A Delta Air Lines plane sits on its roof after crashing upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on February 17, 2025. (Photo: Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)
“Maybe in the DOGE boys’ video game simulations, it doesn’t matter if they lay off hundreds of staff from the FAA. In the real world, however, it will make flying less safe,” said Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman.
As the Trump administration began firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees amid a surge in plane crashes, a leading U.S. consumer advocacy group warned Monday that the slash-and-burn approach of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is making the “next air travel disaster more likely.”
While Musk recently said that DOGE will “aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system,” critics have countered that the Trump administration’s termination of FAA personnel, including critical air traffic control maintenance staff, poses major risks.
“Maybe in the DOGE boys’ video game simulations, it doesn’t matter if they lay off hundreds of staff from the FAA. In the real world, however, it will make flying less safe,” Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said in a statement. “Just like having fewer people safeguarding the nation’s nuclear arsenal will make the risk of a nuclear accident much greater.”
Elon’s DOGE rampage will be a wake up call for what a decimated government really means. Cuts to FAA? Higher risk of plane crashes.Cuts to Forest Service? Higher fire risk. Cuts to the CDC? Higher pandemic risk. Cuts to the EPA? Higher toxic exposures risk — and on and on.
The Musk rampage through government is making it virtually certain that we will suffer through otherwise avoidable health, safety, and economic catastrophes. Cutting the Forest Service increases fire risk, cutting the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and blocking information-sharing risks worsening infectious disease outbreaks, cutting the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] guarantees Big Bank and predatory loan ripoffs, cutting [Food and Drug Administration] staff increases the risk for dangerous devices, drugs, and food additives, cutting the [Environmental Protection Agency] will increase the risk of mass toxic exposures, and on and on.
“If permitted to proceed, the mindless Musk-Trump governmental annihilation is going to touch every American community, imposing tragedy upon tragedy,” Weissman added.
In a Monday social media post, U.S. Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) said that “mass firings of FAA workers—at a time when they already have serious staffing problems—would be dangerous at any time,” but “Musk and Trump doing this weeks after the deadliest crash in years is stupid beyond belief.”
Public Citizen’s warning came on the same day that a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Toronto crashed and overturned on landing. The FAA said all 80 people aboard the flight were rescued. At least a dozen people were injured in the crash, three of them critically, according to the Toronto Star.
While the FAA firings were not a factor in Monday’s accident, the Toronto crash was the latest in a recent surge in air disasters. Last month, 67 people were killed when an American Airlines jet and an army helicopter collided at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. According to initial reports, only one air traffic controller was working both civilian and military flights when the crash occurred.
On January 31, seven people died when a medical transport jet crashed near Philadelphia, 10 people were killed in a February 6 Bering Air commuter flight crash in Alaska, and one person died when a private plane belonging to Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil crashed during landing in Arizona last Monday after its landing gear failed to properly deploy.
We condemn the decision to fire these safety inspectors. Everywhere I go I am asked, “is it safe to fly?” My response is yes because thousands of frontline workers ask that all day long. If federal workers can’t do their jobs, we can’t do ours. 1/2www.passnational.org/index.php/ne…
David Spero, national president of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, the union representing more than 11,000 FAA and Defense Department personnel who install, inspect, and maintain air traffic control systems, said in a statement Saturday that the Trump administration’s terminations “will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin.”
“This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing,” Spero added. “Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte meets with US Vice President JD Vance. Source: NATO/Flickr
Statements by US Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth on the Ukraine war and transatlantic relations have left European leaders in shock
“If American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” US Vice President JD Vance told European leaders at last week’s Munich Security Conference. His remarks came during a draining week for those leaders, as Trump officials announced peace talks with Russian authorities—without European or Ukrainian involvement—while signaling they expect Europe to handle peacekeeping and being paid for their support in minerals from Ukraine.
Speeches by Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threw European leaders into disarray, seen as not-so-subtle indications of a cooling in transatlantic relations. These interventions attacked everything from the EU’s efforts to regulate social media platforms to its approach to far-right parties in parliamentary life. In response, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an emergency summit of select regional powers on Monday, February 17 – just a day before US and Russian representatives are expected to meet in Saudi Arabia.
