil. “They want Germany to be weakened and plunged into chaos.”

The conservative candidate in pole position to be Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has portrayed himself as a leader who will be able to make “deals” with Trump — at a moment when German exports are exposed to the president-elect’s repeated threats of a trade war with Europe.

Many German mainstream politicians worry that, at the very least, Musk and the incoming administration will further undermine German centrist parties by normalizing the AfD and playing down its radicalism.

Those worries grew more pronounced when U.S. Vice President-elect JD Vance reposted an English-language translation of Musk’s controversial tribute to the AfD in Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

“I’m not endorsing a party in the German elections, as it’s not my country and we hope to have good relations with all Germans,” Vance wrote on X.

“But this is an interesting piece,” he added.

Flattery from Macron

Musk hasn’t yet thrown his endorsement behind Marine Le Pen and the French far right. But President Macron — who, like Scholz in Germany, is politically fragile and facing domestic turbulence — is desperate to get him onside.

He has been urging the tech entrepreneur, alongside Trump, to attend a major artificial intelligence summit in Paris next month. The duo's appearance at the recent Notre-Dame reopening was a diplomatic coup for Macron.

“Trump doesn’t seem to hold Paris in the same contempt he holds the EU or Germany,” said a Republican foreign policy expert working with Trump’s transition team, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the team’s internal thinking. “Macron can take solace in the fact that he’s not Scholz.”

Musk hasn’t yet thrown his endorsement behind Marine Le Pen and the French far right. | Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Making life difficult for Macron, however, is the European Commission, which continues investigations into whether X complies with its information rules.

It has found the microblogging site in breach of the Digital Services Act, the EU’s landmark content moderation law, for the deceptive design of “verified” badges and a lack of transparency to researchers.

The jury is still out on X's potential violations around the dissemination of illegal content and measures to fight information manipulation, and the Commission is mulling whether it could slap Musk with a mega-fine.

A back and forth between Musk and former European Commissioner for digital policy Thierry Breton became increasingly hostile. Breton resigned from his post shortly after their war of words, prompting glee from his nemesis.

European leaders are waiting to see where Musk turns his attention next once Trump takes office later this month.

The one certainty is the old rules of diplomacy are out the window.

"While his behavior is dubious, business and trade is fickle," said the former U.K. government adviser. "Governments should never rule out a significant opportunity to do business with him."

Noah Keate in London and Sue Allan in Ottawa contributed to this report.

British minister says Musk ‘misinformed’ on UK child grooming scandals

British Health Secretary Wes Streeting says Musk’s views are ‘misjudged and certainly misinformed’.

Elon Musk appears to be taking a keen interest in the United Kingdom's political scene [File: Allison Robbert/Pool via AP]

AL JAZEERA
3 Jan 2025

A senior British politician has rejected Elon Musk’s criticism of the government’s handling of historic child grooming scandals.

The US technology billionaire on Thursday accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions more than a decade ago.

In a flurry of posts on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk also suggested that safeguarding minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” for refusing a request for a national public inquiry into the Oldham scandal.

On Friday, British Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk’s views were “misjudged and certainly misinformed”. He urged Musk, a close confidant of US President-elect Donald Trump, to work with the government on tackling the issue of child sexual exploitation.

“So if he wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we’d welcome that,” he added.

The widespread abuse of girls, which emerged more than a decade ago in several English towns and cities, including Rochdale, Rotherham and Oldham, has long stirred controversy.

A 2022 report into safeguarding measures in Oldham between 2011 and 2014 found that children were failed by local agencies, but that there was no cover-up despite “legitimate concerns” that the far right would capitalise on “the high-profile convictions of predominantly Pakistani offenders across the country”.

Streeting told ITV News that the government took child sexual exploitation “incredibly seriously” and that it was supportive of an inquiry into the Oldham scandal, but that it should be led locally.

Musk appears to be taking a keen interest in the United Kingdom’s political scene since the left-of-centre Labour Party won a landslide election victory in July 2024, bringing an end to 14 years of Conservative rule.

He has retweeted criticism of Starmer and the hashtag TwoTierKeir – shorthand for an unsubstantiated claim that the UK has “two-tier policing”, with far-right protesters treated more harshly than pro-Palestinian or Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

Musk has also compared British attempts to weed out online misinformation to the Soviet Union, while during summer anti-immigrant violence across the UK, he tweeted that “civil war is inevitable”.

On Friday, he also backed calls for a UK general election, barely six months after the last one. “The people of Britain do not want this government at all. New elections,” he wrote on his X platform.

Musk also recently expressed his support for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the founder of the far-right English Defence League, who is better known as Tommy Robinson and who is serving an 18-month jail term for contempt of court.

 

New Year’s Attacks by Green Beret & Army Veteran: Does U.S. Militarism Abroad Fuel Violence at Home?

January 03, 2025
DEMOCRACY NOW!

GuestsMike Prysner
Iraq War veteran and GI organizer.

Links"Dozens Quitting US Military Over Gaza in Protest: Voices of Hidden Unrest Within the Ranks"

"Eyes Left" podcast


We look at what we know about two deadly incidents that unfolded in the United States on New Year’s Day: a truck attack in New Orleans in which a driver killed at least 14 people before being shot dead by police, and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, part of an apparent suicide. The FBI has identified the New Orleans suspect as 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who had posted videos to social media before the attack pledging allegiance to the Islamic State militant group. In the Las Vegas case, the driver was 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado, an active-duty Army Green Beret, who is believed to have shot himself before the blast. Investigators say they have not found a link between the two incidents despite both men being connected to the military, but Army veteran and antiwar organizer Mike Prysner says “military service is now the number one predictor of becoming what is called a mass casualty offender, surpassing even mental health issues.” Prysner says the U.S. military depends on social problems like alienation and inequality in order to gain new recruits, then “spits them back out” in often worse shape, with people exposed to violence sometimes turning to extremism. “We have these deep-rooted problems in our society that give rise to these incidents of mass violence. Service members and veterans … can actually be a part of changing society and getting to the root of those issues and moving society forward,” he says, citing uniformed resistance to the Vietnam and Iraq wars as examples.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with what we know about the two apparent attacks that unfolded in the U.S. on New Year’s Day and the response so far.

