webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

DOGE COUP

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MTG ro khanna AOC jared mokowitz? 2ndary

see 2025 MUSK 6

see fascism 6

SEE USAID SOFT POWER V CHINA, FARMERS 2B/YR RED STATES ALA TOP 2 JOBS

see resign protest

SEE VETERANS 1/3 FED WORKERS VA CUTS

SEE CHECKS 2 & BAL, // CHEVRON DEFERENCE

2 santa BS

biz man BS

see pub cit COURTS 4

SEE VOODOO 3

SEE INEQUALITY 4

see doge bags

SEE SCHED F

SEE SOCAL SAFE 3

see effic reform BS

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09/22/25

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ink tools 4 25

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just cut irs enforcement 4 25 --> tax dodge, inequality

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an 4 25

Elon Musks’ Department of Government Efficiency is getting its own moment under the microscope, reports WIRED.

Records show the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has launched a probe of DOGE, requesting “comprehensive information from the agencies in question, including incident reports on ‘potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data’ and documentation of policies and procedures relating to systems DOGE operatives have accessed, as well as documentation of policies for the agency's risk assessments, audit logs, insider threat programs, and more.”

The GAO is an independent auditing, research and investigative agency for Congress.

Musk has sent DOGE operatives, most with no experience with government auditing, to ransack federal agencies of funding and employees. Additionally, Trump appointed administrators are working with DOGE teams to strip their own departments of resources, laying off hundreds of employees.

Democrats have vocally opposed such efforts with what critics call low-energy speeches and internet dance scenes, but WIRED reports the GAO audit is likely “one of the first real signs of possible accountability and oversight.”

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“GAO has received requests to review actions taken by DOGE across multiple agencies,” GAO spokesperson Sarah Kaczmarek told WIRED. “The first thing GAO does as any work begins is to determine the full scope of what we will cover and the methodology to be used. Until that is done, we cannot provide any additional details or estimates on when the work will be completed.”

Information obtained by WIRED shows the GAO is focused on investigating safeguards in place serving “confidentiality, integrity, and availability of agency systems and information” according to files.

Read the WIRED story here.

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03/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Adam Curry, former MTV VJ turned podcaster turned Christian nationalist, says those who oppose Elon Musk and DOGE "are under dark spiritual spells and I think we need to pray for them."

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an 3 25

'Catastrophic': Experts warn DOGE cuts could mean national parks end up in private hands

an 3 25

Congressional Republicans alarmed by the head-spinning speedwith which Elon Musk has been upending the federal government are taking steps to gain back some control over the Department of Government Efficiency, according to a new report in Newsweek.

So far, DOGE has shuttered whole agencies and recommended more than 200,000 job cuts, some of which have then been brought back in a haphazard fashion, confusing everyone involved. Republican lawmakers have gotten an earful about the chaos from their constituents, and the courts have taken up the legality of many of the cuts.

"For the first time since the initiative began, congressional Republicans are pushing to impose checks and balances on Musk and exert more control over DOGE's cuts," wrote Newsweek's Martha McHardy. "The move signals a growing effort by Republicans to reclaim Congress' authority over federal spending."

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have met privately with Musk this week to "urge" him to redirect DOGE's cuts through Congress for approval, according to the report.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reportedly met with Musk for over an hour and recommended that the cuts be processed as "rescission packages." Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is also reportedly on board with the plan.

According to McHardy, "A rescission package rescinds previously approved funding and requires only a simple majority vote in both the GOP-controlled Senate and House."

Musk answered in the affirmative when asked whether he supported rescission packages, McHardy wrote. "He was also asked whether Congress should have a vote on DOGE's cuts, to which he replied, 'Well, they do have a vote on it,'" McHardy added.

For now, there remains a definite disconnectbetween DOGE and Congress. McHardy wrote, "In a meeting with House Republicans, Musk distanced himself from the widespread federal firings, blaming department heads."

In addition, "Musk told lawmakers that recently announced plans to cutto cutmore than 70,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs 'wasn't a DOGE decision,'" she wrote.

By requiring DOGE to work directly with Congress, Republican lawmakers are pushing for more accountability and less disruption as Musk looks to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget.

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AN 3 25

'Betrayal': Democrats blast Trump’s 'assault' on VA over plan to cut 80,000 employees

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AN 3 25

'Open corruption': Musk plots SpaceX takeover of FAA flight safety

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AN PRO P 3 25

Dave Nershi was finalizing a report he’d worked on for months when an ominous email appeared in his inbox.

Nershi had worked as a general engineer for the Internal Revenue Service for about nine months. He was one of hundreds of specialists inside the IRS who used their technical expertise — Nershi’s background is in chemical and nuclear engineering — to audit byzantine tax returns filed by large corporations and wealthy individuals. Until recently, the IRS had a shortage of these experts, and many complex tax returns went unscrutinized. With the help of people like Nershi, the IRS could recoup millions and sometimes more than a billion dollars on a single tax return.

But on Feb. 20, three months shy of finishing his probationary period and becoming a full-time employee, the IRS fired him. As a Navy veteran, Nershi loved working in public service and had hoped he might be spared from any mass firings. The unsigned email said he’d been fired for performance, even though he had received high marks from his manager.

As for the report he was finalizing, it would have probably recouped many times more than the low-six-figure salary he earned. The report would now go unfinished.

Nershi agreed that the federal government could be more lean and efficient, but he was befuddled by the decision to fire scores of highly skilled IRS specialists like him who, even by the logic of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, were an asset to the government. “By firing us, you’re going to cut down on how much revenue the country brings in,” Nershi said in an interview. “This was not about saving money.”

Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his billionaire top adviser Musk have launched an all-out blitz to cut costs and shrink the federal government. Trump, Musk and other administration leaders not only say the U.S. government is bloated and inefficient, but they also see it as a bastion of political opposition, calling it the “deep state.”

The strategy used by the Trump administration to reduce the size of government has been indiscriminate and far-reaching, meant to oust civil servants as fast as possible in as many agencies as possible while demoralizing the workers that remain on the job. As Russell Vought, director of the Trump White House’s Office of Management and Budget and an architect of Project 2025, put it in a speech first reported by ProPublica and Documented: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

One tactic used by the administration is to target probationary workers who are easier to fire because they have fewer civil service protections. Probationary, in this context, means only that the employees are new to their roles, not that they’re newbies or underperformers. ProPublica found that the latest IRS firings swept up highly skilled and experienced probationary workers who had recently joined the government or had moved to a new position from a different agency.

In late February, the Trump administration began firing more than 6,000 IRS employees. The agency has been hit especially hard, current and former employees said, because it spent 2023 preparing to hire thousands of new enforcement and customer service personnel and had only started hiring and training those workers at any scale in 2024, meaning many of those new employees were still in their probationary period. Nershi was hired as part of this wave, in the spring of last year. The boost came after Congress had underfunded the agency for much of the past decade, which led to chronic staffing shortages, dismal customer service and plummeting audit rates, especially for taxpayers who earned $500,000 or more a year.

The administration doesn’t appear to want to stop there. It is drafting plans to cut its entire workforce in half, according to reports.

Unlike with other federal agencies, cutting the IRS means the government collects less money and finds fewer tax abuses. Economic studies have shown that for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12, depending on how much income the taxpayer declared. A 2024 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the IRS found savings of $13,000 for every additional hour spent auditing the tax returns of very wealthy taxpayers — a return on investment that “would leave Wall Street hedge fund managers drooling,” in the words of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

John Koskinen, who led the IRS from 2013 to 2017, said in an interview that the widespread cuts to the IRS make no sense if Trump and Musk genuinely care about fiscal responsibility and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. “What I’ve never understood is if you’re interested in the deficit and curbing it, why would you cut back on the revenue side?” Koskinen said.

Neither the IRS nor the White House responded to requests for comment. Last month, Musk asked his followers on X, the platform he owns, whether they would “like @DOGE to audit the IRS,” referring to the U.S. DOGE Service team of lawyers and engineers led by him. DOGE employees have sought to gain access to IRS taxpayer data in an attempt to “shine a light on the fraud,” according to a White House spokesman.

For this story, ProPublica interviewed more than a dozen current and former IRS employees. Most of those people worked in the agency’s Large Business and International (LB&I) division, which audits companies with more than $10 million in assets and high-income individuals. Within the IRS, the LB&I division has the highest return on investment, and the widespread cuts there put in stark relief the human and financial cost of the Trump administration’s approach to slashing government functions in the name of saving money and combating waste and fraud.

According to current and former LB&I employees, the taxpayers they audited included pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas companies, construction firms and major technology corporations, as well as more obscure private corporations and high-net-worth individuals. None of the IRS employees who spoke to ProPublica would disclose specific taxpayer information, citing privacy laws.

With the recent influx in funding, employees said, the leadership of LB&I had pushed to hire not only more revenue agents and appraisers but also specialized employees such as petroleum engineers, computer scientists and experts in corporate partnerships. These employees, usually known internally as general engineers, consulted on complicated tax returns and helped determine whether taxpayers properly claimed certain credits or other tax breaks.

This work happened in cases where major companies claimed a hefty research tax credit, which is a legitimate avenue for seeking tax relief but can also be improperly used. Highly skilled appraisers have also recouped huge savings in cases involving notorious tax schemes, such as what’s known as a syndicated conservation easement — a break abused so often that both congressional Democrats and Republicans have criticized it, while the IRS has included it on its list of the “Dirty Dozen” tax scams.

“These are cases where revenue agents don't have the technical expertise,” said one IRS engineer who is still employed at the agency and who, like other IRS employees, wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. “That’s what we do. We are working on things where expertise is absolutely necessary.”

Current and former IRS employees told ProPublica that the agency had expended a huge amount of resources to recruit and train new specialists in recent years. Vanessa Rollins, an engineer in the IRS’ Chicago office who was recently fired, said probationary employees in LB&I outnumbered full-time staffers in her office. Much of her team’s work centered on training and mentorship for the waves of new employees — most of whom were recently fired. “The entire office had been oriented around bringing us in and getting us trained,” Rollins said.