While Ukrainian officials and some European leaders have insisted they will not accept any deal that excludes Ukraine’s direct involvement, their stance appears to carry little weight.
At the same time, the new US administration has increased pressure on its European allies, demanding a ramping up of their defense budgets and taking on the responsibility of a potential peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. This comes as no surprise: a number of US officials, including Donald Trump himself, have said Europe does not contribute enough to NATO and essentially freeloads off the US. Vance’s speech in Munich only reaffirmed this stance, ultimately reducing high-ranking figures to tears over the apparent breakup between allies.
While the focus of European reactions to recent US statements has been on Ukraine, many leaders have admitted that more is at stake. “Yes, it is about Ukraine – but it is also about us,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. Unfortunately, the conclusion she drew going further is upsetting: “We need an urgency mindset. We need a surge in defense. And we need both of them now.”
Unlike healthcare, education, or social programs—sectors where European governments are consistently told their budgets must remain limited—military spending is expected to face no such barriers. Many European countries have already embraced the shift, with Polish officials, for example, boasting about spending close to 5% of their GDP on defense and warning of looming “wider wars” to convince other states in the region to do the same.
Despite the apparent fracture in US-Europe relations, European leaders have shown no inclination to rethink their dependence on Washington. Instead, most have done exactly what the Trump presidency wants them to do and swiftly pledged to increase military spending. Some have even already expressed willingness to deploy troops for peacekeeping in Ukraine. What remains absent from their reactions is any consideration of a future less dictated by US interests and more aligned with the needs of the people living in Europe.
Since the beginning of the war three years ago, activists have urged Europe to reject NATO’s warmongering and prioritize peace in Ukraine alongside social justice at home. Instead, the coming surge in military budgets will almost certainly coincide with cuts to public services, further fueling the rise of the far-right—a political force that Trump officials, including Vance and Elon Musk, have (more or less) openly backed during interventions in Europe. From this perspective, unlike the conservative circles who “survived ten years of ’s scolding,” Europe’s liberal elite is unlikely to emerge from its current crisis unscathed. Whether their refusal to acknowledge the failure of their anti-people policies will push the entire region into the hands of parties like Brothers of Italy and Alternative for Germany remains to be seen.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Hate speech on X was consistently 50% higher for at least eight months after tech billionaire Elon Musk bought the social media platform, new research has found.
The research looked at the prevalence of overt hate speech including a wide range of racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs.
The study, published today in PLOS ONE, was conducted by a team of researchers led by Daniel Hickney from the University of California, Berkeley.
On October 27 2022, Musk officially purchased X (then known as Twitter) for US$44 billion and became its CEO. His takeover was accompanied by promises to reduce hate speech on the platform and tackle bots and other inauthentic accounts.
But after he bought X, Musk made several changes to the platform to reduce content moderation. For example, in November 2022 he fired much of the company’s full time workforce. He also fired outsourced content moderators who tracked abuse on X, despite research showing social medial platforms with high levels of content moderation contain less hate speech.
This new study is the first to show that this wasn’t an anomaly.
Hate speech including homophobic, racist and transphobic slurs was significantly higher on X after Elon Musk bought the platform. The black lines represent standard errors. Hickey et al., 2025 / PLOS One
More than 4 million posts
The study examined 4.7 million English language posts on X from the beginning of 2022 through to June 9 2023. This period includes the ten months before Musk bought X and the eight months afterwards.
The study measured overt hate speech, the meaning of which was clear to anyone who saw it – speech attacking identity groups or using toxic language. It did not measure covert types of hate speech, such as coded language used by some extremist groups to spread hate but plausibly deny doing so.
As well as measuring the amount of hate speech on X, the study also measured how much other users engaged with this material by liking it.
The researchers’ access to X data was cut off during the study due to a policy change by the platform, replacing free access to approved academic researchers with payment options which are generally unaffordable. This significantly hampered their ability to collect sample posts. But they don’t mention whether it affected their results.
A clear increase in hate
The study found “a clear increase” in the average number of posts containing hate speech following Musk’s purchase of X. Specifically, the volume of posts containing hate speech was “consistently” 50% higher after Musk took over X compared to beforehand – a jump from an estimated average of 2,179 to 3,246 posts containing hate speech per week.