The FBI has identified the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas Wednesday morning as 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado Springs. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head moments before his rented car, packed with fireworks and fuel canisters, burst into flames, injuring seven. Livelsberger was an active-duty member of the Army. He was a Green Beret and Special Forces master sergeant. From 2017 to 2019, he served three tours of duty in Afghanistan. Before that, he deployed to the Republic of Congo, Ukraine and Tajikistan. Livelsberger was on leave from his base in Germany. FBI special agent Spencer Evans said Thursday investigators are still searching for a motive.


SPENCER EVANS: We know we have a bombing, absolutely. And it’s a bombing that certainly has factors that raise concern. It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of, you know, of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle. But we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology or that — you know, any of the reasoning behind it.

AMY GOODMAN: The FBI says it has not found a link between the Las Vegas man and the suspect in the New Orleans attack earlier, just a few hours earlier, on New Year’s Day. Both men served in the U.S. Army, including overlapping assignments at Fort Bragg in North Carolina — what it used to be called — but there’s no evidence they knew each other.

President Biden Wednesday said the FBI had named 42-year-old Texas-born U.S. citizen, U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar as the suspect who rammed his pickup truck into throngs of revelers on Bourbon Street early Wednesday, killing 14.


PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I’ve directed them to keep looking. The individual who rented the truck to explode — that exploded in Las Vegas also served as active-duty U.S. Army. And the FBI is working with the Department of Defense on investigating, including the service member’s possible motives and all those he worked with.

AMY GOODMAN: Jabbar had posted five videos to social media in the last few hours before the attack, pledging allegiance to ISIS and discussing plans to kill his family.

Both Jabbar and Livelsberger were divorced. CNN reports Jabbar’s second wife had a restraining order against him during their divorce case. Meanwhile, in recent months, Livelsberger had reportedly removed pictures of himself from Facebook in which he proposed to his partner and cradled his newborn baby in his arms.

On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump blamed what he called Biden’s “Open Borders Policy” for, quote, “Radical Islamic Terrorism” in an apparent reference to the New Orleans attack. President Trump said once again that people coming from outside of the country were more dangerous than people at home. Soon after, President Biden said that the Texas man was a U.S.-born Army veteran.

Meanwhile, Trump’s incoming senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, also responded to the New Orleans attack. Gorka advised Trump in his first term but was pushed out after The Forward revealed he once had ties to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group and that he supported an antisemitic, racist paramilitary militia in Hungary while he served as a Hungarian politician. Gorka spoke on the right-wing news outlet Newsmax.


SEBASTIAN GORKA: You need to understand — every single one of our Newsmax viewers — you are on the frontline of the war against global jihadism. It’s not just our Tier 1 operators. It’s not just the guys at Dam Neck, the SEALs or the guys over the wire at Bragg. You — you, like the people on Bourbon Street — are on the frontline. So be aware. Keep your head on a swivel. And if you hear people doing strange things and acting peculiarly — apparently, this individual converted to Islam last year — you need to also share that information.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Mike Prysner, an Iraq War Army veteran who’s been watching these developments closely. He previously co-founded March Forward, an antiwar group of veterans and active service members, and worked with Veterans for Peace and another group called About Face. He still works as a GI organizer. Michael Prysner joined the U.S. Army in 2001 when he was 17 and left the military in 2005. His company participated in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, where he served for a year. He hosts a podcast for service members called Eyes Left. In June, his report for _The Empire Files was headlined “Dozens Quitting US Military Over Gaza in Protest: Voices of Hidden Unrest Within the Ranks.”

Mike Prysner, welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you for joining us from Portland, Oregon. If you can start off by responding to these two attacks? Now, again, the authorities say they see no connection between the two. They think both men acted alone. They did use the same app to rent their cars. Livelsberger rented in Denver an EV, one of those Tesla Cybertrucks, which looks like a tank. And you have Jabbar, who launched this attack in New Orleans, used his car as a weapon, his EV pickup truck. But both men were in the military. You have Livelsberger, a Green Beret, and you have Jabbar, who was in the military for more than a decade, now a military veteran. Talk about what took place on New Year’s, Mike.

MIKE PRYSNER: Right. Well, both of these incidents and individuals seem quite different, other than the fact that both of them seem to be triggered by relationship issues. But the main thing that links them is the fact that military service is now the number one predictor of becoming what is called a mass casualty offender, surpassing even mental health issues as a profiler.

You know, there are many different consequences of having a massive military empire, the biggest humanity has ever seen, both in its sheer size, its expanse around the world, one that is constantly engaged in endless and morally indefensible wars around the world. And one of those consequences is the violence abroad coming back against people at home. Livelsberger, of course, his career was one of killing. And then, you know, the New Orleans attacker says he was inspired by ISIS, the mass killing ideology of ISIS. ISIS would not exist were it not for the U.S. military’s complete destruction of Iraq and mass killing of innocent people.

You know, America, in general, of course, has a mass violence problem. Mass shootings happen quite regularly, more than once a day on average. And the reasons for that are linked to U.S. militarism, both in the kind of cultural domination of a country that glorifies violence and exports violence, but more so a government that is presiding over a country with deep and extreme social problems, which it refuses to address while having a blank and endless check for militarism abroad and an ever-increasing budget for the military-industrial complex.

