Citizen Cartwright

A farewell to Musk — and what’s next for DOGE

“President Trump gave Elon Musk a formal send-off on Friday after one of the most tumultuous experiments in modern American governance, in which the world’s richest man had free rein to slash the federal work force,” as The New York Times puts it.

Musk said he'd turn his focus to his businesses now that his time as a “special government employee” had ended. Trump said Musk would continue to advise the administration on cutting costs.

“The DOGE team will only grow stronger over time,” Musk said. 

At the news conference with Trump, Musk was asked about a Times article on Musk’s drug use and “tumultuous” family life. Musk questioned the Times’ credibility and told the reporter to “move on.” Later, he said on social media that he didn’t do drugs, the Times reports.

Here is the CBS News interview with Musk on Tuesday that aired on Sunday, which has gotten a lot of attention.

In the interview, Musk says, “It's not like I agree with everything the administration does. … I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn't decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing. … I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion.”

As far as what Musk’s departure means for DOGE, fired DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia tells Wired that two of Musk’s closest lieutenants, Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander, appear also to be leaving. 

Davis, who's worked with Musk for years, including at X and as CEO of Musk's Boring Company, has been integral to the day-to-day operations of DOGE, Wired says.

Without Davis in charge, Lavingia says, it’s unclear who will lead DOGE — and in what direction. “Steven was the only person who was across everything,” Lavingia tells Wired.

Meanwhile, federal workers from at least six agencies tell Wired that DOGE-style work is escalating in their departments. DOGE appears to be actively recruiting, and over the last week, federal workers have been asked to urgently review and potentially cancel contracts across the government.

Celebrating the compassion and humility of Pope Francis

“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” said Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, in his homily during the pope’s funeral on Saturday.

“His gestures and exhortations in favor of refugees and displaced persons are countless. His insistence on working on behalf of the poor was constant,” Re said.

Francis “strongly supported” transforming the Vatican post office into a free medical clinic for the homeless and undocumented migrants, where it averages 100 visits a day, says The New York Times. Showers for the homeless were set up near the clinic, along with tents distributed by an office of papal charities.

In 2019, Francis blessed a four-story Vatican property behind St. Peter’s Basilica as he opened a shelter that provides housing for about 50 people, says the Times. The pope often ate with the homeless and invited them to annual concerts at the Vatican.

The pope “gave immense emphasis to aid to the poor, not just the poor in Rome, but the poor around the world,” says Carlo Santoro of the Sant’Egidio Community, a Rome-based charity that runs the building, citing trips by a cardinal to take supplies to Ukraine. The most recent trip was earlier this month.

The pope also was outspoken about prison conditions, and one of his final public outings, four days before his death, was to visit inmates at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.

I hope you have a second to click on this photo of the joy of the inmates as the pope greeted them.

The last people to bid farewell to the pope after the funeral mass at St. Peter’s and just before his burial on Saturday were a group of poor, homeless, migrant, transgender, and incarcerated people, each of them holding a white rose. The idea was that all the pope’s favorite people would be accompanying him in his final journey, says Vatican News. 

Good news on women’s rights, North America’s largest bird, food waste

Our friends at Fix the News missed a week of publishing because Angus’ wife had a baby. He says she was born “en caul,” which is explained in this article.

 

The article also says, “in ancient Greece, en caul births were revered as signs of divine favor, believed to herald the birth of future leaders or heroes destined for greatness.”   

 

I emailed Angus with our collective congratulations on the birth of his great little girl, along with ongoing thanks for Fix the News’ counterpoint to what’s happening here. 

 

And I mentioned to him that my father’s older brother was born with the caul. My grandmother believed in the folk tradition that it portended greatness and raised him differently from his siblings. He became by far the most successful member of the family. When he died, his colleagues at the World Meteorological Organization wrote about him, "Although his contributions were seldom outwardly visible, virtually every advance in international environmental collaboration in a half a century bore his fingerprints.”

 

I’m not sure where this issue of Fix the News becomes available only with a subscription. Here are items that may be behind the paywall:

 

— "The last five years have seen lasting global progress on women's rights,” says Fix the News. One hundred sixty-two countries now have laws prohibiting gender-based discrimination in employment, 140 nations have laws to eliminate violence against women and girls, and 60 countries have measures in place to address violence against women in public life — more than double the number in 2019, Fix the News says, citing a United Nations report.

 

— The California condor — which has a 10-foot wingspan and 60-year lifespan — has rebounded from two dozen in 1987 to 561, with 344 living in the wild, according to Knowable Magazine.

 

— The European Union has set its first-ever legally binding targets for member nations to cut food waste, with lawmakers agreeing on a 30 percent cut for retailers, restaurants, caterers and households by 2030, says Euronews.

Tools for stressful times: Inauguration

For what it may be worth, I’d like to share with you an experience I had Monday — and to make a request.

 

In order to write my blog, I needed to watch and read about the inauguration. 

 

The timing worked out that before it started, I was able to watch the Beloved Community Commemorative Service for Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

By the time the inauguration started, I’d been soaking for two hours in that bath of common humanity, belonging, caring and compassion.

