June 3, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN HYPERBOLE: David Brooks Invokes Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin To Mark Musk’s Departure From DOGE.

New York Times columnist David Brooks did the not-so-clever trick of insisting he wasn’t saying what he was indeed saying on Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour as he reflected back on Elon Musk’s time at DOGE by comparing him to Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin.

Host Amna Nawaz wondered, “David, how do you look at it? What’s his legacy, if we know that yet?”

Brooks declared that, “As a budget matter, you would not say he had a big effect, but he did manage to destroy NIH and USAID. And the USAID one is the one I haven’t gotten over. And so there’s folks at Boston University who count, how many people have died because of what DOGE did at USAID? And USAID was a very ill-managed organization. That’s true.”

He then claimed, “according to the Boston University folks, so far, 55,000 adults have died of AIDS in the four months since Trump was elected, 6,000 children are dead because of what DOGE did. That’s just PEPFAR, the HIV. You add them all up, that’s 300,000 dead, and we’re four months in.”

At this point, it should be noted that President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget keeps PEPFAR funding steady. With that in mind, Brooks reference to the trio of communist dictators comes across as even more absurd:

Now, you add, accumulate that over four years, the number of dead grows very high. There are mass murderers in the world, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin. We don’t have anybody on the list from America. And I don’t think it’s the same as committing the kind of genocide they did. But by taking away that agency and being at least semi-responsible for the deaths of probably, by the end of this, hundreds of thousands of millions of people, that’s Elon Musk’s legacy. And the people who work at Tesla and SpaceX may want to think about that.

MSNBC’s Anand Giridharadas, borrowing Fonzie’s leather jacket and t-shirt, jumps the shark as well by taking the same talking points and compares Musk to LBJ: MSNBC panel stunned to silence over report on deaths linked to Elon Musk’s DOGE.

UPDATE:

More: Bono’s ‘300,000 dead’ claim over USAID cuts gets smacked down by Rogan, Musk: ‘Liar/idiot.’

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 157

CDR SALAMANDER: US Navy Shipyards: What They Took From Us. “That is what the “Peace Dividend” era bequeathed to this generation. The subsequent results of maintenance backlogs and until-the-crack-of-doom shipbuilding times give testimony to the insufficiency of it all. While we spent this century engaged and distracted by imperial policing and cultural experimentation in Central and Southwest Asia, the People’s Republic of China has built the world’s largest navy. For good measure, they are also closing the capability gap rapidly.”

Posted at 12:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds 2

MORNING IN AMERICA: Job openings showed surprising increase to 7.4 million in April. Complete with an “unexpectedly” moment from CNBC: “Employers increased job openings more than expected in April while hiring and layoffs also both rose, according to a report Tuesday that showed a relatively steady labor market.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll 21

INCOMING UPDATE TO YOUR NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES:

Please place all previous references to “undocumented immigrants” in the memory hole. If you’re still using “illegal aliens,” report immediately to Room 101.

Posted at 11:53 am by Stephen Green 77

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: The Milky Way may not collide with neighboring galaxy Andromeda after all.’

A titanic cosmic collision between the Milky Way and its closest large galactic neighbor, Andromeda, may not be as sure a thing as scientists thought.

Previously, it had been proposed that there was a good chance that Andromeda and our galactic home, which are moving together, would meet in around 5 billion years and merge to form a daughter galaxy dubbed “Milkomeda.”

New research has revealed that there is a much smaller chance that these two spiral galaxies will slam into each other and merge over the next 10 billion years than was believed. In fact, it’s about 50/50.

If in five billion years, we can’t come up with a better name than Milkomeda, why even bother going on?

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green 54

MORE MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR SELF-DEALING BETWEEN THE BUREAUCRACY AND SO-CALLED NGOS: Labor Department Confirms Bureaucrat on Leave Amid Woke Conflict of Interest Questions.

A nonprofit that supports unions across the world received extra infusions of cash from a federal agency after one of the union group’s employees took a leadership role at the agency. She later went on to serve as the agency’s acting chief of staff.

Lauren Stewart spent 15 years at the Solidarity Center, a left-leaning nonprofit that supports unions, advocated for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and champions “climate justice.” She joined a subagency in the Labor Department in 2022, and in the years since, that agency awarded the Solidarity Center millions more than it had under previous administrations. A Labor Department official told The Daily Signal that Stewart had been placed on administrative leave in April.

Stewart’s role at the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs draws increased scrutiny after the Solidarity Center sued the bureau for canceling the grants under the Trump administration.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green 56

SUSTAINABILITY:

“How did your country go bankrupt?”

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

-Ernest Hemingway, possibly.

Posted at 9:51 am by Stephen Green 103

YES: Open the door to new worlds: Poor kids have a right to Shakespeare, Bach, Plato.

There is nothing compassionate about teaching an easier, more familiar, “culturally relevant” curriculum to disadvantaged children, writes Mark McCourt on EMaths, a British blog. It’s condescension.

Speaking the language of care, some argue that children in poverty “should be shielded from the rigour of canonical texts, or complex scientific ideas, or abstract mathematics, he writes. “That Shakespeare is beyond them. That Bach is meaningless to them. That the laws of thermodynamics belong to someone else’s world.”

School “is meant to offer new worlds,” writes McCourt. “It is meant to take the child by the hand and lead them to places they never knew existed, places beyond their post code, places they have every right to belong.”

If certain educators wanted* kids — and Western Civilization — left behind, what would they do any differently?

*They want it.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green 79

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Are Getting Way Out Over Their Skis About 2026 Midterms. “For most of my adult life, the Democrats have been a formidable political machine, developing years-long strategies, while the GOP reacted to everything in the moment. That party no longer exists. The Democrats in Washington are a collection of grown children who are trying to live out some naively ignorant Che t-shirt fantasies. Even with all of the help that they get from their propagandists, I can’t rule out their ability to completely blow whatever opportunities that might be given them for next year.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green 81

CHANGE?

Posted at 8:50 am by Stephen Green 165

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Supreme Court Denies Cert in Snope, Ocean State Second Amendment Cases.

The Supreme Court has denied cert in two key Second Amendment cases. Snope v. Brown (Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban) and Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island (“high capacity” magazine ban). The Supreme Court has forsaken us, at least for now.

As Josh Blackman wrote at Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy . . .

“Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have granted. Justice Barrett, as usual said nothing. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a very unusual statement respecting the denial of the petition. The first two paragraphs explain why the Maryland decision was ‘questionable.’ If you read these parts, you would expect a grant. Indeed, Kavanaugh as circuit judge had found that the District of Columbia’s ban on AR-15s was unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh says the Court wants more time for percolation, apparently.

As someone living in a state dominated by Democrats determined to legislate away my Second Amendment rights, I’d appreciate a little less “percolation” and a little more SCOTUS action.

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green 76

IT’S BECAUSE CHINA ALREADY HAS A COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 79