These specialists said they earned higher salaries compared with many other IRS employees. But the money these specialists recouped as a result of their work was orders of magnitude greater than what they cost. The current engineer told ProPublica that they estimated their team of less than 10 people had brought in $5 billion in adjusted tax returns over the past four years. (By contrast, a Wall Street Journal analysis published on Feb. 22 found that DOGE had found savings of $2.6 billion over the next year, far less than the $55 billion claimed by DOGE itself.)

A former LB&I revenue agent added that their work didn’t always lead to the IRS recouping money from a taxpayer; sometimes, they audited a return only to find that the taxpayer was owed more money than they had expected.

“The IRS’ mission is to treat taxpayers fairly so they pay the tax they legally owe, including making sure they’re not paying any more than legally required,” the former revenue agent said.

Notwithstanding its return on investment and the sense of duty espoused by its employees, LB&I was hit especially hard by the most recent wave of firings, employees said. According to the current IRS engineer, the Trump administration appears to have eliminated the jobs of about 120 LB&I engineers out of a total of roughly 260. The person said they had heard more terminations were expected soon. The acting IRS chief and a longtime agency leader, Doug O’Donnell, announced his retirement amid the firings.

Several LB&I employees told ProPublica that the mass layoffs had been ordered from a very high level and that several layers of managers had no idea they were coming or what to expect. The cuts, employees said, did not appear to distinguish between employees with certain specialties or performance levels, but instead focused solely on whether they were on probationary status. “It didn't matter the skill set. If they were under a year, they got cut,” another current LB&I employee told ProPublica.

The current and former IRS employees said the firings and the administration’s deferred resignation offer led to situations that have wiped out decades of experience and institutional knowledge that can’t easily be replaced. Jack McCumber was an LB&I senior appraiser in Seattle who got fired about six weeks before the end of his probationary status. He said not only did he lose his job, but the veteran appraiser who was his mentor took early retirement. McCumber and his mentor often worked on syndicated conservative easement cases that could recoup tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. “They’re pushing out the experienced people, and they’re pushing out people like me,” McCumber said. “It’s a double whammy.”

The result, employees and experts said, will mean corporations and wealthy individuals face far less scrutiny when they file their tax returns, leading to more risk-taking and less money flowing into the U.S. treasury.

“Large businesses and higher-wealth individuals are where you have the most sophisticated taxpayers and the most sophisticated tax preparers and lawyers who are attuned to pushing the envelope as much as they can,” said Koskinen, the former IRS commissioner. “When those audits stop because there isn't anybody to do them, people will say, ‘Hey, I did that last year, I'll do it again this year.’”

“When you hamstring the IRS,” Koskinen added. “it’s just a tax cut for tax cheats.”

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AN 3 25

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered at least a temporary blow to President Donald Trump on Wednesday by refusing to overrule a lower court order that said approximately $2 billion in U.S. foreign aid funding ordered frozen by the administration should be resumed.

The 5-4 ruling, issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, paves the way for organizations and programs worldwide working in conjunction or with grants from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to receive those funds already appropriated by Congress.

The legal team challenging the administration's move to block the funding celebrated the ruling.

“Today's ruling by the Supreme Court confirms that the administration cannot ignore the law," said Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel in this case, said in response to the decision. "To stop needless suffering and death, the government must now comply with the order issued three weeks ago to lift its unlawful termination of federal assistance."

The center of the case that was before the high court stems from a lawsuit brought by nonprofit groups and NGOs impacted by the funding freeze, who argued that results were "devastating" for programing that "improves—and, in many cases, literally saves—the lives of millions of people across the globe."

In the suit, as CNNreports, the groups argued the administration's freezing of funds "usurped the power of Congress to control government spending and violated a federal law that dictates how agencies make decisions."

On February 13, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, in a temporary restraining order, said the State Department and USAID must resume most of the funding while the case was under review, but the plaintiffs argued in a filing last week that little, if anything, had been done to comply with that order.

"The district court gave the government every opportunity to demonstrate what steps it was taking to release foreign-assistance funding, as the TRO required, and to explain any practical impediments it faced in pursuing compliance," the groups wrote in their filing."But even by the time of the district court's February 25 hearing—nearly two weeks after the TRO had issued—government counsel could not identify a single action the government had taken in the twelve days since the TRO to release frozen funds."

Wednesday's ruling by the Supreme Court did not make any judgment on the overall merits of the case that remains under review by the lower District Court.

an 3 25

'A serious risk': DOGE targets America's only underground nuclear waste disposal site

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NO LNX

The 'deep state' is real — it's just not what you think it is

U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as he returns to the White House from National Harbor following his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting, on the South Lawn in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 22, 2025.

John Stoehr, The Editorial BoardMarch 03, 2025

I think it’s time to say that the deep state is real, and that it’s trying to make us weaker, sicker, poorer, more vulnerable and easier to control.

I know what that sounds like. It sounds like a conspiracy theory. But that’s the complicated thing about the nature of conspiracy theories.

Some conspiracies are real.

I mean, what else are we to call the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”? It’s not a government department. (Technically, it’s an advisory panel.) It has no legal authority. Even Elon Musk, the billionaire who is allegedly running it, admits as much.

Yet DOGE is exercising power no one alive has ever seen.

It is firing workers of the federal bureaucracy in huge numbers, hollowing out whole agencies and departments, seemingly without rhyme or reason, all in the name of uncovering “waste, fraud and abuse,” even things that are necessary, like the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

DOGE has infiltrated the federal government. It is dismantling services and programs that benefit everyone. No one knows exactly what it is. No one knows exactly who’s responsible. No one knows exactly why it’s doing what it’s doing. It’s secretive and shadowy. It’s undemocratic and unaccountable. And virtually everything it has done has been criminal.

On Thursday night, a federal judge issued a ruling saying, according to the Post, that mass terminations “at several agencies, including the Department of Defense, Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Science Foundation and others, were probably illegal.”

If that’s not “the deep state,” I don’t know what is.

Of course, the term “deep state” is not usually applied in the way I’m applying it, because it arises from rightwing conspiratorial thinking. In brief, it’s the idea that a clandestine cartel of (probably Jewish but certainly anti-American) conspirators are working inside the federal government to usurp the democratic sovereignty of (white) Americans.

You can see this everywhere in rightwing political thought: from allegation that Joe Biden was a “puppet president” controlled by Barack Obama or another “alien force”; to the allegation that Hillary Clinton was the leader of a ring of pedophiles who drank the blood of children; to the allegation that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

In any case, here’s how Wikipedia defines it:

“The deep state is a type of government made up of potentially unauthorized, secret networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals. In popular usage, the term carries overwhelmingly negative connotations and is often associated with conspiracy theories.”

DOGE has not found any fraud, according to Judd Legum, editor of Popular Info. “[Musk is] just cutting things he doesn’t like.” He is also cutting off funding for agencies and departments traditionally in the GOP’s crosshairs. The greatest cuts by far have been to the US Agency for International Development, which they see as too “globalist,” and the US Department of Education, which they see as too “woke.”

According to one estimate, DOGE has fired more than 200,000 people, with another 75,000 voluntarily resigning. Overwhelmingly, these people worked in agencies and departments with broad mandates, which is to say, their explicit mission is to serve everyone equally.

But the carnage is spreading beyond the usual targets of Republican animus. This week, DOGE fired about 800 people at NOAA. That’s the organization that every local weather forecaster relies on. DOGE even gutted NOAA’s two tsunami warning centers. As of Thursday, they are empty. The next round is set for the Environmental Protection Agency, which protects the country’s land, air and water. The president said that 65 percent of the EPA’s 15,000 people are going to be fired.

The carnage is spreading even to Social Security. The White House announced an “organizational restructuring” of the Social Security Administration. According to Professor Heather Cox Richardson:

It is not clear exactly how many positions will be cut; multiple outlets say half of the agency’s 57,000 employees will be let go, while an executive at the agency told Erich Wagner and Natalie Alms of Government Executive that the initial number of firings will be 7,000. At least five of the eight regional commissioners whose offices oversee and support the agency’s frontline offices across the country are leaving, and former Social Security administrator Martin O’Malley warned:

“Social Security is being driven to a total system collapse.”

Social Security, along with the other safety-net programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are seen as the “third rail” in Washington. Any attempt to change them usually results in electrocution, politically speaking.

But thanks to DOGE, the GOP is closing in on the dream of changing Social Security (to what end, I don’t know), without voting on it, without worrying about getting zapped. The Republicans have ceded their constitutional authority, the power of the purse, to a shadowy, unaccountable cabal of unelected bureaucrats to get what they want.

But they want more than your money.

They want your power, too.

So they created a deep state – a “government made up of potentially unauthorized, secret networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals.”

And in the process, they are doing what they accused their enemies of: making America weaker, sicker, poorer, more vulnerable and easier to control, and usurping the democratic sovereignty of its people.

That sounds like a conspiracy theory.

But some conspiracies are real.

NOW READ: Inside Trump's bombshell meeting — and his problem with women

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an 3 25

A watchdog organization on Monday launched a public records probe to determine the extent to which the Trump administration and its billionaire wrecking ball, Elon Musk, are using artificial intelligence as part of their lawless effort to purge the federal workforce.

"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily," said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, the group behind the new investigation.

"We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to force the Trump-Vance administration to fulfill its obligation to the public and to our system of laws," Perryman added.

The probe comes days after NBC Newsreported that federal workers' responses to Musk's email ultimatum were "expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary."

"The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language," the news outlet reported, citing unnamed sources. "The AI system will determine whether someone's work is mission-critical or not."

Additionally, according toThe Washington Post, Musk lieutenants "have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software."

"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite."

