Russia Asks Elon Musk for Help Crushing Dissent

It looks like Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government could put people’s lives at risk across the world.

USAID provided, among other things, funding for groups advocating for human rights and democratic reforms in states mired by autocratic regimes, as a form of U.S. soft power in places such as Russia. When Musk gutted the agency earlier this month, he baselessly claimed that USAID was “laundering” taxpayer funds into far-left sources.

Now Russia wants to know exactly where the money was going. Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian State Duma, asked the U.S. Tuesday for a list of individuals and opposition groups in Russia who received money from USAID.

“If they recognized the organization as an enemy, let them give us the lists,” Volodin said, according to The Times of London.

“Congress will send us the lists—we will give them to the FSB,” he continued, referring to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.

Volodin bragged that exiled opposition figures would be left “hungry and cold” without funding from USAID. “Those who received money from abroad, now let them publicly confess and repent on Red Square,” he said.

It’s unclear whether Congress, or the U.S. government, will comply with Volodin’s request, but Donald Trump has made it more than clear that he’s not opposed to giving in to every one of Russia’s demands.

The president bragged Wednesday about a friendly phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to start negotiations to end its invasion of Ukraine. This week, his secretary of defense ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, and said that it was “unrealistic” to expect Russia to forfeit all of its illegally claimed territory. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has since sort of walked back the NATO claim.)

If Musk or Trump genuinely believes that the U.S. was wrongly funding these groups, there is no reason why they wouldn’t readily supply this information to the Russian government, which is not only historically hostile to the U.S., but takes extreme measures to stamp out dissent within its borders.

But this U.S. administration is so far notably less hostile to autocrats, and practically uninterested in democracy.

Should Musk comply, there are many others who might be at risk abroad. As Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sinks its teeth into the far corners of the federal government, it’s clear that there are significant national security risks involved, particularly where its intelligence agencies are involved.

The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wednesday to run the Department of Health and Human Services, primarily along party lines. Fifty-two Republican senators voted in favor of Kennedy, a known conspiracy theorist, to front America’s health policy, while 45 Democrats, one Republican, and two independent senators remained opposed.

Senator Mitch McConnell—a childhood polio survivor—was the singular Republican holdout against Kennedy, marking the third time that the Kentucky lawmaker has voted against one of Donald Trump’s nominees.

“Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he is the best possible person to lead America’s largest health agency,” McConnell said in a statement. “As he takes office, I sincerely hope Mr. Kennedy will choose not to sow further doubt and division but to restore trust in our public health institutions.”

Per Trump, Kennedy will spend his time atop America’s public health agency researching the already thoroughly debunked conspiracy that ties vaccine usage to increased autism rates. But Kennedy’s appointment will also have him oversee a budget of nearly $2 trillion and a staff of 90,000 federal employees, as well as hand him the reins of critical health programs under the fold of HHS, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.  (Dr. Mehmet Oz, the reality TV host and similarly failed 2024 presidential candidate, has been tapped to lead CMS, though a date for his confirmation hearing has not yet been set.)

The 71-year-old’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has not been laid out in specifics, but Kennedy has vaguely promised to tackle the nation’s rising obesity rates, SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps), and has claimed he will work the Department of Agriculture to eradicate ultra-processed foods from the American market.

Kennedy’s history in public health is questionable at best. His stances, which include unscientific beliefs that AIDS is not caused by HIV and that a large number of vaccines should be stripped from the market, could have major impacts on the agency designed to protect America’s health, especially as bird flu outbreaks begin to dot the country.

And Kennedy’s conspiratorial policies have been tied to legitimate harm halfway across the world. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones.

That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that the U.S. declared eliminated in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

The virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist faced a slew of criticism throughout his confirmation hearings, including condemnation for making millions of dollars off his dangerous vaccine rhetoric, which included money stemming from speaking fees, dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, and leading Children’s Health Defense. His aggressive, anti-scientific approach to medicine made at least one senator emotional during his hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan argued, at the time, that Kennedy’s cashflow from “relitigating and churning settled science” was making it “impossible” for the medical community to move forward with legitimate research into autism and other disabilities.

The hearings also uncovered that Kennedy had paid close to $1 million to settle a sexual misconduct case brought by one of the employees at Children’s Health Defense, despite repeatedly denying what he had described as “frivolous, unfounded allegations” against him. But that wasn’t the only sexual assault claim against him: In 2024, Kennedy was accused of (and sort of apologized for) groping his children’s babysitter, Eliza Cooney, in the late 1990s.

