Trevor Milton Lists All Of The Cozy Relationships With Trump That Definitely Didn’t Lead To His Pardon

from the let-me-count-the-ways dept

We chronicled the implosion of the company Nikola and the fall from grace of its CEO, Trevor Milton, for years. If you don’t recall the story, Nikola was built to develop over the road trucks with a hydrogen propulsion system. In 2020, in a bid to gain more investment and boost confidence of current investors, Nikola showed off footage of what it called a working prototype moving down a lonely highway road. The problem is that it wasn’t a working prototype for the purposes of the footage. Instead, the truck was towed towards a descending hill and then allowed to roll down it with that momentum, with the filming camera tilted to make it appear as though it were on level ground. A sort of Adam West in Batman approach, in other words.

From there Nikola lost contracts, attempted to silence criticism via copyright, ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Milton was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 4 years in prison for his role in this fiasco. Justice, it appeared, was done.

But last week Donald Trump pardoned Milton, who will now see no jail time, as he’d been out on bond as he appealed the case. Conmen of a feather flock together, it seems.

“It is no wonder why trust and confidence in the Justice Department has eroded to nothing. I wish judges would stop believing whatever the prosecutors feed them so Americans could trust the justice system again,” Milton said in a statement.

Milton was convicted by a jury. He was represented in that trial by Brad Bondi, a partner at law firm Paul Hastings and the brother of current U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Now a free man, Milton has said he plans to release a documentary that he believes will tell his side of the Nikola story.

Milton apparently did not note whether that documentary would feature a permanently tilted camera in order to keep things consistent.

But as you can tell, there is no remorse here. Far from any contrite admission of guilt, Milton is pitching his pardon as a validation that he was innocent all along, the victim of the Biden administration, rather than a valid conviction handed down from a jury. If there were accusations to be made of political fuckery in any of this, they should have been made at trial, not as part of a post-pardon media commentary.

Now, if you’re concerned that Milton’s cozy relationship between his attorney and the U.S. Attorney General, or that the millions his family donated to the Trump campaign had anything to do with his getting pardoned, rest easy. Milton is here to tell you that these conflicts had nothing to do with it, one by one.

Milton said donations he and his wife made to the Trump campaign in October played no role in the pardon.

“I wouldn’t even know how to do that,” he said. “It would be illegal to do that.”

Milton also said that Trump-appointed Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the sister of one of his attorneys, also had no role in the pardon. Milton on Monday repeatedly said he was a political victim under the Biden administration, adding the pardon says, “Trevor is innocent.”

I like to imagine that he made these comments with a shit-eating grin on his face and punctuated them with an exaggerated wink. A pardon of course does not confer innocence onto the convicted. But it’s not crazy to suspect that donations and familial relationships at play here factored into his pardon. Just watching how Trump operates over the last few years should at least raise suspicions.

But again, there is no responsibility being taken by Milton for any of this.

Milton, who confirmed he sold more than $300 million in company shares in 2021, said he would not repay any of the investors. But he would be open to helping those people in future ventures.

“So, I’m not heartless,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I feel for these people probably more than most.”

One wonders if there is a hill steep enough to prevent those investors from running up them in response.

Filed Under: brad bondi, donald trump, donations, fraud, pam bondi, pardon, soft corruption, trevor milton
Companies: nikola

Anchorage Police Department: AI-Generated Police Reports Don’t Save Time

from the the-time-saving-tech-that-isn't dept

The Anchorage Police Department (APD) has concluded its three-month trial of Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that uses audio from body-worn cameras to write narrative police reports for officers—and has decided not to retain the technology. Axon touts this technology as “force multiplying,” claiming it cuts in half the amount of time officers usually spend writing reports—but APD disagrees.

The APD deputy chief told Alaska Public Media, “We were hoping that it would be providing significant time savings for our officers, but we did not find that to be the case.” The deputy chief flagged that the time it took officers to review reports cut into the time savings from generating the report.  The software translates the audio into narrative, and officers are expected to read through the report carefully to edit it, add details, and verify it for authenticity. Moreover, because the technology relies on audio from body-worn cameras, it often misses visual components of the story that the officer then has to add themselves. “So if they saw something but didn’t say it, of course, the body cam isn’t going to know that,” the deputy chief continued.