Democracy Forward said Monday that it would use Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to shine light on the administration's reliance on AI for personnel decisions. The Trump Justice Department argued in a court filing last week that the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is exempt from public records requests—a claim that experts have rejected and condemned as an attempt to skirt oversight.

"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite," Perryman said Monday. "DOGE and this administration are operating in a shroud of secrecy, and their 'govern by chaos' tactics have only made government less efficient and caused disruptions to our safety and security."

Democracy Forward said its new FOIA requests were sent to DOGE as well as the Office of Personnel Management, the State Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the General Services Administration, among other agencies.

*Wired reported last month that "Thomas Shedd, the recently appointed Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told General Services Administration workers that the agency's new administrator is pursuing an 'AI-first strategy.'"

"Shedd provided a handful of examples of projects GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian is looking to prioritize, including the development of 'AI coding agents' that would be made available for all agencies," Wired added. "Shedd made it clear that he believes much of the work at [Technology Transformation Services] and the broader government, particularly around finance tasks, could be automated.

Geoffrey Fowler, the Post's technology columnist, noted Monday that "lots of recent evidence shows that relying on automation alone to make critical decisions can lead to big government mistakes."

"Just ask New York City, where last year a government AI chatbot advised businesses to break the law," Fowler wrote. "Or Australia, where a deeply flawed algorithm called Robodebt created the opposite of efficiency: the government had to settle for more than a billion dollars with citizens for wrongly reclaiming benefits."

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an 3 25

Tesla and SpaceX CEO initially declared that his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, had saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars by laying off federal workers and cancelling contracts for projects he deemed inefficient.

However, a Monday article in the New York Times shows that some of the South African centibillionaire's math isn't adding up. And DOGE representatives are now reportedly scrambling to correct their mistakes. The Times' David Fahrenthold, Margot Sanger-Katz and Jeremy Singer-Vine highlighted one specific U.S. Coast Guard contract cancellation that DOGE initially claimed saved $53.7 million. In reality, the contract was only for $144,000, and was already completed 20 years ago.

Musk has claimed that DOGE is transparent and will post "receipts" of all of its purported cost savings online. But aside from the Coast Goard contract completed in 2005, the billionaire's group has also committed several other glaring errors, casting doubt on the veracity of its claims of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

READ MORE:'Strong eugenic connotation': Here's the hateful slur the alt-right is bringing back

"These are not savings,” government spending tracker Lisa Shea Mundt told the Times. “The money’s been spent. Period. Point blank.”

Out of all the budget cuts DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) has taken credit for, Musk has said five particular cuts saved taxpayers $10 billion. One contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that DOGE claimed was for $8 billion was actually just for $8 million. DOGE also erroneously counted a $655 million contract three times. And the group also claimed to have cancelled a $232 million contract at the Social Security Administration, when in reality just one individual project was cancelled to the tune of $560,000.

Out of the $10 billion in purported cuts Musk claimed for these five line items, the actual savings was just $19 million, which is 99.8% smaller than the initial number DOGE proffered. That's a similar error to the Coast Guard contract, which was 99.7% less than what Musk claimed.

"It’s obvious that they don’t understand," said Eric Franklin, who runs a firm that consults with the U.S. government on contracting procedures. A $14 million contract with Franklin's firm was actually on DOGE's wall of receipts, even though it had been completed in 2021.

READ MORE:'Inaccuracies' on DOGE website suggest Trump admin is taking credit for cuts they did not make

"It’s really akin to a bull in a china shop, he added. "And what do you end up with? It’s just a big mess."

an 3 25

An executive at USAID, the foreign aid agency in the process of being dismantled, was placed on administrative leave after sending memos criticizing the Trump administration’s cuts, Sam Stein writes Monday at the Bulwark. Nicholas Enrich, the acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, was showing the consequences of the Trump administration was not honoring its promise to exclude life saving foreign aid.

“Enrich had authored two memos, both dated February 28, 2025,” Stein writes. “One noted the dramatic staff reductions that had taken place at the Bureau for Global Health, whose workforce had gone from 783 ‘encumbered’ positions to 69 personnel ‘that received Essential Personnel Designations, of which 15 received RIF letters.’ In the other, Enrich identified ‘72 activities across 31 awards’ that had been approved for waivers by Secretary of State Marco Rubio but for which no payments had been released. He said the death toll from this was ‘not known.’”

In a third unfinished memo, which Stein called, "more alarming than the other two," Enrich outlined consequences of a stop to $7.7 billion in global health aid. This could lead to “12.5–17.9 million cases of malaria with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths annually, a 28 to 32 percent increase in tuberculosis globally, an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year, and potentially more than 28,000 cases of Ebola, Marburg, or related diseases.” In addition, nearly 17 million pregnant women would lose out on lifesaving programs.

READ MORE: 'Strong eugenic connotation': Here’s the hateful slur the alt-right is bringing back

He noted that these cuts could affect global trade. They could also cause job losses for American farmers providing food to send overseas. Finally, he pointed out that risk of preventable diseases would reach the U.S.

Ending these programs, he said, could pose risks for national security. “Weakened disease surveillance doesn’t only jeopardize natural outbreak detection — it also creates openings for malicious actors,” Enrich wrote. “Global health monitoring systems serve as the ‘smoke alarm’ for unusual disease patterns that could signal a bioterrorism event. If those alarms are switched off or muted due to lack of funding, a deliberate release of a pathogen could spread for weeks under the guise of a normal outbreak.”

Enrich was aware that the memos would have repercussions for his own career. “He knew sending those would result in discipline and the end of his career (at USAID), but also sending those ‘for the record’ ensured that the world had a light on what was really going on,” a source told the Bulwark.

“How much good will come of this is the larger question,” Stein writes. “It’s fair to be skeptical. That said, there is some precedent for people using public pressure to compel DOGE and Trump to reverse their decisions to shutter critical programs. Over the weekend, Elon Musk took to Twitter to try and shame folks for insisting that 400,000 boxes of USAID-branded nutrient-rich, peanut-based paste were languishing in a warehouse because of the aid pause. But he also pledged to look into it. And then he reported back that the payments for those shipments had been restored — which, by late Sunday night,they had been.”

READ MORE: Alarm sounded as Trump’s recent moves threaten to upend the Constitution

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an 2 25

Since I offered you 10 reasons for modest optimism last week, discontent with the Trump-Musk regime has surged even further. America appears to be waking up. Here’s the latest evidence — 10 more reasons for modest optimism.

1. Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet.

The chief reason Trump was elected was to reduce the high costs of living — especially food, housing, health care, and gas.

A new Pew poll shows these costs remain uppermost in Americans’ minds. Sixty-three percent identify inflation as an overriding problem, and 67 percent say the same about the affordability of health care.

That same poll shows the public turning on Trump. The percent of those disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy has risen to 53 percent (versus 45 percent who approve). Disapproval of his actions as president has risen to the same 53 percent versus 45 percent approval, which shows how essential economic performance is to the public’s assessment of presidents these days.

The Pew poll also shows 57 percent of the public believes that Trump “has exceeded his presidential authority.” By making the world’s richest person his hatchet man, Trump has made more vivid the role of money in politics. Hence, a record-high 72 percent now say a major problem is “the role of money in politics.”

Other polls show similar results. In the Post-Ipsos poll, significantly more Americans strongly disapprove of Trump (39 percent) than strongly approve of him (27 percent). Reuters, Quinnipiac University, CNN, and Gallup polls show Trump’s approval ratings plummeting (ranging from 44 percent to 47 percent).

In all of these polls, more Americans now disapprove of Trump than approve of him.

2. DOGE is running amusk.

DOGE looks more and more like a giant hoax. This week, reporters found that nearly 40 percent of the contracts DOGE claims to have canceled aren’t expected to save the government any money, according to the administration’s own data.

As a result, on Tuesday DOGE deleted all of the five biggest “savings” on its so-called “wall of receipts.” The scale of its errors — and the misunderstandings and poor quality control that appear to underlie them — has raised questions about the effort’s broader work, which has led to mass firings and cutbacks across the federal government.

DOGE has also had to reverse its firings. On Tuesday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Douglas A. Collins celebrated cuts to 875 contracts that he claimed would save nearly $2 billion. But when veterans learned that those contracts covered medical services, recruited doctors, and funded cancer programs as well as burial services for veterans, the outcry was so loud that on Wednesday the VA rescinded the ordered cuts.

After hundreds of nuclear weapons workers were abruptly fired, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire them.

After hundreds of scientists at the Food and Drug Administration were fired, they’re being asked to return.

On Wednesday, Musk acknowledged that DOGE “accidentally canceled” efforts by the U.S. Agency for International Development to prevent the spread of Ebola. But Musk insisted the initiative was quickly restored.

Wrong. Current and former USAID officials say Ebola prevention efforts have been largely halted since Musk and his DOGE allies moved last month to gut the global-assistance agency and freeze its outgoing payments. The teams and contractors that would be deployed to fight an Ebola outbreak have been dismantled, they added.

DOGE staff are resigning. On Tuesday, 21 federal civil service tech workers resigned from DOGE, writing in a joint resignation letter that they were quitting rather than help Musk “dismantle critical public services.”

The staffers all worked for what was known as the U.S. Digital Service before it was absorbed by DOGE. Their ranks include data scientists, product managers, and engineers. According to the Associated Press, “all previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.”

Finally, Musk’s conflicts of interest are bursting into the open, and it isn’t a pretty sight. The FAA is close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon to overhaul a communications system integral to its air traffic control system — and awarding the contract to Musk’s Starlink instead.

Why? A team of employees from SpaceX, Starlink’s parent company, has been working inside the FAA in recent days. And Musk himself has been criticizing Verizon’s platform on his social media company, X.

Senior FAA officials have refused to sign paperwork authorizing the switch to Starlink, so Musk’s team is now seeking help to secure the deal from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau. Could Musk’s financial motive be any clearer?

