Trump Just Canceled Ethics

🎧 On Lever Time: The FBI just found more JFK assassination records — go listen to this episode about what documents are still being withheld.

👀 Spotted: Reporting from this newsletter was featured on MSNBC last night

⬇️ Spend four minutes reading this 843-word newsletter to learn about:

• Trump’s takedown of the government’s top ethics watchdog.
• Top Dems’ latest strategy for stopping Elon Musk.
• How nonprofit hospitals afford Super Bowl ads.
• A new paperwork rule that surprisingly has everyone’s support.

🤖 The opening scene of Dr. Strangemusk. A month after President Trump deregulated artificial intelligence, Elon Musk is trying to buy OpenAI, as the company now wires itself into the U.S. government’s nuclear arsenal. A 2024 federal study concluded that unregulated AI could “pose an extinction-level threat to the human species.” Less than a year later, Vice President JD Vance is warning Europeans that “excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry.”

👋 Farewell, ethics… we hardly knew ye. President Trump fired the government’s top ethics official responsible for enforcing anti-corruption laws in the White House. The termination came hours after Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asked the White House if Musk — a government contractor — is complying with laws prohibiting him from “participating in any particular matter that would have a direct and predictable effect on the employee’s financial interests.” Musk most recently pushed to shut down the regulatory agency that would police his new payment app.