The Anchorage Police Department is not alone in claiming that Draft One is not a time saving device for officers. A new study into police using AI to write police reports, which specifically tested Axon’s Draft One, found that AI-assisted report-writing offered no real time-savings advantage.

This news comes on the heels of policymakers and prosecutors casting doubt on the utility or accuracy of AI-created police reports. In Utah, a pending state bill seeks to make it mandatory for departments to disclose when reports have been written by AI. In King County, Washington, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has directed officers not to use any AI tools to write narrative reports.

In an era where companies that sell technology to police departments profit handsomely and have marketing teams to match, it can seem like there is an endless stream of press releases and local news stories about police acquiring some new and supposedly revolutionary piece of tech. But what we don’t usually get to see is how many times departments decide that technology is costly, flawed, or lacks utility. As the future of AI-generated police reports rightly remains hotly contested, it’s important to pierce the veil of corporate propaganda and see when and if police departments actually find these costly bits of tech useless or impractical.

Originally posted to the EFF Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: ai, anchorage, anchorage pd, draft one, paperwork, police
Companies: axon

Massive Expansion Of Italy’s Piracy Shield Underway Despite Growing Criticism Of Its Flaws

from the doubling-down-on-a-failure dept

Walled Culture has been following closely Italy’s poorly designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked power to shut down critical national infrastructure. Since then, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), an international, not-for-profit association representing computer, communications, and Internet industry firms, has added its voice to the chorus of disapproval. In a letter to the European Commission, it warned about the dangers of the Piracy Shield system to the EU economy:

The 30-minute window [to block a site] leaves extremely limited time for careful verification by ISPs that the submitted destination is indeed being used for piracy purposes. Additionally, in the case of shared IP addresses, a block can very easily (and often will) restrict access to lawful websites – harming legitimate businesses and thus creating barriers to the EU single market. This lack of oversight poses risks not only to users’ freedom to access information, but also to the wider economy. Because blocking vital digital tools can disrupt countless individuals and businesses who rely on them for everyday operations. As other industry associations have also underlined, such blocking regimes present a significant and growing trade barrier within the EU.

It also raised an important new issue: the fact that Italy brought in this extreme legislation without notifying the European Commission under the so-called “TRIS” procedure, which allows others to comment on possible problems:

The (EU) 2015/1535 procedure aims to prevent creating barriers in the internal market before they materialize. Member States notify their legislative projects regarding products and Information Society services to the Commission which analyses these projects in the light of EU legislation. Member States participate on the equal foot with the Commission in this procedure and they can also issue their opinions on the notified drafts.

As well as Italy’s failure to notify the Commission about its new legislation in advance, the CCIA believes that:

this anti-piracy mechanism is in breach of several other EU laws. That includes the Open Internet Regulation which prohibits ISPs to block or slow internet traffic unless required by a legal order. The block subsequent to the Piracy Shield also contradicts the Digital Services Act (DSA) in several aspects, notably Article 9 requiring certain elements to be included in the orders to act against illegal content. More broadly, the Piracy Shield is not aligned with the Charter of Fundamental Rights nor the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU – as it hinders freedom of expression, freedom to provide internet services, the principle of proportionality, and the right to an effective remedy and a fair trial.

Far from taking these criticisms to heart, or acknowledging that Piracy Shield has failed to convert people to paying subscribers, the Italian government has decided to double down, and to make Piracy Shield even worse. Massimiliano Capitanio, Commissioner at AGCOM, the Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees, explained on LinkedIn how Piracy Shield was being extended in far-reaching ways (translation by Google Translate, original in Italian). In future, it will add:

30-minute blackout orders not only for pirate sports events, but also for other live content;

the extension of blackout orders to VPNs and public DNS providers;

the obligation for search engines to de-index pirate sites;

the procedures for unblocking domain names and IP addresses obscured by Piracy Shield that are no longer used to spread pirate content;

the new procedure to combat piracy on the #linear and “on demand” television, for example to protect the #film and #serietv.

That is, Piracy Shield will apply to live content far beyond sports events, its original justification, and to streaming services. Even DNS and VPN providers will be required to block sites, a serious technical interference in the way the Internet operates, and a threat to people’s privacy. Search engines, too, will be forced to de-index material. The only minor concession to ISPs is to unblock domain names and IP addresses that are no longer allegedly being used to disseminate unauthorized material. There are, of course, no concessions to ordinary Internet users affected by Piracy Shield blunders.