And so, this gives rise to an extreme amount of social problems in our society that are rooted in things like alienation and inequality and desperation and despair and hopelessness. And then, so, the U.S. military comes in and, for the purposes of recruitment, must target people who are most impacted by those social problems. They bring them into an institution where they train them to kill. They train them that killing is actually quite honorable and quite cool, and sends many of those people to kill abroad, you know, and has a notoriously — very notorious for ruining people’s mental health, in a mental health system that makes people’s mental health problems even worse, and then spits them back out into a society where people find their lives harder than when they joined. That’s kind of why I think that it’s become a number one predictor of becoming a mass casualty offender, is all of those consequences.

And, you know, if we look at Fort Bragg in particular — you mentioned both these people passed through Fort Bragg — you know, Fort Bragg was, for two decades, the hub of the “global war on terror,” in particular the Special Operations factory, which does some pretty dark stuff around the world. And so, it’s really no surprise that two of these people passed through this base and that they are just joining a larger number of people from the military who end up carrying out acts of violence on others.

A lot of these are turned inward, and there’s, of course, an epidemic of suicide and drug addiction and alcohol addiction and overdoses and things like that. But, of course, when you have a scenario like that in our society, some number of those people, instead of self-destruction, will move to the destruction of others, which is what we’ve seen with these two individuals.

AMY GOODMAN: And again, Fort Bragg is now called Fort Liberty, because Bragg was an enslaving Confederate general, Braxton Bragg, a Confederate officer in the U.S. Civil War, and like a number of bases, it has been renamed. You talk about the violence. Also an epidemic of violence against women on these bases. And it’s always interesting, in these mass casualty events, whether you’re talking about a mass shooter in a school like Sandy Hook, to look at the attackers’ relationship with women in the past. I mean, you had the Sandy Hook shooter killed his mother before. But often when domestic violence doesn’t go — isn’t taken seriously, you see what — the escalation of the violence, Mike.

MIKE PRYSNER: Absolutely. I mean, you know, and this is a problem that’s endemic to the military, as well. I mean, you know, Fort Liberty, it’s high rates of domestic violence, of murders even. You know, Seth Harp, who’s another antiwar Iraq War veteran, has also done really important work on this. And so, yes, I mean, there is, of course, many indicators.

I mean, it comes back to this idea that these — we have this mass violence problem. There are many ways that the government could be stopping this, could be taking measures to get to the root of these things. But instead, it just exacerbates them. And, of course, the U.S. military is — you know, there are so many cocktails in our society that allow these things to bubble over into violence against other people. The military is just, you know, one of the stronger cocktails that exists.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about Livelsberger, what we understand now happened. He’s the Green Beret who drove that Cybertruck that blew up in front of the Trump hotel in Las Vegas. Apparently, he died of a self-inflicted bullet wound. Can you talk about soldier suicides?

MIKE PRYSNER: Well, I mean, it’s an epidemic, and it has been for a long time. I mean, and it’s something that, you know, especially was exacerbated when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began. You have people like Livelsberger who deployed many, many, many times. In Special Operations, you know, he, no doubt, was involved in things that — involved in killing all over the world.

But, you know, the way that the military historically and, you know, from my own experience being in touch with so many service members who were struggling against this, you know, the military’s policy when it comes to mental health and suicide and things like that is to maintain the fighting force. And so, the goal of the U.S. military when they’re dealing with this epidemic within the ranks is to keep the fighting force active and keeping people deploying and things like that. And that’s what we saw throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And so, of course, there’s a great deal of this, a great deal of this in society writ large, but in the military in particular. You know, so, Livelsberger, who injured many people and could have killed some people, as well, and so, you know, on face value, it looks like he was just another statistic of someone from Special Operations or the military in general that killed themselves but was doing it in this kind of spectacular way, you know, went out with a bang, which, you know, with our corporate media that sensationalizes so many of these incidents, maybe was inspired to do something that made a scene or something like that. But I think the suicide is, of course, a major problem in the military and in our society, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, and that, of course, there’s going to be some layer of those people that want to turn that violence on other people, as well as themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: An article in The Washington Post from about, oh, a month ago is headlined “Trump could hobble renewed fight against domestic terrorism, analysts warn.” Now, this is really interesting. I remember when Obama came to office and there was a report on domestic terrorism, especially right-wing terrorism in the military. He was pressured not to have that report released. This is an ongoing issue. Then you have the misinformation that Fox put out on New Year’s Day saying that the truck that was rented came over — this is the truck in New Orleans that Jabbar used — came over the border in the last two days. It was not minutes later that Trump didn’t post on Truth Social that finally people have to accept that people who come from outside this country are more of a threat than people who are born here. And he attributed the minimizing of the foreign threat to Democrats and the fake news media. Of course, he was wrong about this, and Jabbar was a U.S.-born U.S. citizen, served in the military for more than 10 years. Mike?

MIKE PRYSNER: Of course. Well, you know, the Trump administration is going to use the New Orleans attacker to feed into their right-wing agenda. The reality is, is that when we look at extremist attacks or violence from people who have been in the military or are still in the military, a very, very tiny number of those people, you could say, were inspired by Islamic extremism. But right-wing extremism is, in fact, a very prevalent and common thing, and has been throughout the entire history of the U.S. military. I mean, the Ku Klux Klan, America’s premier domestic terrorist organization, was one founded by military veterans. And throughout the entire history of the U.S. military, white supremacist and right-wing organizations have heavily recruited from and been led by people who are in the military and military veterans, as well.

This all came to a head in the ’90s, where the Oklahoma City bombing, but also you had neo-Nazi service members —

AMY GOODMAN: Served — right. Timothy —

MIKE PRYSNER: — in the Marines commit a lynching of a Black couple in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And then, so, there was this brief period of crackdown of the military on right-wing extremism. But when the Iraq War started going very badly and they needed bodies to continue to go to the Iraq War, they completely removed their restrictions on this kind of thing and then — you know, which has been exposed by many journalists — were knowingly bringing in right-wing extremists. Some of them were going into the military specifically to get training to bring back out into their organizations.

