The Death of Government Expertise
Why Trump and Musk are on a firing spree
Tom Nichols wrote:...
(“Do I need to call Elon?” one young DOGE-nik reportedly snapped when a federal official had the temerity to deny him access to sensitive information.)....
atlantic
An advertisement that was set to run in some editions of The Washington Post on Tuesday calling for Elon Musk to be fired from his role in government was abruptly canceled, according to one of the advocacy groups that had ordered the ad.
Common Cause said it was told by the newspaper on Friday that the ad was being pulled. The full-page ad, known as a wraparound, would have covered the front and back pages of editions delivered to the White House, the Pentagon and Congress, and was planned in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund
...
“We asked why they wouldn’t run the wrap when we clearly met the guidelines if they were allowing the internal ad,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and chief executive of Common Cause. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason.”
...
Prayer and prosecutions: the US ‘hate group’ waging war over Britain’s abortion clinic buffer zones
Anti-abortion campaigners cheer as JD Vance brands safe zones an attack on ‘liberties of religious Britons’
Rachael Clarke remembers life before buffer zones. Almost every day, the head of staff at the UK’s biggest abortion provider would get emails from staff worried about protesters outside clinics – and women crying in the waiting room.
Some of the protesters had huge placards with graphic images of foetuses. Others held candlelit vigils and said prayers. One scattered baby clothes in the bushes. “We had everything from people telling women that having an abortion was putting their baby in a meat grinder to people following nurses down the road in the dark telling them they were killing babies,” says Clarke.
Since buffer zones were rolled out nationally late last year – building on public space protection orders that were already in place outside some clinics – she says things have drastically improved.
Reports of alleged harassment outside British Pregnancy Advisory Service clinics have stopped almost completely. So when she heard JD Vance, the US vice-president, decrying buffer zone laws as an attack on the “liberties of religious Britons” in a speech on Friday at the Munich Security Conference – and condemning the conviction of a man, Adam Smith-Connor, who he said had been targeted for “just silently praying on his own” – she wasn’t impressed. “You can’t see these things in isolation,” she says.
Rather than being a one-off, Clarke sees the Smith-Connor case as part of a wider effort by anti-abortion campaigners to test the new law to the limits – and shift the focus away from the true reason for buffer zones to a debate about freedom of speech.
Hers is a view shared by reproductive healthcare professionals, legal experts and campaigners who believe buffer zones – intended to protect service users and staff – are being targeted in an orchestrated campaign by conservative Christian groups that are fuelling the spread of misinformation and seeking to shift the terms of the debate.
At the centre of the efforts is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a prominent conservative Christian group which opposes gay marriage as well as wanting abortion to be banned – and has been labelled an extreme rightwing “hate group” by critics including the Southern Poverty Law Center in the US.
The Observer has found that the group’s UK branch has coordinated publicity and funded legal costs in a string of cases of alleged abortion buffer zone breaches. In that of Smith-Connor, who was convicted in October, it has written blog posts, launched a fundraising campaign and is paying for a legal appeal.
Using almost identical language to that used by Vance, it has circulated statements claiming Smith-Connor is the victim of a “thought crime”. In reality, he had been prosecuted for breaching a public space protection order which had been put in place to protect staff and service users following issues with protests. The new buffer zone law that Vance referred to, which has since come into force, makes it illegal under the Public Order Act 2023 for anyone to do anything that intentionally or recklessly influences someone’s decision to use abortion services, obstructs them, or causes harassment or distress, within 150 metres of a clinic. The law doesn’t explicitly mention prayer, or silent prayer, but criminalises behaviour likely to intimate staff or service users.
At the time of his arrest in November 2022, Smith-Connor had been partially standing behind a tree near an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, which was protected by a public space protection order following anti-abortion activity. He had been praying, which he said was because he and his former girlfriend had once aborted a pregnancy. But he had also been asked repeatedly to move on, by a community officer who had spoken to him for an hour and 40 minutes. Ordering him to pay £9,000 costs, district judge Orla Austin said he had breached a public space protection order and that his actions had been “deliberate”.