An AGCOM board member, Elisa Giomi, who was mentioned previously on Walled Culture as a lone voice within AGCOM exposing its failures, also took to LinkedIn to express her concerns with these extensions of Piracy Shield (original in Italian):

The changes made unfortunately do not resolve #critical issues such as the fact that private #reporters, i.e. the holders of the rights to #football matches and other live #audiovisual content, have a disproportionate role in determining the blocking of #domains and #IP addresses that transmit in violation of #copyright.

Moreover:

The providers of #network and #computer security services such as #VPNs, #DNSs and #ISPs, who are called upon to bear high #costs for the implementation of the monitoring and blocking system, cannot count on compensation or financing mechanisms, suffering a significant imbalance, since despite not having any active role in #copyright violations, they invest economic resources to combat illegal activities to the exclusive advantage of the rights holders.

The fact that the Italian government is ignoring the problems with Piracy Shield and extending its application as if everything were fine, is bad enough. But the move might have even worse knock-on consequences. An EU parliamentary question about the broadcast rights to audiovisual works and sporting competitions asked:

Can the Commission provide precise information on the effectiveness of measures to block pirate sites by means of identification and neutralisation technologies?

To which the European Commission replied:

In order to address the issues linked to the unauthorised retransmissions of live events, the Commission adopted, in May 2023 the recommendation on combating online piracy of sport and other live events.

By 17 November 2025, the Commission will assess the effects of the recommendation taking into account the results from the monitoring exercise.

It’s likely that copyright companies will be lauding Piracy Shield as an example of how things should be done across the whole of the EU, conveniently ignoring all the problems that have arisen. Significantly, a new “Study on the Effectiveness and the Legal and Technical Means of Implementing Website-Blocking Orders” from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) does precisely that in its Conclusion:

A well-functioning site-blocking system that involves cooperation between relevant stakeholders (such as Codes of Conduct and voluntary agreements among rights holders and ISPs) and/or automated processes, such as Italy’s Piracy Shield platform, further increases the efficiency and effectiveness of a site-blocking regime.

As the facts show abundantly, Piracy Shield is the antithesis of a “well-functioning site-blocking system”. But when have copyright maximalists and their tame politicians ever let facts get in the way of their plans?

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally published to Walled Culture.

Filed Under: agcom, copyright, dns, eu, eu commission, italy, piracy shield, site blocking, vpns, wipo

Daily Deal: uTalk Language Learning

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

uTalk can help you start speaking like a native within minutes. Using the uTalk learning App you can listen to real native speakers to help you navigate through your next vacation or business trip. With more than 2,500 words and phrases to learn in each of our 140+ languages, the app gives you a running start on your journey to language fluency. Simple and easy to use, you have fun as you develop your language skills naturally. Access to all 140+ languages is on sale for $200, or you can choose 2 languages for $30 or 6 languages for $50.

Note: The BestNetTech Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from BestNetTech Deals helps support BestNetTech. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

from the when-you-don't-understand-trade,-everything-looks-like-theft dept

There’s a fundamental problem with Donald Trump’s new trade policy: it fails a test that actual 5th graders can pass. I know this because I tried explaining his “Liberation Day” trade plan to one last night. Here’s how that conversation went:

“Imagine you want to buy a toy at a store which costs $50. You pay for the toy and walk away with it. The President looks at that transaction and says ‘wait, you paid the store $50 and the store paid you nothing, therefore the store is stealing from you. To “fix” this, I’m going to tax the store $25. From now on that same toy costs $75.”

The 5th grader looked at me like I was crazy. “Whaaaaaaat? None of that makes sense. If I pay for something, it’s not stealing. And taxing the store seems stupid, and then everything is more expensive. Why would anyone do that? That can’t be how it works.”

This is the core problem with Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade policy: it fundamentally misunderstands what trade deficits are. And if you think that’s bad, just wait until we get to the part where this policy declares economic war on penguins and our own military base.