And so, today we have many far-right organizations, like Atomwaffen Division, Identity Evropa, Patriot Front, some of those organizations founded by veterans, but also who recruit heavily from the military and veterans, as well. Like, leaked documents from Patriot Front show that more than 20% of their applicants are young veterans or people who are still in the military. You know, this is a real — this is a real danger. You know, the Oath Keepers, after January 6, it was revealed that so many of the participants were military veterans. In fact, many from the Special Operations were really the tactical leadership of that assault, and many of whom had stashed large numbers of assault rifles and ammunition in hotel rooms that were very near the Capitol assault.

And so, of course, this is something that should concern everyone. It’s obviously the real clear and present danger when we’re talking about extremism from within the military. But the Trump administration has indicated that the problem in the military is in fact wokeism. And they may be going after woke generals or things like that, which really means they will be going after trans people. But also, I think it’s very concerning when we talk about what we should look forward to with the Trump administration, how they’re going to combat extremism from the military. You know, one of Trump’s main program platforms — on his 20-point program for his presidency, one of them was deporting pro-Hamas terrorists. And so, of course, we know that the Trump administration, when they say “pro-Hamas,” they really just mean pro-Palestine.

And, you know, this, I guess, brings me to the point that, you know, the military, as we’ve been discussing, really transforms people in a lot of ways, that it can tend to transform people in extremely negative ways. But a lot of times people’s military experience puts them in a positive direction and causes them to reject the violence that they were a part of, which is what we’ve been seeing the past year through the Gaza genocide, where large numbers of service members have been quitting the military, both publicly and privately, have been taking part in demonstrations to try to protest the U.S. role in it, and taking other really dramatic and heroic actions in that regard. And those are the kinds of people that Donald Trump and Hegseth and others who are going to be a part of the administration identify as extremists, when the real threat of right-wing extremism is going to go, of course, completely ignored, because that’s really the base of the incoming administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Mike Prysner, a recent Guardian report headlined “Trump pick a threat to US military’s counter-extremism effort, experts warn,” quote, “Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled choice for secretary of defense, will struggle to handle the serious problem of extremism in the US military due to his own far-right political views, experts in the subject have warned.” The piece quotes Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq War veteran, CEO of the nonprofit watchdog Task Force Butler, saying, quote, “I think it’s going to be an absolute disaster. Pete Hegseth is a domestic extremist,” he said. The Guardian goes on to note, quote, “Hegseth, an Iraq and Afghan war veteran, was barred from attending Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration after a fellow national guardsman accused him of being an 'insider threat' and an extremist with problematic tattoos.” Mike Prysner, your final comments?

MIKE PRYSNER: Yeah, well, we are in a tumultuous time in America, both a time of heightened political violence and at a time of growing despair and growing inequality in this country. You know, the military, being a cross-section of that U.S. society, experiences those things, as well. And in that moment, there are going to be numbers of people in the military and veterans who are going to gravitate towards right-wing organizations and go the path that Hegseth went. There’s going to be people who do the opposite, and there’s going to be people that just turn inward into self-destruction and despair.

And so, that’s why I think it’s very important for progressive-minded people to realize that there is a role we can play in reaching out to people who are in the military who can go down a different path and can go down the path of the many heroic service members who have taken a stand, who have quit the military and who have used their experiences as a force for good in this world.

And, you know, getting back to this main issue of that, we have these deep-rooted problems in our society that give rise to these incidents of mass violence. You know, service members and veterans, instead of being a number one mass casualty offender, so many of them can actually be a part of changing society and getting to the root of those issues and moving society forward, as they have historically in the past — Vietnam veterans leading the struggle against the Vietnam War, Iraq veterans leading the struggle against the Iraq War, and both those instances being decisive factors in those wars coming to an end. We have much bigger problems to address in society. Service members can be and veterans can very much be a part of solving them. And it’s very much needed that we foster that among progressive people, because there is clearly a faction on the right wing that is very much already doing that and taking advantage of that, and, of course, is entering the highest seats of power, with people like Hegseth.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike Prysner, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Mike was an Iraq War Army veteran, longtime GI organizer, previously co-founded March Forward, an antiwar group of veterans and active service members. He was 17 when he joined the military in 2001. His company participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

This is Democracy Now!  This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today. Donate

Soldier who died in Las Vegas explosion left note saying it was to be a wakeup for country's ills

An Army soldier who died in an explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck at the Trump hote l in Las Vegas left a note saying it was stunt to serve as “wakeup call” for the country’s ills, investigators said Friday.

Tara Copp, Alanna Durkin Richer And Colleen Long, The Associated Press

• 
  
• 
  

This image provided by Alcides Antunes shows a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel early Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (Alcides Antunes via AP)

An Army soldier who died in an explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck at the Trump hote l in Las Vegas left a note saying it was stunt to serve as “wakeup call” for the country’s ills, investigators said Friday.

Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in the note that he needed to “cleanse my mind” of the lives lost of people he knew and “the burden of the lives I took.”

Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officials said.

“Although this incident is more public and more sensational than usual, it ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues,” FBI Special Agent In Charge Spencer Evans said at a news conference.

The explosion caused minor injuries to seven people but virtually no damage to the hotel. Authorities said Friday that Livelsberger acted alone.

“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in a letter found by authorities who released only excerpts of it.

Investigators identified the Tesla driver — who was burned beyond recognition — as Livelsberger by a tattoo and by comparing DNA from relatives. The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, according to coroners officials.

Pentagon officials have declined to say whether Livelsberger may have been suffering from mental health issues but say they have turned over his medical records to police.