Transphobic slurs saw the highest increase, rising from an average of roughly 115 posts per week before Musk’s acquisition to an average of 418 afterwards.
The level of user engagement with posts containing hate speech also increased under Musk’s watch. For example, the weekly rate at which hate speech content was liked by users jumped by 70%.
The researchers say these results suggest either hate speech wasn’t taken down, hateful users became more active, the platform’s algorithm unintentionally promoted hate speech to users who like such content – or a combination of these possibilities.
The study also detected no decrease in the activity of inauthentic accounts on X. In fact, it found a “potential increase” in the number of bot accounts partly based on a large upswing in posts promoting cryptocurrency, which are typically associated with bots.
An important data-driving deep dive
There were a number of limitations to the study. For example, it only measured hate speech posts in English, which accounts for only 31% of posts on the platform.
Even so, the study is an important, data-driven deep dive into the state of X. It shows it is a platform where hate speech is prolific. It also shows Musk has failed to fulfil his earlier promises to address problems on X such as hate speech and bot activity.
As Musk himself said at the White House earlier this week: “Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected”.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One after signing a proclamation renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on February 9, 2025. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership,” asserted one campaigner.
First Amendment defenders are calling on media organizations and journalists to stand up to bullying and intimidation by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration on Friday confirmed the indefinite exclusion of one of the world’s largest news agencies from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to adopt the Republican leader’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that because The Associated Press “continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change” of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it will be indefinitely banned from White House news conferences and the president’s official airplane.
“The level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation.”
The New York-based AP, which provides news content to roughly 15,000 media outlets in over 100 countries, has explained that, because the gulf is an international body of water, it will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico because Mexico—whose president on Thursday threatened to sue Google for adopting Trump’s name change—and other countries do not recognize the new name.
In contrast, the AP said it will call Denali, the highest peak in North America, Mt. McKinley following a name change by Trump because the Alaska mountain is located entirely inside the United States.
Budowich said the AP‘s decision on the Gulf of Mexico exposes the agency’s “commitment to misinformation.”
“While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces,” he argued.
But critics said the Trump administration’s behavior is about a lot more than just a spat over a name change.
“Of course, this is just more petty behavior by a president seeking to punish any news organization that doesn’t follow his dictates, regardless of how ridiculous they may be,” Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, told Common Dreams on Friday.
“It’s at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership,” Karr stressed. “They need to advocate for themselves, their colleagues, and for journalism writ large.”
“The good news is that more than a dozen of the mass market news outlets have refused to adopt Trump’s name change for the Gulf of Mexico,” he added. “That’s a start. They now need to speak out against his First Amendment threats, despite the consequences. There is much more at stake now than just having access to the White House.”
“By defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well.”
Writing for Public Notice Friday, Noah Berlatsky commended the AP for “not changing their style to suit the whims of a would-be tin-pot dictator.”
“And by defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well,” Berlatsky added.
“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions,” WHCA president Eugene Daniels said earlier this week.
RSF USA executive director Clayton Weimers said in a statement that “the level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation.”
“A sitting president is punishing a major news outlet for its constitutionally protected choice of words,” Weimers added. “Donald Trump has been trampling over press freedom since his first day in office.”
President Trump banning the Associated Press from an event over their usage of "Gulf of Mexico" instead of "Gulf of America" may seem more absurd than alarming, but Trump's attacks on the free press are no joke.
Numerous experts highlighted what they called the unconstitutionality of banning a media outlet from press briefings for political reasons.
“The AP—a major news agency that produces and distributes reports to thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV broadcasters around the world—has had long-standing access to the White House,” Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote on Friday.
“It is now losing that access because its exercise of editorial discretion doesn’t align with the administration’s preferred messaging,” Terr added. “That’s viewpoint discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional.”
Berlatsky wrote: “As ABC, Meta, the LA Times, The Washington Post, and Google demonstrate, you lose 100% of the fights you preemptively and despicably surrender. The AP has already won an important victory by refusing to change the Gulf of Mexico to some random other name at the whim of a power-mad orange gasbag.”