The policy, unveiled yesterday afternoon, is called a “reciprocal tariff plan,” which is a bit like calling a hammer a “reciprocal pillow.” The premise is that since other countries have high tariffs on us (they don’t), we should have high tariffs on them (we shouldn’t). But that’s not even the weird part.

At the heart of this policy is a chart. Not just any chart, but what might be the most creative work of economic fiction since, well, Donald Trump launched his memecoin. Trump proudly displayed these numbers at a White House event, explaining that they showed the tariffs other countries impose on the US. He emphasized repeatedly that the US was being more than “fair” because our reciprocal tariffs would be less than what other countries were charging us.

There was just one small problem: none of the numbers were real tariff rates. Not even close. Vietnam, according to the chart, imposes a 90% tariff on US goods. This would be shocking news to Vietnam, which does no such thing.

At first, observers assumed the administration was simply inventing numbers, which would have been bad enough. But the reality turned out to be far more stupid. James Surowiecki stumbled into what was actually happening:

Let’s pause for a moment to appreciate what Surowiecki discovered. The administration didn’t just make up random numbers — that would have been too simple. Instead, they invented a formula that manages to be both more complicated and more wrong: they took our trade deficit with each country and divided it by that country’s exports to us.

So for Indonesia, the math went like this:

• US trade deficit with Indonesia: $17.9 billion
• Indonesia’s exports to the US: $28 billion
• $17.9B ÷ $28B = 64%
• Therefore (according to this logic), Indonesia must be charging us the equivalent of a 64% tariff

This is roughly equivalent to calculating your coffee shop’s markup by dividing how much coffee you buy from them by how much coffee they buy from you. Which would make sense if you were in the coffee business, but you’re not.

When confronted about this methodology, the administration didn’t backtrack. They just admitted it:

“The numbers [for tariffs by country] have been calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers … based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all trade practices, the sum of all cheating,” a White House official said, calling it “the most fair thing in the world.”

Whoever on the Council of Economic Advisers used this formula should turn in their econ degree, because this is not how anything works. Even if they then go on to publish another version of the formula that looks all sophisticated and shit:

This is what happens when you ask ChatGPT to “make my wrong econ math look more scientific.” The document even admits that they couldn’t figure out the actual tariff rates, so they “proxied” them with this formula instead. That’s a bit like saying you couldn’t find your house keys, so you proxied them with a banana.

The fundamental problem here isn’t just that the tariff numbers are wrong — though they absolutely are. It’s that the entire premise rests on treating trade deficits as if they were tariffs. They’re not the same thing. At all.

Let’s back up for a moment and talk about trade deficits, because Trump has been getting this wrong for longer than some of his supporters have been alive. His logic appears to be:

1. “Deficit” sounds bad
2. Therefore, trade deficits must be bad
3. Therefore, countries with whom we have trade deficits must be cheating us
4. Therefore, we should punish them with tariffs to “level the playing field”

Remember that 5th grader from earlier? They already understood what Trump doesn’t: when you buy a toy for $50 at a store, you have a “trade deficit” with that store. You gave them $50, they gave you $0. But you also got a toy. That’s not the store cheating you — that’s just how buying things works.

A trade deficit between countries works the same way. When we have a trade deficit with a country, it just means we bought more stuff from them than they bought from us. We got the stuff. They got the money. That’s it.

Trump’s solution to trade deficits (which aren’t a problem) is to impose tariffs (which don’t help). In fact, they can often make things worse. According to actual economists who study this stuff, higher tariffs can actually lead to higher trade deficits, not lower ones.

Joseph Gagnon, one of the world’s foremost experts on trade deficits, explains exactly why this is such a bad idea:

Although tariffs do not reduce trade deficits, they do reduce imports and exports, as well as total income. That’s because they force a country to shift resources from more profitable exports to less profitable imports, as well as to services. But the long-run economic effects are also negative. By shielding producers from foreign competition, a tariff ultimately leads to less business innovation, slower productivity growth, and lower household living standards.

You might notice something about that paragraph. It starts by describing how tariffs hurt the economy in the short term. Then there’s a “but” — which usually signals some kind of silver lining. Instead, it just pivots to explaining how tariffs hurt the economy even more in the long term.

Cool.