The myriad details of Kennedy’s private life—as well as his virulent anti-vax prerogatives—gave pause to a number of lawmakers on the Hill. Kennedy has publicly admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, believed the 2004 presidential election was stolen from Democrat John Kerry, peddled conspiracies that the CIA killed his uncle, chain-sawed off the head of a dead whale (per his daughter Kick Kennedy), and late last month was described by his cousin Caroline Kennedy as a “predator” who is “addicted to attention and power.”

In a late January missive to lawmakers, Kennedy’s 2024 running mate Nicole Shanahan promised to “personally fund challengers” to primary senators who dared to vote against Kennedy.

“I will make it my personal mission that you lose your seats in the Senate if you vote against the future health of America’s children,” the Silicon Valley lawyer and investor said in a video statement at the time. “You’re either on the side of transparency and accountability, or you’re standing in the way.”

Just a reminder before Kennedy’s tenure attempts to rewrite history: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

This story has been updated.

The pseudo-president of the United States is calling for entire government agencies to be “deleted.”

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind.... It’s kind of like leaving a weed,” Elon Musk told the World Governments Summit in Dubai in a video speech Thursday. “If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed—it doesn’t stop weeds from ever going back, but it makes it harder.”

The tech mogul was asked about the changes he has been making with his Department of Government Efficiency, and he decided to crow on and on about his newest pet project of dismantling the whole federal government.

“So we have to really delete entire agencies, many of them,” Musk said. “And that’s not to say there won’t be an increase over time of bureaucracy in some new administration, but it will be from a much lower baseline. So certainly it’s a step in the right direction.”

So far, Musk has taken a sledgehammer to the U.S. Agency for International Development, setting off alarm bells, and is already axing programs and grants at the Department of Education. His vision aligns with that of President Trump, who promised to wipe out the department while campaigning for president.

Musk’s decisions are having drastic consequences all over the world, with even medical research under threat. Meanwhile, his own conflicts of interest continue, including a $400 million contract for the U.S. government to buy armored Tesla vehicles. It begs the question of how much the tech CEO is personally benefiting from his so-called efficiency crusade.

The State Department was set to buy $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Elon Musk over the next five years. But after a report from Drop Site News on Wednesday exposed the massive conflict of interest, the department quietly deleted the word “Tesla” and changed the $400 million line item to a generic “armored electric vehicles.”

“After @DropSiteNews revealed Tesla was forecast to be given a $400 million contract for “Armored Tesla,” the State Department altered its spreadsheet to obscure Tesla’s role,” Ryan Grim wrote on X. “Metadata shows the spreadsheet was revised several hours after our story published.”

“I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least,” Musk wrote on X.

The “armored Tesla” notation was made in December 2024, a month after Trump was elected.  

The State Department did not respond to Drop Site News when asked about the sudden edit in the federal contact.

The question then is: Was this just a very dubious mistake? Or a clear cover-up? 

Donald Trump claimed that his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday would be the beginning of the end for the war in Ukraine—but his former national security adviser doesn’t think so.

Speaking with CNN late Wednesday, John Bolton argued that Putin had made a puppet out of Trump, using basic flattery to warm him up before stripping the U.S. leader’s position apart. Trump had posted on Truth Social following the call that Putin had “used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’”

“I think we know exactly what is going to happen,” Bolton told the network. “President Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin before the negotiations have even begun.

“The positions that Defense Secretary [Pete] Hegseth announced in Brussels—which, I’m sure I’d be stunned if Trump didn’t convey them directly to Putin in their phone call—constitute terms of a settlement that could have been written in the Kremlin,” Bolton said, noting that the details of the arrangement were practically Russian propaganda.

“It’s a complete reversal of the U.S. and NATO position on a number of issues; for example, up until today the official American position was that Ukraine should be returned to full sovereignty and territorial integrity. That’s gone,” he said.

“The question of NATO membership, as far back as 2008, had been that ultimately Ukraine would become a member. It doesn’t look like that’s around anymore, either,” Bolton continued.

“This is a palpable harm to American national security, because what Hegseth and Trump did today was not only blow up the NATO position on Ukraine, they blew up a thing called the Belovezha Accords,” Bolton said, referring to the 1991 agreement between three Soviet states that effectively dissolved the Soviet Union by declaring their independence from Moscow, creating the countries of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

“So it means that not only is unprovoked aggression by Russia against Ukraine now OK, every other former Republic in the Soviet Union is vulnerable to the same thing without any indication that the U.S. will do anything about it.”

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Munich on Friday to discuss the state of the war. But Bolton believes that Putin is opting to negotiate through Trump because he believes “he’ll get more out of it.”

“And he’s absolutely right,” Bolton said.

The damage to America’s reputation wouldn’t stop in Eastern Europe, according to Bolton, who noted that Beijing would likely be keeping a close eye on how the U.S. reacts to “unprovoked aggression” with regard to Taiwan. Bolton also described new National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who was confirmed on Wednesday, as “one of [Trump’s] worst nominations,” specifying that her controversial background would make it less likely for America’s allies to be willing to share intelligence with the United States.