“If any portion of Trump’s agenda is to be stopped, we need people and organizations who are willing to defy him and speak truths he doesn’t want to hear,” he added. “Despite Trump, the AP still calls the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. In doing so, it’s reminding us what freedom looks like. It’s also demonstrating us that if you don’t want to lose your freedoms, you have to use them.”
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Adam Johnson (Column, 2/3/25): “The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN ran with the framing that ‘DOGE’ was some good-faith, post-ideological effort to ‘cut costs,’ ‘find savings’ and ‘increase efficiencies.’”
Having spent nearly $300 million to purchase the US presidency for Donald Trump, Elon Musk now feels entitled to do with it as he pleases. Just how radically Musk plans to remake the country was conveyed to the American people only after the election, when Musk stood behind the presidential seal on Inauguration Day and gave a Nazi salute. Then did it again. Maybe that sort of thing was OK to do in apartheid South Africa, where Musk grew up, but it’s jarring to see here in the United States.
Reporters initially struggled to meet the moment (FAIR.org, 2/4/25), downplaying Musk’s salute (the Washington Post described a “high-energy speech“), as well as his broader agenda, which Musk now openly declares a “revolution,” and consists of an unelected billionaire wresting control of nearly the entire executive branch of government. Early media reports went along with Musk’s “efficiency” mantra (Column, 2/3/25), but more recently reporters have started to find their footing, and the dangers of Musk’s project are being conveyed. Sort of.
“Reporters on the battlefield are doing what they can” to expose the radical nature of Trump’s second term, writes media columnist Oliver Darcy (Status, 2/5/25). “The news generals back in the command center, however, are largely abdicating their duties.”
‘Musk’s audacious goal’
Nowhere is this discrepancy more apparent than at the Washington Post, a newspaper famed for opposing a prior Republican president with an expansive view of executive power. These days, however, even as Post reporters like Jeff Stein are busy breaking stories (e.g., 1/28/25, 2/8/25) about the Trump power grab, the paper’s higher-ups are careful not to offend the president or Musk. The Post is even, incredibly, calling on the Constitution-defying billionaire duo to push further.
As Elon Musk seizes extraconstitutional control of the federal budget, Washington Post editors (2/7/25) urge him to use that power to go after Social Security and Medicare.
“To have any chance of achieving Musk’s audacious goal of $2 trillion in cuts,” the Post editorial board (2/7/25) wrote, “Trump will need to work with elected representatives in Congress to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare before they become insolvent.”
While claiming it wants Trump to “erect guardrails” for Musk, the Post urges the president to abandon one of the only guardrails he established—the cutting of Social Security and Medicare, which Trump repeatedly said he wouldn’t do, but recently started waffling on.
To be clear, the Post has long called for cutting so-called entitlements (FAIR.org, 11/1/11, 6/15/23). But to do so at this moment—by encouraging a coup attempt to push further—is quite extraordinary.
The Post’s move comes as its billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is lavishing praise and millions of dollars on Trump and his family, while coaching his paper to take a less critical approach in its coverage (FAIR.org, 1/22/25). Bezos’s ingratiation toward Trump started prior to the election, when Bezos personally spiked the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (FAIR.org, 10/30/24).
Good news for X from Amazon
The Washington Post (2/4/25) reports on “divergent views among Jewish leaders in how to respond to Musk”: Some object to his ” Nazi-esque salute and Holocaust jokes,” others appreciate his censorship of criticism of Israel.
Bezos has also been busy making nice with Musk, his longtime rival for most powerful man on Earth and in space. On both fronts, Musk now has a decided edge, aided by his control over much of the US government, which both men’s sprawling empires rely on for billions of dollars in contracts.
With Musk’s hand on the public-money spigot, Bezos apparently did him a favor. After Musk openly heiled Hitler, Jewish leaders renewed calls to boycott Musk’s social media platform, X (Washington Post, 2/4/25). “To advertisers—including Google, Amazon and the ADL: Pull your ads now,” the Jewish leaders wrote. “The pressure is working. X’s financial difficulties prove it.”
But the boycott’s pressure was countered by Bezos’s company. “[X] got good news last week, with Amazon reportedly planning to hike its advertising on the site,” the Post (2/4/25) reported, without mentioning Bezos.
