Dear Commons Community,

“No Kings” protests are being organized to coincide with a military parade in Washington, D.C., celebrating  Trump’s 79th birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. The protests are framed as a response to what organizers view as authoritarian governance and a rejection of the spectacle of the parade, which they believe represents a display of power rather than true democratic values. As described at the No Kings website.

Date: June 14, 2025

Purpose

To protest against President Trump’s policies and the militarization of celebrations, emphasizing that the country does not belong to a king and advocating for civil rights and community empowerment.

Locations

Approximately 1,800 protests are planned across the country, with significant events in various cities. Notably, there will be no protests in Washington, D.C., where the parade will occur. Instead, organizers encourage participation in marches in nearby areas like Philadelphia.

Organizers and Participation

The protests are coordinated by a coalition of progressive groups, including Indivisible, the American Federation of Teachers, and Public Citizen. They aim to mobilize communities to stand against what they perceive as corrupt and authoritarian practices by the Trump administration.

Events and Activities

In addition to the protests, there are training sessions and town halls planned to prepare participants for safe and effective mobilization. These sessions will cover crowd management, safety protocols, and strategies for nonviolent action.

Conclusion

The “No Kings” protests represent a significant grassroots movement aimed at fostering community solidarity and challenging the current political climate. Participants are encouraged to join local events and contribute to the collective message of resistance against perceived authoritarianism in American politics. For more information and to find specific events, you can visit the official “No Kings” website. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Israel struck Iran’s nuclear, missile and military complex early yesterday, in an unprecedented attack that reportedly killed three of Iran’s most powerful figures and plunges the wider Middle East into dangerous new territory.

The strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and senior military leaders could be a turning point in the long-running conflict, with Israel braced for a major Iranian retaliation – and the threat of a wider regional war breaking out now a real risk.

Later yesterday morning, that retaliation appeared to be underway after Israel’s military said Iran had launched more than 100 drones toward Israel, and that Israel had begun “intercepting” them outside of its borders.  As reported by CNN.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Israel will face “severe punishment” for the attacks, and confirmed that a number of Iranian commanders and scientists had been killed. Iran’s Armed Forces spokesperson said both the United States and Israel would “pay dearly.”

The US was not involved in the strikes, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, noting that Israel had “advised” the US that it believed the “action was necessary for its self-defense.”

Washington has long sought to limit Tehran’s nuclear capacity, with the most recent negotiations in Rome last month ending with no agreement. A sixth round of US-Iran talks had been scheduled for Sunday in Oman – it’s not clear if it will go ahead.

In a televised address to the nation early Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military operation had “struck at the head of Iran’s nuclear weaponization program” and targets included Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz, Iranian nuclear scientists, and Iran’s ballistic missiles program.

“Moments ago, Israel launched operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival,” Netanyahu said.

“This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”

Repeated explosions could be heard in the capital, Tehran, terrifying its residents, and multiple videos geolocated by CNN showed flames and smoke billowing from buildings across the city. Iran’s airspace has also been closed, its civil aviation authority said.

An Israeli military statement later Friday said Israeli fighter jets had also completed a “large-scale strike” on aerial defense arrays in western Iran. “As part of the strikes, dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers were destroyed,” it said.

One of Iran’s most powerful men, Gen. Hossein Salami — the commander-in-chief of the country’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — was among those killed in the attacks, the IRGC confirmed. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces and the country’s highest-ranking military officer, was also killed, according to Iran’s state TV channel IRINN.

Iran’s former national security chief Ali Shamkhani, a key adviser to Khamenei who served as secretary of the National Security Council for almost a decade, was killed too, IRINN reported. Also among the dead were six of Iran’s nuclear scientists, state affiliated Tasnim news agency said.

Khamenei appointed new commanders on Friday to head key military entities, including Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, the new head of the IRGC.

Friday’s strikes suggest Netanyahu saw a window of opportunity to meet Israel’s longstanding objective of obliterating Iran’s nuclear program. Iran is in its weakest military position in decades following crippling economic sanctions, previous Israeli strikes on its air defenses and decimation of its most powerful regional proxies, including Hezbollah.

US officials had previously told CNN that Israeli strikes on Iran would be a brazen break with Trump’s approach on the Middle East.

Several countries voiced alarm and condemnation over Israel’s strikes, with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry saying the attack undermines Iran’s “sovereignty and security and constitute a clear violation of international laws and norms,” and China’s embassy in Iran calling the situation “severe and complex.”