After Vance’s comments on Friday, the ADF celebrated online. CEO and president Kristen Waggoner – who was in Europe this week in a visit that coincided with Vance’s – posted on X: “Very grateful to Vice President @JDVance for highlighting Adam’s unjust and illiberal conviction for silent prayer in the UK.”
The ADF is also funding legal help for Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the founder of the March for Life anti-abortion group, who has been arrested twice, but not convicted over alleged buffer zone violations, and was paid £13,000 by West Midlands police.
A prosecutor had said the case had not met the full code test, which assesses whether prosecutions are in the public interest and if there is sufficient evidence. A West Midlands spokesperson said Vaughan-Spruce had made a civil claim for unlawful arrest, assault and a breach of human rights and it had settled the claim without any admission of liability.
This weekend, the ADF was sharing videos of Vaughan-Spruce outside an abortion clinic, being asked to move on by an officer and declining.
The ADF also backed Father Sean Gough, a Catholic priest who faced charges claiming he intimidated service users near an abortion clinic, which were later dropped for the same reason as Vaughan-Spruce’s - and is supporting a fourth woman who is expected to appear in court next month over her alleged failure to pay a fixed penalty notice after she was accused of breaching a buffer zone.
The cases raise questions about the growing influence of US anti-abortion groups in Britain. The Observer previously reported that the UK branch of the ADF had more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.
In all the cases, at the centre of the ADF’s publicity is the idea that silent prayer is being criminalised – and people’s right to freedom of religion is being eroded.
But Clarke says this is a distraction. “The thing they try to push is that it’s just ‘silently praying’: you might be walking down the road minding your business and a police officer leaps out. But that’s not how it works. These campaigners seek out abortion clinics and they stand directly outside,” she says.
Pam Lowe, senior sociology lecturer at Aston University, who has researched the anti-abortion movement, said: “From my research the intimidation comes from people standing there. Most people are not immersed in what is or isn’t happening outside abortion clinics. So all they see is someone they think is going to stop them. It doesn’t matter what that person intends or doesn’t intend to do, it’s the presence rather than the action that’s the problem. I’ve seen people climb over walls, put their hood up or try to run past these people, because they don’t know and have no idea what their intentions are.”
She said the attempt to focus on “silent prayer” and freedom of speech and religion appeared to be a “deliberate strategy by the anti-abortion movement”. “They are still free to pray and say what they want about abortion. They are just asking them to move 100m down the street.”
The ADF says it wants buffer zones to be abolished altogether. Lois McLatchie Miller, the ADF’s UK spokesperson, said they did “not exist to protect women from harassment (as this, rightfully, was already illegal). Rather, they violate fundamental freedoms by criminalising people for peaceful, consensual conversations, and even prayers”.
The group says it’s proud to back the legal defences of Smith–Connor, Vaughan-Spruce and others it says have been “targeted for their Christian faith”. It denies it is a hate group – a claim it says is part of a “smear campaign” – and says Smith-Connor’s prosecution is “one of the most extreme examples of censorship in a free society”. “The UK is on show to the world for “thought policing,” which is incompatible with democracy,” Miller said.
But from a legal standpoint, academics say the current law is robust – and strikes the delicate balance between the rights of campaigners, and the rights of the people it is intended to protect.
Prof George Letsas, from the faculty of law at UCL, said the buffer zones law – which came into effect in England and Wales in October - was already “very clear” – and effectively balanced the human rights of all parties. “From a legal perspective it’s clear that the right of women to access abortion services prevails over the right to protest, including silent protest,” he said.
He feels efforts by campaign groups to influence UK legal processes are “very problematic”. “Because where the money spent is very substantial, and there are deep pockets, you worry about the outcomes and being one-sided. What’s better is if these cases come to the courts more organically as opposed to in an orchestrated way where they’re trying to test the limits of the law. The problem is these appear to be orchestrated, deliberate efforts.”
