- Why does Trump promote AI, while cutting funding for science and medicine?
- Why does Trump pardon drug traffickers, while shooting boats in the Caribbean that are supposedly, without evidence, trafficking drugs?
- Paul Krugman on the end of the free world;
- Robert Reich on the last person in the world who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize;
- John Pavlovitz on how if you support ICE, you shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas;
- Brief items about Trump’s phony peace prize; the right-wing media grift; how Hegseth and Bondi have responded about illegal orders to the military; and how Trump has committed the same mortgage fraud that he now accuses of others.
Why is Trump so obsessed with AI…
Axios, 8 Dec 2025: Trump says AI executive order targeting state laws coming this week (Via)
Trump:
“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI. We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS. …”
Axios:
The executive order isn’t likely to try to block state AI laws outright. Instead, it’s expected to attempt to gut state AI laws by launching legal challenges and conditioning federal grants on compliance. … some Republicans, like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), are sounding alarms about high AI risk for kids, jobs and safety. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) have pushed language to preempt state action …
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…when he is gutting American leadership in every field of science and medicine?
NY Times, 2 Dec 2025 (in today’s print paper): The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine, subtitled “A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.” (gift link)
Very long piece with lots of animated graphics as you scroll down.
In the past decade, the National Institutes of Health awarded top scientists $9 billion in competitive grants each year, to find cures for diseases and improve public health.
This year, something unusual happened. Starting in January, the Trump administration stalled that funding. By summer, funding lagged by over $2 billion, or 41 percent below average.
Sample chart:
I have no idea. I can only speculate that Trump thinks AI is a “thing” that he has some crude conception of, while all that research in science medicine is far too abstract for him to begin to understand.
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And again. What is Trump thinking?
Washington Post, 8 Dec 2025: Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric, subtitled “The president has granted clemency to about 100 people accused of drug-related crimes during his time in office, a Post analysis shows.”
On President Donald Trump’s first full day in office this year, he pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of creating the largest online black market for illegal drugs and other illicit goods of its time.
In the months since, he has granted clemency to others, including Chicago gang leader Larry Hoover and Baltimore drug kingpin Garnett Gilbert Smith. And last week, he pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for running his country as a vast “narco-state” that helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Meanwhile,
At the same time, Trump has threatened military action against Venezuela over accusations that the country’s government is supporting the drug trade and has pushed the Pentagon to conduct targeted strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean. The contrasting actions have come under fire from Democrats and other critics, who say Trump’s broad use of clemency contradicts promises to get tough on drugs.
Again, I have no idea. There was the suggestion with the pardoning of Hernández that he was a Trump supporter, and of course Trump will forgive *anything* of his supporters, but that surely can’t be true of all the others he’s pardoned. A backup explanation is that he thinks anyone convicted of anything is somehow illegitimate, since Trump was convicted of a bunch of felonies, and therefore the legal system is corrupt; and if there’s a drug problem, he’ll just solve it by blowing up boats or invading Venezuela.
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More on America’s retreat from the world stage.
Paul Krugman, 8 Dec 2025: Is This The End of the Free World?, subtitled “Trump wants to MAGAfy Europe, too”
There was a time, not so long ago, when America was the leader of the free world. It was the first among equals within an alliance of nations bound together by shared values — above all a commitment to democracy and civil liberties. From London to Berlin to Tokyo, in the aftermath of genocide and the utter devastation of World War II, America – as Ronald Reagan put it – was the shining city on the hill. We should never forget that Americans played the pivotal roles in the Nuremberg trials, upholding the rule of law in an impartial and transparent manner in the trials of those who had committed unspeakable atrocities and acts of war. “Ich bin ein Berliner,” declared John F. Kennedy in Berlin, as East Germany tried to trap its own people behind the Berlin Wall.
MAGA, however, doesn’t want to be part of that world. In fact, it doesn’t want a world of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law to exist. The Trump administration has become especially hostile to Europe, precisely because the Europeans are trying to hold on to the values MAGA is trying to destroy at home.
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Robert Reich, 8 Dec 2025: Who’s the Last Person in the World to Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?
Subtitled “The person who’s been waging illegal wars”
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John Pavlovitz, 7 Dec 2025: Christian, If You’re Celebrating ICE, You Shouldn’t Be Celebrating Christmas
Sample:
If you’re celebrating the mass deportations of distraught, exhausted human beings seeking refuge, you probably shouldn’t be singing sweet songs about a baby with “no crib for a bed.”
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Briefly noted.
- Salon, Heather Digby Parton, 8 Dec 2025: FIFA’s phony “peace prize” can’t redeem Donald Trump, subtitled “Trump is an incompetent warmonger, and an elderly man in obvious decline. A made-up medal won’t change that”
- Pathetic, in all its details.
- Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 5 Dec 2025: Dan Bongino lays bare the right-wing media grift
- “[P]eople like Bongino — and by extension, Hannity — make their money by tossing off reckless speculations that confirm their right-wing audience’s biases, and face no perceptible consequences if their claims turn out to be false.”
- Two items about Republican hypocrisy.
- CNN, 8 Dec 2025: Hegseth in 2016 repeatedly warned of Trump issuing unlawful military orders (via)
- And Pam Bondi said the opposite:
- NY Times, 8 Dec 2025: Must the Military Disobey Unlawful Orders? Pam Bondi Has Said Yes.
- Subtitled: “As a lawyer for a conservative think tank, Ms. Bondi, now the attorney general, filed a Supreme Court brief last year saying service members who followed such orders were committing crimes.”
- And one more about Trump’s hypocrisy.
- ProPublica, 8 Dec 2025: Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal
- Subtitled “The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing he called ‘deceitful and potentially criminal.'”
- It’s curious how Trump accuses others of the very things he’s done.