Donald Trump bragged Wednesday about how easily he folded to his beloved Russian President Vladimir Putin, after handing the fellow autocrat everything he’d been hoping for.

“I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects.”

The president said that they’d spoken about how many Russians and Americans had been killed during World War II, and the two leaders agreed that they wanted to “stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.”

“President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE,’” Trump gushed.

“We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,” Trump added. “We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.”

Trump said that he’d instructed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff to lead the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Before entering office, Trump had previously claimed that he would end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of being elected president. When pressed in September on his actual plan, Trump said, “I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get ’em together.”

Already, it’s clear that Trump simply intends to give in to Putin’s demands. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told U.S. allies that liberating all of Russia’s occupied Ukrainian territory was “an unrealistic objective.” He also backed down on the American push to have Ukraine join NATO, in compliance with a long-standing complaint from Putin.

Also on Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed as the director of national intelligence. Gabbard previously faced intense scrutiny for being a Russian stooge, with her own former staffers warning that she often read and shared articles from Russian state media. She also criticized American hostility toward Putin and pushed propaganda about Ukraine.

After Gabbard’s nomination was announced in November, the response in Moscow was “gleeful,” according to The New York Times. Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, fawned over Gabbard, reporting that the CIA and FBI were “trembling” in response to her nomination. The article stated that Ukrainians considered Gabbard to be “an agent of the Russian state.”

“Behind closed doors, people think she might be compromised. Like it’s not hyperbole,” one Republican Senate aide told The Hill in December. “There are members of our conference who think she’s a [Russian] asset.”

Gabbard was able to overcome any meaningful skepticism on the part of Republicans, as she was confirmed by every single Republican senator, save one: Senator Mitch McConnell. Now, Moscow can rejoice at the installation of an authoritarian sympathizer in Gabbard, and keep its stolen territory from Ukraine, while shutting the country out of a military alliance.

Even an apparent Trump win—the release of Marc Fogel, an American detained in Russia—was the result of trading a crypto-criminal back to Moscow. Trump previously railed against prisoner exchanges, claiming that they were extortion.

Donald Trump complained about a “new theory” about magnets during a rant about Boeing, while answering questions that were not about magnets or Boeing at all.

After swearing in Tulsi Gabbard Wednesday as his new director of national intelligence, the president embarked on a winding hour-long question-and-answer session with reporters, where he alleged that “billions and billions of dollars” had been “thrown away illegally.”

Trump threw the blame around widely, alleging massive fraud at the Department of Education, until the weave found its way to Boeing, the airplane manufacturer that produces the Boeing 747 the president flies on. Trump spoke at length and to little effect about how he was “not happy about that whole thing.”

“We signed a very strong contract, I signed a guaranteed maximum contract which they haven’t seen in a long time. And they’re saying they’re getting hurt by it,” Trump ranted, saying that Boeing wanted “more money.”

“But they have to produce the product and we expect them to produce the product. They have to produce the product, they agreed to build planes at a certain price,” Trump rambled. “They’re not used to that. They’re used to having time and material contracts where whatever it costs time and material. No dates. No anything. And it ends up costing five times more.”

Trump’s comments about cheaping out on Boeing are particularly disturbing considering recent allegations that the company might have cut corners during the production of its 737 Max 9 planes. In any case, it seems that reflecting about things that end up being more expensive than you might expect sent Trump’s brain careening into one of his old rants about magnets on boats.

“Take a look at the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier, the Ford. It was supposed to cost $3 billion. It ends up costing like $18 billion,” Trump said. “And they make, of course, all electric catapults which don’t work.”

The USS Gerald R. Ford actually cost roughly $13 billion to make, and it’s certainly not clear that its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System doesn’t work. But the president wasn’t done.

“And they have all magnetic elevators to lift up 25 planes at a time, 20 planes at a time. And instead of using hydraulic, like on tractors that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything, they use magnets,” Trump said.

“It’s a new theory. Magnets are going to lift the planes up, and it doesn’t work. And they had billions and billions of dollars of cost overruns,” he said.

While the production of the ship was delayed and experienced cost overruns, it’s not entirely clear why Trump has decided that the magnets on these ships don’t work. But, he has talked incoherently about this technology before. In January 2024, Trump baselessly claimed that magnets stop working when placed in water, and therefore were a stupid thing to put on a boat. When weaving his way through his grievances, the president’s mind has a tendency to repeat the hits, even the more inane ones.

“You look at the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that this country is going through. And we have to straighten it out,” Trump concluded.

European leaders are reeling after Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding “peace” talks. 

