United States | News & Politics

Coca-Cola has set a goal of having women in 50% of its senior leadership roles by 2030. Coke has also said that it wants race and ethnicity representation that reflects national census data at all levels of the company in the U.S.

Robby Starbuck, a conservative activist who targets corporate DEI programs, applauded PepsiCo’s actions on Friday. In a post on X, Starbuck said Coca-Cola “should be very nervous about continuing with their woke policies.”

tl;dr: Pepsi bad, Coke good.

With the world watching, Nantambu, 41, made his choice. As the rest of the 400 hired dancers moved in a coordinated rhythm to Lamar’s music, Nantambu reached into his clothes and unfurled a joint Palestinian and Sudanese flag. He took off running, waving a flag adorned with the words “Sudan” and “Gaza” in black ink. After roughly 30 seconds, he was wrestled to the ground by security as the crowd watched. Despite the mere seconds of screen time, his protest captured national attention. https://archive.ph/lFN0q

Pesticide-backed proposed law that opponents call ‘Cancer Gag Act’ pits Iowa farm groups against each other

After WhatsApp claimed 90 users were targeted last year, experts concerned over how US could use cyberweapons

One user Musk amplified frequently attacks Black people and has said he is "impressed" by the Holocaust.

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["U.S. shadow president"] Elon Musk has huge and extensive connections to the Chinese dictatorship, both personally and through his businesses, and he has a long history of bending over backwards to appease its desires.

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Musk’s ties to China largely revolve around Tesla. The company’s largest factory is in Shanghai, where it produces half—over 900,000—of its vehicles sold worldwide. One source estimated that nearly 40 percent of Tesla’s battery supply chain relied on Chinese companies, and those relationships are growing. In 2022, Tesla opened a showroom in Xinjiang, where China is conducting a cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority.

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Tesla has also received large government subsidies, both tacit and explicit, from the Chinese state. It was the first and so far only foreign car company allowed to operate by itself in the Chinese market, as opposed to others like Volkswagen that had to form a joint venture with a Chinese company. Tesla has also secured more than half a billion dollars in loans from state-owned banks there, as well as a 10 percentage point break on its corporate tax rate that lasted until 2023.

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It’s not a coincidence that China is also Tesla’s largest market, and indeed has become more important to the company of late. While sales fell in Europe and the U.S. last year, and appear to be falling faster since Trump was elected (which is surely driven in large part by Musk’s Nazi antics), Tesla sold 657,000 cars in China in 2024—an increase of about 9 percent.

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Musk was also seemingly responsible for removing a number of controls on investment in China in the most recent [U.S.] government funding bill. Back in December, he personally blew it up out of nowhere with dozens of frantic posts on Twitter/X, and when a new version came through, wouldn’t you know it, the controls were gone.

It similarly comes as no surprise that Musk has repeatedly praised China, and even offered support for its foreign-policy objectives. He has personally met with top Chinese officials and businessmen on many occasions over the years, including Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who personally gave Musk a Chinese green card at Tesla’s Shanghai factory, and President Xi Jinping. In 2022, Musk said Taiwan should be deemed a Hong Kong–style “special administrative zone” of China, for which he was thanked by the Chinese ambassador. In 2023, he said on CNBC there is a “certain inevitability” about China’s goal of annexing Taiwan, and later that year said on a podcast that the island is an “integral part” of China. In 2024, Vladimir Putin reportedly asked Musk to not activate Starlink internet over Taiwan as a favor to China, and later SpaceX told its Taiwanese suppliers to leave the island.

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It should also be mentioned that Chinese law states that any company operating in China must hand over any data the government wants without question.

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America is getting a painful, bludgeoning lesson in why there are so many federal rules around ethics, foreign associations, and security. The government is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the personal plaything of one ultra-billionaire and whatever dictators might be able to twist his arm.

Following an executive order from President Donald Trump barring people from updating the sex designation on their passports, seven people have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the State Department’s refusal to issue passports with accurate sex designations.

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The new lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Massachusetts, and law firm Covington & Burling LLP, on behalf of seven people who have not been able to obtain passports that match who they are because of the State Department’s new Passport Policy or are likely to be impacted by the new policy upon their next renewal. The complaint was filed in the federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

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On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order attempting to mandate discrimination against transgender people across the federal government and government programs. This included a directive to the Departments of State and Homeland Security “to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards” reflect their sex “at conception.” Under the ensuing Passport Policy, within 24 hours the State Department began holding some passports and other documents (such as birth certificates and court orders) submitted by transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people who had applied to update the sex designation on their U.S. passports and returning others with their applications rejected and their newly-issued passport marked with their sex assigned at birth.

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[The] lawsuit argues the Passport Policy implemented by the State Department violates the Administrative Procedures Act because it is unconstitutional and arbitrary and capricious, and because it failed to comply with requirements to provide notice and comment for changes to government forms. The lawsuit also asserts that the State Department’s actions violate transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people’s rights under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution by unlawfully restricting their freedom of movement, as well as their rights under the Equal Protection Clause by unjustifiably discriminating against them on the basis of their sex. The policy also violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by requiring people to have a sex designation on their passport that conflicts with their identity and potentially outs them to others. This violates the First Amendment’s protection against being required to convey governmental ideological messages they disagree with.

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SAEGERTOWN, Pa. — Several people were hurt in a fire and explosion at a manufacturing plant near Erie in Northern Pennsylvania.

In a press conference, Saegertown Fire Chief BJ Fleischer said firefighters were sent to Parker LORD Corporation’s facility in Saegertown just after 10:30 a.m. when an automatic fire alarm went off at the plant. This facility is located about an hour and a half from Pittsburgh.

Firefighters were met with heavy smoke upon arrival and shortly thereafter there was an explosion.

Chuck Lawrence with Saegertown Borough Emergency Management said 13 firefighters and plant personnel were sent to area hospitals with minor injuries or out of precaution for evaluation. A spokesperson for LORD Corporation said four employees were taken to hospitals out of precaution for evaluation.

These are not systems you tamper with lightly. Musk and his crew could act deliberately to extract sensitive data, alter fundamental aspects of how these systems operate, or provide further access to unvetted actors. Or they may act with carelessness or incompetence, breaking the systems altogether. Given the scope of what these systems do, key government services might stop working properly, citizens could be harmed, and the damage might be difficult or impossible to undo. As one administrator for a federal agency with deep knowledge about the government’s IT operations told us, “I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger.”

Russell Vought is now acting head of CFPB, created in wake of 2008 financial crash to supervise financial companies

DEI seems to have taken over from Woke as the all-purpose MAGA terms for "this is bad". DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. As with Woke, which seems to an accusation of using rational thought, DEI seems like it would be difficult to interpret as bad. Saying that you strongly oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion is a pretty frank admission of your values.

This use of DEI seems to translate directly as "insufficiently racist".

You might say he has a type.