Unless he’s going to ignore a court ruling, he may be getting ahead of himself: The Trump administration on Wednesday nixed federal approval of New York’s “congestion pricing” automobile tolls, which had been instituted just last month to raise funds for the region’s aging mass transit system. In a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the federal government has jurisdiction over highways leading to Manhattan and that these additional tolls posed an unfair burden in motorists outside the city. Duffy called the tolls, targeting Manhattan-bound drivers, “backwards and unfair.” “New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” Duffy said in statement. […] MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday the New York transportation agency will go to court to fight any federal efforts to end the tolls.
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“We live in a bureaucracy.” Lol. No, it does not make sense. Here’s a little lesson for Elon that he must have missed when he became a citizen: He does seem to be familiar with this: The Führerprinzip was the basis of executive authority in the government of Nazi Germany. It placed the Führer’s word above all written law, and meant that government policies, decisions, and officials all served to realize his will. In practice, the Führerprinzip gave Adolf Hitler supreme power over the ideology and policies of his political party; this form of personal dictatorship was a basic characteristic of Nazism. The state itself received “political authority” from Hitler, and the Führerprinzip stipulated that only what the Führer “commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience,” with party leaders pledging “eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
The ambitious intentions of Peter Beinart’s new book are evident from the title: Being Jewish...
Bad Wolf executive Julie Gardner offered insights into the second season of Showrunner Russell T. Davies's Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa, and more.
Australia’s next Prime Minister, according to the country’s press pack, Peter Dutton, has refused to rule out whether or not he will blow, billionaire Clive Palmer’s trumpet in order to form a minority Government. ”Clive is someone I admire deeply... Read More ›
Trump: "Inflation is back" pic.twitter.com/r9CStL0xrP — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 19, 2025 It isn’t his fault though, naturally. Nothing ever is. But people aren’t buying it. He promised to fix it on day one: A pillar of Trump’s political strength has been public belief that his policies will be good for the economy, and his rating on the economy remains significantly higher than the final readings of his predecessor in office, Democrat Joe Biden, who ended his term with a 34% approval rating on the economy. But Trump’s rating for the economy is well below the 53% he had in Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted in February 2017, the first full month of his first term as U.S. president. In the latest poll, only 32% of respondents approved of Trump’s performance on inflation, a potential early sign of disappointment in the Republican’s performance on a core economic issue after several years of rising prices weakened Biden ahead of last year’s presidential election. Trump defeated Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, in the Electoral College and narrowly won the popular vote.
Trump is leaving Ukraine with impossible choices: fight a losing war without U.S. support, or submit to economic vassalage.
The post Trump Doesn’t Care About Ukraine or Russia — Just Money appeared first on The Intercept.
Venue was set to host a cigars, cocktail and DJ night for British Trump-backers attending a conference addressed by Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch
Trump’s nominee for health secretary is leading a crusade on junk food, and the industry is getting ready to fight back.
If national governments across the globe are prepared to put minimising the climate threat ahead of protecting the fossil fuel industry, they will have to make major changes to how the net zero concept is being applied. This will require carbon offsetting to be brought in line with its intended application, and a consequential major Continue reading »
The board of Creative Australia, formerly the Australia Council, has betrayed its mission by enabling censorship and gross political interference in the arts, and its members must resign or be sacked. Five days after Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi was appointed to represent Australia at the next Venice Biennale in 2026, he was unceremoniously dumped by Continue reading »
As a quick study in the psychology of Australia-US relations, last week had it all. There was the sound of cash registers ringing in Washington as Canberra handed over the first cheque for the US nuclear submarine production base. There was the self-aggrandisement of Richard Marles at the Pentagon, chuffed at being the first defence Continue reading »
The decline in manufacturing jobs is common to most developed economies and is not unique to the US. Further, Donald Trump is nothing if not delusional, and his tariffs will only damage both the US economy and others as well. Employment in US manufacturing peaked a long time ago back, in June 1979. Since then, Continue reading »
Recently, US President Donald Trump spoke about the displacement of Gaza’s residents to Egypt, Jordan, and a group of neighbouring countries, as well as turning Gaza into an area under US control. This proposal sparked a wave of criticism and condemnation at various levels. International reactions to the proposal At the international level, the proposal Continue reading »
With this year’s federal budget supposedly brought forward to 25 March, the seasonal peak in business bulldust has come early. Last week, Canberra kicked off an annual ritual little noticed in real-world Australia, the call for “pre-budget” submissions on what the government should do in its budget. I’ve never known any of that free advice Continue reading »
The editorial authorities at The Australian newspaper have splendid senses of humour if their indulgence of the laugh-a-line contributions of Peter Jennings, Greg Sheridan and Henry Ergas are anything to go by. Jennings, who boasts his writings are “piquant”, recently said Donald Trump’s idea about clearing people out of Gaza “has about as much chance Continue reading »
Evolution works by conserving traits that carry value for the species, but more often it is perceived as “survival of the fittest” or in “social darwinism”. These are literary licences: scientifically, they are close to misinformation. A look at the Grandmother Effect will show you why. Before Homo became sapiens, after the end of the Continue reading »
The Republican president’s new regulators are suddenly touting the trust-busting agenda that Democrat Kamala Harris eschewed during the 2024 campaign.