 

I was grateful to be able to hold on to those feelings as I watched the inauguration (it helped that for most of the time, I also was working on a craft project that gave an outlet to energy generated by watching the inauguration).

 

We know that Donald Trump’s behaviors are the result of his childhood. This seven-minute clip from PBS’ Frontline summarizes it. He wasn’t encouraged to value common humanity and compassion. In fact, he's thrived by collaborating with Fox News in mining fear and anger among his supporters and the Republican Party.

 

But I do believe what former President Jimmy Carter said in his speech in 2002 accepting the Nobel Peace Prize: “The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.”

 

I’m going to be doing my best to hold on to compassion for everyone, no matter what their childhood turned them into, and to try to help those who are suffering because of their policies.

 

My request: When you come across examples of common humanity, compassion and kindness — and any other tools and techniques for responding to stressful times — please send them to me so I can share them here.

Martin Luther King’s daughter on sharing his holiday with Trump inauguration

On this federal holiday, I’d like to check in with you just briefly as we begin our day.

Martin Luther King’s daughter, Bernice King, head of the King Center in Atlanta, recently posted this on Instagram:

“I’ve read posts encouraging people to, on MLKDay, tune in to The King Center’s MLK, Jr. Beloved Community Commemorative Service instead of being attentive to the inauguration. 

“Do both. 

“l certainly understand the desire to tune out rhetoric, ideology, and policies with which we passionately disagree and which contradict the spirit of the Beloved Community. 

“However, we must pay attention to what President-Elect Trump speaks on that day, even if by transcript and video later. 

“We cannot develop a love-centered strategy for addressing language and legislation if we are not also strategic in our listening and leadership. This is not the time for ignorance. 

“Earlier on MLK Day, watch and listen to our Commemorative Service at 9am EST.

“We will lift my father’s life, legacy and teachings with focus on a mission that we believe is possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence365 (Kingian Nonviolence). 

“Contrary to common misconceptions about Kingian Nonviolence, it is not passive and it does not cower before injustice and abusive power. It employs Six Principles and Six Steps to plan for doing the following: 

1. Educate about and eradicate hate and injustice without soiling our souls by being hateful and unjust

 

2. Explore the root issues of the social ills and sustained inhumane ideologies that are causing our collective destruction 

3. Entwine our efforts to change or transform systems and institutions that discriminate against and violate people based on race, gender, religion, sexual identity, nationality, ethnicity, etc. 

4. Engage in creating the Beloved Community, about which my mother, Coretta Scott King, said: “The Beloved Community is a realistic vision of an achievable society, one in which problems and conflict exist, but are resolved peacefully and without bitterness. In the Beloved Community, caring and compassion drive political policies that support the worldwide elimination of poverty and hunger and all forms of bigotry and violence.’” 

Good news in 2024

Fix the News’ year-end roundup has 86 examples of good news in global health, conservation, living standards, energy, human rights, and science and tech.

 

No matter how busy you may be, I hope you’ll at least have time to scroll through this issue to experience the abundance of good will and good work that’s improving the lives of our human family in so many ways.

‘Just Mercy’ author on progress in criminal justice

Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, was interviewed by the PBS NewsHour on Wednesday on how his book “Just Mercy” has changed the criminal justice system and the public's understanding of it since the book was published 10 years ago.

 

“When I started doing this work 40 years ago, there were very few organizations, there were very few resources available to people who were in jails and prisons, people wrongly convicted, people condemned to die,” Stevenson says.

 

“But certainly in the last 10 years, that has shifted enormously. We have had eight states abolish the death penalty. The rates of incarceration have dropped. We're no longer seeing that steady increase that we saw during the last decades of the 20th century. We have seen some real significant reforms.

 

“Most of the young people that I wrote about in ‘Just Mercy’ who were condemned to die in prison when they were 13 and 14 have been released and they're now out. So I have been really encouraged by the success we have seen over the last decade, but more so by the number of people who are now engaged on these issues, on campuses, in policy spaces, in legislatures.”

 

“We have had a legal system for a long time that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent.

 

“And we haven't been concerned about changing that because we have just ignored this population. And I think by highlighting the people and the stories, that has shifted. And when you make the kind of mistakes that we have made — this year, we saw the 200th person exonerated after being sentenced to death.”

 

“For me, invoking mercy, invoking grace, invoking this idea that the criminal justice system isn't just about the people we are prosecuted, it's also about us, it's about what kind of society we live in, what kind of community we create when we tolerate injustice and inequality.”

 

You can watch the full interview or read the transcript here.

Biden apologizes to Native Americans for 150-year forced boarding school policy

On, Friday he became the first sitting U.S. president to apologize for the systemic abuse generations of Indigenous children endured in boarding schools at the hands of the federal government.

 

The United States removed Indigenous children as young as 4 from their homes and sent them away to the schools, where they were stripped of their cultures, histories and religions and beaten for speaking their languages. 