Emily Ottley, lecturer in the law department at the University of Winchester, said challenges to arrests and convictions were to be expected, given the buffer zones law is new and has not been tested. “It’s important to not completely eradicate the views and feelings of the people who are protesting,” she said. But she said the law had been formulated in a way that balanced the human rights of both parties - adding that the true test would be in how it was treated by police, prosecutors and the courts in months to come.
For Dr Jonathan Lord, the medical director at MSI Reproductive Choices and co-chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists abortion taskforce, the ADF funding of legal cases shows how “the radical American right wing” had been “empowered” and was attempting to push its “extreme anti-abortion views in the UK and around the world”.
He said he hoped the focus of the conversation would return to the true reason why the law was brought in. “For the terrified woman who knows she faces abuse if their partner discovers she is pregnant, it is irrelevant whether the protester is praying, thinking about their shopping list or has an empty mind. It is simply that they are there that is the problem,” he said. “It has nothing to do with freedom of speech or of banning prayer, but of preventing harm to women, girls and their families.”
The USA is about to commit a triple betrayal: against democracy, against Europe and against itself. This has become clear following the statements made last week by the American triumvirate of President Donald Trump, his Vice President J.D. Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The first betrayal is that of democracy. [... ...]
Secondly, the Americans are about to commit treason against Ukraine and thus against Europe. ...
The Munich Conference of 1938 was an act of appeasement in which Britain and France ceded the Sudetenland - part of Czechoslovakia - to Nazi Germany in the deceptive hope of keeping the peace. It came to epitomise betrayal of smaller nations and the failure to resolutely confront aggression. The Hitler-Stalin Pact in turn sealed the division of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence in August 1939. Both agreements, also ‘deals’, were at the expense of the peoples and states, who were degraded to defenceless victims of cynical power politics.
We know about the catastrophic consequences of this policy, and who can guarantee that a similar policy will not lead to disaster again?
Back then, of course, the USA came to Europe's aid in the name of democracy and freedom. If, on the other hand, the US government does tomorrow what it is announcing today, it threatens to sell out Europe's democracy and freedom to the Russian dictator. In doing so, it would make itself an accomplice to the crime.
Thirdly, the USA is about to betray itself and its history.
[...]
She said the attempt to focus on “silent prayer” and freedom of speech and religion appeared to be a “deliberate strategy by the anti-abortion movement”. “They are still free to pray and say what they want about abortion. They are just asking them to move 100m down the street.
And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
... evangelicals like Vance ...
Quote:The USA is about to commit a triple betrayal: against democracy, against Europe and against itself. This has become clear following the statements made last week by the American triumvirate of President Donald Trump, his Vice President J.D. Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The first betrayal is that of democracy. [... ...]
Secondly, the Americans are about to commit treason against Ukraine and thus against Europe. ...
The Munich Conference of 1938 was an act of appeasement in which Britain and France ceded the Sudetenland - part of Czechoslovakia - to Nazi Germany in the deceptive hope of keeping the peace. It came to epitomise betrayal of smaller nations and the failure to resolutely confront aggression. The Hitler-Stalin Pact in turn sealed the division of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence in August 1939. Both agreements, also ‘deals’, were at the expense of the peoples and states, who were degraded to defenceless victims of cynical power politics.
We know about the catastrophic consequences of this policy, and who can guarantee that a similar policy will not lead to disaster again?
Back then, of course, the USA came to Europe's aid in the name of democracy and freedom. If, on the other hand, the US government does tomorrow what it is announcing today, it threatens to sell out Europe's democracy and freedom to the Russian dictator. In doing so, it would make itself an accomplice to the crime.
Walter, do you have any reservations about the wording of the part I bolded above?
I certainly do.
This was an excellent piece by Professor Wirsching, but that sentence was jarring.
Walter, do you have any reservations about the wording of the part I bolded above?
I certainly do.
This was an excellent piece by Professor Wirsching, but that sentence was jarring.