3. Tesla is in deep s---.

Americans outraged by Musk’s outsized role in the Trump regime are targeting Musk’s Tesla.

Many Tesla owners are feeling buyer’s remorse — their cars are vandalized or they become publicly shamed by strangers upset with the car company’s CEO. Others are putting anti-Musk bumper stickers on their cars.

A video from musician Sheryl Crow that received over 20 million views on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook features the singer waving goodbye to her Tesla Model S, as Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye” plays in the background. “There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with,” Crow wrote in the caption. “So long Tesla.”

Last weekend, thousands demonstrated outside of Tesla dealerships from Philadelphia to Seattle to register their outrage with Musk’s political power.

The #TeslaTakedown campaign page on Action Network has listed 46 upcoming events at Tesla dealerships and charging stations around the country over the next week. Another organizing platform, Mobilize, includes another 32 events.

Union pension funds are getting involved. Randi Weingarten, president of the giant American Federation of Teachers, has called on the CEOs of the nation’s six largest asset management firms to review Tesla’s current valuation. “This is about safeguarding workers’ retirements,” she said in a statement. “Just this week we saw Tesla stock continue to sink faster than a Cybertruck in quicksand as European sales fell off a cliff. So, we knew we needed to act.”

4. The oligarchy has never been more exposed.

An important aspect of the era we’re in is that a record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of a small group of people who are now revealing themselves to be remarkably selfish, shameless, and insensitive to the needs of America.

This is a further reason for modest optimism because as the oligarchy exposes itself for what it is, the dangers it poses to average people become more apparent — and the odds increase of a fierce public backlash to it.

On Wednesday, at the same time Elon Musk (the world’s richest person) was lecturing Trump’s Cabinet about the importance of decimating the federal workforce, Jeff Bezos (America’s second-richest) was telling staffers at The Washington Postthat henceforth the Post’sopinions would focus on defending “personal liberties and free markets” and opposing viewpoints would not be published.

The Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned, as he should.

When oligarchs talk of “personal liberties and free markets” they mean their own liberties to become even richer and more powerful, as the rest of America slides into worsening economic insecurity and fear. When the oligarchs speak of “freedom,” what they actually seek is freedom from accountability.

All this is becoming more apparent than ever.

5. People are rising against corporate power.

For all these reasons, a backlash is beginning. Popular rage that this country is now run by an oligarchy, a small group of billionaires and corporate elites, is surging.

Today’s “economic blackout” has enlisted millions of Americans who have stopped buying and thereby demonstrated our power.

Meanwhile, protests are breaking out against big predatory corporations. On the eastern shore of Maryland, a bright red Republican area, 20,000 have signed a petition demanding an investigation of Delmarva Power, a subsidiary of utility giant Exelon, for overcharging them. That’s almost 5 percent of Delmarva’s entire customer base.

The same anger is mounting in New York City at Con Edison. And in St. Joseph, Missouri, at Evergy.

When House Republicans were in their home districts last week, they were deluged with angry questions about corporate power, Elon Musk, and big money.

A few Senate Republicans even explained to their constituents that they voted to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services because he’s “hated” by Big Pharma.

Meanwhile, Bernie is back. While not running for president again, 83-year-old Bernie Sanders this week launched his “National Tour to Fight Oligarchy” — to overflow crowds in deep-red Nebraska and Iowa. Bernie is showing that even in red America, opposition to oligarchy and Trump is becoming the dominant view of a large swath of the public.

Record-breaking crowds are also appearing for other notable progressives. A record-sized group showed up to Representative Jim McGovern’s town hall. The same thing happened in Massachusetts with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

6. As Trump and Musk trade Social Security and Medicaid for big tax cuts for the rich, Americans will go ballistic.

The budget plan passed by the House this week — at Trump’s urging — gives billionaire oligarchs and giant corporations the lion’s share of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

To offset the $4.5 trillion, the plan includes severe spending cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and Social Security.

Seventy-two million Americans rely on Medicaid, half of them children. Forty-two million Americans receive food stamps — many who aren’t paid enough to put food on the table.

Federal workers at the Social Security Administration learned Wednesday that a plan was already underway to cut 50 percent of staff, as well as 1,200 field office locations.

The move is likely to affect tens of thousands of employees across the country and millions who rely on the agency for monthly checks that keep them afloat. Such deep cuts to SSA, already at historically low staffing, will cause significant degradation of services, very likely including checks missed and individuals dying before their claims can be processed.

Why do I include this outrage in my list of reasons for modest optimism? Because if nothing else awakens the slumbering giant of the American people, the Trump-Musk attacks on Medicaid and Social Security to pay for another giant tax cut for the rich will.

Polls show unequivocally that Americans across party lines reject tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich. In fact, more than two-thirds — 67 percent — of Americans support higher taxes on billionaires.

7. Democracies are joining together, minus Trump’s America.

Since it’s become clear that America has begun allying itself with Russia, the movement of the world’s other major democracies to join forces has been gaining momentum.

On February 17, eight European leaders and the heads of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union met. On Wednesday, France’s Emmanuel Macron spoke with the leaders of 19 countries, including Canada, either in person or over videoconferencing. Leaders from Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden also joined the conversation.

Britain’s PM Keir Starmer is shifting the center of UK foreign policy from the United States to Europe.

All of this bodes well for a united front of democracies against authoritarian dictatorships — even though, tragically, Trump’s America is on the wrong side.

8. Negative economic consequences of the Trump-Musk blunderbuss are beginning to appear.

The economy is starting to show signs of strain as the Trump-Musk moves to shrink federal spending, lay off government workers, and impose tariffs on America’s largest trading partners shake businesses and ricochet across states and cities.

Trump’s moves to halt foreign aid and freeze some federal funding have already taken a toll on domestic farmers who export billions of dollars of products as part of American foreign aid programs.

Billions of dollars of climate and infrastructure investments that were underway during the Biden administration are now in limbo.

Apollo Global Management, an investment firm, estimates that DOGE job cuts could rise to 300,000. When government contractors are included, total layoffs could be closer to 1 million.

Economic indicators are showing signs of mounting stress, with much of the anxiety focused on Trump’s tariffs. On Thursday, he said tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go into effect on March 4 and he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on China.

A survey of consumer sentiment published by the Conference Board on Tuesday recorded its largest monthly decline in confidence since 2021 in February. The drop was attributed to growing pessimism about employment prospects and future business conditions, with concerns about trade and tariffs reaching levels last seen during the 2019 trade wars in Mr. Trump’s first term.

This week’s University of Michigan survey of American consumers shows that they expect prices will rise at a 3.5 percent yearly rate over the next decade — the highest rate of consumers’ inflation fears since 1995.

A measure of corporate activity from S&P Global published last week showed business expansion slowing in the United States in February as a result of “uncertainty and instability surrounding new government policies” such as federal spending cuts and tariff-related developments.

The National Association of Homebuilders said in its latest report that builder confidence had fallen to a five-month low because of concerns about tariffs, elevated mortgage rates, and high housing costs.

Morgan Stanley economists estimate that tariffs will raise inflation, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, by as much as 0.6 percentage points and depress real consumer spending by as much as 2 percentage points. The overall hit to inflation-adjusted economic growth could be as high as 1.1 percentage points.

I include these gloomy economic statistics as a modest reason for optimism because they, too, signal the looming end of public support for Musk and Trump.

9. Elections are looking brighter.

Add up all of this and elections are looking brighter — and we don’t have to wait until 2026. This is a major election year. If you count all the seats up for election this year at the local, state, and federal levels, there are 100,000 seats open across 45 states.

Governors, mayors, city councils, state representatives, judges, school boards — these positions up and down the entire ballot in 2025 — are a vital line of defense against the Trump-Vance-Musk regime.

Wisconsin voters will fill the deciding seat on their state’s Supreme Court. This election will have huge implications for the labor rights and voting rights of everyday Wisconsinites. Musk is filling the coffers of the Republican candidate right now, but Wisconsinites won’t let Musk’s big money determine their future.

If you live in New York City and don’t like the Trump administration meddling in the federal corruption charges against current Mayor Eric Adams, you have the power to choose a new mayor.

The great states of New Jersey and Virginia will elect their next governors — and control of their state houses.

On the federal level, Florida will hold two special elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, and New York will hold another later this year. These could affect the balance of power in the House.

The sea change is already beginning.

On Wednesday, Democrat Eugene Vindman won his House race against the Republican and former army Green Beret Derrick Anderson in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District — a key victory for Democrats as they seek to regain a majority in the lower chamber.

In his first term, Trump fired Vindman and his brother, Alexander, who both held senior roles on Trump’s National Security Council, after they raised concerns about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

As a member of Congress, Vindman will now help fellow Democratic lawmakers serve as a check on the power of Trump.

10. Adding it all up.

Connect the dots: Trump’s ratings continue to plummet. Musk’s DOGE is off the rails and becoming a late-night joke. Consumers are taking out their anger on Tesla. America’s oligarchs are openly defiant and behaving shamelessly. Bernie and other progressive voices are attracting record-breaking crowds. Trump and Musk are attacking Medicaid and Social Security to pay for a giant tax cut for the wealthy. The world’s leading democracies are joining together against dictatorial regimes, including Trump’s America. Economic indicators are trending downward. And elections look brighter.

What does this add up to? America is waking up, and it doesn’t like what it’s seeing in Trump and Musk.

I don’t want to sound overly optimistic. We have a huge amount of work to do. My purpose in giving you these additional reasons for modest optimism is for you to have a sense of possibility.

All is not lost. We are not doomed. The Trump-Vance-Musk regime is filled with incompetence and riddled with treachery.

If all of us maintain our courage and resolve, and do what’s necessary, we will prevail.

NOW READ:[Liberals need to stop letting Trump voters off the hook

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RWW

02/24/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Newly installed FBI Director Kash Patel made a surprising choice for his No. 2 Sunday night: Dan Bongino, a MAGA podcaster and former Secret Service agent with no experience in the bureau.

