Hours before Donald Trump was sworn in to begin his second term, promising a “golden age” for America,
the leader of a Central European country was describing the years ahead in strikingly similar terms.
Prime Minister #Viktor #Orbán said Trump’s return would usher in Hungary’s own “golden age”
and mark the “collapse” of liberal democracy.

The messaging overlap was no surprise.
Orbán’s strongman style has long served as an inspiration for U.S. conservatives,
who have looked at Hungary as a possible model for a right-wing America
with less immigration,
fewer regulations
and the removal of democratic constraints they see as unwieldy or inconvenient.
Orbán has formed a close bond with Trump and has made multiple visits to the president’s Florida resort.
This week, the prime minister praised Trump’s unilateral outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.
During one of last year’s U.S. presidential debates, Trump praised Orbán as “a strong man. He’s a tough person."
https://apnews.com/article/trump-orban-hungary-autocracy-authoritarian-republicans-dfdf6299a614ec4e364be37c1132e446

The Washington Post backed out of a $115,000 ad buy from Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund when they saw the message: "Who's running this country: Donald Trump of Elon Musk?"

Here are the ads that Jeff Bezos's newspaper refused to run.

FINALLY! In Paris, Olaf Scholz has had enough of Trump and draws a clear line:

1. Trump talking about peace negotiations and European troops in Ukraine is “deeply annoying”, “wrong”, and “untimely” because Ukraine is not in peace negotiations but in a war.

2. Germany will keep supporting Ukraine (No matter what Trump does).

3. Ukraine must never be forced to accept peace terms.

4. NATO will still be the corner stone of European defence.

In short: Trump can take his ideas and shove them. 🔥

⚠️“The state of the Arctic: High temperatures, melting ice, fires and unprecedented emissions

The Arctic tundra has switched from a carbon sink to a source of emissions, according to a NOAA report.” #ClimateCrisis
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/arctic-ice-melting-high-temperatures-fires-emissions-rcna183464 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/arctic-ice-melting-high-temperatures-fires-emissions-rcna183464?cid=mob_npd_nn_ios_mar

The ideas in Project 2025? Reagan tried them, and the nation suffered

#Project2025 begins with its authors (one of whom stepped down last month) boasting of the Heritage Foundation’s 1981 publication
“The Mandate for Leadership,” which helped shape the Reagan administration’s policy framework.

It hit its mark: Reagan wrote 60% of its recommendations into public policy in his first year in office, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Yet the 900-plus-page Project 2025, itself a major component of a new edition of “The Mandate for Leadership,” does not contain any analysis of the economic and social price Americans paid for the revolution the Heritage Foundation and Reagan inspired.

If today’s economic #inequality, racial #unrest and environmental #degradation represent some of our greatest political challenges,
♦️we would do well to remember that Reagan and the Heritage Foundation were the preeminent engineers of these catastrophes. ♦️

Perhaps no day in Reagan’s presidency better embodied his policy transformations or the political ambitions of the Heritage Foundation than Aug. 13, 1981,
when Reagan signed his first budget.

This budget dramatically transformed governmental priorities and hollowed out the nation’s 50-year pursuit of government for the common good that began during the New Deal.

Once passed, it stripped 400,000 poor working families of their welfare benefits,
while removing significant provisions from another 300,000.

Radical cuts in education affected 26 million students.

The number of poor Americans increased by 2.2 million, and the percentage of Black Americans living in poverty rose to a staggering 34.2%.

Of course, this was just the beginning of Reagan’s war on the poor, the environment and education.

Following a Heritage Foundation plan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s operating budget would fall by 27%,
and its science budget decreased by more than 50%.

Funding for programs by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that provided housing assistance would be cut by 70%,
according to Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, By America.”

Homelessness skyrocketed.
And, as Project 2025 proposes, Reagan attempted to eliminate the Department of Education but settled for gutting its funding in a manner that set public education,
in the words of author Jonathan Kozol,
“back almost 100 years.”

As funding for these issues nosedived under Reagan,
financial support for the “war on drugs” skyrocketed and the prison population nearly doubled.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-25/project-2025-trump-heritage-foundation-election

Whenever I express concern about solidarity among academics, it's because of shit like this. Tl;dr, Stanford's creative writing lecturers were all fired at the behest of the senior faculty members. Why? Fascinating question.

https://medium.com/@tom.kealey/overview-of-the-stanford-creative-writing-lecturer-situation-c60888edb3d8