May 4, 2025

Sunday, May 4, 2025 Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

This ‘n that.

Why not? It’s Sunday.

During keynote remarks at Emerge America's 20th anniversary gala in San Francisco, former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized the first 100 days of President Trump's second term and accused the administration of abandoning American ideals.

Touch to watch. 👇

Touch the link to watch. 👇

Foreign affairs Updates.

Support for Nazism is illegal in Germany. Elon Musk’s friends at AfD have now been added to the list.

Look who is supporting AfD, which is NOT the most popular party in Germany. This would be really shocking except it isn’t. Trump’s people are full out Nazi.

Trump lost in Maine too.👇

High-profile attorney Abbe Lowell launches new firm to push back on Trump's attacks on legal system

Washington — Abbe Lowell, a criminal defense attorney who has represented a number of high-profile political clients, is launching a new law firm to push back on President Trump's crusade against several major practices.

Lowell & Associates has hired multiple attorneys who left firms that cut deals with the Trump administration as the president sought to punish prominent practices to settle his long-held grievances against his political opponents. Mr. Trump has issued executive orders targeting major law firms that represented his political opponents, were involved in legal challenges against him or hired attorneys connected to the investigations into him.

Lowell's previous clients include Mr. Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner; former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden; and former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, former Trump administration official Miles Taylor and whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid are among the firm's first clients.

In an announcement, the firm said it represents "individuals, including current and former state and federal officials who have been unlawfully and inappropriately targeted by this Administration," as well as "entities and organizations involved in litigation over the improper revocation of grant funding by the Department of Government Efficiency and the federal government."

"We are not here to make statements, we are here to litigate, win, and help reinforce the legal guardrails that hold our democracy together," said Brenna Trout Frey, who resigned from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, after the firm committed to providing $100 million in pro bono work for Mr. Trump's interests.

Several firms — Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Paul, Weiss and Milbank — also pledged millions of dollars in free legal work for the administration in response to the executive orders, while others — Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Perkins Coie — are fighting them in court.

Mr. Trump's executive orders require government contractors to disclose any business they have with the legal practices. They direct agencies to cancel contracts with the orders' targets and also reassess contracts with the firms or companies that do business with them to ensure funding decisions align "with the interests of the citizens of the United States" and the Trump administration's priorities. (CBS News)

Defenders for people illegally targeted by Trump? Sounds like big lawyering business to me!

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No respect at all for anyone, anything. Only self-aggrandizement. 👇 Yes, the lunatic really posted this, as did the official White House Twitter.

Newsweek. Most Americans Describe Donald Trump as 'Dangerous Dictator'—New Poll

Trump speaks on his first 100 days at Macomb County Community College Sports Expo Center, Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Warren, Michigan.

The majority of Americans now say they believe President Donald Trump fits the description of a "dangerous dictator," according to new polling.

What To Know

A majority of Americans in the poll described Trump not as a strong leader, but as a "dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy," according to the survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

The poll, conducted from February 28 to March 20 among 5,025 adults, found that 52 percent of Americans agreed with that statement, while 44 percent said they see Trump as "a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America's greatness."

The numbers were split clearly across partisan lines with 87 percent of Democrats calling Trump as a threat to democracy, while 81 percent of Republicans said they think he is a strong leader. Independents leaned toward the threat, with 56 percent labeling Trump dangerous and 42 percent calling him strong.

The poll also carries signs of erosion within Trump's base. Among voters who once supported Trump but say they now regret it, 55 percent said they view him a dangerous dictator. That number climbs to 68 percent among nonvoters who regret not participating in the election. Among all nonvoters, a majority—54 percent—now see Trump as a threat to democracy.

Religious identity is another major fault line. Trump retains strong backing from white Christian groups, with 73 percent of white evangelical Protestants, 66 percent of Latter-day Saints, and majorities of white Catholics and white mainline Protestants saying he should be empowered as a strong leader. In contrast, Christians of color, non-Christian groups, and the religiously unaffiliated overwhelmingly view him as a dangerous authoritarian figure. That includes 71 percent of Black Protestants, 69 percent of Hispanic Catholics, and 65 percent of unaffiliated Americans.

Racial and educational divides were similar. The majorities of Black (67 percent), Hispanic (63 percent), Asian American/Pacific Islander (58 percent), and multiracial Americans (56 percent) said they see Trump as a threat. White Americans are more divided—51 percent support his leadership, while 45 percent view him as dangerous. Among whites without a four-year degree, support for Trump was at 57 percent, while 56 percent of college-educated whites call him a dangerous dictator.