Authorities excerpted the messages from two letters Livelsberger wrote using a cellphone note application, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren said.

The letters covered a range of topics including political grievances, domestic issues and societal issues, Koren said.

Tesla engineers, meanwhile, helped extract data from the Cybertruck for investigators, including Livelsberger’s path between charging stations from Colorado through New Mexico and Arizona and on to Las Vegas, Koren said.

“We still have a large volume of data to go through,” Koren said. “There’s thousands if not millions of videos and photos and documents and web history and all of those things that need to be analyzed.”

The new details came as investigators sought to determine Livelsberger’s motive, including whether he sought to make a political point with the Tesla and the hotel bearing the president-elect’s name.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk was in Las Vegas early Wednesday, the day of the explosion. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at his South Florida estate.

Musk spent an estimated $250 million during the presidential campaign to support Trump, who has named Musk, the world’s richest man, to co-lead a new effort to find ways to cut the government’s size and spending.

Investigators suspect Livelsberger may have been planning a more damaging attack but the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force from the crudely built explosive.

Investigators said previously that Livelsberger shot himself inside the Tesla Cybertruck packed with fireworks just before it exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Day.

“It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle, but we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology,” Spencer Evans, the Las Vegas FBI’s special agent in charge, said Thursday.

Asked Friday about whether Livelsberger had been struggling with any mental health issues that may have prompted his suicide, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that “the department has turned over all medical records to local law enforcement.”

A law enforcement official said investigators learned through interviews that he may have gotten into a fight with his wife about relationship issues shortly before he rented the Tesla in Colorado on Saturday and bought the guns. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Among the charred items found inside the truck were a handgun at Livelsberger’s feet, another firearm, fireworks, a passport, a military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Kevin McMahill said. Authorities said both guns were purchased legally.

Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners. He had served in the Army since 2006, rising through the ranks with a long career of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, the Army said. He had recently returned from an overseas assignment in Germany and was on approved leave when he died, according to a U.S. official.

He was awarded a total of five Bronze Stars, including one with a valor device for courage under fire, a combat infantry badge and an Army Commendation Medal with valor.

Authorities searched a townhouse in Livelsberger's hometown of Colorado Springs Thursday as part of the investigation. Neighbors said the man who lived there had a wife and a baby.

Cindy Helwig, who lives diagonally across a narrow street separating the homes, said she last saw the man she knew as Matthew about two weeks ago when he asked her if he could borrow a tool he needed to fix an SUV he was working on.

“He was a normal guy,” said Helwig, who said she last saw the wife and baby earlier this week.

The explosion of the truck, packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, came hours after 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people before being shot to death by police. The FBI says they believe Jabbar acted alone and that it is being investigated as a terrorist attack.

___

Copp, Richer and Long reported from Washington. Contributing were Associated Press journalists Rio Yamat, Ken Ritter and Ty ONeil in Las Vegas; Colleen Slevin in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles.

Tara Copp, Alanna Durkin Richer And Colleen Long, The Associated Press

Trump’s top Mideast aides have close personal ties to him, business backgrounds

January 03, 2025 
By Michael Lipin

On the Middle East, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has chosen as advisers two businessmen with whom he shares close personal ties. VOA’s Michael Lipin has our story.

India says US H1B visas benefit both countries after Trump, Musk backing





03/01/25 | 

The movement of skilled professionals is an important part of India-U.S. ties and benefits both countries, New Delhi said on Friday amid a debate over H-1B visas on which President-elect Donald Trump and his backer Elon Musk commented recently.

India, known for its massive pool of IT professionals, many of whom work across the world, accounts for the bulk of such visas issued by the United States.

Late last month, Trump said he fully backed the H1B programme for foreign workers opposed by some of his supporters after Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, vowed to go to “war” to defend it.

India said such visas provided mutual benefits.

“Our countries have a strong and growing economic and technological partnership and within this ambit, mobility of skilled professionals is an important component,” India’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, told a press conference when asked about the H1B visa discussions in the U.S.

“India-U.S economic ties benefit a lot from the technical expertise provided by skilled professionals, with both sides leveraging their strengths and competitive value. We look forward to further deepening India-U.S economic ties which are to our mutual benefit.”

India received about 78% of the 265,777 H1B visas issued by the United States in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2023.

The country is keen to strengthen ties under Trump, Jaiswal said, noting that India’s foreign minister and foreign secretary recently visited the United States and held meetings with Trump’s transition team.

(Reuters)

India conveys its concerns to China over hydropower dam in Tibet

TO BE THE WORLDS LARGEST HYDRO DAM



03/01/25 | 

India’s foreign ministry said on Friday that New Delhi has conveyed its concerns to Beijing about China’s plan to build a hydropower dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo river which flows into India.

Chinese officials say that hydropower projects in Tibet will not have a major impact on the environment or on downstream water supplies but India and Bangladesh have nevertheless raised concerns about the dam.

The Yarlung Zangbo becomes the Brahmaputra river as it leaves Tibet and flows south into India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Assam states and finally into Bangladesh.

“The Chinese side has been urged to ensure that the interests of downstream states of the Brahmaputra are not harmed by activities in upstream areas,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a weekly media briefing.

“We will continue to monitor and take necessary measures to protect our interests,” he said.

The construction of the dam, which will be the largest of its kind in the world with an estimated capacity of 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, was approved last month.

Jaiswal said that New Delhi had also lodged a “solemn protest” with Beijing against its creation of two new counties – one of which includes a disputed area also claimed by India – last month.

“Creation of new counties will neither have a bearing on India’s longstanding and consistent position regarding our sovereignty over the area nor lend legitimacy to China’s illegal and forcible occupation of the same,” he said.