The video might bring pleasure to their supporters, but for us it is a call to shut down their fascist deportation machine.
The post Trump and Musk Delight in the Sounds of Human Suffering With Sick “ASMR” Immigrant Video appeared first on The Intercept.
President Trump took some questions yesterday as he finished yet another round of golf and wound up another long weekend at his Florida resort. Elon Musk was a big topic which appeared to get on his nerves especially when a reporter wanted to know what position the multi-billionaire actually held now that the White House has said that he is not actually running the DOGE department after all. He responded, “So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want… but you know what? Ukraine’s a bigger deal.” He sounded quite irritated that they were asking him about such trivialities when he is the one who has world leaders quaking in their boots as he re-makes the whole world in his image. He’s clearly delegated the wrecking of the federal government to Musk, to which he’s only peripherally paying attention, so that he can concentrate on wrecking the world order. Both men are doing a bang-up job so far.
To determine whether your body will fit our pants, please use this sizing guide.
Our pants are measured in cubits. The cubit is a unit of measurement less ancient than legs, but more ancient than the notion that we should clad them somehow. It’s equal to the distance between someone’s elbow and their longest fingertip.
Whose elbow and fingertip? That’s proprietary. But it’s definitely not yours.
To find your size, pull out your favorite pair of pants and figure out how many cubits they are. If you don’t have a favorite pair of pants, pick the pair that makes you least likely to scream into a balled-up cardigan.
Then, divide the total number of cubits by 3.5 to account for our European sizing. Don’t ask where in Europe; that’s also proprietary.
Next, you need to select one of our several “cuts” to ensure a tailored fit. All of our cuts are named after your worst bullies from middle school.
To determine whether you’re a Maldon, a Caleb, or a Sertraline, you’ll need to find your natural waist.
The Welsh Government looks set to impose bold new restrictions on lying in politics. It's time for Westminster to follow suit, argues Jennifer Nadel
What Bernie knows in his bones This TokTok is a week old, but if you’re not one of the almost 10 million who have watched it, devote 10 minutes. @bernie Oligarchs are waging a war on the working class, and they are intent on winning. But this is what I know: The worst fear that the ruling class in this country has is that Americans come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthy few. ♬ original sound – Bernie Sanders Bernie as a presidential candidate struck me as a one-trick pony: class struggle. But he knows that trick in his bones. “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats,” entrepreneur Nick Hanauer wrote over a decade ago To: My Fellow Zillionaires: But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?
Mahmoud Darwish called clarity the greatest mystery. Matthew Zapruder writes poems that are precise in their architecture and mysteriously limpid in their meanings. And full of avowals, resistances to any final conclusiveness, open to—even when saddened by—the endless mutability of things. A mutability that seems to call up in him an energy of doubt, and because he seems at heart a poet of praise, there is a gorgeous melancholy to the pictures of the world he paints in words. And that’s only part of why they are so deeply pleasurable to read. This is the kind of reading that’s a physical pleasure, a pleasure in the mind and in the way the language unfolds in the imagination of the senses. I Love Hearing Your Dreams, the poet’s fifth collection, is not really about dreams but about the ways human beings relate and connect, or miss the connection, or long for it, or work at its toils and hallucinations, and sometimes even find a fleeting peace in the pressures of time. Here’s how “For Young Poets” begins:
Abandoning Ukraine and NATO Even as Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger saboteurs bleed federal agencies of skilled public servants and threaten nuclear stockpile security at the National Nuclear Security Administration, Donald Trump is selling out Ukrainian allies to Russia and again trying to shake down NATO. Trump on Tuesday blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky for presiding over a country “that has been blown to smithereens” in a war he falsely accused Ukraine of starting. Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago. Zelensky responded, “Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.” As do we all. Nice country you got there The Telegraph of London reports on the $500 billion “deal” Trump’s agents dropped on Ukraine in exchange for its strategic minerals. The Telegraph obtained a Feb.