Residents in Iran faced a long and terrifying night. “People reported the ground shaking, hearing explosions, and jets flying overhead,” Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, told CNN.

Azzam, a 35-year-old Iranian citizen who lives close to Saadat Abad in northern Tehran, an area targeted by Israel, told CNN: “I woke up with the whole house shaking. I was very scared, not knowing what had happened.”

Sam, 29, told CNN that he fears further attacks. “I am concerned about the escalation of this, and what this means for us in Tehran.” Like Azzam, he requested anonymity due to concerns for his safety.

Israel declared a state of special emergency, closing its airspace, shutting schools and banning social gatherings. “Tens of thousands” of Israeli soldiers were being called up in preparation for an Iranian retaliation, Israel’s military chief of staff said.

Fears of wider war

Analysts and experts have long warned that Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear capabilities could trigger a massive Iranian retaliation and threaten to tip the region into a full-scale war.

And if Israel and Iran become entangled in wider conflict, it could risk drawing the US into the fray. The US is Israel’s closest ally and biggest weapons supplier, and there are currently about 40,000 US troops across the Middle East, including nearly 4,000 in Iraq and Syria.

Indications of that risk emerged earlier this week as the US ordered the departure of non-essential personnel from locations around the Middle East as intelligence warnings increased that an Israeli strike on Iran was imminent.

Netanyahu has repeatedly pushed for a military option to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and recent US intelligence reports said that Israel was seeking to capitalize on the destruction inflicted after it bombed Iran’s missile production facilities and air defenses in October.

Experts say an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would also likely spell the end of Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the US.

The facility at the heart of Iran’s nuclear ambitions was engulfed in flames on Friday, according to social media images geolocated by CNN and Iranian state television.

The nuclear complex in Natanz, a city about 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of Tehran, is considered Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility. Analysts say the site is used to develop and assemble centrifuges for uranium enrichment, a key technology that turns uranium into nuclear fuel.

The Iranian atomic energy agency confirmed that the Natanz facility had been damaged. The complex has overground and underground facilities and it’s unclear what was impacted but no casualties were reported, the agency said.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said there were no elevated radiation levels at Natanz. Other nuclear facilities in Iran, Isfahan and Fordow “have not been impacted,” Grossi added.

Friday’s strikes came shortly after Tehran said that it would ramp up its nuclear activities due to the International Atomic Energy Agency passing a resolution saying that the country was not in compliance with its non-proliferation commitments, senior US officials told CNN.

Iran oversees a so-called Axis of Resistance across the region that includes loyal proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as various militia groups in Iraq and Syria. Since Israel’s war in Gaza began in 2023, attacks by those proxy groups have escalated in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Last year Israel and Iran’s years-long cold war erupted into the open with a series of missile strikes from both sides. At the time, the US warned Israel not to strike Iran’s energy or nuclear infrastructure.

Friday’s operation goes much further than previously seen. CNN’s security analyst Beth Sanner said that removing Salami is akin to taking out the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff: “You can imagine what Americans would do,” she said.

Iran is now “under existential threat” and as such, the Israelis will be expecting “a massive, much bigger retaliation than what they saw last time,” Sanner added.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Nearly all the members of a board overseeing the prestigious Fulbright scholarships resigned yesterday in protest of what they call the Trump administration’s meddling with the selection of award recipients for the international exchange program.

A statement published online by board members said the administration usurped the board’s authority by denying awards to “a substantial number of people” who already had been chosen to study and teach in the U.S. and abroad. Another 1,200 foreign award recipients who were already approved to come to the U.S. are undergoing an unauthorized review process that could lead to their rejection, the board members said.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“To continue to serve after the Administration has consistently ignored the Board’s request that they follow the law would risk legitimizing actions we believe are unlawful and damage the integrity of this storied program and America’s credibility abroad,” the statement reads.

Congress established the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago to promote international exchange and American diplomacy. The highly selective program awards about 9,000 scholarships annually in the U.S. and in more than 160 other countries to students, scholars, and professionals in a range of fields.

All but one of the 12 board members resigned, according to Carmen Estrada-Schaye, who is the only remaining board member.

“I was appointed by the president of the United States and I intend to fill out my term,” Estrada-Schaye said.