Relations between Asian giants India and China, that were strained after a deadly military clash on their disputed border in 2020, have been on the mend since they reached an agreement in October to pull back troops from their last two stand-off points in the western Himalayas.

The two armies have stepped back following the agreement and senior officials held formal talks for the first time in five years last month where they agreed to take small steps to improve relations.

(Reuters)

Thousands of pro-Palestine supporters march in Istanbul NYE

WEDENSDAY JANUARY 1, 2025

Cardiff University accused of spying on pro-Palestine protesters, staff

The claims, which the university has vehemently denied, arose after the release of email correspondence between university officials and South Wales Police.


Critics have described certain interactions between the university and the police as inappropriate and have called for greater accountability in how the university handles such matters. / Photo: cardiff.ac.uk


Cardiff University has come under scrutiny following allegations of “spying” on students and staff involved in pro-Palestine protests.

The claims, which the university has vehemently denied, arose after the release of email correspondence between university officials and South Wales Police.

The emails, totalling 144 pages, were obtained by the student group Caerdydd Students 4 Palestine through a Freedom of Information Act request.

While some of the disclosed material appears innocuous, other exchanges have raised concerns about the university’s relationship with law enforcement and its handling of sensitive information.

Among the disclosed correspondence were discussions regarding an incident outside Cardiff Bay police station.

This incident resulted in the arrests of students and a university staff member, all of whom were later released on bail.

Critics have described certain interactions between the university and the police as inappropriate and have called for greater accountability in how the university handles such matters.

One particularly contentious exchange, dated April 2024, involved a police employee requesting information about the number of Iranian students enrolled at Cardiff University, according to a London-based newspaper, The New Arab.

This request has been highlighted by protesters as an example of the university allegedly sharing sensitive data inappropriately. In response to the allegations, Cardiff University firmly denied the claims of surveillance.

A spokesperson for the university told The New Arab, “We recognise that freedom of speech within the law is an important right and a cornerstone of a democratic society. We reject entirely the suggestion that we have 'spied' or have put our staff or students 'under surveillance.'"

The university further emphasised its cooperation with South Wales Police, describing their relationship as standard practice aimed at ensuring the safety of the university community.

"We enjoy a good working relationship with South Wales Police’s university liaison team. Where appropriate, this involves the exchange of relevant information. This is not unique to Cardiff University. It helps ensure the safety of all our university community, which remains our ultimate priority," the spokesperson added.

Opinion

Carter was a successful peacemaker – but he did not succeed in Bosnia

His 1994 handshake with Radovan Karadzic was a stain on his legacy.

Hamza Karčić
Associate professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo
Published On 3 Jan 2025

When he lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections, Jimmy Carter was only 56. Too young for traditional political retirement and with a purpose in life still, he soon set out to make the most of his years ahead. He devoted himself to establishing The Carter Center and pursuing a number of causes including conflict resolution. Carter’s post-presidential life won him plaudits and the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, he has been widely considered an exemplary former president. In the process, he reinvented himself and the post-presidency.

In pursuing conflict resolution, Carter opted for private peacemaking and, in the process, did away with established norms expected of former presidents. His private diplomacy included meeting and negotiating with unsavoury figures deemed unworthy of a former president’s imprimatur. In 1994 alone, Carter travelled to meet and negotiate with North Korea’s Kim Il Sung and Haiti’s Raoul Cedras. Negotiating with international pariahs led to criticisms of Carter for providing them with face-time and even a degree of legitimacy. Perhaps the most controversial of his private peacemaking efforts until and since then was his 1994 meeting with Bosnian Serb rebel leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic.

Shortly before Christmas of 1994, Carter made a more than 5,000-mile trip from the United States to the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale outside Sarajevo. He was welcomed by the who’s who of the rebel leadership. The purpose of his trip was to hammer out a ceasefire between the rebels and the Bosnian government in the midst of the winter. His meetings with Karadzic and Mladic raised eyebrows and were roundly criticised. The 39th American president met in 1994 with individuals that the US State Department had listed as war crimes suspects back in 1992. So what did Carter set out to do and why?

By the time of Carter’s trip, Bosnia had been at war for two and a half years with much of the country overrun by Bosnian Serb forces. The internationally recognized Bosnian government, having survived the initial onslaughts, was putting up serious resistance and had undertaken offensives aimed at recapturing occupied lands. The broad outlines of an international peace plan known as the Contact Group plan hashed out in the summer of 1994 was accepted by the Bosnian government and rejected by the Bosnian Serbs. The winter that year was to serve as a respite before major Bosnian government military operations were expected in the spring of the following year. It is against this backdrop that Carter travelled to Bosnia in December 1994 to reach a ceasefire.

Carter was approached by emissaries of the Bosnian Serb side who had visited the former president at Plains, Georgia with a request for his involvement. The Clinton administration was ambivalent about Carter’s trip and kept its distance without openly opposing it. The Bosnian government was concerned that this was Karadzic’s public relations ploy to get a former American president to visit him but was in no position to prevent it.

When he landed in Sarajevo, Carter got a firsthand sense of the Bosnian capital under siege which he recalls in his memoirs. Bosnian government officials, convinced that Carter was duped into making this trip, offered a lukewarm reception. By contrast, the mood at Pale the next day was jovial. No person of higher political stature and world fame had honoured this town with a visit. The negotiations produced an agreement on a four-month ceasefire.

All the actors involved went along with the ceasefire but for different reasons. The Pale Serbs turned out to be the main beneficiaries of Carter’s private diplomacy. Far more important than a temporary ceasefire was the opportunity to host a former POTUS in their stronghold and brief him on Serb grievances. Carter’s mere presence at Pale was a major publicity coup. This public relations success led Karadzic to exaggerate his own expectations of Carter’s potential future involvement. In fact, Karadzic sought to involve Carter in Bosnia in 1995 again but to no avail.

