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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Trump's war on science accelerates [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-28

Matthew Yglesias/Slow Boring:

Trump's war on science A multi-directional assault on the foundations of American research Thanks to the involvement of Elon Musk and the support of several other prominent technology industry figures, the second Trump administration has a techno-futurist strand that was completely missing from the nostalgia-soaked first. We’re hearing about robots, advanced rockets, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies of tomorrow. But underlying this forward-looking rhetorical glow is a multi-pronged attack on American scientific research that could genuinely cripple knowledge production and our long-term future. In order to grasp the full scale of the assault, it’s important to recognize that these threats are converging from multiple directions at once. The centerpiece, politically at least, is a determination to destroy left-aligned institutions, of which universities are a salient example. But that’s hardly the only front:

Jonathan Weiler/Jonathan’s Quality Kvetching Newsletter:

Turtles All the Way Down On bottomless bad faith and a way forward The point isn't to charge, for the six millionth time, that Republicans are unceasing hypocrites. That's in the water-is-wet category. The point is to remind ourselves and the political leaders who seek to represent us that their approach to endless rightwing fulminating needs to change fundamentally. It's both bad politics and unprincipled to cave in to blatant bad faith out of some misguided notion of decorum, or fear of losing popular support, or because maybe Republicans have a point about some tempest in a teapot (Hunter Biden’s laptop, anyone?) when, in this era, Republicans’ only goal is to seize power and then abuse it once they have it. Democrats have limited tools at their disposal right now, as we all know. But they need to start practicing, both for the sake of the party’s future, and the country’s, a different mode of politics. As Josh Marshall wrote yesterday, one thing they can do is adopt a parliamentary opposition’s approach. In parliamentary systems, the opposition has a shadow cabinet. One purpose of that is to provide the public with an ongoing narrative about what the government is doing wrong and how the opposition would act differently if and when they return to power. The point of this exercise isn’t to lie about your opponents. It’s in part to ensure that the public doesn’t only hear one side of the political story.

x the headline here is that Republicans are worried about having a special election in a seat that Trump won 60-40 https://t.co/CT4eElN8lO — Leah Greenberg (@Leahgreenb) March 27, 2025

Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:

The disappearing of Rumeysa Ozturk is something I never thought I’d see in America Masked federal agents in an unmarked vehicle snatched a Tufts student off the street for an op-ed she wrote in a college newspaper. You’ve probably seen something like this before — but only in a movie, and only in a film that was seeking to capture the horrors of daily life under Joseph Stalin at the peak of his 1930s purges across the USSR, or maybe a Gestapo thriller set in Nazi Germany. At 5:30 p.m. on a spring day on an urban residential street, a young woman in a bright white coat, hajib, and sneakers, engrossed in her mobile phone, emerges from a residence. Within seconds, a gaggle of men in black, who’ve been waiting for hours in a car nearby, surround the startled pedestrian, as the apparent leader wrestles away her phone. The men awkwardly pull down ski masks to cover their faces as they handcuff the shrieking 30-year-old woman and remove her backpack — no doubt leaving her to wonder whether she is being arrested...or kidnapped. As a neighbor’s doorbell camera recorded the scene on video, the handcuffed woman is led by these men in street clothes into their unmarked car, as one is finally heard to explain: “We are the police.”

x "Use Signal or other encrypted messaging for ordinary texting" does not remotely mean "Use Signal for highly sensitive national-security matters" https://t.co/4cPabn7x4D — Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) March 26, 2025

Andrew Miller/Post-Gazette:

Radically downsizing the government will only hurt the public I grew up in the South Hills, but spent 12 years in the Executive Branch of the federal government at the State Department and White House’s National Security Council. (Working in federal buildings in Washington, I was surprised how frequently I saw Steelers and Penguins’ logos on lanyards and on cars in the parking lot.) I have both worked with civil servants as one of them — an apolitical civil servant for Democratic and Republican administrations — and also observed civil service from the perspective of a political appointee charged with implementing the president’s agenda. Career public servants work for the American people. Unfortunately, the federal government’s work is often taken for granted. A civil servant is somewhat like a catcher in baseball. You only notice a catcher when he or she makes a mistake. We freely bemoan a potholed interstate highway but seldom appreciate a newly paved one. How many of us prior to the tragic crash of American Eagle Flight 5342 had conscious feelings of gratitude toward the Federal Aviation Administration for the 16 years since a crash of similar magnitude?

x Representatives of the American government have been going door to door in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, in recent days ahead of the now-canceled visit by the U.S. Second Lady, Usha Vance.



This is according to TV 2’s correspondent in Nuuk, Jesper Steinmetz.



“American… — Orla Joelsen (@OJoelsen) March 26, 2025 WIRED:

Mike Waltz Left His Venmo Friends List Public A WIRED review shows national security adviser Mike Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and other top officials left sensitive information exposed via Venmo—until WIRED asked about it. A Venmo account under the name “Michael Waltz,” carrying a profile photo of the national security adviser and connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him, was left open to the public until Wednesday afternoon. A WIRED analysis shows that the account revealed the names of hundreds of Waltz’s personal and professional associates, including journalists, military officers, lobbyists, and others—information a foreign intelligence service or other actors could exploit for any number of ends, experts say. Among the accounts linked to “Michael Waltz” are ones that appear to belong to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Walker Barrett, a staffer on the United States National Security Council. Both were fellow participants in a now-infamous Signal group chat called “Houthi PC small group.”

x The conservatives on the Supreme Court effectively gave Trump immunity while in office, and out. Now back in office, Trump has another guarantee against any prosecution - an obviously-corrupt DOJ who will simply go along with whatever he wants. This isn't a democracy. https://t.co/o1r1ZvVNjL — @ijbailey (@ijbailey) March 27, 2025

Der Spiegel:

Private Data and Passwords of Senior U.S. Security Officials Found Online Donald Trump's most important security advisers used Signal to discuss an imminent military strike. Now, reporting by DER SPIEGEL has found that the contact data of some of those officials, including mobile phone numbers, is freely accessible on the internet. Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials. To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.

x 👀‼️This is absolutely brutal, from Dave Portnoy, Barstools Sports



“Trump you may love Michael Waltz, you may like Pete Hegseth…. Somebody has to go down.



"You can’t have the top of the top security people in the United States… adding random editors of a magazine that hates… https://t.co/zyEmAPdTCH — Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) March 26, 2025

Reuters:

Majority of Americans believe presidents should obey the courts, Reuters/Ipsos pol finds The three-day survey, which closed on Sunday, found that 82% of respondents - including majorities of Democrats and Republicans - agreed with a statement that the "president of the United States should obey federal court rulings even if the president does not want to." When questioned specifically about Trump's recent deportation of people under a wartime authority, which a court ordered halted, 76% of Republicans agreed with a statement that "the Trump Administration should continue to deport people they view as a risk despite the court order." Only 8% of Democrats backed the approach.

NBC:

Majority unhappy with Trump's appointees as some face heat over group chat with military plans The latest NBC News poll, conducted before this week's news about communications security, found 52% of respondents "generally disappointed" with Trump's appointments. A majority of American voters are generally disappointed with the people President Donald Trump has appointed to posts in his administration, according to an NBC News poll earlier this month — a record share in a question NBC News has measured at the start of four previous administrations. The survey was conducted March 7-11, before The Atlantic published a story Monday revealing that a number of senior Trump administration officials — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz and others — participated in a Signal chat thread about plans to launch airstrikes against Houthi militants, in which Hegseth shared plans including the timing and types of aircraft used. The Signal thread included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, as well as Hegseth, Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others.

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