Fulbright scholars include recent U.S. college graduates who pursue further study or teach English overseas, American professors who spend a year at a university in another country and international scholars who come to the U.S. to study or work at universities here. Alumni of the program have gone on to serve as heads of state or government and have received Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. Notable alumni include Leslie Voltaire, president of Haiti’s transitional presidential council; Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of Bangladesh; Luc Frieden, prime minister of Luxembourg; and King Felipe VI of Spain.

Award recipients are selected in a yearlong process by nonpartisan staff at the State Department and other countries’ embassies. The board has had final approval. The recipients who had their awards canceled are in fields including biology, engineering, agriculture, music, medical sciences, and history, the board members said.

All the board members who resigned were selected under former President Joe Biden. The State Department, which runs the scholarship program, said they were partisan political appointees.

Tony

The Beach Boys in their classic striped shirts.  Brian Wilson is bottom right.

Dear Commons Community,

Brian Wilson, the heart and soul of the 60s rock group, The Beach Boys, died yesterday at the age of 82.

The family of Wilson, who was a founding member of The Beach Boys, confirmed his death on Instagram, writing: “We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.”

Soon after the news broke, celebrities took to social media to share their condolences.

Elton John posted on Instagram calling Wilson “the biggest influence on my songwriting ever.”

“Brian Wilson was always so kind to me from the day I met him,” John said. “He sang ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’ at a tribute concert in 2003, and it was an extraordinary moment for me. I played on his solo records, he sang on my album, The Union, and even performed for my AIDS Foundation.”

I grew to love him as a person,” John continued. “He was a musical genius and revolutionary. He changed the goalposts when it came to writing songs and shaped music forever. A true giant.”

Bob Dylan posted his condolences on X.

“Heard the sad news about Brian today and thought about all the years I’ve been listening to him and admiring his genius,” Dylan wrote. “Rest in peace dear Brian.”

The Beach Boys themselves shared a tribute on Instagram, writing in part, “Brian Wilson wasn’t just the heart of The Beach Boys — he was the soul of our sound. The melodies he dreamed up and the emotions he poured into every note changed the course of music forever. His unparalleled talent and unique spirit created the soundtrack of so many lives around the globe, including our own. Together, we gave the world the American dream of optimism, joy, and a sense of freedom — music that made people feel good, made them believe in summer and endless possibilities.”

In  the 1960s, there were so many great rock groups including the Rolling Stones, the Temptations, the Four Tops, etc. but The Beach Boys had a sound that was all theirs. Brian Wilson made it so!

May he rest in peace!

Tony

TIME photo illustration; Source Images (Donkey: Richard Bailey—Corbis/Getty Images; Paper: MirageC/Moment/Getty.

Dear Commons Community,

Time Magazine has a featured article describing the Democrat Party  in disarray as a result of the shellacking it took in the 2024 elections. The Time cover above says it all.  Here is an excerpt.

“Like a lot of Democrats these days, Chris Murphy has been doing some soul searching. For years, the Connecticut Senator, who took office shortly after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, was one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates for tighter gun laws. Gun safety was so important, he argued, that supporting an assault-weapons ban should be mandatory for Democratic leaders. 

Recently, Murphy has come to believe he was wrong. Not about tougher gun laws, but about trying to force all Democrats to adopt his position. “I bear some responsibility for where we are today,” he told me in a phone interview in April. “I spent a long time trying to make the issue of guns a litmus test for the Democratic Party. I think that all of the interest groups that ended up trying to apply a litmus test for their issue ended up making our coalition a lot smaller.”

Murphy’s shift in thinking is part of the reckoning that has gripped the party since President Donald Trump’s victory in November. Democrats could dismiss Trump’s first win as a fluke. His second, they know, was the product of catastrophic failure—a nationwide rejection of Democratic policies, Democratic messaging, and the Democrats themselves. The party got skunked in every battleground state and lost the popular vote for the first time in 20 years. They lost the House and the Senate. Their support sagged with almost every demographic cohort except Black women and college-educated voters. Only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about the future of the party, according to a May 14 AP poll, down from nearly 6 in 10 last July. Democrats have no mojo, no power, and no unifying leader to look to for a fresh start.

Everyone knows how bad things are. “As weak as I’ve ever seen it,” says Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who represents a district Trump won. Trump’s second term is “worse than everyone imagined,” says Nevada Senator Jacky Rosen. The Democratic National Committee has offered few answers as it prepares to release a “postelection review” sometime this summer. “I don’t like to call it an ‘autopsy’ because our party’s not dead—we’re still alive and kicking,” explains Ken Martin, the new party chair. “Maybe barely, but we are.”