Younger generations are also more likely to express concern. Except for the Silent Generation, at least half of every age group—including baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z—see Trump as a threat to democracy. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.

The poll's release comes amid slumping approval ratings for Trump 100 days into his second term. According to a CNN poll conducted April 17 to April 24, Trump now holds the lowest approval rating of any modern president at this point in their term—lower even than his own standing during the same period in 2017.

Much of the recent dip is tied to Americans' view of Trump on the economy.

His April 2 rollout of sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs triggered a market crash before a partial recovery days later. The PRRI survey found that 65 percent of Americans—93 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Republicans—oppose the new tariffs, even if they might protect U.S. jobs, citing concerns about rising consumer prices. Just 31 percent support the policy. Trump enacted the tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1970s law that allows the president to regulate commerce during a national emergency. Legal scholars and lawmakers have argued the law was misapplied, and a coalition of a dozen states is suing the administration, asserting that only Congress can impose such tariffs.

Trump's broader attempts to consolidate power have also triggered a number of legal challenges. Since returning to office, his administration has fired thousands of federal workers in an effort to shrink the government, relying on the reimplementation of "Schedule F"—a controversial executive order Trump first introduced in 2020 to strip job protections from civil servants. Though President Joe Biden rescinded the order in 2021, Trump revived it on his first day back in office. Lawsuits argue the move violates constitutional principles, particularly the separation of powers, by sidelining Congress's authority over federal employment. Despite ongoing litigation, the mass layoffs continue.

According to the PRRI poll, 55 percent of Americans—including 85 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of Republicans—believe Trump has overstepped his authority by ordering mass firings across multiple agencies. (Newsweek).

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AI Is Taking Over Coding at Microsoft, Google, and Meta | Entrepreneur

Key Takeaways

• Big tech companies, from Meta to Microsoft, are using AI to write and review code.
• At Meta’s LlamaCon conference this week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that AI will take over half of the company’s software development within the next year.
• About 30% of new code at Google and Microsoft is AI-generated.

Big Tech is spending tens of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure in 2025 alone, and now the CEOs of companies like Meta and Microsoft are indicating exactly how they're using the technology.

At Microsoft, engineers are using AI to write 20% to 30% of the code for company projects, CEO Satya Nadella said at Meta's LlamaCon conference on Tuesday.

In a sit-down chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nadella noted that the exact percentage of code produced by AI varies based on the programming language. He said that AI generates "fantastic" Python code, but its C++ abilities are "not that great."

Nadella also said that Microsoft is leaning on more advanced AI agents, software programs that perform complex tasks without human assistance, to review code.

As for Meta, Zuckerberg said in the talk that he isn't sure exactly how much code AI is currently writing, but the company intends to use AI for half of its software development within the next year.

"That will just kind of increase from there," Zuckerberg said.

On a podcast with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg stated that Meta is developing AI that can write code at the level of a mid-level engineer, and the company plans to have "a lot" of its code "built by AI engineers instead of people engineers" this year.

At Google, meanwhile, CEO Sundar Pichai said on an earnings call last week that the company was using AI to write "well over 30%" of new code, up from 25% in October. Google employees are increasingly accepting AI-suggested code, he said.

"I still see it as early days, and there's going to be a lot more to do," Pichai said on the earnings call.

Other C-suite executives have predicted that AI will soon take over coding. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott said on the 20VC podcast last month that AI will write 95% of code within the next five years. Dario Amodei, the CEO of $61 billion AI startup Anthropic, had an even more accelerated timeline, stating last month that AI would write "essentially all of the code" for companies within the next year.

Earlier this week, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said that the company would replace human contract workers with AI.

This month, Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke told all of his employees that using AI effectively was now a "fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify."

As tech companies turn to AI for coding, they are laying off human software engineers. According to layoff-tracker Layoffs.fyi, over 51,000 tech employees have been laid off at 112 companies so far this year. (Entrepreneur).

Related: These 3 Professions Are Most Likely to Vanish in the Next 20 Years Due to AI, According to a New Report.

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Tell the kids in your life (daughters, sons, nieces, nephews, cousins, friends, friends’ kids) thinking about studying coding to study History instead, or write a play. There will be much to unwind. For the time being, they shouldn’t count on National Endowment for the Arts grants.

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I am going to try to make Monday and Tuesday Trump-free zones. See you on Wednesday.

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