 

“We should be ashamed,” Biden said to Indigenous people, including tribal leaders, survivors and their families, gathered at the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix. Biden called the system “one of the most horrific chapters in American history,” while acknowledging the decades of abuse inflicted on children and widespread devastation left behind. 

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who introduced a bill last year to establish a truth and healing commission to address the harms caused by the boarding school system, called the apology “a historic step toward long-overdue accountability for the harms done to Native children and their communities.” 

 

The schools were intended both to assimilate Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children and to dispossess tribal nations of their land, according to an Interior Department investigation launched by Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to lead the agency. A member of the Pueblo of Laguna, Haaland commissioned the investigation in 2021.

 

The investigation documented the cases of more than 18,000 Indigenous children, of whom 973 were killed. The report and independent researchers say the overall number was much higher.

 

As part of the investigation, former students recounted harmful and often degrading treatment they endured at the hands of teachers and administrators while separated from their families. Descendants spoke about traumas that have passed down through generations and are seen in broken relationships, substance abuse and other social problems that plague reservations today. 

 

Bill Hall, 71, of Seattle, was 9 when he was taken from his Tlingit community in Alaska and forced to attend a boarding school, where he endured years of physical and sexual abuse that led to many more years of shame. He and others long have been advocating for resources to redress the harm.

 

Congress laid the framework for the nationwide boarding school system for Native Americans in 1819 under the fifth president, James Monroe. The last of the schools opened in 1969, the same year that a Senate report declared the boarding school system a national tragedy. It found that the schools were grossly underfinanced, academically deficient and had a “major emphasis” on discipline and punishment.

 

The forced assimilation policy was finally and officially rejected with the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, but the government never fully investigated the boarding school system until the Biden administration.

 

The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by a total of $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials say. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the schools received federal money as partners in the effort to “civilize” Indigenous students.

 

Here is a transcript of Biden’s apology, from the White House.

 

And here is more on the boarding schools, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

U.S. to Israel: Allow aid to Gaza or risk losing weapons funding

Israel has 30 days to increase the amount of humanitarian aid it’s allowing into Gaza, or it could risk losing access to U.S. weapons financing, The Associated Press and other media report.

 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent the warning to their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday.

 

A similar letter Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to the Palestinian territory, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday. 

 

But “it’s fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak,” Miller said at a briefing. Blinken and Austin “thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again, to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today.”

 

For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Israel must institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites, Austin and Blinken say in the letter.

 

U.S. officials say the letter was sent to remind Israel of both its obligations under international humanitarian law and of the Biden administration’s legal obligation to ensure that the delivery of American humanitarian assistance should not be hindered, diverted or held up by a recipient of U.S. military aid.

 

A National Security Memorandum issued by President Biden in February, which applies to all recipients of U.S. security assistance, requires the recipients to provide assurances that they won't use it to violate human rights or restrict humanitarian aid in areas where U.S. weapons are being used, The Times of Israel explains.

 

On Monday, the Israeli military body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza, COGAT, said 30 trucks carrying aid from the World Food Program had entered northern Gaza through the Erez crossing, BBC News says.

That ended a two-week period when the UN said no food aid was delivered to the north, and supplies essential for survival were running out for the 400,000 Palestinians there.

Alexei Navalny on why he went back to Russia

The Russian opposition leader’s book, “Patriot, A Memoir,” is to be published Oct. 22. Excerpts were published by The New Yorker on Friday.

 

Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 after medical treatment in Germany for a near-fatal poisoning, knowing that he’d be arrested.

 

He died in prison on Feb. 16.

 

Here is an excerpt of an excerpt of what he wrote on Jan. 16:

 

“Exactly three years ago, I came back to Russia after treatment following my poisoning. I was arrested at the airport. And for three years I’ve been in prison.

 

"And for three years I’ve been answering the same question.

 

"Prisoners ask it simply and directly.

"Prison officials inquire about it cautiously, with the recording devices turned off.

 

"'Why did you come back?’"

"I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.

"And, if you’re not prepared to do that, you have no convictions. You just think you do. But those are not convictions and principles; they’re only thoughts in your head.

 

"Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone who’s not currently in prison lacks convictions. Everyone pays their price. For many people, the price is high even without being imprisoned.

 

"I took part in elections and vied for leadership positions. The call for me is different. I travelled the length and breadth of the country, declaring everywhere from the stage, 'I promise that I won’t let you down, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t abandon you.' By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don’t lie to them.

"It turned out that, in Russia, to defend the right to have and not to hide your beliefs, you have to pay by sitting in a solitary cell. Of course, I don’t like being there. But I will not give up either my ideas or my homeland.”

 

As I’ve mentioned in this blog, when I was young, I volunteered for Amnesty International for about 10 years and sent many letters and telegrams asking governments to release people who were imprisoned for their political beliefs. 

 

I have the deepest respect for Alexei Navalny and don’t presume to question his decision.

 

But if someone were to tell me they were considering whether to follow his example, I would ask them to please keep themselves alive. It seems to me we need all the courageous truth tellers speaking out as long as possible, from exile if necessary.