WOW

In spite of the criticisms levied at the protests being staged outside of Tesla dealerships nationwide, including Easton in Columbus, the growing movement given rise by the drastic cuts to federal government initiated by Elon Musk are hitting the billionaire where it counts.

In January, I returned to Damascus after 14 years in exile. The last time I had stood in the city’s streets, towering statues of Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad loomed over the squares. Following the collapse of Bashar Al-Asad’s rule in December of 2024, those statues now lay in fragments—some torn down, others left to decay.

In January, I returned to Damascus after 14 years in exile. The last time I had stood in the city’s streets, towering statues of Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad loomed over the squares. Following the collapse of Bashar Al-Asad’s rule in December of 2024, those statues now lay in fragments—some torn down, others left to decay.

In January, I returned to Damascus after 14 years in exile. The last time I had stood in the city’s streets, towering statues of Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad loomed over the squares. Following the collapse of Bashar Al-Asad’s rule in December of 2024, those statues now lay in fragments—some torn down, others left to decay.

In January, I returned to Damascus after 14 years in exile. The last time I had stood in the city’s streets, towering statues of Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad loomed over the squares. Following the collapse of Bashar Al-Asad’s rule in December of 2024, those statues now lay in fragments—some torn down, others left to decay.

It’s August in Tokyo—hot and muggy, as usual. So I’ve scheduled my daily walk to be early and close to where I’m staying with a friend in the western part of the city. I walk to Tama-Reien, Tokyo’s largest municipal cemetery. Headstone and funerary shops line the street near the entrance. Once inside, I sense the order of a well-run place: a map laying out the grid, toilets and water taps well-marked, and row upon row of family headstones.

Yet, just as mosquitoes break the stillness of the air, a degree of neglect punctuates the place. While many plots are well-tended—gravestones washed, greenery neatly clipped, remnants of flowers and incense—others are overgrown, a jumble of weeds, with headstones broken or missing altogether. These are “abandoned graves” (akihaka) that no one cares for due to the family dying out or moving away.

Walking through Tama Reien, I also discover another category of dead: those who enter the ground abandoned already. When someone dies kinless and unclaimed, the municipality assumes responsibility and buries them in the zone for the “disconnected dead” (muenbo). A single marker designates the collective, anonymous remains gathered here. Devoid of the tenderness of flowers and care, the plot feels lonely. While saddened, I’m nonetheless drawn to it.

Later I ask my friend Yoshiko Kuga about it. She tells me that more and more Japanese are worried about meeting this undesirable fate.

Sociality, or the relations humans have with other humans, has long interested me. As an anthropologist, I’ve researched social hierarchies, gender, and capitalism in urban Japan for several decades. Yoshiko, who I became fast friends with during an earlier fieldwork project, is the one who first pointed me in the direction of my recent research on how the practices surrounding care for the dead, once dependent on family relations, have radically changed due to demographic and socioeconomic shifts in the population.

• Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman has agreed to surrender his license to practice law for three years due to several infractions during his investigation of the 2020 election, but his career — built on serving Republican party interests — began to spiral downward after his attendance at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to new reporting from Wisconsin Watch.
• Gableman’s participation as a sitting Supreme Court justice at the 2016 Republican Convention in Cleveland may have violated the state judicial code, which bans partisan political activity. He caused disturbances in two hospitality suites and was escorted out of the convention hall by Wisconsin Republicans. Less than a year later, he decided, at age 50, not to seek re-election to a second 10-year term.
• Gableman was hired in 2020 by President Donald Trump’s first administration to work in the federal Office of Personnel Management. He was involved in implementing a Trump executive order to curb diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for federal employees. When Trump lost his 2020 bid for reelection, Gableman returned to the public spotlight by supporting claims the election had been stolen.
• After Trump accused Wisconsin Republican leaders of not investigating election fraud and of “working hard to cover up election corruption,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced at the state Republican Party convention that he had retained Gableman, a Trump-aligned former Supreme Court justice, to investigate the 2020 election.
• Gableman was paid $117,000 for the investigation — more than twice the amount budgeted — and the investigation cost taxpayers a total of $2.8 million — four times the budgeted amount, including $432,000 for a recently settled public records lawsuit. It found no evidence to overturn the election. “He paid no attention to detail, he delegated almost all the work to somebody else and very poor follow-through,” Vos told Wisconsin Watch. “It seemed like Mike Gableman was more concerned about the money he was earning as opposed to finding the truth.”

The Trump Administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has wrought havoc on the federal government, diminishing its ability to perform essential work—like administering Social Security benefits for retirees, weather forecasting to predict tornadoes, and environmental pollution cleanup—while creating new inefficiencies and increased public costs. Now, many Republican governors and state lawmakers are demonstrating their loyalty to the Trump administration by setting up state-level versions of DOGE.

Despite the novel branding, these initiatives are part of the longstanding right-wing mission to capture and consolidate government in service of the wealthy. In fact, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for deconstructing the federal government—which the Trump administration has followed almost to a T—is rooted in decades of state-level efforts to weaken democracy, suppress workers’ rights, and deepen inequality.

At least 26 states across the country have launched DOGE-style efforts purportedly related to “government efficiency” through legislation, executive action, or the creation of new legislative committees. While these initiatives vary, they all use disingenuous calls to “root out inefficiency” and “cut wasteful spending” as a smokescreen for the same right-wing agenda many conservative state lawmakers and their allies have pursued for decades: consolidating power in the hands of a minimally accountable executive, attacking public-sector workers, and cutting public services in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.

The Trump White House is repurposing the potent framing of “terrorism” to go after a new set of enemies – drug cartels, migrants and domestic political opponents. Its words and deeds pose serious risks to the U.S. constitutional order, civil liberties and maybe peace as well.

Offices that helped survivors of violence and discrimination from inside the immigration system have been gutted by the Trump administration.

Chief Executive’s April survey of U.S. CEO confidence finds their ratings of current business conditions at the lowest level since the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered business in the spring of 2020. Their outlook for the year to come remains stalled at a multi-year low as well.