Fringe right-wing conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino wiped away tears on one of his final broadcasts after accepting the job of FBI deputy director from President Donald Trump.

Idaho pastor Doug Wilson referred to White-Cain as an 'erratic woman preacher who has been all over the map.'

Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary said he instructed her to make ads that “thank me for closing the border.”

Is the faction that wants the death penalty for women who terminate pregnancies winning?

Elon Musk promised to deliver a “maximally transparent” government efficiency program. What he’s disclosed so far is a messy and inaccurate accounting of his group’s early work.

A month into Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s much-hyped efforts to root out fraudulent and wasteful spending by government agencies, not a single instance of fraud or waste has been discovered.

AN 2 25

'A lot of fear': Republicans a no show as Wisconsin farmers complain of Trump chaos

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AN 2 25

During President Donald Trump's first month back in the White House, many right-wing media outlets — from Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business to Newsmax TV — aggressively championed his policies, including mass layoffs at a wide range of federal government agencies.

Trump's alliance with SpaceX/Tesla/X.com CEO Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), receives plenty of favorable coverage at Fox News. And the most controversial members of Trump's administration are being championed in right-wing media.

But the Washington Post's Philip Bump, in his February 24 column, stresses that Republican politicians are running into a disconnect between right-wing media coverage and public responses to Trump's policies.

READ MORE:[We've reached the moment of maximum peril for our nation and our freedoms

For example, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin) — who won reelection by 22 percent in his district — was "booed upon his arrival at a town hall event near Oshkosh" on Friday, February 21. Many attendees were angry over the Trump Administration/DOGE layoffs.

"Why the divide? Unquestionably in part because Trump supporters exist in a disinformation bubble, to paraphrase a prominent foreign leader," Bump explains. "They don't see it that way, of course; in their view, their news diet represents an escape from falsehoods propagated by left-leaning elites. But the falsity of that framing is easily demonstrated."

Grothman and other GOP lawmakers who are being booed at town hall events, according to Bump, "often spend most of their lives within the right-wing media universe, where Trump and Musk are treated with fervently policed admiration."

"That Republican legislators are now facing complaints from constituents is a reminder of the limits of the extent of the right's propaganda machine," Bump argues. "The mechanism Watters celebrates may reaches millions of people, but tens of millions of people voted against Trump in November despite that. Most Americans reject the idea that firing hundreds of thousands of government employees is necessary to fight waste and fraud."

READ MORE:**Revealed: Emboldened terrorists 'quickly rebuilding' as MAGA takes over the DOJ**

*Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).

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AN NO LNX

We've reached the moment of maximum peril for our nation and our freedoms

Donald Trump talks to Shalga Hightower, mother of Iofemi Hightower who was killed in 2007, during a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 2, 2016.

Thom Hartmann February 24, 2025

Get ready.

The resistance to billionaires running our government is growing. Bernie Sanders is touring the Red State Midwest and drawing massive crowds. Federal workers are pissed. Republican politicians are in hiding, refusing to do town halls even when their constituents demand them or try to set them up.

Comrade Krasnov’s…er, Trump’s polling numbers are collapsing as fast as his embrace of Comrade Putin is growing. Fascism expert and On Tyranny author Professor Timothy Snyder notes over at BlueSky:

“Nervous Musk, Trump, Vance have all been outclassed in public arguments these last few days. Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”

James Carville told Dan Abrams:

“This whole thing is collapsing. … I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days, is in the midst of a massive collapse and particularly a collapse in public opinion.”

At the same time, four Republicans have now thrown Nazi salutes, three over this past weekend at CPAC. They think they can overcome their fear of the people by intimidating us.

This is a moment of maximum peril for our nation and our freedoms because if, as Rachel Bitecofer documents, Trump and his followers really are following Hitler’s script to seize total power and turn America into an authoritarian dictatorship, the next step may well be to exploit an attack on America.

Germans remember well that fateful day ninety-two years ago this week: February 27, 1933. It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack.

A Dutch communist named Marius van der Lubbe had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The German intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians still argue whether rogue elements in Hitler’s intelligence service helped him; the most recent research implies they did not, but simply watched him proceed.)

And then van der Lubbe took down the prize of Germany, the Parliament building (the Reichstagsgebäude), setting it ablaze on that February day.

Hitler knew the strike was coming (although he apparently didn’t know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation’s most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was van der Lubbe who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history,” he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. “This fire,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “is the beginning.” He used the occasion — “a sign from God,” he called it — to declare an all-out “war on terrorism” and the groups he said were its ideological sponsors, the socialists and Jews.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for “terrorists” was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected “allies” of the infamous terrorist. Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, Hitler had pushed through legislation — in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the “liberal” philosophy he said spawned it — that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus.

His Decree on the Protection of People and State allowed police to intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; and police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

It was the beginning of the end of a democratic Germany.

Similarly, in 2002, the new Russian President Putin was engaged in a war with Chechnya, trying to subdue and subsume a nation that has been both under Russian rule and independent over the past several centuries, very much like Ukraine.

A theater in Moscow was seized that year by “Chechen rebels” who began executing theater-goers: Putin ordered poisonous gas apparently made of something like fentanyl poured into the theater, and it let his police take back the theater (although many of the hostages, along with their tormentors, died from the gas).

Putin used the attack as an excuse to escalate his years-long conflict with the parts of Chechnya that still were fighting for their independence from Russia; he launched a major WWII-style land invasion and bombing campaign. Tens of thousands died, entire cities were destroyed, and Chechnya was largely subdued within the year.

In the aftermath of that 2002 theater attack and subsequent war there was speculation from multiple sources and countries that Putin knew the attack was coming and welcomed it, believing he could use it as an excuse to escalate his low-level conflict with Chechnya to elevate his own profile while finally seizing full control of the region.

It was an echo of the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999 that then-Prime Minister Putin used to leverage himself into the presidency the following year. He’d used those terror attacks to consolidate his power, and repeated the trick in 2003 beginning with the 2003 arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Yukos Oil. By the following year most serious voices of dissent or opposition in Russia were either dead, in prison, or fleeing for their lives.

There’s a long history of leaders using national emergencies to raise their popularity, expand their own power, overwhelm opposition politicians, scapegoat minorities, suspend constitutions and elections, and provide a legal façade for ending or weakening democracy.

Both George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu — at a time when their popularity was in the toilet and charges of impropriety were swirling (in Netanyahu’s case, actual criminal charges) — ignored multiple warnings of attacks coming.

The 9/11 and October 7 attacks — predicted by agencies and nations warning American and Israeli intelligence services respectively — were then successfully used by both to consolidate their own popularity and power.

Which is why this is such a dangerous moment that requires vigilance and preparation.

Trump’s popularity is now collapsing as his largest campaign donor takes a chainsaw to the American government, threatening virtually every aspect of federal and state functions from Social Security to Medicaid to medical research and foreign aid. An attack on America that would enable him to play the role Bush did after 9/11 would be very politically useful.

In an extreme case, which he has publicly mused about, an attack could justify his declaring a national state of emergency, suspending elections, and putting the Constitution on ice. He could then shut down media he doesn’t like, imprison people who speak out, and suspend the 2026 and 2028 elections.

All legally.

At the same time he’s contemplating this, the FBI — America’s premiere counterterrorism organization — is being scattered with as many as 1500 agents leaving Washington, DC. An open apologist for Putin has been put in charge of our intelligence services. And the senior leadership of our military was just purged, replaced with toadies who’ll praise Trump as if this were North Korea at every opportunity.

And the JAG officers of each branch of the military along with their senior commanders — the people who would determine the legality of presidential orders to, say, shoot at protestors or open detention camps for journalists and dissidents — have been fired and replaced by loyalists who’ll do whatever Trump demands.

Brett Holmgren was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center until a few weeks ago; he recently warned that the threat levels right now are at unprecedented highs.

Muslims around the world are incensed by Israel’s slaughter in Gaza; Ukrainian expats and refugees are furious about Trump’s embrace of Putin; and the Afghanistan-based Islamic State-Khorasan has already carried out attacks killing 13 Americans along with a recent slaughter in Moscow.

And, pointing to the deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans last month, Holmgren added:

“I think it illustrates that while we have been quite effective as a government and across administrations at disrupting plotting overseas and going after terrorist leaders, we have a lot more work to do when it comes to countering violent extremism at home…”

Anybody remember the bombs left at the RNC and DNC on January 6th? The bomber is still at large, not to mention groups across the political spectrum — and recently fired federal workers — who may have grievances against our government. And people from nations around the world where USAID was keeping friends and relatives alive but isn’t any longer.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong in my concern that we’re facing the very real possibility of an imminent attack that will be exploited by Trump to put a final nail in the coffin of American democracy, but we all — and Democrats, in particular — need to be ready. The Reichstag Fire scenario could be closer than any of us expect.

As the saying goes: “Stand back and stand by.”

MMA 2 25

02/19/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

President Donald Trump crowned himself with a new title Wednesday as he gave himself credit for “saving” Manhattan from congestion traffic pricing, writing a Truth Social post in which he declared “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency finally released a “wall of receipts” as part of its “maximum transparency” promise Monday, but some of their figures are not quite adding up.

Russ Vought, Trump’s OMB director, wrote an essay in 2022 that reads like a blueprint for what was to come.

Government employees have long protected the ballot from attacks. The president is preparing to fire many of them.

On a recent livestream, white Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon and his co-hosts were asked for their thoughts on a Trump-themed goat statue displayed at Mar-a-Lago. In response, Webbon suggested it was indicative of demon worship and promoted the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

A right-wing conspiracy theory website is at the heart of the latest Justice Department resignation in protest of the Trump administration’s interference at the DOJ.