So we have a policy that:

1. Is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of trade deficits
2. Uses made-up numbers derived from a nonsense formula
3. Would actually make the “problem” it’s trying to solve even worse
4. Will definitely make Americans poorer

But wait, it gets better.

All of this glosses over the fact that “reciprocal tariffs” are not reciprocal at all. Trump’s team is making up fake tariff numbers for foreign countries based not on anything having to do with tariffs, but on trade deficits, which is just an accounting of inflows vs. outflows between two countries. It’s only reciprocal because the Trump team faked the numbers.

On top of that, Trump can only impose tariffs (normally a power of Congress) based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act. Both laws require there to be an actual “emergency.” The only emergency here is that nobody in the administration understands what trade deficits are.

But at least we may know where they got their brilliant formula from. There has been some suggestion that the administration got the idea from AI — specifically from asking a large language model how to calculate “fair” tariffs based on trade deficits. And yes, when asked “What would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even-playing fields when it comes to trade deficit? Set minimum at 10%,” several AI models did suggest something similar to the administration’s approach.

guess where they got their weird trade deficit math from?i went to the pit for y'all and brought back the screenshots with alt text

— Amy Hoy (@amyhoy.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T00:42:22.169Z

But here’s the thing: every single AI model also included very clear warnings about why using this formula would be catastrophically stupid. I tested this myself with multiple LLMs (Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Llama, and Copilot), and they all basically said “Well, if you insist on doing something this economically illiterate, here’s how you could do it, BUT PLEASE DON’T.”

My favorite was DeepSeek, in which I had its reasoning turned on, and it seemed particularly perplexed as to why I would try to balance trade deficits with tariffs, but felt resigned to do so:

That’s a little small to read, but it says:

Wait, but is this the right approach? I mean, tariffs can have various effects. If you impose a tariff, it might lead to retaliation from other countries, which could hurt US exports. Also, higher tariffs could increase prices for consumers in the US, which isn’t great for the economy. But the user is specifically asking about balancing the trade deficit, so maybe those considerations are secondary here.

Yeah, that’s literally DeepSeek grappling with the fact that the user here (the US government) is asking for a fundamentally stupid thing without understanding the consequences.

The administration appears to have taken only the formula and ignored all the warnings. Which would be merely sad if they were just playing with theoretical numbers. But they’re not. They’re actually implementing this policy, using emergency powers that are supposed to be reserved for actual emergencies — not “we don’t understand how trade works” emergencies.

Which then brings us around, finally, to the penguins.

Because MAGA’s best economists are implementing it so mechanically, applying their formula to every country in what appears to be the CIA World Factbook, we end up with some truly spectacular results.

Let’s take a closer look at the very last page of the administration’s tariff list:

Now, you might notice a bunch of these entries show a flat 10% tariff rate. That’s what happens when a “country” has no trade with the US at all — the formula defaults to the minimum. A mildly competent team might have wondered why these places have zero trade with us and done a quick check before declaring economic war on them.

But this team isn’t mildly competent. This team is extremely, profoundly, impressively incompetent.

So let’s look at who exactly we’re launching a trade war against, starting with the Heard and McDonald Islands. Total population: zero human beings. The only residents are some absolutely stunning penguins. You can actually adopt one if you want — though I suppose that may now cost 10% more, thanks to Trump’s tariff.

But that’s not even the best part. Just a few lines up, you’ll find the “British Indian Ocean Territory,” also known as the Chagos Islands. Nearly all of the humans currently on these islands are US military personnel at the Diego Garcia base. And they’re only there because, as detailed in a recent Behind the Bastards podcast, the British government forcibly expelled all the native inhabitants to lease the territory to the US military.

Let that sink in for a moment: Donald Trump just imposed tariffs on our own military base. On territory we lease. Where the only residents are US military personnel.

So to sum up where we are:

1. The administration invented an economic emergency
2. To justify a policy based on made-up numbers
3. Generated by an AI formula that came with explicit warnings not to use it
4. Which they’re now using to launch trade wars against:
   • Penguins
   • Our own military
   • And presumably Santa’s Workshop (someone check for a North Pole entry)

And while the penguins and military base make for amusing examples of this policy’s incompetence, the real damage will come from applying this same backwards logic to basically all of our actual trading partners — countries whose goods and services make American lives better and whose economic relationships we’ve spent decades building. And who, historically, welcomed back American goods and services as well. All of that is now at risk because someone couldn’t be bothered to learn what a trade deficit actually is. And the American electorate deciding that’s who we wanted to govern the country.

