Pentagon vs Anthropic, MAHA is a Joke, and so is Hakeem Jeffries

Much of the week's media oxygen was consumed by the State of the Union and impending war with Iran, but here are some stories you may have missed.

Pentagon bullies Anthropic

The U.S. Department of Defense is in a high-stakes feud with AI company Anthropic over the military use of its AI model, Claude. The Pentagon has given Anthropic a Friday deadline to remove safeguards restricting the use of its technology, or risk losing its $200 million contract.

The Pentagon has also threatened to label the company a "supply chain risk", which would mean that any other vendor that did business with the DOD would be prevented from working with Anthropic. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has also threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel compliance.

Anthropic refuses to allow its AI to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weaponsuses (no human oversight), which it deems ethically unacceptable. The company maintains that these restrictions are essential for responsible AI use, even in national security contexts, and insists that they do not hinder lawful military operations.

MAHA is a joke

Speaking of invoking the Defense Production Act, that's what the Trump administration did this week to promote the domestic production of glyphosate, the cancer-causing herbicide in Monsanto's Roundup. Doing so grants manufacturers liability protections.

You probably won't be surprised to learn that Monsanto's parent company, Bayer AG, donated a million dollars to Trump's inauguration or that the lobbying firm that Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles worked for prior to joining the administration represents the multi-billion-dollar firm.

HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been an opponent of glyphosate, having won hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for its victims before joining the administration. The leader of the so-called MAHA movement offered no resistance and even embarrassed himself by defending the decision.

From podcasters who made their careers ranting about the release of the Epstein Files (Dan Bongino, Kash Patel) only to help cover them up, to antiwar candidates (Tulsi Gabbard) forced to turn warmonger, to Kennedy's latest capitulation, the MAGA humiliation rituals are wild!

In other MAHA news, Casey Means's confirmation hearing to be the US Surgeon General was wild. Means' who quit during her residency to become an online health influencer was peppered with questions about failing to disclose that she had been getting paid for peddling snake oil supplements she pushed. Senators were unable to get her to give a straight answer on whether parents should be advised to have their children vaccinated against measles.

Hakeem Jeffries is a joke

There are few members of Congress as utterly useless as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, at least if you live in the U.S. instead of Israel. "AIPAC Shakur," as he's known in Washington, was caught funneling dark money from Palantir, the Alex Carp/Peter Thiel military tech firm that supplies ICE with its mass surveillance and much of the IDF's tech, into Congressional coffers.

In January alone, more than a dozen lobbyists with firms representing Palantir bundled a combined $2.9 million for the DCCC, according to an FEC disclosure. The January contributions from Palantir’s lobbying firms represents 38% of the DCCC’s total fundraising for the month.

Jeffries was also caught running a shell game that allows AIPAC to funnel money to candidates without it showing up as direct AIPAC support. Jeffries has benefited from more than a million dollars from AIPAC support over his career and always votes to support military aid to the country. Young and progressive voters who don't think we should be borrowing money from China to support a genocide aren't buying it.