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MMA

Right-wing media celebrate the gutting of the federal government as critical agencies are expected to reel from layoffs

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Pete Tsipis

Published 02/20/25

As the Trump administration orders thousands of layoffs of “probationary” federal employees, new reporting shows that many of these firings hit people who had been in public service for years, and some employees are now being rehired because of the critical nature of their jobs — suggesting the layoffs have been rolled out haphazardly. But many right-wing media figures responded by celebrating the layoffs, praising the supposed “line by line” cutting of waste in the federal budget and the mass firings of “entitled” public employees.

The Trump administration is firing thousands of federal employees with little justification

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AN 2 25

'Hugely important' airport narrowly avoids mass resignation of all air traffic controllers

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AN 2 25

:{A wide range of federal government agencies are being targeted for mass layoffs by the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by SpaceX/Tesla/X.com CEO Elon Musk.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is being gutted, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) expects to suffer the same fate, and Trump proposes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education altogether. According to the Washington Post, as many as 200,000 federal government workers may lose their jobs.}:

The most vehement outcry against these layoffs is coming from Democrats, but according to Washington Post reporter Liz Goodman, some GOP lawmakers are worried as well.

In an article published on February 19, Goodwin reports, "Republican senators find themselves in an unusual position these days: begging Trump officials to release funds they themselves appropriated. Senators have, in recent days, made the case to Cabinet secretaries and other Trump officials to let money flow back into their states. They are trying to finagle exceptions to President Donald Trump's sweeping executive orders or cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service that freeze hundreds of billions of dollars, including money for farmers and infrastructure projects. That push comes as the (Trump) Administration has also sought to fire a wide swath of federal employees — some of whom live in red states."

READ MORE: GOP lawmaker sounds the alarm on coming ‘clash’ between Republicans and Trump

Goodwin cites Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) and two examples of GOP lawmakers who worry that the DOGE cuts are going too far.

Republicans who "praise the ultimate goal of streamlining the federal government" are urging the Trump Administration "to reconsider its cuts or pauses to federal grants that support biomedical research and labs, or for programs supporting Native American tribes." This, according to Goodwin, is a " humbling turn of events for a body that has traditionally prized its power of the purse."

"Trump campaigned on overturning traditional limits on his ability to cancel funding appropriated by Congress, saying he should be able to use a technique called 'impoundment' to reduce or eliminate spending," Goodwin explains. "He and his allies have been laying the groundwork for challenging restrictions on that power in court and have aggressively flouted Congress' power with potentially illegal freezes on spending. The use of impoundment could create a situation where lawmakers who are in good standing with the Trump Administration have a better shot at restoring their funds, posing a potential conflict of interest, experts said…. Murkowski said she's been lobbying 'pretty much all the departments' to restore frozen funding that's affecting her state — including the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department and Agriculture Department."

Goodwin adds, "(Murkowski) has also asked the Trump Administration to exempt Native American tribes from freezes affected by an executive action targeting programs that promote diversity. Over the weekend, she slammed the Administration's responses to her on terminations of federal workers as 'evasive and inadequate.'"

READ MORE:Mike Johnson's big budget bill likely dead on arrival as 'key holdouts' threaten to sink it

*Read the Washington Post's full article at this link.

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AN 2 25

When Donald Trump was on the campaign trail during the 2024 presidential race, he promised an abundance of executive orders if he won the election. And Trump, now president again, has issued countless executive orders during his first month back in the White House — some of which are being temporarily blocked in the federal courts.

Trump and his allies — including Vice President JD Vance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk — are accusing federal judges of failing to respect Trump's executive powers. But many Trump critics are countering that federal courts, under the U.S. Constitution, are supposed to play an aggressive role in the United States' system of checks and balances.

READ MORE:GOP lawmaker sounds the alarm on coming ‘clash’ between Republicans and Trump

In an article published by The Atlantic on February 19, attorney Quinta Jurecic stresses that the pushback against Trump's executive orders is growing — not decreasing or slowing down.

"Courts have prevented Trump from dismissing a government watchdog without explanation and granted restraining orders barring the (Trump) Administration from slashing funds for crucial scientific research," Jurecic notes. "They have prevented Musk's team from meddling with Treasury Department systems and insisted that the government halt its transfer of an incarcerated transgender woman to a men's prison. Four separate judges have issued orders requiring the government to stand down on its effort to dismantle birthright citizenship."

Jurecic continues, "Litigation has also proved to be a valuable tool for prying loose key information from the administration, like the specifics of just what access Musk's aides were given to the Treasury Department, and as a means of making legible to the public what Trump is trying to get away with."

The attorney argues that the Democratic minority in Congress "seems to be waking up" after entering "this second Trump term cautiously."

READ MORE:Mike Johnson's big budget bill likely dead on arrival as 'key holdouts' threaten to sink it

"This opposition movement will try to build on itself," Jurecic predicts. "The Democratic Party is taking more aggressive action in part because of an outraged constituency demanding that it speak up; that, in turn, may encourage Americans to push the party further. Spoon emoji, court orders, protests — all of these serve as indications that those who dissent are not alone."

Jurecic adds, "True, courageous leadership can emerge unexpectedly. Within the FBI, Acting Director Brian Driscoll has become a folk hero of sorts for his refusal to provide Justice Department leadership with the names of FBI agents to potentially be fired…. The fact is that Trump is an unpopular president who eked out a razor-thin plurality of the popular vote and whose party holds the slimmest of majorities in the House. So far, he has been able to avoid that inconvenient reality by relying on executive orders."

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no lnx an

Why is the media ignoring Trumpworld's latest shout-outs to hardcore racists?

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while signing executive orders during a brief event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2025.

REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Thom Hartmann February 18, 2025

One of the enduring mysteries in today’s American political life is why so many Republican politicians and their friends are adopting or promoting openly Nazi symbols, iconography, and slogans.

Is it a shout-out to the hardcore racists and haters that make up the GOP’s base, all just a performance to get enough votes to win elections? Or a proclamation that the end-goal of Republican governance is the destruction of American democracy, perhaps in deference to Vladimir Putin? How about it’s being a bizarre attempt at trolling people old or well-educated enough to remember or know what Nazism inevitably leads to?

And why are America’s mainstream media so unwilling to even report on, much less discuss, all the Nazi and neo-Nazi references surrounding Trump and today’s captive Republicans?

Elon Musk, Trump’s #1 campaign donor and co-president, threw two Nazi “Sieg Heil” salutes following Trump’s inauguration, causing the media to fall all over itself trying to make excuses for his behavior. Actual, declared Nazis and white supremacists were thrown into an ecstatic tizzy, however, with the Ohio Proud Boys posting the clip with the words, “Heil Trump!”

The neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe posted the Musk clip with the Waffen SS lightning-bolt emoji; their leader, Christopher Pohlhaus, wrote: “I don’t care if this was a mistake. I’m going to enjoy the tears over it.” Other neo-Nazi, Nazi, and white supremacist groups across the web jumped in to celebrate the salute, as Rolling Stone extensively documented.

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It all seems to have really picked up steam after young neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting Nazi slogans, murdering a young woman protestor, and giving Hitler salutes.

Our media completely failed to identify them as Nazis, even though they were proclaiming that themselves.

Since Trump’s endorsement of their behavior with his “good people on both sides” comment, which he continues to defend, such behavior has been emulated across the nation.

Poke anything associated with Trump and odds are Nazi memes will pop out.

The “America First” slogan was the name of an openly pro-Nazi movement in America in the 1930s, a fact that seems to have been lost down the memory hole. And Trump told his former Chief of Staff, Marine General John Kelly, that “Hitler did some good things…” along with referring to American soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.”

And then there are Trump’s attacks on the media, echoing Joe Stalin and Adolf Hitler with their “enemy of the people” rhetoric. He’s suing media outlets left and right, just like Putin and Orbán did in their early years to intimidate reporters and bankrupt opposition publications and websites.

Elon Musk just called for reporters for CBS’s 60 Minutes program — “the biggest liars in the world” — to receive “a long prison sentence.”

In an echo of Hitler’s “denunciations,” his “border czar” is even calling for the police at the Department of Justice to investigate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for telling immigrants about their constitutional rights.

After pointing out at a rally that Hitler said that Jews were “poisoning the blood” of Germany (yes, he pointed it out himself), Trump then said of nonwhites in America:

“It’s true. They’re destroying the blood of the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out.”

The 2021 CPAC meeting featured a stage resembling the Odal Rune, a potent Nazi symbol, that drew a rebuke from the hotel hosting the conference.

In 2022, Trump dined with Nick Fuentes, a prominent and out Holocaust denier. Trump later posted a 30-second video that twice references a “unified Reich.” Trump’s buddy Steve Bannon has repeatedly endorsed the notoriously antisemitic and racist novel The Camp of the Saints” which characterizes Black Americans, “dirty Arabs,” and “feces-eating Hindu rapists” as engaging in a conspiracy to destroy white people and civilization.

His son, Don Jr., retweeted a message by a white supremacist who attacks interracial dating and queer people, “liked” tweets by another account that posts pictures of Jews with exaggerated noses, made a “joke” about gas chambers and our media, and participated in an interview with a talk show host who said slavery was the best thing to have ever happened to Black people.

When Vice President Vance visited Germany this past week, instead of meeting with that nation’s chancellor or his peer, he hung out with the leader of the Nazi-adjacent AfD party, while giving a speech in which he extensively quoted Putin’s sentiments. Proud to be known by the company he keeps…

And then there’s DOGE, the official title of the iron-fisted, massively rich oligarchs who ruled Venice for ten centuries that’s been reclaimed by billionaire Musk for himself and his work. The logo is arguably explicit, as Jim Stewartson points out at his excellent mind-war.com newsletter/website:

“On the DOGE logo there are 8 stars above the cartoon, and 8 stars on the flag inside the gear. This is another National Socialist signal. It means Heil Hitler. Musk has used this signal numerous times, in addition to quite literally doing two Hitler salutes at the inauguration.”