The Bosnian government was unhappy with Carter’s trip but did not want to derail his mission. In any case, seeking to make the most of a developing situation, Sarajevo demanded that the ceasefire be extended to the whole country and thereby relieve the northwestern besieged enclave of Bihac from further attacks.

Rather than achieve peace, the Carter ceasefire turned out to be just a respite in the war. The winter recess was a prelude to major fact-changing offensives launched by the Bosnian and Croatian armies in the summer of 1995 which helped pave the way to end the war. It was in November 1995 that the negotiations resulted in the Dayton Peace Accords.

Though Carter’s grasp of the Bosnian war was sketchy, his determination to play a peacemaker – a trait seen not infrequently in the former president – overcame any concerns that more seasoned peacemaking hands would have had. His initiative in Bosnia stands as another example of his post-presidential activism.

Yet, one tainted with controversy.

The image that most vividly captured the full controversy of Carter’s trip was a photograph of the former president and the Bosnian Serb leader. The photo-op of the two announcing the ceasefire in December 1994 at Pale was awkward. The former American president who had placed an emphasis on human rights in office and beyond was flanked by the “architect of the Bosnian genocide” – to borrow a description of Radovan Karadzic from American scholar of Bosnia, Robert J Donia.

Today, upon his passing aged 100 on December 29, the world is remembering former President Carter as a statesman and human rights advocate who remained committed to building peace.

But his trip to Pale, and meeting with Karadzic, immortalised in the photograph taken almost exactly 30 years ago, remains a major stain on his long and impactful post-presidential career.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
.

US Has Given Israel $22 Billion in Military Aid Since October 2023

According to data from SIPRI, US weapons now account for 78% of Israel's arms imports

By Dave DeCamp

January 3, 2025

Source: Antiwar.com

  

Since October 7, 2023, the US has provided Israel with more than $22 billion in military aid, Israel Hayom reported Wednesday, citing data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The stepped-up US military aid to Israel has supported the genocidal war in Gaza, Israel’s war in Lebanon, military operations in the occupied West Bank, and attacks on Syria, Iran, and Yemen.

According to SIPRI, from 2019 to 2023, US weapons accounted for 69% of Israel’s arms imports. Since October 7, that number has risen to 78%, demonstrating Israel’s significant reliance on US military aid.

In October 2024, Brown University’s Costs of War Project said the US had provided Israel with $17.9 billion in military aid in the first year of the onslaught in Gaza. Since then, Israel has signed a $5.2 billion contract with Boeing to purchase F-15 fighter jets, a deal funded by the US, bringing total US military aid since October 7, 2023, to over $22 billion.

The Costs of War report also said US military operations in the Middle East to support Israel cost American taxpayers at least $4.8 billion, a number that must have also risen since the US has continued to bomb Yemen and deployed a THAAD air defense system to Israel.

Israeli officials have been candid about how reliant they are on US support. An Israeli Air Force official told Haaretz that without US military aid, Israel would not be able to sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

How Trump Nominees Could Make Project 2025 a Reality

It starts with Russell Vought, his pick to lead the little-known Office of Management and Budget.

By Amanda Becker

January 3, 2025

Source: The 19th



Republican President-elect Donald Trump spent the closing months of his campaign trying to distance himself from a blueprint for his second term known as Project 2025.

Then, in the days after his victory, Trump picked major architects of the Heritage Foundation’s vision for key posts in his next administration, setting the stage for them to implement a conservative Christian agenda that has the potential to reshape the federal government and redefine rights long held by all Americans, though likely to disproportionately impact women, LGBTQ+ people and vulnerable populations like the elderly and disabled.

One of these architects is Russell Vought, whom Trump has again tapped to lead his Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, an under-the-radar entity to most Americans that wields immense influence over the federal government by crafting the president’s budget. If confirmed by the Senate, a very likely outcome, Vought will be optimally positioned to inject Project 2025’s priorities — many of which reflect his career-long push to dismantle programs for low-income Americans and expand the president’s authority — across the federal agencies and departments that OMB oversees.

Ben Olinsky, who advised Democratic former President Barack Obama on labor and workforce policy before joining the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, where he works on issues related to the economy and governance, said that Vought’s vision for OMB as presented in Project 2025 is “to basically change the plumbing so they can do whatever they want without any meaningful checks and balances” during Trump’s second term.

“I think that it’s important to really make sure [Americans] understand what the plans are for changing the plumbing,” Olinsky said.

Vought has firsthand knowledge of the OMB’s wide-ranging scope. During Trump’s first term, he was OMB’s deputy director, acting director and, finally, confirmed director. In those roles, he helped then-President Trump craft a plan to jettison job protections for thousands of federal workers and assisted with a legally ambiguous effort to redirect congressionally appropriated foreign aid for Ukraine.

In the years since, as Trump staved off legal threats and convictions to build a winning bid to return to the White House, Vought has refined his thinking and strategies about how to best force agencies to “come to heel and do what the president has been telling them to do,” as he put it in a recent interview.

Vought has used two pro-Trump groups he founded — the nonprofit Center for Renewing America and its advocacy arm, America Restoration Action — to discredit structural racism as a driver for inequality and attempt to stymie diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. In August, he told a pair of British journalists posing as potential donors that the Center for Renewing America is “an organization I helped turn into the Death Star,” the fictional Star Wars space station that can destroy planets, and it “is accomplishing all of the debates you are reading about.”

The chapter that Vought wrote for Project 2025 details how the Office of Management and Budget could be a vehicle to advance the Christian nationalist agenda he favors — and he has not hesitated to talk about it.

“I think you have to rehabilitate Christian nationalism,” Vought told the British journalists at the Centre for Climate Reporting, which released video of the conversation that was recorded using hidden cameras.

