Must-Reads and Some Thoughts on the Big Feud
"The monster is wounded. Let him bleed."
Greetings friends,
If you are looking for my thoughts about the Trump-Musk feud, scroll down. If you’re here for the must-reads, you can start at the top.
Must-Reads
- Teachers Are Not OK by Jason Koebler. “‘ChatGPT isn't its own, unique problem. It's a symptom of a totalizing cultural paradigm in which passive consumption and regurgitation of content becomes the status quo.’”
- Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Will Lead to 51,000 Preventable Deaths Each Year by Mike Ludwig. “The estimate of 51,000 preventable deaths is based on details from a previous analysis from CBO, which initially found that 13.7 million people would lose their health care coverage by 2034. Since CBO has now revised that estimate to be higher in response to queries from Democrats, the estimate of 51,000 deaths could, in fact, be an undercount.”
- Kill It with Fire by Troy Nahumko. “The past isn’t just contested. It’s being actively dismantled, manipulated, weaponized—hollowed out and repackaged as a white nationalist fable in which oppression is at best a footnote, and fascism just another policy preference.”
- Israel’s Rockets Make the Joy of Eid Impossible in Gaza for a Second Year by Ghada Abu Muaileq. “In Gaza, Eid is no longer something we await. It has become a luxury we dream of, a memory we carry, or a postponed date we’re not sure we’ll live to see.”
- Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions by Emanuel Maiberg. “The moderator said that it has banned “over 100” people for this reason already, and that they’ve seen an ‘uptick’ in this type of user this month.”
- US Immigration Officers Ordered to Arrest More People Even Without Warrants by José Olivares. “Senior US immigration officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file officers to ‘turn the creative knob up to 11’ when it comes to enforcement, including by interviewing and potentially arresting people they called ‘collaterals.’”
- Deepfake Scams Are Distorting Reality Itself by Jules Roscoe. “‘If there’s an image of you on the internet, that would be enough to manipulate a face to look like it’s saying something that you haven’t said before or doing something you haven’t done before,’ Groh says.”
- You Can Find America’s Future in El Salvador by Avik Jain Chatlani. “It’s a dream that’s becoming universal: From San Salvador to Guantánamo to Hebron, children are collateral, prisoners are terrorists, labor is importable and dispensable.”
- Oregon's Paradox by Scot Nakagawa. “Oregon's simultaneous identity as both a progressive stronghold and a hotbed of white nationalism represents a powerful case study in how America's racial history continues to shape our politics.”
- Elon Musk’s Reign of Corruption Chronicled in Elizabeth Warren Report by Tim Dickinson. “Issued by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the report is titled ‘Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Musk’s 130 Days in the Trump Administration’ and features a list of 130 actions by Musk, his companies, and family members that ‘raise questions about corruption, ethics, and conflicts of interest.’”
- Palantir Is Going on Defense by Caroline Haskins. “On Tuesday, a Palantir employee threatened to call the police on a WIRED journalist who was watching software demonstrations at its booth at AI+ Expo.”
ICYMI
This week, I published an interview with Eric Blanc about Elon’s Musk’s departure from the White House and what comes next for federal workers. I took some flack for this interview, because Eric and I both argued against the previously popular opinion that Musk wasn’t really losing power in DC. More on that below.
Support Gladis
A beloved member of my organizing community, Gladis Yolanda Chavez Pineda, was seized by ICE this week during an immigration check-in. Gladis is a member of Organized Communities Against Deportations, and her neighbors and co-strugglers rallied—alongside multiple members of the Chicago City Council—at the scene of her arrest, after masked ICE agents with long guns apprehended ten people outside an office building on Michigan Avenue on Wednesday. One City Council member reported being thrown to the ground by ICE agents. Please sign the petition demanding Gladis's release.
Final Thoughts
The feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump on Thursday was so consuming, and downright entertaining, that I could scarcely look away. Since last week, I have been getting pushback for arguing that Musk’s departure from the White House wasn’t an empty gesture aimed at helping his businesses recover, but rather, an actual loss of power. After discussing those views with Eric Blanc in a recent piece, one reader wrote in to say, “I didn’t think you were that gullible.”
Until yesterday, the prevailing opinion among many leftists and liberals was that Donald Trump was speaking earnestly when he said, “Elon isn’t going anywhere.” But to me, the whole thing felt reminiscent of Musk’s 2018 departure from OpenAI. When Musk left OpenAI, the public narrative was that Tesla was building out its AI software, and that leaving the board would eliminate a potential conflict of interest for Musk, who would continue to fund and advise the project. Of course, it would later be revealed that Musk left OpenAI because he lost a power struggle with Sam Altman, who is now the CEO of OpenAI.
It’s been obvious for weeks that Musk’s influence in the White House was waning.