Frank Apisa wrote:This opinion is indeed remarkable - which is why I have posted parts of it here (translated).Walter, do you have any reservations about the wording of the part I bolded above?
I certainly do.
This was an excellent piece by Professor Wirsching, but that sentence was jarring.
Maybe this sentence in bold is a bit exaggerated, but it reflects my opinion.
I am a ‘post-war child’, and was grateful for what the Americans (and the British, after all I lived in the British zone) did for us and the restoration of democracy here.
In Potsdam, I was able to study the (original) documents that led to the division of Germany, the division into two parts.
The (Nazi) German Reich had not only lost the war but had also brought insane disaster upon Europe (and the world).
But the situation in Ukraine is something completely different. I really do think it is a betrayal if they are first helped, but then their future is only negotiated with the aggressor.
In my opinion, we are currently in a crisis of reliability.
Was the word Professor Wirsching used closer to "betrayal" than to "treason?"
Frank Apisa wrote:The sentence in German is "Zweitens sind die Amerikaner im Begriff, Verrat an der Ukraine und damit an Europa zu begehen."Was the word Professor Wirsching used closer to "betrayal" than to "treason?"
Verrat translates to 'treason'.
However, the term's "Verrat an" translation is 'betrayal (of so.)'.
My bad.
Placebo frontman Brian Molko charged with calling Meloni ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’
The singer is being charged with defamation of the far-right Italian prime minister leader while performing at a festival in Turin in 2023
Placebo frontman Brian Molko is being charged with defamation after appearing to call the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a “piece of ****, fascist, racist” in Italian while performing at a festival in Turin in 2023.
In August 2023, Meloni sued Molko over the comments. Prosecutors subsequently opened an investigation into the claims and have charged Molko with “contempt of the institutions”.
On Monday, Italy’s justice ministry allowed prosecutors in Turin to move forward with the legal proceedings. Defaming the Italian government, parliament, courts or army carries a fine of up to €5,000 (£4,146) and a direct summons to trial. Although public defamation in Italy can carry a prison term of up to three years, a spokesperson for justice minister Carlo Nordio has said Molko is unlikely to receive a custodial sentence.
A spokesperson for the band said there would be no comment.
Meloni leads the nationalist Brothers of Italy party and the hard-right coalition that has led the country since 2022 and pursued hardline policies on immigration, abortion and same-sex parenting. She recently joined far-right figures at the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Her party has recently banned surrogacy, putting those who go abroad to access it on a par with terrorists, paedophiles and war criminals – seemingly as part of the party’s homophobic stance – but ignoring the fact that nine out of 10 of the 250 Italian couples who seek surrogacy overseas each year are heterosexual. In September, the granddaughter of Italian wartime dictator Benito Mussolini said she was leaving Brothers of Italy because it was too rightwing.
In May, the philosopher Donatella Di Cesare, who was being sued by Meloni’s brother-in-law for comparing one of his speeches to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, claimed that her government was strategically using defamation suits to silence public intellectuals. Meloni’s first year in office recorded the highest number of lawsuits against public participation, according to the European parliament’s civil liberties committee.
Molko formed Placebo in 1994. The British rock band are known for their androgynous appearance and lyrics discussing sexuality, drug use and mental health. Their single Nancy Boy reached UK No 4 in 1997. Their most recent album, Never Let Me Go, was released in 2022.
Ukraine would become an economic colony of the USA for an indefinite period of time...
In a court filing last night, the Director of the Office of Administration in the Trump administration, Joshua Fisher, clarified the government position of billionaire Elon Musk. In a sworn declaration to the court, Fisher identified Musk as “a Senior Advisor to the President.” He explained: “In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives.”
Fisher’s statement went on to say that Musk is neither an employee nor the service administrator—that is, the leader—of the Department of Government Efficiency.
The statement is in response to a lawsuit filed by 14 states—New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington—contending that Musk’s role is unconstitutional because he has such sweeping power in his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that the Constitution requires that his position be confirmed by the Senate.
