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— eclectics ‘HEADLINES’ from this week’s media —
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Musk and his ultrarich peers in the tech industry may still see right-wing politicians as the most likely collaborators for their business interests and policy preferences, but there is nothing inviolable about their bond to Trump’s movement.
The breakup reveals a crucial feature to contemporary populism: “It’s personality. These are not traditional parties rooted in enduring ideas or collective vision,” observed British commentator and broadcaster Lewis Goodall. “They are vehicles for individual ambition — [Reform leader Nigel] Farage here, Trump in the U.S. When you build a movement around one man, everything else becomes disposable. That’s why Farage has fallen out with so many allies over the years. That’s why this sort of politics burns through people, through allies, through institutions.”
The United States’ putative adversaries are watching with bemusement. Ahead of a new round of trade talks with Washington, China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed questions about the Trump-Musk breakup as “an internal affair” of the United States.
As my colleagues detailed, officials in the Kremlin and others connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin had more fun. Musk has been sympathetic to Moscow’s position on its war in Ukraine, while his father, Errol Musk, a former South African businessman and politician, has praised Putin in the past and is set to attend a conference in Russia hosted by influential far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=68465d7622827c5c302196ac&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&linknum=5&linktot=78
Through a panoramic series of actions, President Donald Trump is transforming the federal government into a vast machine for rewarding his allies and punishing those he considers his adversaries.
Trump is using executive orders, federal investigations and regulatory decisions to deploy federal power against a stunning array of targets, ranging from powerful institutions such as Harvard and Columbia universities and major law firms to individual critics from his first term and former President Joe Biden’s top White House aides. Simultaneously, Trump is rewarding allies with presidential pardons, commutations, government contracts and the termination of federal regulatory or criminal investigations.
The explosive breakup with Elon Musk has provided the most vivid demonstration yet of Trump’s transactional view of the presidency. When Musk was Trump’s most prominent political ally and benefactor, the White House brushed off complaints about the potential for conflicts of interest as the tech billionaire’s companies competed for billions in government contacts. Then, when the two men fell out last week, Trump immediately threatened to terminate the contracts for Musk’s companies.
Trump struck a similar note on Saturday, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker that if Musk began to fund Democratic campaigns in protest of the president’s sweeping policy bill, “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences.” https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/08/politics/trump-musk-presidency-nixon-analysis
Israel once relied heavily on Palestinian workers, but it started bringing in large numbers of migrant workers after the 1987-93 Palestinian revolt, known as the first Intifada.
Most came from Thailand, and Thais remain the largest group of foreign agricultural laborers in Israel today, earning considerably more than they can at home. https://apnews.com/article/thailand-hostages-gaza-explainer-israel-37e874bff5cb81ad6ea49d57058858a1
Even without the tariffs, the One Big Beautiful Bill slams the poorest because it makes deep cuts to federal food programs and to Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans. After the bill’s tax and spending cuts, an analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model found, the poorest fifth of American households earning less than $17,000 a year would see their incomes drop by $820 next year. The richest 0.1% earning more than $4.3 million a year would come out ahead by $390,070 in 2026. https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-budget-deficit-taxes-447ab174f84d67fea5023bbe02dd60e0
Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%.
Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world’s best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation’s borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education.
Trump’s latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His proclamation applies only to Harvard, and a federal judge late Thursday temporarily blocked it. But Trump’s order poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. https://apnews.com/article/international-students-harvard-columbia-ivy-league-cb330dbf66d4b035e66ea160e4ede856
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