During Trump’s tour of the Middle East, Musk threw a days-long tantrum about his company being boxed out of the “Stargate AI campus,” a new project in the United Arab Emirates that would benefit Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and Open AI, while excluding Musk’s xAI. Musk, who was furious about his company’s exclusion and the involvement of Altman, his longtime rival, tried to derail the AI infrastructure deal, arguing that Donald Trump would not sign it. Musk apparently believed that Trump was in his corner and would protect his interests. This was not the case. Trump signed off on the deal, which the White House has called “a groundbreaking framework agreement establishing the first AI acceleration partnership”—a framework that does not include Musk or Grok.
Only days after Musk’s departure from the White House, the billionaire was expressing deep frustration over Trump’s decision to cast aside Jared Isaacman, who Trump had previously nominated to head up NASA. Isaacman is a close ally of Musk, and got the boot just days before his confirmation hearing was set to begin. Trump posted on social media that he had reconsidered Isaacman’s nomination after a “review of prior associations.” Some reports have indicated that this was a reference to prior donations to Democratic candidates, but those donations had long been public knowledge. The message seemed clear: Elon’s guy was out because Elon was no longer calling the shots.
In addition to these slights, the Republican budget, which Schumer recently dubbed the “We’re All Gonna Die Act,” also eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles and could eliminate an important revenue stream for Tesla: the ability to sell emissions credits to manufacturers that fall short of environmental regulations in some states. Currently, companies that fail to meet those standards can buy credits from companies like Tesla, which produce zero emissions cars. In 2024, Tesla earned nearly $2.8 billion from these credit sales—a significant portion of its profits. The bill would bar states from enforcing their own strict emissions standards, cutting off a key revenue stream for Tesla at a time when the company’s sales are already plunging, thanks to political backlash over Musk’s Nazi pose and chainsaw antics in DC, as well as rising competition in the electric vehicle market.
Musk spent days whining that the “We’re All Going to Die Act” wasn’t destructive enough. He griped that the bill would balloon the deficit, undermining DOGE’s work. Then, on Thursday, things boiled over. Musk and Trump went head-to-head in a spectacular public spat, with Musk accusing Trump of appearing in the Epstein files and Trump threatening to end Musk’s government contracts. Overnight chatter suggested the two might hop on a call to broker a “peace deal,” but as of this writing, that call appears to be off, with Trump telling reporters that Musk has “lost his mind.”
It is unsurprising, but nonetheless disconcerting, that some Democrats are responding to the feud by attempting to court Musk. “We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) said, according to Politico. “A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like him.”
Khanna’s claim that the Democratic Party is more closely aligned with Musk’s values is both damning and disgusting. Musk has vilified immigrants, called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” gutted federal jobs and programs, posed like a Nazi at an inaugural event, and repeatedly amplified white supremacist myths and hoaxes. When he proudly put USAID through a "woodchipper," he unleashed mass death across the Global South—killing starving and ailing adults, children, and infants. Musk is a fascist opportunist who should be offered no quarter. He should be battered from all sides, including by the protest movement that helped deliver him to this moment.
Last night, at a social event for local activists, I talked with a Chicago Tesla Takedown organizer who was thinking through messaging for this Saturday’s protest. These activists know their work isn’t done, and they should be supported. If you despise Elon Musk and everything he represents, I recommend joining a Tesla Takedown protest this weekend. Some people should be kicked while they’re down, and Democrats apparently need to be reminded that their would-be base will not forgive or forget Musk’s actions.
We must not, under any circumstances, allow Musk to recover a shred of credibility or political favor among decent people. He is a man who should never know peace. Musk has flexed his fascist values on an international stage, while proudly dismantling programs that kept millions of people alive. The richest man in the world has condemned millions of the poorest people in the world to death, while publicly insisting that empathy is the greatest threat to western civilization. There is no coming back from these actions, and anyone attempting to offer Musk a redemption arc should be condemned as one of his collaborators. Failing to impose consequences on those who enact fascist politics at scale is a form of surrender. The Biden administration made our current political nightmare possible by refusing to hold Trump accountable for the fascist power grabs of his first term—and now some Democrats seem poised to outdo that failure.
Amid their abandonment of immigrants and trans people, and their pitiful response to Trump’s shock-and-awe politics, Democrats should be concerned with their own redemption. They paved the path to this moment with their capitulations, anti-immigrant policies, and authoritarian maneuvers. They have fashioned themselves as a less threatening, more diverse and upbeat version of the Republicans, and were roundly rejected. This moment requires a real, transformative alternative to these death-making politics. This is a time to rally against Musk’s fascist, xenophobic, oligarchic agenda, not to make peace with it. The monster is wounded. Let him bleed.
Much love,
Kelly
Organizing My Thoughts is a reader-supported newsletter. If you appreciate my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber today. There are no paywalls for the essays, reports, interviews, and excerpts published here. However, I could not do this work without the support of readers like you, so if you are able to contribute financially, I would greatly appreciate your help.