You already know most of the reasons for the 2024 fiasco. Joe Biden was too old to be President, and just about everybody but Joe Biden knew it. His sheer oldness undermined all efforts to sell his policies effectively. Democrats lost touch with the working class, with men, with voters of color, with the young. Voters saw Democrats as henpecked by college-campus progressives, overly focused on “woke” issues like diversity and trans rights. They tried to convince people that the economy was good when it didn’t feel good; they tried to convince people that inflation and illegal immigration were imaginary problems. In an era when voters around the globe were in an anti-incumbent mood, Democrats were stuck defending the status quo. The pandemic election of 2020 and the post-Dobbs midterms in 2022 lulled top party officials into a dangerous complacency. They thought Americans hated Trump enough to accept an unsatisfying alternative. They thought wrong.”

They thought wrong “big time”!

Tony

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs

Dear Commons Community,

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed a proposal that would have banned teaching antisemitism at the state’s public K-12 schools, universities and colleges and exposed educators who violate the new rules to discipline and lawsuits.

The proposal would have prohibited teachers and administrators from teaching or promoting antisemitism or antisemitic actions that create a hostile environment, calling for the genocide of any group or requiring students to advocate for an antisemitic point of view. It also would have barred public schools from using public money to support the teaching of antisemitism.

Educators would have personally been responsible for covering the costs of damages in lawsuits for violating the rules.

Hobbs, a Democrat, said yesterday that the bill was not about antisemitism but rather about attacking teachers.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“It puts an unacceptable level of personal liability in place for our public school, community college, and university educators and staff, opening them up to threats of personally costly lawsuits,” she said in a statement. “Additionally, it sets a dangerous precedent that unfairly targets public school teachers while shielding private school staff.”

Hobbs described antisemitism as a very troubling issue in the U.S., but said students and parents can go through the state’s Board of Education to report antisemitism.

The measure cleared the Legislature last week on a 33-20 vote by the House, including a few Democrats who crossed party lines to support it. It’s one of a few proposals to combat antisemitism across the country.

Democrats tried but failed to remove the lawsuit provision and swap out references to antisemitism within the bill with “unlawful discrimination” to reflect other discrimination.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Michael Way, of Queen Creek, called the veto “disgraceful,” saying on the social media platform X that the legislation was meant to keep “egregious and blatant antisemitic content” out of the classroom.

“To suggest that it threatened the speech of most Arizona teachers is disingenuous at best,” he added.

Opponents said the bill aimed to silence people who want to speak out on the oppression of Palestinians and opened up educators to personal legal liability in lawsuits students could file.

Students over the age of 18 and the parents of younger pupils would have been able to file lawsuits over violations that create a hostile education environment, leaving teachers responsible for paying any damages that may be awarded, denying them immunity and prohibiting the state from paying any judgments arising from any such lawsuits.

Last week, Lori Shepherd, executive director of Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center, wrote in a letter to Hobbs that if the bill were approved it would threaten teachers’ ability to provide students with a full account of the holocaust.

Under the bill, “those discussions could be deemed ‘antisemitic’ depending on how a single phrase is interpreted, regardless of intent or context,” she said.

The bill would have created a process for punishing those who break the rules. At K-12 schools, a first-offense violation would lead to a reprimand, a second offense to a suspension of a teacher or principal’s certificate and a third offense to a revocation of the certificate.

At colleges and universities, violators would have faced a reprimand on first offense, a suspension without pay for a second offense and termination for a third offense. The proposal also would have required colleges and universities to consider violations by employees to be a negative factor when making employment or tenure decisions.

Under the proposal, universities and colleges couldn’t recognize any student organization that invites a guest speaker who incites antisemitism, encourages its members to engage in antisemitism or calls for the genocide of any group.

Courageous decision on the part of Governor Hobbs!

Tony

Terry Moran and Stephen Miller

Dear Commons Community,

ABC News reporter Terry Moran has been suspended from the air after sharing an incendiary social media post about one of  Trump’s key advisers.

In the early hours on Sunday, Moran, the 65-year-old senior national corresponden,  took to X to share a post about Stephen Miller, the president’s homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy.