President Trump has routinely referred to Musk as DOGE’s leader, and the media routinely refer to “Elon Musk’s DOGE.” Musk has flooded his social media site with claims that DOGE is cutting programs that he claims are wasteful or fraudulent, although so far he has yet to provide any proof of his extravagant claims. In the early hours of Monday, he reposted a picture of a leaner, meaner version of himself dressed as a Roman gladiator with the caption: “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus.” Musk added: “And I am.”
Beginning on Friday, the Trump administration began mass purges of federal government employees. As Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein, and Emily Davies reported in the Washington Post, the firings were haphazard and riddled with errors, but apparently most of those firings were of employees in the probationary period of employment, typically the first year of service but a status that’s triggered by promotions and lateral transfers as well. About 20 FDA employees who review neurological and physical medical devices were fired, hampering the agency’s ability to evaluate the devices produced by Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink. Employment lawyers say the mass firings are illegal because they ignore employee protections.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, had noted: "This is essentially a private citizen directing an organization that's not a federal agency that has access to the entire workings of the federal government to hire, fire, slash contracts, terminate programs, all without any congressional oversight." Now the Trump administration is attempting to protect Musk by saying he is simply an advisor.
Department of Justice lawyer Joshua Gardner told Chutkan that he could not independently confirm the firings of thousands of federal employees last week, prompting her to note that his ignorance seemed willful: "The firing of thousands of federal employees is not a small thing,” she said. “You haven't been able to learn if that's true?"
Peter Charalambous of ABC News noted that lawyers from the Department of Justice are also unable to explain what, exactly, DOGE is. They won’t say it’s an “agency,” which, as U.S. District Judge John Bates wrote, would be “subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.” On Friday, Charalambous points out, when reporters asked senior advisor to the Treasury Department’s general counsel Christopher Healy, who runs DOGE, he answered: “I don’t know the answer to that.”
What is clear, though, is that the DOGE team is vacuuming up data from government agencies. It began its run shortly after Trump took office by accessing the Treasury Department payment system, prompting the resignation of career civil servant David Lebryk. Then on February 2 the DOGE people moved on to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) where they struggled with security officers trying to stop them from accessing classified information. By February 12 they were at the General Services Agency, which oversees the government’s real estate.
That pattern has continued. Over the weekend, Fatima Hussein of the Associated Press reported that DOGE was trying to get access to taxpayer data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), specifically the Integrated Data Retrieval System that enables examinations of tax returns, deep troves of information about hundreds of millions of American citizens and businesses. Access to individuals’ bank account numbers and private information has, in the past, been tightly guarded. Indeed, compromising access to that information is a felony.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the Committee on Finance, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the top Democrat on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, wrote to Douglas O’Donnell, acting commissioner of the IRS, demanding information about DOGE’s access to taxpayer information and noting that the request for access raises “serious concerns that Elon Musk and his associates are seeking to weaponize government databases containing private bank records and other confidential information to target American citizens and businesses as part of a political agenda.”
DOGE worked over the weekend to get access to Social Security Administration databases as well. Amanda Becker of The 19th notes that these records contain information about individuals’ income, addresses, children, retirement benefits, and even medical records. Lisa Rein, Holly Bailey, Jeff Stein, and Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post reported that acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Michelle King, who had been with the agency for decades before Trump elevated her to acting commissioner last month, resigned after a clash over access to the data.
Jason Koebler of 404 Media reported today that workers at the General Services Administration resigned in protest after Musk ally Thomas Shedd, who now runs the group of coders DOGE has embedded in that agency, requested access to “all components of the Notify[DOT]gov system.” That system is used to send mass text messages to the public. Information about it is highly sensitive and gives anyone with access “unilateral, private access to the personal data of members of the public,” according to Koebler. That includes not just names and phone numbers, but information about, for example, whether individuals are enrolled in public benefit programs that are based on financial status.