When your trade policy is so fundamentally misguided that you’re declaring economic war on flightless birds and your own armed forces, perhaps it’s time to admit that the 5th grader from the beginning of this story wasn’t just smarter than the administration — they were dramatically overqualified for Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Filed Under: biot, chagos islands, diego garcia, donald trump, economics, heard and mcdonald island, liberation day, motherfucking penguins, penguins, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs, trade deficit, trade war

Trump’s FCC ‘Investigates’ Disney For Not Being Racist And Sexist Enough

from the pathetic-and-sad dept

Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr isn’t really interested in doing his actual job as head of the FCC. He’s not interested in protecting consumers or markets from notoriously shitty telecom monopolies. He’s not interested in protecting consumers or markets from harmful consolidation. He’s not interested in addressing the fact the telecom industry just saw the worst hack in history.

What’s he interested in? Harassing companies that don’t adequately bend the knee to Trump. And harassing companies that aren’t suitably racist or sexist enough for the Trump administration’s liking.

Carr’s already announced he’s launching phony “investigations” into Verizon and Comcast for not being racist and sexist enough (read: having some bare-bones inclusivity efforts on a website). He’s doing this by leveraging looming approvals for potential shitty mergers to bully these companies into submission. And because these companies are routinely stocked with abject cowards, it will probably work.

And Carr continues to expand his anti-civil-rights campaign on the taxpayer dime. Last week he announced he’s also “investigating” Disney/ABC for not being racist and sexist enough. From NPR (which Carr is also “investigating” for being insufficiently deferent to christofascist clods):

“In a letter to Disney CEO Robert Iger, Carr said the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau will review whether Disney or ABC have violated any FCC equal employment opportunity regulations. He added that the probe will apply to both past and current policies.”

As with all of these investigations, Carr is pulling his legal justifications entirely out of his ass. He’s basically trying to claim that marginal efforts to be more inclusive are themselves in violation of anti-discrimination rules and laws. Rules and laws they’re trying to destroy. It’s circular logic gibberish designed to give a thin veneer of legitimacy to pointless bullshit harassment. Sayeth Carr:

“Numerous reports indicate that Disney’s leadership went all in on invidious forms of DEI discrimination a few years ago and apparently did so in a manner that infected many aspects of your company’s decisions.”

In telecom, Carr has tried to re-interpret language in the Communications Act designed to prevent discrimination to attack efforts against discrimination. It will never hold up in even the shittiest of courts, but Carr of course doesn’t care about that. He wants the publicity generated by the fake investigations to do the bullying. He wants to scare companies with fake, costly inquiries into nonexistent violations.

Disney, like most feckless U.S. corporations, has been happy to oblige so far, scrubbing their websites and earnings reports of references to equality and inclusion, shortening warnings on Disney+ about how older Disney content may feature racist stereotypes, and shuttering already flimsy programs designed to help marginalized populations.

Of course the U.S. press, many of them keen to avoid harassment or get tax cuts and merger approvals, have proven appropriately feckless in their news coverage of Carr’s weird zealotry.

Authoritarian propagandists have hijacked the term “DEI” to help sanitize and normalize sexism/racism, and conflate half-assed corporate inclusivity initiatives with popular civil rights. Instead of saying Carr is “being racist,” “being sexist,” “embracing resegregation,” or “attacking civil rights,” they’re quick to adopt the more sterile “he’s investigating DEI” nomenclature:

And if you read through pretty much any coverage of these sham investigations, you’ll find they all go out of their way to frame Carr’s racist and sexist harassment of companies as serious adult policymaking. Because that’s what you get when you let journalism consolidate at the hands of feckless trust fund brunchlords who are more interested in tax cuts and access than serving the public interest.

Carr’s a weird zealot launching baseless investigations into companies because they’re not being suitably racist and sexist enough for his king’s liking. It’s pathetic, and the collective press and corporate response so far has been equally so.

Filed Under: authoritarianism, brendan carr, civil rights, dei, fcc, harassment, journalism, media, racism, resegregation, sexism
Companies: disney