Moran referred to both Miller and Trump as “world-class hater[s]” in the post, which has since been deleted.

A spokesperson for ABC News commented on the post in a statement shared with PEOPLE, noting that Moran “has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others. The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards,” their statement noted.

Moran took aim at Miller and the president in the post, which was shared shortly after midnight on Sunday.

“The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism,” Moran wrote. “Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller.”

The reporter continued: “It’s not brains. It’s bile. Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater. You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.”

“Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred is only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment,” he concluded.

Don’t hold back, Terry!

Tony

P.S.

After the above was posted,  ABC News announced:

Maxine Waters

Dear Commons Community,

In an interview with the CNN correspondent Kyung Lah, California Democrat Representative Maxine Waters described Trump as a “cruel, dishonorable human being” while addressing his decision to deploy the National Guard. Waters spoke to Lah after attempting to visit David Huerta, the President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who was arrested during the protests at the weekend. Waters expressed her surprise at the equipment and weapons the troops had.

Showing images of the Guardsmen in LA, Lah said during the broadcast, “And then I want you to take a look at what these Guardsmen are carrying. You can see these large sticks. We saw them about 15 minutes ago, pull them out and take a more aggressive posture, as if to be prepared to push back the crowd.” 

Lah continued in her broadcast: “But then the weapon that they’re holding are standard issue M4 weapons. They’re military M4 rifles. And take a closer look at that magazine. Those are magazines suggesting that they are indeed loaded with ammunition.” As the camera showed the crowd gathering in the California city, she continued, “And I want you to take a larger look at this crowd that we have.

“This isn’t a sizable crowd, it’s a growing crowd, but this is what they are seeing here in downtown Los Angeles, an incredible militarized force. It actually brought congresswoman Maxine Waters, down here to the Metropolitan Detention Center. She tried to get inside to talk to the president of SEIU, he was detained. She could not get in. The door indeed was slammed in her face. And then here’s what she said about the militarization she’s seeing here in downtown Los Angeles.”

Talking about the weapons seen in the images, Waters said, “I don’t know why we have guns. What are those guns for? Are they to shoot protesters? I mean, there’s no reason to be here with the National Guard.

“The President of the United States is a cruel, dishonorable human being who would just as soon they shoot somebody down. But I don’t want that to happen. I do not want – I want the elected officials to do everything that we can to dissuade them.”

After airing the interview, the CNN correspondent concluded, “Here’s the concern. It’s the cauldron that has been created today by the deployment of the National Guard, by how people are feeling about these ICE arrests that occurred on Friday, what that clash could mean today here on the streets of Los Angeles.”

The Guard was deployed specifically to protect federal buildings, including the downtown detention center where protesters concentrated. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said officers were “overwhelmed” by the remaining protesters – and said they included regular agitators who show up at demonstrations to cause trouble.

Several dozen people were arrested throughout the weekend of protest. One was detained Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers. Trump responded to McDonnell on Truth Social, telling him to arrest protesters in face masks. “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” he wrote.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom requested Trump remove the guard members in a letter Sunday afternoon, calling their deployment a “serious breach of state sovereignty.” His comments were echoed by Mayor Karen Bass who said in an afternoon press conference, “What we’re seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration. This is about another agenda, this isn’t about public safety.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In an escalation of Elon Musk’s fractured relationship with President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, the Tesla CEO has floated the idea of starting a new political party to rival the two-party system.

Musk conducted a poll via his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), asking his 220 million followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” The public results show that around 80% of respondents voted yes.

“The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!” Musk said, reacting to the results of his Thursday, June 5, poll. “And exactly 80% of people agree…This is Fate.”  As reported by Time.

On Friday, Musk shared a potential name: “The America Party.” The moniker echoes that of his super political action committee (PAC), America PAC, which was founded in 2024 to support Trump’s efforts to return to the White House. The super PAC reportedly spent around $200 million to help elect Trump. Musk’s donations made him Trump’s largest, and most prominent, donor in the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, when talking to NBC News on Saturday, Trump said that Musk will “have to pay the consequences” if he opts to fund Democratic candidates in light of their feud. The President declined to say what those consequences would be.

“I’m not going to say, but he’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” Trump said.

In 2016 and 2020, Musk voted for Trump’s Democratic opponents—Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden, respectively. But during the 2022 midterm elections, Musk said he intended to vote Republican, and that later developed into him becoming Trump’s close ally, which was cemented when the President positioned him as lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a role he held until recently.