Trump and Putin announced Wednesday that they’d begin talking to deliver an end to the war on Ukraine. The news came as Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, warned NATO on the same day that it could no longer rely on U.S. protection from Russia attacks—and that liberating all of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine is “unrealistic.” 

Now the news of Trump and Putin putting their heads together to solve this crisis has sent a shudder through Europe, as its leaders fear the “solution” may be exactly what Trump has suggested in the past: Russia will be allowed to continue its invasion unfettered, with no care for the impacts on the rest of the continent.  

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius noted that it was “regrettable” that Hegseth had already professed that there was no way to end the Russian invasion before negotiations even began. 

“In my view, it would have been better to discuss a possible NATO membership for Ukraine or the country’s possible territorial losses only at the negotiating table and not to take it off the table beforehand,” Pistorius said, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers today. 

“There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine. And Ukraine’s voice must be at the heart of any talks,” U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey said to reporters at NATO headquarters. 

Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said it would be a “deadly trap” to accept any solution from Trump and Putin. 

“Whether we decide to fall under the illusion that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are going to find a solution for all of us, and that would be a deadly trap, or we will, as Europe, embrace our own economic, financial and military capacity,” he told CNN’s Natasha Bertrand.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy also spoke to Trump on Wednesday and called the discussion “meaningful.” 

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the U.S., we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. As President Trump said, let’s get it done. We agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings.”

Donald Trump’s plan to send undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay has left officials in the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense scrambling and confused trying to prepare the military base to house more immigrants.

CNN reports that DHS and DOD officials are confused about who is in charge and what will happen when migrants arrive at the base. Multiple federal agencies are involved, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol. They all are accustomed to different responsibilities.

“Nobody really knows what’s going on, between DOD, ICE, and CBP. We’ve got everybody pointing fingers, saying, ‘They’re in charge,’ ‘They’re paying for this,’ ‘They’re providing security.’ No one actually knows,” one source told the news outlet.

The Trump administration began transporting migrants to Guantánamo last week using U.S. military aircraft, prompting protests from immigration rights groups. There have been seven military flights transferring 98 migrants to the facility, as of Wednesday, according to data shared with CNN. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued over the immigrants being denied access to legal representation.

The criteria for who gets sent to the facility aren’t clear. So far, only men have been taken there, who are described as having “criminality,” but CBS News reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is mostly sending nonviolent, low-risk immigrants to the detention facility. One Venezuelan migrant was reportedly sent to Guantánamo because he had an “Air Jordan” tattoo.

It’s another example of Trump’s historic cruelty toward undocumented immigrants and anyone he deems a criminal. It’s red meat for the MAGA right, with their prejudices and long-standing opposition to immigration of any kind. So far, Democrats have not pushed back in large numbers against Trump’s immigration policies, even bolstering them in the case of the Laken Riley Act. For the foreseeable future, humanitarian concerns and comprehensive immigration reform are less than an afterthought.

Some of the country’s foremost national security experts are just as alarmed by Trump’s potential disregard for the judiciary branch as we are. 

During The New Republic’s “America in Crisis” event on Wednesday evening, a panel of experts raised their biggest concern about the direction in which the Trump administration is headed: No one knows what happens next. 

“From the prosecutorial perspective, what’s the worst case scenario? What could [the Trump administration] do if they really decided to go for it, as it were?” New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent asked. “What should people do, what recourse do they have?”

“Particularly one thing that concerns me … the next step when the Trump administration refuses to abide by a federal court order,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney famous for defending whistleblowers. “I have strength right now as a lawyer, and we are winning in the legal battles, but if that happens, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do.”

Olivia Troye, a former Homeland Security official in the Trump administration, echoed those sentiments. 

“I would say that that’s my biggest fear, is what Mark Zaid just said.… I’m under no illusions that that is something that could happen when they show plain disregard for that.” Troye urged citizens to speak up in the face of this looming threat. “Make your voices heard. Write letters to the editor, follow your investigative journalist.… Call your members of Congress. Our voices as people still matter. They make us feel like they don’t, but they do matter.”

The fact that these specialists shared the same fear of an impending constitutional crisis was sobering. Those fears were compounded on Monday, when a Rhode Island judge found that the Trump administration had violated a court order to unfreeze some federal funds. The courts have been long viewed as the final line of defense against Trump’s most authoritarian tendencies. But even if Democrats and NGOs sue Trump and win, who’s to say that he’ll undo the policies he already put in place? 

Vice President JD Vance, a Yale law school graduate, offered his own reinterpretation of the Constitution just days before Monday’s court ruling. “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote on X. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.  Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

You can watch a full recording of The New Republic’s event, “America in Crisis: Navigating the Dark Road Ahead.” This event was produced in partnership with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Rachel Carson Council.