Elon Musk and his apologists are getting upset by people pointing out that his illegal destruction of USAID had resulted in the avoidable deaths of countless people in exchange for no benefits whatsoever. Always both a maximalist and a liar, he’s claiming that no deaths at all have resulted from his termination of extremely cost-effective aid programs. This is obviously false, as systematic evaluation reveals:

Elon Musk really doesn’t want you to say he’s responsible for the deaths of millions.

Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for charging him with destroying the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and putting millions of lives at risk around the world:

“There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,” Khanna said. “You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with his SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

In response, Musk called Khanna a liar, threatened to sue, and said he should be in prison.

But Khanna is making a perfectly reasonable claim here. In that quote, he is (carefully) citing a peer-reviewed study that estimated the effects of dismantling USAID. It found that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will result in 14 million deaths overall by 2030, of which 4.5 million will be children under the age of 5.

This is probably a high-end estimate, but even lower end projections with different methodologies sit between 670,000 and 1.6 million annual deaths compared to a fiscal year 2023 baseline.

In other words, the toll from USAID cuts seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people annually1; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of 14 million.

If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make.

“But where are the names? Name the names!” Well, here you go [gift link]:

“There is not even a single dead child!” Musk protested on social media. I noted that I had met many families of children who had died — and that’s when he concluded that I was lying.

Musk’s assertion that not a single child died is absurd, yet he doubled down: “They cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

On X, I began to give Musk some names. Let me elaborate:

Jibia was a 10-year-old girl, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class in Rwamwanja, Uganda. Aid cuts meant that the local clinic ran out of $2 bed nets to protect from mosquitoes, as well as anti-malaria medicines. Jibia died of malaria last July, her mother told me outside the family home. Medical records confirmed that, and health workers told me that she would have been fine without the aid cuts: Replacing her tattered bed net with a new one could have prevented malaria, and in any case drugs would have helped her to recover promptly.

Yamah Freeman hemorrhaged while pregnant with her third child in her village in Liberia. The United States had provided ambulances to the local hospital, but the aid cuts under Musk and President Trump meant that the ambulances had no fuel. The strongest young men in the village placed her on their shoulders and raced down the path toward town, shouting encouragement to her as they ran, but she bled to death along the way. Her parents and sister told me about this, and I visited her grave.

Achol Deng, 8, had been infected with H.I.V. at birth in South Sudan but had been kept alive by American-provided medicines costing just 12 cents a day. The dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and the resulting chaos meant that she lost her caseworker and access to medicines, and soon died of an opportunistic infection, health workers told me.

I could keep going. A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts have cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide. A study published in the Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates, the aid defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030.

DOGE would, in itself, suffice to make Trump one of the worst presidents in American history. And all the money in the world won’t make Elon Musk any less of a horrible person and I’m happy that it’s getting to him.

The post Elon, Elon, what a killer appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

You may have heard that a giraffe named Gracie skipped town—"town" being the Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, Texas. Gracie, who is estimated to be around 3 or 4 years old, had been living there since May. Gracie is a reticulated giraffe, a species known for their clean and geometric pattern of brown spots. The owner of the ranch, Vick Jones, told The New York Times that Gracie had wandered to a fenced corner of the ranch, which is nestled in a canyon, climbed a slab of rock to nibble on some trees, and then descended on the other side of the fence. From there she wandered in the Texas outback, oblivious that she had made headlines as a "runaway" and a "fugitive"—a giraffe "on the loose."

Although she occasionally popped up on game cameras from private properties in the area, Gracie dodged the authorities for nearly two weeks, leading Sheriff Nathan Johnson to decree "In almost 30 years of being a lawman, this is my first escapee giraffe," per USA Today. There was a rush of AI-generated memes of Gracie enjoying the local sights. The giraffe was found four miles from the ranch after an extensive helicopter search, and Jones organized efforts to capture Gracie and return her to the ranch. Sheriff Johnson, upon sharing the news, reported that Gracie was found "fat and happy" and that "she had a 'catch me if you can, sucker' attitude."

It is funny to think about a giraffe wandering through Texas, just as it is funny to think about the search for said giraffe—perhaps nature's most obvious animal—taking two weeks. Sheriff Johnson, to be sure, is having some fun in his press conferences, whether his jokes are landing or not. But, as Kenny Torrella smartly pointed out for Vox, the reasons a giraffe like Gracie was in Texas in the first place are not so funny.

Anjali Dayal is a professor at Fordham University. I regard her as a social media friend because we share many interests, including an enthusiasm for the United Nations. I don’t usually just post a series of Bluesky posts, but she speaks the truth very well in this series.

Updating – I posted too soon. Anjali is still adding to the thread.

The post Don’t Look Away appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

In the mid-2010s, Time’s pronouncement that America had reached the transgender tipping point overshadowed another startling edict from Salon a few months later: Ass was the new pussy.

Licking it. Suckling it. Introducing it to a curious finger. Dicking it down with fleshy and artificial phalluses. The world had caught up to Mozart, who, in 1782, penned “Leck mich im Arsch,” translated from German as “Lick me in the ass.” He probably meant kiss my ass, but who are we to presume the inner workings of a genius who loved poop and fart jokes.

Though the practice of darting fast and deep between the cheeks is indeterminably old, psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing didn’t coin the term anilingus until 1886. The Romans defined cunnilingus and fellatio for us centuries earlier.

Salon’s 2015 ass supremacy proclamation quoted porn star Asa Akira. She was right. Culturally, by then, everyone was talking and singing about tonguing ass, even the straights. Nicki Minaj sang about a guy tossing her salad in “Anaconda” around the same time disgraced NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams watched his daughter Allison Williams act out anilingus on the season four premiere of Girls. A father’s dream.