However, Trump and Musk have now had an explosive fall-out, which has played out in the public arena via social media over the past few days. It started with Musk’s disapproval over Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which he called an “abomination” and told his social media followers to “call your Senator, call your Congressman… kill the bill.”

On Thursday, the back-and-forth between the two influential men escalated, with Musk alleging that Trump is listed in the files related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “That is the real reason they have not been made public,” Musk said. He did not provide evidence pertaining to this and, as of early Saturday morning, the post has been deleted.

Musk also, in another since-deleted X post, endorsed a message that said: “Trump should be impeached” and that Vance “should replace him.”

Trump has argued on his own social media platform, Truth Social, that “Elon was wearing thin” and that he asked the Tesla CEO to leave the White House.

Starting a new political party is a good idea.  The Republicans have lost their souls under Trump and the Democrats are leaderless.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Since at least the industrial revolution, workers have worried that machines would replace them.

But when technology transformed automaking, meatpacking and even secretarial work, the response typically wasn’t to slash jobs and reduce the number of workers. It was to “degrade” the jobs, breaking them into simpler tasks to be performed over and over at a rapid clip. Small shops of skilled mechanics gave way to hundreds of workers spread across an assembly line. The personal secretary gave way to pools of typists and data-entry clerks.

The workers “complained of speedup, work intensification and work degradation,” as labor historian Jason Resnikoff described it.

Something similar appears to be happening with artificial intelligence in one of the fields where it has been most widely adopted: coding.  As reported by The New York Times and The Seattle Times.

As AI spreads through the labor force, many white-collar workers have expressed concern that it will lead to mass unemployment. Joblessness has ticked up and widespread layoffs might eventually come, but the more immediate downside for software engineers appears to be a change in the quality of their work. Some say it is becoming more routine, less thoughtful and, crucially, much faster paced.

Companies seem to be convinced that, like assembly lines of old, AI can increase productivity. A recent paper by researchers at Microsoft and three universities found that programmers’ use of an AI coding assistant called Copilot, which proposes snippets of code that they can accept or reject, increased a key measure of output more than 25%.

At Amazon, which is making big investments in generative AI, the culture of coding is changing rapidly. In his recent letter to shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that generative AI was yielding big returns for companies that use it for “productivity and cost avoidance.” He said working faster was essential because competitors would gain ground if Amazon doesn’t give customers what they want “as quickly as possible” and cited coding as an activity where AI would “change the norms.”

Those changing norms have not always been eagerly embraced. Three Amazon engineers said managers had increasingly pushed them to use AI in their work over the past year. The engineers said the company had raised output goals and had become less forgiving about deadlines. It has even encouraged coders to gin up new AI productivity tools at an upcoming hackathon, an internal coding competition. One Amazon engineer said his team was roughly half the size it was last year, but it was expected to produce roughly the same amount of code by using AI.

Amazon said it conducts regular reviews to make sure teams are adequately staffed and may increase their size if necessary. “We’ll continue to adapt how we incorporate Gen AI into our processes,” Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, said.

Other tech companies are moving in the same direction. In a memo to employees in April, the CEO of Shopify, a company that helps entrepreneurs build and manage e-commerce websites, announced that “AI usage is now a baseline expectation” and that the company would “add AI usage questions” to performance reviews.

Google recently told employees that it would soon hold a companywide hackathon in which one category would be creating AI tools that could “enhance their overall daily productivity,” according to an internal announcement. Winning teams will receive $10,000. A Google spokesperson noted that more than 30% of the company’s code is now suggested by AI and accepted by developers.

The shift has not been all negative for workers. At Amazon and other companies, managers argue that AI can relieve employees of tedious tasks and enable them to perform more interesting work. Jassy wrote last year that the company had saved “the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years” by using AI to do the thankless work of upgrading old software.Eliminating such tedious work may benefit a subset of accomplished programmers, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University who has tracked research on the subject closely.

But for inexperienced programmers, the result of introducing AI can resemble the shift from artisanal work to factory work in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Things look like a speedup for knowledge workers,” Katz said, describing preliminary evidence from ongoing research. “There is a sense that the employer can pile on more stuff.”

Bystanders in Their Own Jobs

The automation of coding has special resonance for Amazon engineers, who have watched their blue-collar counterparts undergo a similar transition.