In an interview with conservative activist Tucker Carlson shortly after Trump’s reelection, Vought likened OMB to the “nerve center” through which a president can ensure their policy directives trickle down to the multitude of federal agencies and a civilian workforce of more than two million people.

“Properly understood, [OMB] is a President’s air-traffic control system with the ability and charge to ensure that all policy initiatives are flying in sync and with the authority to let planes take off and, at times, ground planes that are flying off course,” Vought wrote in Project 2025.

He sees two primary ways to ground wayward planes: by eliminating potential dissent within agencies and withholding money appropriated by Congress for projects and programs the president does not support.

Both would clear the way for Trump’s next administration to implement many of the priorities detailed in Project 2025, which could essentially redefine rights, systems and cultural norms for all Americans.

Some of Project 2025’s recommendations include restricting abortion access and supporting a “biblically based” definition of family, because the “male-female dyad is essential to human nature,” by replacing policies related to LGBTQ+ equity with those that “support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.”

It also suggests transforming the FBI into a politically motivated entity to settle scores and barring U.S. citizens from receiving federal housing assistance if they live with anyone who is not a citizen or permanent legal resident, which would serve Trump’s campaign promise to take extraordinary measures to crack down on illegal immigration. During remarks in September titled “Theology of America’s Statecraft: The Case for Immigration Restriction,” Vought justified the separation of families and condemned so-called sanctuary cities, or those that pass laws that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. “Failing to secure the border is a complete abdication of [the government’s] God-given responsibility,” he said.

Olinsky explained that while many of the policies in Project 2025 have been floating around Republican circles in Washington for years without gaining much traction, the document is a detailed roadmap that shows how its authors believe they can finally deliver on key pieces of their conservative Christian agenda.

“One, it says all of the quiet parts out loud about the full scope of the agenda. And then the second thing, which I think is something folks should really pay attention to, is it says how they’re going to accomplish it, practically, by using executive action,” Olinsky said.

In many ways, Vought’s approach to bending the federal government to a president’s will began taking shape during Trump’s first administration. In late 2020, as Trump’s first term drew to a close, Vought helped him craft an executive order known as “Schedule F,” which reclassified thousands of civil servants and, with that, stripped them of their job protections; Vought recommended that close to 90 percent of OMB’s workforce be reclassified.

President Joe Biden rescinded the executive order on his third day in office. Project 2025 recommends reinstating it.

Former Trump officials, campaign advisers and others in his orbit have already identified as many as 50,000 federal employees who could be fired, according to published reports. And just last month, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic effort to codify protections for these workers ahead of Trump’s — and likely Vought’s — return.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation to protect federal employees, warned of a “loyalty-based system that would impede the work of the federal government, expose people to intimidation and bring people into jobs that are not qualified to do them, thus risking the American public’s safety and quality of life.”

Vought is among the Trump loyalists who have been open about their desire to slash the federal workforce — as a route to purge critics, improve efficiency or both.

In the interview with Carlson, Vought said, “There certainly is going to be mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.” His language appeared to communicate an effort to ensure obedience and compliance. With the firings and layoffs, Vought said he wants to avoid having “really awesome Cabinet secretaries sitting on top of massive bureaucracies that largely don’t do what they tell them to do.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests to discuss Vought’s selection for OMB or the chapter he wrote for Project 2025 about the agency. The 19th reached out to Vought through his Center for Renewing America, which likewise did not respond to a request for comment.
Power of the Purse

During Trump’s first term, OMB helped find money to begin building a small section of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — a key campaign promise Trump made in 2016 — “because Congress wouldn’t give him the ordinary money,” Vought told Carlson.

Trump also enlisted OMB to withhold $400 million in military aid that Congress approved for Ukraine, as Trump and his associates tried to pressure the country to investigate Biden and his family. The move prompted the abuse-of-power case House Democrats made against Trump during his first impeachment, when Vought defied a subpoena to testify. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog, concluded that the scheme violated the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Days later, the Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump. (Trump had eventually released the aid.)

When Trump subsequently nominated Vought to lead OMB in 2020, Democrats opposed him because of his approach to impoundment authority. He was nonetheless confirmed.

Vought’s path to confirmation is all but certain this time around: Republicans control the Senate, the congressional chamber charged with approving presidential nominations. Very likely to feature in his confirmation hearings is Vought’s belief that the OMB can help Trump overcome opposition and implement policy priorities, possibly including those contained in Project 2025, by redirecting or refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress, which under the Constitution holds the power of the purse.

“Making Impoundment Great Again!” Vought wrote in June on X, riffing on the “Make America Great Again” slogan that has come to define Trump’s movement.

Trump spent his campaign insisting that he had not read Project 2025 and did not know its authors. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote in a July post on his Truth Social platform.

But of the more than 350 people who contributed to Project 2025, at least 60 percent are linked to the incoming president, according to a list of contributors and their ties reviewed by The 19th. They range from appointees and nominees from Trump’s first administration, like Vought, to members of his previous transition team and those who served on commissions and as unofficial advisers.

Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, seized on Project 2025 during their campaigns to highlight the dangers they believe are posed by a second Trump presidency. At 920 pages, it offers a vision of government that is far more detailed and specific than the policy proposals put forward by Trump directly. The “Agenda 47” on Trump’s campaign website was a list of 20 bullet points that included vague policies like “end the weaponization of government against the American people” and “unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success.”

When Trump announced Vought as his OMB pick, he said Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.” His other selections for OMB leadership posts include anti-abortion activist Ed Martin and Vought’s colleague at the Center for Renewing America, Mark Paoletta, whom the president-elect praised as a “conservative warrior.”

One question as Trump takes office on January 20 and Vought, if confirmed, helps him control the government’s workforce and purse strings, is which version of the country they will promote and whose rights are — and aren’t — protected.