While X’s finances “were once so bad that Musk floated the idea of filing for bankruptcy,” things are suddenly looking up, the Financial Times (2/12/25) reported:
Musk famously admitted to overpaying for Twitter after he bought the social media platform known now as X for $44 billion in 2022. But the billionaire’s foray into government has coincided with a turnaround in X’s fortunes, as advertisers, including Amazon, flock back to the platform.
‘Lemmings leaping in unison’
Kathleen Parker (Washington Post, 1/24/25) likened those who condemned Musk’s Nazi gesture to “lemmings leaping in unison from a cliff”—because it’s suicidal to notice fascism in high places?
It wasn’t just Bezos’s company that threw Musk a lifeline, but also his newspaper. An initial Post headline (1/20/25), which omitted mention of Musk’s Nazi salute, read “Elon Musk Gives Exuberant Speech at Inauguration.” The following day, Post columnist Megan McArdle, echoing the ADL, downgraded Musk’s salute to an “awkward gesture,” the same phrase Post columnist Kathleen Parker used to dismiss those who saw something more sinister as “lemmings leaping in unison from a cliff” (Washington Post, 1/24/25).
Interestingly, one of the most vociferous “lemmings” was Post columnist Catherine Rampell, who brilliantly called out Musk’s Nazi salute, but on CNN, and noticeably not in the Post, except once in passing (1/30/25).
Musk responded to Rampell’s CNN appearance by threatening to sue her in a post (1/27/25) to his over 200 million X followers.
I noted at the top that Musk spent nearly $300 million to elect Trump, but that’s only part of the story. Musk also provided inestimable support by transforming X into a pro-Trump bullhorn. Personally, when I logged onto X during the campaign, I routinely saw Musk’s pro-Trump tweets at the top of my feed, even though I didn’t follow Musk at the time.
Since the election, Musk ’s gifts to Trump have continued. X recently agreed to pay Trump $10 million to settle Trump’s 2021 lawsuit against the company, even though the case was dismissed in 2022. Trump was still appealing the ruling two-and-a-half years later when a deal was cut. “The settlement talks with X began after the election and were more informal, with both Trump and Musk personally involved in hammering out the $10 million number,” the Wall Street Journal (2/13/25) reported.
‘Cheering for change’
New York Times (2/11/25): Many of the federal agencies targeted by Musk “were leading investigations, enforcement matters or lawsuits pending against Mr. Musk’s companies.”
It’s quite something for Elon Musk—the world’s richest human and one of the largest government contractors—to gleefully slash public spending benefiting others. Especially when, by one measure, “virtually all of his net worth can be pinned to government help,” CNN (11/20/24) reported.
While Musk claims to wield a populist’s pitchfork as he attacks “the bureaucracy,” a closer look reveals the work of an oligarch’s scalpel. Musk’s coup team—called DOGE, and consisting mostly of twentysomething male engineers, several of whom appear to share Musk’s racist ideology (New York Times, 2/7/25)—is targeting the federal agencies investigating Musk’s companies, which in addition to X, include Tesla and SpaceX.
“President Trump has been in office less than a month, and Elon Musk’s vast business empire is already benefiting—or is now in a decidedly better position to benefit,” read the opening lines of a New York Times story (2/11/25):
At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by [Trump’s] moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies.
While Trump claims Musk is “not gaining anything” from the arrangement, and Musk says the same, Wall Street sees things differently. Even as Musk says he’s turning his “efficiency” revolution to the Pentagon—the only federal agency never to pass an audit, and where any honest attempt to rein in government spending would begin—stocks for armsmaking companies associated with Musk are surging, while those without ties to him languish. “Palantir, as well as Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI and robotics and AI specialist Anduril Industries, are cheering for change,” the Wall Street Journal (2/10/25) reported.
In other words, having seized control of the levers of government, an oligarch will now be directing funding to himself and his cronies. That’s Wall Street’s view, anyhow.
It seems to be Bezos’s as well. With Amazon and Blue Origin, Bezos’s space company, competing for billions in government contracts, it makes perfect business sense for Bezos to cozy up to Musk and Trump. From a journalistic perspective, however, it’s nothing short of a disaster, one that’s playing out daily in the pages of the WashingtonPost.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
