«Should Chinese automakers be banned from Western markets, or should they be welcomed as long as they build factories here, maybe even in joint partnerships with local brands as China has required on its end for years? I think the latter approach makes more sense, and the United States and Canada risk letting Mexico seize the entirety of that opportunity because their Sinophobia is so all-consuming. Conservative politicians are already starting to call for Mexico to be ejected from the continental trade pact over the issue of Chinese cars.

Electric vehicles are far from a silver bullet for transport decarbonization, let alone addressing the long list of other issues that plague transport systems dominated by personal automobiles. But given how fast we need to cut our emissions, they will be part of any realistic path forward. Maybe one of those path is to have US and Canadian workers in domestic factories churning out cars with Chinese labels on them — just as they do with Japanese and Korean brands today. It might even give local automakers the kick they need to offer some more affordable models.»

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/what-we-get-wrong-about-the-supposed-threat-of-chinese-evs

Also: MOAR NUKES!

(Still not a fan of Chinese software and human rights practices, though. And the way we mine lithium is *literally* salting the earth.)

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/advertisers-are-returning-to-twitterx-to-keep-elon-musk-happy

«According to the FT, multiple media executives admitted that brands would be returning as advertisers on Twitter/X not because it’s a great place to reach people, but because they know it’s something Musk cares about and he’ll have influence with Trump. Lou Paskalis, chief executive of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, called it a form of “political leverage” that will be helpful if the companies are seeking government contracts. Throwing a few million dollars at Twitter/X to be in the “good graces of Elon” will surely also be a good strategy to stay out of his crosshairs and those of the administration.»

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/01/education-department-diversity-training-00201957

How is it my stupid, government-hating cousin is somehow in charge of things now?

In addition to the headline story (no email, just Xitter),

«On Friday, the Department of Defense announced it would evict four news organizations — NBC News, the New York Times, NPR and Politico — from leased offices within the Pentagon. The office space will be turned over to four other organizations — Breitbart News radio, the Huffington Post, One America News Network and the New York Post — some of which have curried favor with Trump and his political allies in recent times. (The Huffington Post is owned by BuzzFeed, which counts Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy among their minority owners.)»

https://thedesk.net/2025/02/ntsb-moves-plane-crash-press-updates-x-twitter/

https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-news-cdc-orders-mass-retraction

«What can and cannot go forward appears to require approval by a Trump political appointee, an explicit requirement for any public health communications under the Trump Administration’s gag order. That’s slowing many things down. At present, there is only one political appointee in the entire CDC, acting Director Susan Monarez (plus her personal assistant, who is not a scientist). It’s unclear if some decisions may be devolved to lower officials. For example, if a paper is pulled because it simply mentions gender, it is unknown if anyone other than Monarez possesses the authority to approve its resubmission.

“How can one person vet all of this?” another official asked, “especially one who, [like Monarez], came from an agency of, what, 130 people?”

And yet, that seems to be the theme of the new administration: a few privileged individuals have been handed enormous authority, creating a backlog of decisions that may end up being fairly arbitrarily determined.»

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/senior-fbi-official-forcefully-resisted-trump-administration-firings-rcna190301

«Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.

The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney and NBC News legal contributor, called the firings illegal.

“Career federal employees can be fired for conduct or performance issues, not because they failed to demonstrate political loyalty to the current incumbent of the White House,” said Vance. “Trump ignored controlling law and regulations to do this, and unless the Supreme Court changes their interpretation, any firing of permanent members of the civil service should not stand.”

Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.

One of the Jan. 6 prosecutors fired on Friday told NBC News that they “did nothing wrong” and had no regrets about their work. The person, who asked not to named due to fear of retaliation, said it was discouraging to be fired after seeing Trump pardon violent rioters who attacked police officers.

“We’ve all been looking over our shoulders, like, ‘Is this the day that we’re gonna get fired?’ Because we were doing our jobs?”»

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/doge-is-ripping-out-the-guts-of-government

I wonder how long it will take for us to start caring about stuff we never cared about.

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/musk-friday-coup

Oh, boy oh boy oh boy.

«But there’s a long road ahead, because Virginia has a complex process for constitutional amendments: They must pass in two consecutive legislative sessions, and then be approved by voters in a statewide referendum. Concretely, this means that the voting rights reform needs to pass the legislature again in 2026 before voters even get to weigh in.

And that repeat passage very likely hinges on whether Democrats maintain legislative control during this November’s elections, when the entirety of the state House is on the ballot. This measure is universally supported by Democratic lawmakers and almost universally opposed by Republicans, and the GOP could, and probably would, look to kill it next year if they win back the state House in the fall.

Virginia’s system of felony disenfranchisement is a Jim Crow relic, enshrined during a 1902 state constitutional convention with specifically racist intent. One of the lead authors at that convention said at the time that a system which ties voting rights to criminal records would “eliminate the darkie as a political factor” in Virginia, and guarantee “the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”»

https://boltsmag.org/virginia-advances-measure-to-end-lifetime-ban-on-voting/

None of us are racists today, of course*, so this is a classic example of racism without racists.

«[Sweater vest dad Governor Glenn] Youngkin, the Republican who succeeded Northam in 2022, shut down that decade of reform. He said he’d only consider whether people are worthy of having their rights restored on an individual, case-by-case basis.»

Not a racist, though. Just a gentle, loveable guy.

\* Sarcasm, Mastodon. Give me a little credit.

The youth did not save us.

«Young people who chose issues like racism, abortion, and climate change as their top priority in the 2024 election were the most likely to support Harris. However, 40% of youth chose “the economy and jobs” as their top priority—by far the highest of any issue, and those youth voted for Trump by a more than 22-point margin. Immigration was the third most commonly chosen top issue among youth overall, and the young people who chose it voted for President Trump by a nearly 70-point margin.»

https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/overall-youth-turnout-down-2020-strong-battleground-states

«It’s also worth highlighting that, in an election cycle with a lot of focus on the potential role of influencers and celebrities to engage young voters, less than 1% of young people said that motivation from an influencer had been one of their top-three motivations to cast a ballot.»

«More Than 1 in 3 Young People Were Never Contacted By an Organization About the 2024 Election»

«The study surveyed a total of 2,064 self-reported U.S. citizens ages 18 to 34 in the United States.»

There’s kind of a launchpad to this info here: https://circle.tufts.edu/2024-election.

And here’s how I found it: https://prospect.org/culture/2025-01-31-celebrity-fatigue-democrats/.