On Tuesday, Musk announced on a Tesla earnings call that he's taking a step back from his role at DOGE starting next month and "allocating far more of [his] time to Tesla."
Editorial: If the human immunodeficiency virus is less well suppressed thanks to President Trump’s cuts to USAID, it risks finding more and more hosts in which it can mutate. New and more dangerous strains can develop, which are resistant to existing drugs
Harvard is leading the pushback because it can afford to fight. Others are realising that they can’t afford not to
Enfeebling universities or seizing control is an early chapter in the authoritarian playbook, studied eagerly by the likes of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. “Would-be authoritarians and one-party states centrally target universities with the aim of restricting dissent,” Jason Stanley, a scholar of fascism at Yale, wrote in the Guardian in September. Last month, he announced that he was leaving the US for Canada because of the political climate and particularly the battle over higher education.
It is not merely that universities are often bastions of liberal attitudes and hotbeds for protest. They also constitute one of the critical institutions of civil society; they are a bulwark of democracy. The Trump administration is taking on judges, lawyers, NGOs and the media: it would be astonishing if universities were not on the list. They embody the importance of knowledge, rationality and independent thought.
Would the legendary American writer have welcomed the publication of her therapy notes? It seems unlikely
Joan Didion entered the fray on the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s unfinished final manuscript in an essay titled Last Words in 1998: “You think something is in shape to be published or you don’t, and Hemingway didn’t,” she wrote. You believe a writer’s unpublished work is fair game after their death or you don’t, and Didion – it would seem – didn’t.
Debate about the ethics of posthumous publication has been ignited once more, this time with Didion at its centre. After the writer’s death in 2021, about 150 pages were found in a file next to her desk. These were meticulous accounts of sessions with her psychiatrist, from 1999 to 2003, focused mainly on her adopted daughter Quintana, who was spiralling into alcoholism. Addressed to her husband, screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, this journal has been published under the title Notes to John. “No restrictions were put on access,” we are told in a brief, anonymous introduction, presumably the ghostly hand of her literary estate.
Editorial: Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, ad hoc leaders of this ad hoc alliance, must inspire their allies as Volodymyr Zelensky has. Ukraine’s success – and survival – depends on it
Pope Francis’s progressive legacy rests in the hands of cardinal electors who will be juggling competing agendas
In keeping with the humble style of his papacy, Pope Francis did his best to dial down the pomp and ceremony that would mark his passing. In St Peter’s Basilica, where he now lies in state, Francis’s body rests in an unelaborate coffin and has not been placed on the traditional elevated bier. The tomb in which he will be buried is to be underground and unadorned, carrying only the plain inscription “Franciscus”, again on his instructions.
The final grace notes of a remarkable papacy will add to the pathos of Saturday’s funeral, which hundreds of thousands of mourners are expected to attend. The Argentinian pope’s plain, direct style endeared him to millions of non-Catholics as well as to the faithful. But the ecclesiastical politics of what happens next, in a divided church, will be anything but straightforward.
Editorial: The chancellor must resist the siren calls of higher borrowing or deeper public spending cuts and instead look at windfall taxes on big tech companies and banks
Washington, like Moscow, prefers bilateral talks to a wider diplomatic process. Kyiv and other European governments are rightly alarmed
There could hardly be clearer evidence than Donald Trump’s latest attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the US administration’s last-minute snub of London peace talks, that what matters to him is not Ukrainian sovereignty and safety, nor the transatlantic alliance, but a deal with Vladimir Putin. The US president says an agreement is close, with leaks suggesting that Washington would recognise annexed Crimea as Russian with Moscow giving little if anything in return. For Mr Trump, it is Ukraine’s president who is harming negotiations by saying he will not recognise Russia’s control.
Mr Putin is passionate about maximising Russian interests, attentive to every detail, skilled in negotiations, and believes that time is on his side. Mr Trump does not care about the outcome as long as he can claim he has ended the war, has little interest in the detail and has a habit of handing over the prize at the start of the process.
On Monday, Department of Transporation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to Gov. Hochul extending the deadline to stop collecting congestion tolls again, but this time put some teeth on his demand.
The Soros domestic-terror protection racket is spinning up again — this time, to block anti-Tesla thugs from consequences as they pursue their insane vendetta against law-abiding citizens who own cars made by Elon Musk.
Editorial: The IMF’s downgrade of global growth forecasts, a direct result of US tariffs, will only add to the pressure on chancellor Rachel Reeves to make the case during her visit to Washington for a fabled US-UK free trade agreement
The US president’s economic agenda collides with fragile financial systems, triggering market fears, investor flight and developing nation chaos
Wake up! When the most sober of global institutions, the International Monetary Fund, abandons its usual technocratic calm to sound the alarm on the political roots of global financial instability, it’s time to pay attention. The IMF is warning of a non-negligible risk of a $1tn hit to global output, as Donald Trump’s erratic “America first” agenda – part oligarchic enrichment scheme, part mobster shakedown – collides with a perfect storm of global financial vulnerabilities.
Such a shock would be equivalent to a third of that experienced in the 2008 crisis. But it would be felt in a much more fragile and politically charged environment. This time, the crisis stems not just from markets but from the politics at the heart of the dollar system. The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report sees the danger in Mr Trump’s trade policies, especially his “liberation day” announcements, which have pushed up America’s effective tariff rate to the highest in over 100 years.
The sentencing of opponents and other public figures to as much as 66 years in prison highlights the president’s dismantling of political achievements
Tunisia wasn’t just the birthplace of the Arab spring. In 2021, a decade after the movement swept across the region, it remained a flickering yet precious beacon of democracy when other nations had swiftly fallen into chaos or authoritarianism. Then President Kais Saied staged a self-coup and reversed most of his country’s progress, dismantling institutions and snatching away his compatriots’ hard-won civil liberties.
Following his re-election last year – in a contest from which all significant opposition had been removed, and on a historically low turnout – he has redoubled his efforts. Civil society, business, the judiciary and the media as well as political opponents have all felt the pain, but it hasn’t stopped with them. Last year, officials from the Tunisian Swimming Federation were arrested for plotting against state security over their failure to display the national flag at a competition.
President Donald Trump can prove his hefty, across-the-board tariffs are working — and calm the markets — by beginning to secure trade deals with nations soon. He best hop to it. Indeed, the clock is ticking.
As cardinals prepare to choose a new pope, they must not replace a moderniser with a traditionalist – and Pope Francis’s successor must be bold enough to finish what he started
Connexion