There are also 14 teeth on the gear that makes up the O in DOGE in the logo, a direct rip-off from Hitler’s Nazi labor movement of the 1930s, reflecting the famous “14 words” memorized by every white supremacist: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Check out this 30-second video, courtesy of Jim Stewartson at mind-war.com:

Following that theme, Trump, Vance, and multiple Republican politicians and media figures have, for years, promoted the Naziesque “Great Replacement Theory” that posits American Jews are paying their agents in business, government, and society to hire Black, brown, and queer people and women to replace white men.

Additionally, when Trump tweeted out his Anders Breivik quote about saving the country and thus violating no laws, Musk retweeted it with 14 American flag emojis. These guys aren’t subtle because they don’t have to be; they know any American media that calls them out will either be attacked as paranoid or they’ll simply say it was a joke or misunderstanding.

But their followers know exactly what they’re saying, and why. Just like they understood that Trump’s birther crap was really his way of saying, “Hey, white people, have you noticed that guy in the White House is Black? We can’t tolerate that!”

And they also clearly heard the dog whistle when he came down the escalator and attacked brown-skinned immigrants. Or when he claimed the Potomac crash was because the helicopter pilot was a woman hired “because of DEI.”

Or when Trump offered refugee status to white South Africans, but not to Black or Indian South Africans.

There’s so much evidence of Trump’s and Musk’s apartheid leanings, it’s pretty much impossible to deny any longer. Which raises the question: Is our media in with the Nazis, or just committed to Not-Seeing them?

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AN 2 25

'Inaccuracies' on DOGE website suggest Trump admin is taking credit for cuts they did not make

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5.5 MIL LEFT ON CONTRACT

Busted: DOGE took credit for canceling $8 billion contract — but it was really $8 million

Utter incompetence': Federal agency rehires crucial workers after 'accidentally' firing them — again

AN 2 25

'Outrageous lies': Trump floats kicking millions off of Social Security

150 YO GET SS DO NOT GET COBOL 1875

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RWW

02/18/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

A Trump administration personnel official says Musk has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions.”

TRUMP LIARS SIAD IN AFFIDAVIT TO TANYA CHUTKIN

While Trump’s first administration was heavily influenced by traditional Republican figures, his second one is far more influenced by a burgeoning new establishment — a very online one.

Jesse Watters appeared to let the cat out of the bag Monday afternoon during an episode of The Five, revealing precisely how the pro-Trump MAGA media ecosystem effectively operates. But while he may not have intended to, his description ended up being a pretty stunning indictment of Fox News’ standing as a news outlet along the way.

State Sen. David Bullard wants to force the Bible into classrooms. He just doesn't want atheist teachers having a say in how it's taught.

The Trump administration is harassing Romania about easing up on the far-right misogynist accused of sex trafficking.

In a Friday livestream, white Christian nationalist Joel Webbon and his co-hosts complained about women having abortions, using birth control, and holding positions of power. Webbon also declared that when Christian nationalists take control, “at least for the next 50 years in all Western countries, there will be no female leadership ever in any sphere of human society whatsoever.”

On Saturday afternoon, during Presidents Day weekend, the twice-impeached president and convicted felon was, to his credit, honest about it: He believes he’s allowed to break any law he wants.

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MMA

Fox News' Jeanine Pirro attacks federal employees who “think they're entitled to a job”

02/18/25

Dan Bongino says people need to “take it on the chin” and “sacrifice for a little bit” for Trump’s policies

:{02/18/25

Angelo Carusone on Deadline White House: MAGA media personalities are trying to intimidate judges and justices to get their way

02/18/25

:{:{February 17, 2025 edition of MSNBC's *Deadline: White House}:

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): if you go back to what the hardcore base has been pickled in and you sort of place it against what is wildly unpopular with the general public, including Republican voters, including people who voted for Donald Trump ostensibly for change, annihilating all of the post-Watergate reforms is high on that list.

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Yeah, I mean that is, that is one of the defining characteristics, not just of Project 2025, but some of the key figures that came in, Russ Vought being principal among them, which is that we need to reset on all the post-Watergate norms and that a lot of these things, and again we say norms instead of laws because a lot of what we're talking about here, some of these things are laws and practices, but a lot of the stuff that they really want to target and that they're targeting first is are the norms, basically sort of a new way of saying.

OK, that's the way we're going to operate, you know, and that's just how it's going to be. It's a better way to function. It's sort of like, you know, not screaming when the elevator door closes. There's no law that says you shouldn't scream when you're in a crowded elevator, but it's not nice, and most people would find it appalling, and we just don't do it, you know, I mean, that's just, it's kind of a norm. It's a basic one, but it is. And there's a lot of those. That's how we all kind of function.

They want those all gone. And to me the revealing part here is, you know, when you think about it from the Supreme Court perspective. And this also ties we were talking about earlier with the IRS. You know, the Supreme Court can be a laggard or a vanguard when it comes to establishing sort of, you know, order and laws and interpretations of it. They can, they can drive social change, which is very rare, but they can do it in monumental instances, and we remember those Supreme Courts that do it. They can also be a laggard, meaning everything else kind of changes around them and they just kind of finally enshrine it.

What we haven't really seen before is a Supreme Court that’s s a vanguard for centralizing power and rolling back so much progress in this way, it's very rare and usually they get dinged for that when they do take those actions and where it ties in with this IRS stuff and what we're seeing online and the sort of the right wing rage is that there is a consistent and persistent attack on judges right now that do even the most basic thing that could be perceived as anti-Trump or thwarting the Trump's agenda or putting speed bumps in. Even if it's entirely you know, benign.

They're ripping them apart on X and on social media. They're digging through their files. They're digging through their family members, and they're creating sort of this larger cloud around them which is designed to work the heads of the individual judges, but it's also in the minds of the Supreme Court because when you start to think about it, you say, gosh, we really need to be careful here that we don't step too far in one direction or the other. We certainly don't want to aggravate the Trump base. This may not be the best time, you know, we should probably hold off.

I'm worried that that part of that working of the refs landscape is going to further poison the well and incentivize them to be vanguards in helping reestablish and reassert this sort of concept of a unitary executive and just accelerate the removal of so many of the norms that have really been helping preserve a lot of our basic, you know, civic and democratic functions.

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MMA

February 18, 2025, edition of The Dan Bongino Show, streamed on Rumble

DAN BONGINO (HOST): Watch yesterday's show if you think I’m BS-ing you. I covered Wall Street Journal segments and other segments where some Republican lawmakers are like, “Hey, that cutting's great, but don’t cut anything in my district.” I saw someone — I liked a tweet saying today, they tweeted to their lawmaker: “Hey, Dan Bongino’s right. Everybody is going to take a little bit of a kick in the stomach here.” Everyone. There’s going to be a weapons program in your district. There’s going to be some NGO a friend-of-a-friend may work for. Ladies and gentlemen, you want the — you want to be statesmen in the spirit of our revolutionary forefathers who gave up everything to fight the world's greatest empire at the time — the British Empire? We’re just asking you to sacrifice for a little bit for the long-term prosperity of the United States. Now’s the time. We are never going to be in a golden age of politics again like we are in the next year and 11 months now. We have two freaking years. We’re all going to take it on the chin a little bit. Rich guys, poor guys, middle class guys, someone’s going to lose their tax cut. It is time to take it on the chin. We have to fix this thing now, not tomorrow.

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MMA FEVER SWAMP EXPLAN

February 17, 2025 edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Back to Project 2025 which was so wildly unpopular that Donald Trump said he had never heard of it. After deporting people in this country illegally who committed violent crimes, you have a majority of Americans who oppose everything else, majority of Americans oppose retribution if it means that FBI agents are purged or prosecutors are purged, and the IRS having more reach and having more political people with more fingers and grubby hands on your personal data is almost universally opposed.

What is going on?

ANGELO CARUSONE: Yeah, I mean, and Project 2025 sort of teed this up. Their proposal for sort of getting to where we are right now was to, and the objective, and that's the thing, the objectives were stated pretty clearly, which was to increase the politicization of the IRS so that it could be another instrument of revenge, and that's the important thing to consider here.

:{:{A lot of these initial actions are as much about sort of aggregating and consolidating power as possible, but the through line, the part that he's appealing to and It's not the majority of Americans, it's the most intense sort of fervent part of Americans that have been pickled in misinformation and rage for decades. That’s who he’s appealing to here. That’s why he announced his campaign in Waco which is a site of an attack against the government, it’s a symbol.}:

It’s to say we are going to be revenge. And so part of it was to turn the IRS into that and what they were proposing was adding in additional appointees into the IRS. It’s one of the agencies that has very few. I think it’s one or two, they wanted to add an additional seven and that was to help politicize it to speed it along. And what DOGE provides and it provides it not in this context but also more broadly, is essentially an accelerant for Project 2025's objectives and policies and that's that's really the difference maker here is that something that was already going to move at breakneck speed is actually going to speed up quite a bit.

And the other part that’s illuminating – why the IRS, why this data, what’s the point? Sarah sort of got to it about a bunch, when she was talking about how it could be weaponized and deployed and as a tool to shrink civic spaces. And so to really understand why they were going after the IRS in Project 2025 and now it’s that you have to look at it from the perspective of somebody that has been sitting in the right-wing fever swamps for a while. And if you have been, if you’re a consumer of the same kind of content Trump consumes every day what you believe is that there’s a massive conspiracy by liberal billionaires and the deep state to fund protesters, to feed, to fuel the deep state attacks on you, to turn the IRS into an instrument of revenge against conservatives over the past few years.

So what this is designed to do is validate those falsehoods and then operationalize them. And that’s the scary part.

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uc students publ cit sue over dept of ed; trump sec sponsor deiA 2 day wkshop, now ppl fired for going admin leave devos

AN 2 25

A short-term loss by Democratic state attorneys general may turn into a long-term win, according to a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

On Tuesday, Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney tweeted that Chutkan refused to grant the plaintiffs — which included attorneys general from 14 states — the temporary restraining order (TRO) that they requested in the suit. However, she left the door open for an injunction in the future if plaintiffs returned to court and altered their request for relief.