How times change. A month after his daughter got rimmed on TV, NBC suspended Williams because he told a BS story about Iraq, claiming that he’d been on a helicopter that was forced to land when it took rocket-propelled grenade fire. It never happened. Minaj has moved on from ass to shit—she’s gone MAGA.

Some of those who helped move ass eating into pop culture may be gone from our hearts, but rimming remains evermore. Still, I worry. Whenever a sexual practice hits the mainstream, the discussion tends to focus on licking invisible, cultural barriers and not speaking of the actual, physical barriers and practices that make sex safe. I get why. Taboos are more fun to talk about than STIs, or giardia, one of the microscopic parasites one can ingest when rambling south of the taint.

The two primary risks are sexually transmitted infections and bacteria. Australian studies have shown that men who have sex with men (MSM) were having steadily more oral-to-anal sex between the 1980s and early 2000s. An Australian study from 2016 found that among 1,312 MSM, 70.5 percent had received anilingus. The authors of the study concluded that the use of saliva during sex—from rimming and as lubricant for anal sex and fingering—“may play a key role in gonorrhea transmission in MSM.” Data from another Australian study in 2022 suggested that both kissing and rimming were “important” practices in gonorrhea transmission. We know that bacteria like shigella and campylobactor can also transmit this way.

In regard to the sex pests we’re all more familiar with—gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis, Mpox, and so on—anilingus is not unusually risky. But there’s risk. It’s sex.

Gonorrhea can pass from the throat to the asshole, no problem. In its early stage, syphilis spots can bloom on the mouth and tongue. Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is transferred by skin-to-skin contact if lesions are present. You can also catch HPV, chlamydia, herpes, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B (a lower risk) through anilingus. However, your chance of HIV infection from oral-anal contact is basically zero in the absence of bleeding gums or open sores.

If I ever had the MAHA crowd, by now I’ve lost them, so please get vaccinated against common STIs if you have the means. It’s an easy way to help yourself and your community.

Concerning heterosexuals, yet another Australian study found men were far more likely (25.5 percent) to have rimmed their partners than women (9.3 percent). Whether this has to do with straight men washing or not washing their ass cracks in the shower, I cannot speculate.

I’m not saying the data should dissuade you or anyone else from rimming. I simply believe information is both a sword and a shield. Dr. Chase Cannon, a provider at the county’s Sexual Health Clinic at Harborview, whom I called last month, didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade either.

“Folks can have their pleasure as long as they’re being mindful,” he says.

Here’s a practical question before you go down: Hey, [partner X], are you feeling well? If the answer is “no,” give rimming a pass, at least for the night.

Joshua Lumsden, a physician assistant certified at the queer-focused clinic Capitol Hill Medical, concurred. If a partner is vomiting or having diarrhea, it’s “not a good time to fill your mouth with joy.”

There’s always the risk that partner X is sick and does not know it. Asymptomatic transmission is possible. Dr. Cannon knows this might not be the “most popular” suggestion, but he says consider using a barrier like a dental dam, or taking a regular condom, slicing it lengthwise, and laying down that raincoat like a picnic blanket between two hills. Consider a dab of lube for anal comfort.

A gentle, external wash of the anus with soap and lukewarm tap water can also reduce the chance of a bacterial infection. The poop-sensitive among us who cannot tolerate the thought of another human being discovering shit in their ass may be tempted to reach for the douche. Drop it!

Dr. Cannon says research shows douching can increase the risk of certain infections because it wears down the lining of the rectum by creating microtears and bringing immune cells to the surface. But if you must power wash your hole, opt for  lukewarm tap water. Commercially available enema solutions are too harsh. As are hot water and high pressure.

And if you are using soap on the outside of your hole, avoid anything scented or dyed, as they can also carry an STI risk from irritating the rectal lining, Lumsden added. “Probably, more practically, you just don’t want an irritated butthole.”

Here are a few more wise words: While you’re washing your ass, wash your hands, and consider the order in which you do those two things. Following a sexual PEMDAS is generally a good idea. (Please Excuse My Dear Ass, Sexually.)

It is no easy task in the heat of the moment. If you’ll allow me to speak directly to your lizard brain: ass last. Pole before hole. Pink before stink. Alternating between the ass and the genitals is like inviting a UTI into your living room and offering it a tall glass of anything but cranberry juice cocktail.

If you want to rim a partner and are unsure their hygiene is up to snuff—either because you don’t know them or know them all too well—Lumsden suggests you incorporate showering into foreplay. That way, nobody gets their feelings hurt or an unpleasant, surprising flavor with a sickening after-effect.

But ass eating is not all biological. It’s a matter of the heart as well. Asking to lick someone’s ass, or asking them to lick yours, is vulnerable.

Zoey Watson-Hanson, a LICSW in Seattle, talked about how it may be easier for people seeking casual and spontaneous sex on Tinder or Feeld to ask for what they want than it is for people in established partnerships with long-term partners. It depends on how comfortable they’ve been sharing their sexual interests in the past. Either way, “what you got to do is just come right out and say it,” she says—preferably not while you’re in the middle of sex, when someone might feel more pressured.

Just be normal about it: Pick a casual setting, during a non-aroused conversation, and deliver that ask as an ask, not an ultimatum. Emphasize pleasure and consent, and let your partner ask questions. Eating ass may be simpler for you than for a germaphobe or reformed fundamentalist who connects a “dirty” act to moral impurity. In other words, you gotta go deep to get deep. 

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