For years, many workers at Amazon warehouses walked miles each day to track down inventory. But over the past decade, Amazon has increasingly relied on so-called robotics warehouses, where pickers stand in one spot and pull inventory off shelves delivered to them by lawn-mower-like robots, no walking necessary.

The robots generally haven’t displaced humans; Amazon said it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers since their introduction, while creating many new skilled roles. But the robots have increased the number of items each worker can pick from dozens an hour to hundreds. Some workers complain that the robots have also made the job hyper-repetitive and physically taxing. Amazon says it provides regular breaks and cites positive feedback from workers about its cutting-edge robots.The Amazon engineers said this transition was on their minds as the company urged them to rely more on AI. They said that while doing so was technically optional, they had little choice if they wanted to keep up with their output goals, which affect their performance reviews.

The expectations have sped up rapidly. One engineer said that building a feature for the website used to take a few weeks; now it must frequently be done within a few days. He said this is possible only by using AI to help automate the coding and by cutting down on meetings to solicit feedback and explore alternative ideas. (A second engineer said her efficiency gains from using AI were more modest; different teams use the tools more or less intensively.)

The new approach to coding at many companies has, in effect, eliminated much of the time the developer spends reflecting on his or her work.

“It used to be that you had a lot of slack because you were doing a complicated project — it would maybe take a month, maybe take two months, and no one could monitor it,” Katz said. “Now, you have the whole thing monitored, and it can be done quickly.”

As at Microsoft, many Amazon engineers use an AI assistant that suggests lines of code. But the company has more recently rolled out AI tools that can generate large portions of a program on its own. One engineer called the tools “scarily good.” The engineers said that many colleagues have been reluctant to use these new tools because they require a lot of double-checking and because the engineers want more control.

“It’s more fun to write code than to read code,” said Simon Willison, an AI fan who is a longtime programmer and blogger, channeling the objections of other programmers. “If you’re told you have to do a code review, it’s never a fun part of the job. When you’re working with these tools, it’s most of the job.”

This shift from writing to reading code can make engineers feel like bystanders in their own jobs. The Amazon engineers said that managers have encouraged them to use AI to help write one-page memos proposing a solution to a software problem and that the artificial intelligence can now generate a rough draft from scattered thoughts.

They also use AI to test the software features they build, a tedious job that nonetheless has forced them to think deeply about their coding. One said that automating these functions could deprive junior engineers of the know-how they need to get promoted.

Amazon said that collaboration and experimentation remain critical and that it considers AI a tool for augmenting rather than replacing engineers’ expertise.

It said it makes the requirements for promotions clear to employees.

Harper Reed, another longtime programmer and blogger who was the chief technology officer of former President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, agreed that career advancement for engineers could be an issue in an AI world. But he cautioned against being overly precious about the value of deeply understanding one’s code, which is no longer necessary to ensure that it works.

“It would be crazy if in an auto factory people were measuring to make sure every angle is correct,” he said, since machines now do the work. “It’s not as important as when it was group of 10 people pounding out the metal.”

And just as factories abroad have made it cheap and easy for entrepreneurs to manufacture physical products, the rise of AI is likely to democratize software-making, lowering the cost of building new apps.

“If you’re a prototyper, this is a gift from heaven,” Willison said. “You can knock something out that illustrates the idea.”

The Dreaded Speedup

Amid their frustration, many Amazon engineers have joined a group called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which is pressuring the company to reduce its carbon footprint and has become a clearinghouse for workers’ anxieties about other issues, like return-to-office mandates. (Amazon said it is working to reduce carbon emissions from its data centers; the climate justice group is pushing it to provide more information on how.)

The group’s organizers say they are in touch with several hundred Amazon employees on a regular basis and that the workers increasingly discuss the stress of using AI on the job, in addition to the effect that the technology has on the climate.

The complaints have centered around “what their careers are going to look like,” said Eliza Pan, a former Amazon employee who is a representative for the group. “And not just their careers but the quality of the work.”

While there is no rush to form a union for coders at Amazon, such a move would not be unheard-of. When General Motors workers went on strike in 1936 to demand recognition of their union, the United Auto Workers, it was the dreaded speedup that spurred them on.

The typical worker felt “that he was not free, as perhaps he had been on some previous job, to set the pace of his work,” historian Sidney Fine wrote, “and to determine the manner in which it was to be performed.”

Tony