A White House spokesperson defended DOGE’s access to the IRS by saying that “waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” adding: “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.” But DOGE has been unable to document what it claims are cost-saving measures. On Monday it listed what it said were $16 billion in canceled contracts, but Aatish Bhatia, Josh Katz, Margot Sanger-Katz, and Ethan Singer of the New York Times corrected the record, noting that a contract DOGE valued at $8 billion was actually closer to $8 million. Further, they noted, claims of $55 billion in savings lacked documentation.
Musk’s recent claims that the Social Security Administration is sending out payments to tens of millions of dead people more than 100 years old—a claim echoed by President Trump—were wrong: the software system defaults missing birthdates to more than 150 years ago and the Social Security Administration decided not to spend more than $9 million on upgrading its system to include death information. Right-wing podcaster Trish Regan warned DOGE that “it’s critical to present the math CORRECTLY” and noted: “Looks like the team got out over its skis on this one.”
Aside from the many legal problems with the argument that the opaque DOGE can alter programs established by Congress, and the problems with documenting its actual work, it is undeniable that Musk’s team has had access to a treasure trove of information about Americans and American businesses and the ways in which they interact with the government. This information can feed the AI projects that Musk envisions putting at the center of American life. It also opens the way for Musk and his cronies to weaponize private information against business competitors as well as political enemies.
In addition, it can also feed a larger technological project for controlling politics.
The story of how Cambridge Analytica used information harvested from about 87 million Facebook users to target political ads in 2016 is well known, but the misuse of data was back in the news earlier this month when Corey G. Johnson and Byard Duncan of ProPublica reported that the gun industry also shared data with Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 election.
Johnson and Duncan reported that after a spate of gun violence, including the attempted assassination of then-representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and the mass shootings at Fort Hood in Texas, a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, had increased public pressure for commonsense gun safety legislation, the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, worked with gun makers and retailers to collect data on gun owners without their knowledge or consent. That data included names, ages, addresses, income, debts, religious affiliations, and even details like which charities people supported, shopping habits, and “whether they liked the work of the painter Thomas Kinkade and whether the underwear women had purchased was plus size or petite.”
Analysts ran that information through an algorithm that created a psychological profile of an individual to enable precise targeting of potential voters. Ads based on these profiles reached almost 378 million views on social media and sent more than 60 million visitors to the National Shooting Sports Foundation website. When Trump won in 2016, the NSSF took partial credit for the results. Not only was Trump in office, it reported, but also, “thanks in part to our efforts, there is a pro-gun majority in the U.S. House and Senate.”
The State Department has ordered the cancellation of all news subscriptions deemed “non-mission critical,” according to internal email guidance viewed by The Washington Post. The move aligns with the Trump administration’s crackdown on media companies that count the U.S. government as paying customers.
A Feb. 11 memo sent to embassies and consulates in Europe described the mandate as part of an effort to reduce spending. The email read, in part, “Considering this priority, posts are asked to immediately place Stop Work Orders on all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals.”
The mandate applies globally, to hundreds of U.S. embassies and consulates, according to a State Department official who spoke with The Post on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Embassy security teams rely on news coverage to prepare for diplomatic travel in conflict zones. Cancellation of subscriptions — including to local news outlets — could hinder their assessment of threats, the official said.
A Feb. 14 memo directed procurement teams at embassies and consulates to prioritize the termination of contracts with six news organizations in particular: the Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and Reuters.
State Department personnel were told that they could submit a request to maintain a news subscription but that it “must be done within 1 sentence.” The guidance laid out possible justifications — if the subscription affects the safety of U.S. personnel or facilities, or if it is required by treaty or law, or if it yields an affirmative answer to one of the following questions: “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
A State Department employee who received the memos, and shared them with The Post, expressed concern that terminating news subscriptions — particularly to local outlets — would deprive embassies and consulates of information necessary to complete their mission. “This will endanger American lives overseas because we are being cut off from news sources that are needed on a daily basis,” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment to the press.
On a teleconference the day after the initial memo was sent, employees were given a presentation about the mandate, with one slide saying it was enacted “in support of the administration.”
... ... ...
