K Saxon

For some reason tonight I’m remembering a quote from the film epic, Khartoum: Get thee from my house… And may ye die on the desert untended… May vultures consume thy flesh, Sands thy blood… I‘m not wishing this fate upon our soldiers—they have little choice. I‘m wishing this fate upon the hideous, craven cabal that is sending them to the Middle East.

#BREAKING: Rep Raskin: “Trump essentially wants to move us into an Orban or Putin or Xi-type government…I have a Republican colleague who told me he was at the White House and was told by someone from the Trump family we are going to be the RICHEST FAMILY on earth when this administration is over.”😳

Hello, @USCG, we’d like to report a squatter.

@CNN As long as it’s a mandatory punishment for pedophiles!

The Justice Department is bringing back the firing squad as a manner of execution in federal death penalty cases. cnn.it/48Rky72

@omgsidewalks An intact family that was happy and healthy.

For those who didn't grow up privileged, name something you thought was luxury when you were a kid

More than two years since California raised the fast food minimum wage to $20 an hour, a new study reports NO JOB LOSS and MINIMAL COST INCREASES. Our commitment to both California workers and businesses powers the Golden State as the strongest economy in America.

I wrote about this in my newsletter. The Weather Service didn't launch balloons recently and got surprised by tornadoes in Kansas. DOGE cuts at NWS cut out weather balloon launches which gather data for storm prediction. You are less safe because of that choice.

Trump had an “hours long freak out”? That suggests we really have reached 25th Amendment territory.

Trump is selling off America’s parks to polluters. California is building them. Today, we’re adding THREE new state parks — protecting them for generations!

We’re getting a glimpse of what they are going to do in November. They’ll take your vote the second it doesn’t go their way. Take note.

Republicans have pulled their dangerous, egregious bill gutting the Endangered Species Act (ESA) from the House Floor🎉 Happy Earth Day! 🌎

Even when this dark chapter finally ends, I will never forget the immorality, the criminality, and the pure cruelty we’ve seen in service to one of the worst humans to ever walk the earth.

Love how Trump keeps threatening Powell and he just keeps telling the truth about the administration’s dismal record.

Amazon just got caught running a secret price manipulation operation with Levi's, Home Depot, Walmart, and many more. Every time you "comparison shopped" online, you were looking at prices that were already rigged. Here's what happened: Amazon would monitor prices on Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, and Chewy in real time. The second a competitor listed a product cheaper than Amazon, they'd contact the brand directly and tell them to "fix it." And the exact emails are now PUBLIC. Amazon sent Levi's links to two Walmart listings with the subject line "styles of concern." They basically said the prices on Walmart are too low and we have a problem. The next day, Levi's responded: "I talked to Walmart and they have partnered with us to take Easy Khaki Classic fit back up to ladder SPP price, $29.99 immediately." Levi's literally called Walmart and told them to raise the price. Because Amazon told Levi's to make the call. Walmart complied. Then Amazon matched the HIGHER price. Both retailers ended up charging more. The customer paid extra. Nobody competed. Same playbook with Hanes: Amazon sent them links showing Target and Walmart prices were lower. Hanes confirmed they "reached out to Target and Walmart to have the prices increased." Target increased the prices. Walmart increased the prices. Amazon kept their margins. But it gets even worse... Amazon told Allergan (the company that makes eye drops) that their product was "suppressed" on Amazon because it was cheaper on another site. Allergan responded: "Walmart got their price back up to $16.99." Amazon then unsuppressed the listing. They did this with pet treats on Chewy. Furniture on Home Depot. Products across dozens of categories spanning YEARS. The mechanism is simple but terrifying: If you're a brand and you sell cheaper on Walmart than on Amazon, Amazon suppresses your product, removes you from the Buy Box, buries you in search results, and effectively makes you invisible to 300 million customers. Brands can't afford that. So they call Walmart and Target and say "raise your prices or we'll lose our Amazon listings." Walmart and Target comply because they need the brand's products. Amazon captures 40 cents of every dollar spent online in America. That gives them the leverage to set prices across THE ENTIRE internet. Not just their own platform. So turns out, you were never comparison shopping. You were looking at a coordinated price floor set by Amazon through backroom phone calls between brands and their competitors. "Amazon is working to make your life more unaffordable." 3 separate antitrust trials are now scheduled for 2027. The FTC has its own case. 18 states plus the DOJ are piling on. This is literally happening during the WORST affordability crisis in a generation. Groceries up 25% since 2020. Housing unaffordable. Wages flat. And the largest ecommerce company on Earth has been secretly coordinating with brands to make sure you can't find a cheaper price ANYWHERE. "Competition" in retail is just a fantasy.

@PalantirTech Don’t confuse money and power, with character.

We are deeply grateful to be admitted to the S&P 500. Only in America!

Maine just became the first state in the nation to pass a moratorium on new AI data centers. The American people increasingly understand that these revolutionary technologies have got to improve life for all of us, not just make the richest people in the world even richer.

You will not see @CNN or @MSNOWNews covering this. The @BBC is doing their job. This should be a lead story on all US networks.

Using people's personal data to charge them more should be illegal. I have a bill to ban it. Plan to hear from me, @JetBlue.

@PalantirTech Go home, Palantir. You’re drunk.

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, we can all agree that billionaires and big corporations buying up politicians like they’re just another vacation home is simply not right. We need to end Citizens United.