Chutkan acknowledged in the 10-page ruling that centabillionaire Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which is not yet a Congressionally authorized federal agency) have created "considerable uncertainty and confusion for Plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents," and called its actions "unpredictable." But she sided against the attorneys general, saying the "possibility" of harm was "not enough" for a TRO.

READ MORE:'Ridiculous': Federal judge torches Trump DOJ lawyer over military 'pronoun use'

"It remains 'uncertain' when and how the catalog of programs that Plaintiffs identify will suffer," Chutkan wrote. "That said, Plaintiffs raise a colorable Appointments Clause claim with serious implications. Musk has not been nominated by the President nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate, as constitutionally required for officers who exercise 'significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.'"

The "Appointments Clause" Chutkan referenced is in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which grants a president "Power, with Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States." Because Musk is classified as a "special government employee" who was never appointed to an official role and confirmed by the Senate, Chutkan suggested that the South African billionaire may be challenged in other ways that could prove fruitful for plaintiffs.

"Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight," she wrote. "In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this Court acts within the bounds of its authority."

Musk's DOGE employees recently gained access to millions of Americans' sensitive data from both the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration (SSA). Acting SSA administrator Michelle King — who President Donald Trump appointed to the role on the first day of his second term — resigned over the weekend after refusing to hand over data to DOGE.

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AN 2 25

One of the longest tenured members of the U.S. Senate is now suggesting Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is more powerful than all of Congress.

According to a Tuesday report in Politico, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Musk and his "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE (which Congress has not yet made an official federal agency) is free to make sweeping changes to how federal money is spent and that the legislative branch has no ability to interfere.

"Congress can’t do anything except complain about it," Grassley told RadioIowa, arguing that DOGE's actions fall under the umbrella of the executive branch.

READ MORE:'Kick the bucket at any moment': GOPer worried about Trump entrusting agenda to 91 year-old

"This is an executive branch decision that, who works for the executive branch is determined by the president of the United States,” the Iowa Republican continued. “The Constitution says all executive power of the federal government shall be vested, and that’s the word that’s used, vested in the office of the presidency.”

While Grassley is correct in that Article II of the U.S. Constitution designates certain powers to the executive branch, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly grants the power of the purse to Congress. Specifically, the nation's founding documents grants the legislative branch the "Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."

Despite arguing that he couldn't stop DOGE's budget cuts and the administration's mass firings of federal workers, the Judiciary Committee chairman offered his sympathies for longtime federal employees who lost their jobs. He called it "a tragedy for people that are getting laid off."

"Going out looking for a job after having a job for 10 years is not an easy thing to do," Grassley told RadioIowa.

READ MORE:GOP senator slammed after urging Trump work around law to 'make president's job easier'

Click here to read Politico's full report,, and click here to read Grassley's comments to RadioIowa.

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AN NO LNX

'Gotta be kidding': Jim Jordan scrambles as he's confronted over Musk 'double standard'

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) listens to House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. James Comer (R-KY) during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on "The Urgent Need to Address the Gun Violence Epidemic," on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2022.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Matt Laslo and Raw Story February 18, 2025

WASHINGTON — What emails?

That’s the mood from congressional Republicans these days as allegations of private servers and accessing sensitive, private data swirl about this White House.

In 2016 alone, House Republicans issued more than 70 subpoenas or investigative inquiries into Hillary Clinton and her private server.

Many of those same Republicans are now shrugging off fears that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency — a.k.a. DOGE — are flouting government protocols while scouring government databases in their effort to purge federal workers.

But Republicans are about to have a reckoning. Last summer the Supreme Court gave this Congress homework — work policymakers on Capitol Hill haven’t had to do in the past 40 or so years: Write precise rules and regulations instead of leaning on experts in federal agencies to flesh out the policy specifics after Congress passes a bill.

It’s unclear if the contemporary Congress is up to the serious task of policymaking, especially the 119th Congress, which is brimming with technophiles focused on clicks, viral videos and digital dunking.

In the month since Trump took his oath of office, critics say, instead of standing up for Congress and flexing the new powers the Supreme Court bestowed on the institution, congressional Republicans have all but surrendered their oversight responsibilities as they’ve ceded unprecedented power to President Donald Trump and his billionaire sidekick, Elon Musk.

All this talk of a ‘constitutional crisis’ may be a tad premature. What’s certain is America’s in the midst of a congressional crisis — one the current Congress may not be able to withstand.

In more than a dozen exclusive interviews, Republicans on Capitol Hill tell Raw Story not to rule Congress out yet, even as critics fear there’s not going to be much power left for legislators to reclaim with the GOP ceding so much legislative turf to Trump and DOGE at the start of this new administration.

“I'm delighted”

Several Republicans who spoke to Raw Story are cheering for Musk and Trump to dismantle the very federal government set up by Congress in recent years and decades.

“Do you worry that you guys are ceding a little too much power?” Raw Story asked Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) while walking through the Capitol.

“Well, I hate to say this, but the only way it's going to happen, in my opinion, is if we let them do it the way they're doing it. Otherwise, it won't get done. So I'm delighted,” Lummis — who was a member of the far-right, Constitution-wagging Freedom Caucus when she served in the House — told Raw Story. “I mean, really, really delighted with the way that Trump is allowing the DOGE people to audit.”

Team Trump is set on upending, dismantling, overhauling or outright deleting government websites, grants, programs, agencies, protocols and even federal employees themselves.

The courts are now dealing with an onslaught of legal challenges to this new MAGA administration. All those cases will take time to wind through the judiciary, but the Supreme Court’s already spoken.

Last June, the Supreme Court issued new, norm-upending marching orders to Congress when, in a 6-3 ruling, the majority of justices overturned a pivotal, if wonky, 1984 decision when the Roberts Court obliterated the so-called Chevron doctrine, which enabled experts in federal agencies to write rules and regulations never explicitly spelled out by Congress.

That means, Congress’ crutch is gone. It remains unclear if lawmakers will be able to stand on their own and master the jot and tittle of measures they send to the president’s desk.

But for now, at least, Republican majorities on Capitol Hill seem fine outsourcing the legislative branch’s powers to Trump and his White House.

“We're witnessing the collapse of a lot of constitutional boundaries”

In spite of claiming otherwise, DOGE and its unelected leader, Elon Musk, are so opaque, it’s unclear just how their tech is set up. But IT experts say they seem to be operating their own, non-governmental server.

While a case winds through federal courts, Republicans on Capitol Hill are fine with giving Musk, basically, whatever he wants.

“Like, with Musk, I was playing back the tape, you guys were really hard on Hillary for her server,” Raw Story recently pressed House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH). “Is there a double standard here?”

“No, not a double standard. I mean, Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, after the policy decisions that administration made led to — and security decisions that the administration made — led to the deaths of Americans in Benghazi, Libya,” Jordan — the second most senior Republican on the Oversight Committee — told Raw Story. “And then we find out 60,000 emails, and she destroyed, like, 30,000 of them. You gotta be kidding me.”

“So just having the server isn’t the problem?” Raw Story pressed.

“Right. Musk isn't destroying anything,” Jordan said. “He just wants to know where your money’s being spent.”

Democrats agree on one point. They say there’s literally no comparing ‘her emails’ to the work Musk’s conducting in secret.

“No, the two are not comparable, in that Elon is in a class by himself. It's not just the server, but the unfettered power that Trump’s given him,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) told Raw Story. “But I think it's important in talking about him to remember, everything he does is empowered by Trump. Good cop, bad cop.”

To congressional Republicans, Trump and Musk are both playing good cop.

“I'm amazed,” Jordan said. “The Trump administration is up to the most intense and focused start of any administration, certainly in my lifetime. I think the American people appreciate the focused, intense, on-offense type of start to this administration.”

“Are you afraid that Congress could be ceding a little bit of its authority — too much of its authority — to the White House and an unelected official?” Raw Story asked.

“No. I think you have this focused effort by DOGE to identify stupid things that the federal government’s spending money on,” Jordan said. “And I think when the American people see that, they're like, ‘Well, that's ridiculous. Of course, we need to change that.’”

Democrats aren’t surprised by much these days. Still, many are astounded watching GOP leaders on Capitol Hill outsource their legislative responsibilities to officials across the Trump administration set on canceling decade’s worth of congressional work — from bipartisan foreign aid programs to nonpartisan domestic food assistance programs.

“There's a shameful abdication of legislative power and responsibility by the GOP majority to the executive branch and the executive branch's lawless delegate,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) — a constitutional scholar by trade — told Raw Story. “We're seeing tremendous erosion of our constitutional edifice.”

Raskin finds the blurred lines between Musk’s work at DOGE and the billions of dollars in federal contracts his companies, like SpaceX, receive beyond troubling.

“We're witnessing the collapse of a lot of constitutional boundaries,” Raskin — the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee — said. “You know, we have this extraordinary convergence of governmental power with corporate power to the extent that a major federal contractor collecting billions from the taxpayers is now also a federal government employee purporting to oversee federal spending.”

Unlike Trump’s first administration, today’s Trump-centric GOP is unified at the Capitol, at least when it comes to oversight, which Raskin says isn’t taking place in spite of Republican rhetoric claiming otherwise.

“They keep talking about, you know, what a great job Elon Musk is doing on oversight when we have an Oversight Committee. The Judiciary Committee has an oversight subcommittee. All of Congress is supposed to be doing oversight as a central part of our responsibility,” Raskin said. “And so instead, they want one, you know, unvetted government contractor to be doing oversight over federal contracts. It's ridiculous.”

It’s not just the lack of oversight. Republicans on Capitol Hill are now Musk’s biggest cheerleaders.

“Everybody sorta ran on the same stuff”

Republicans refute claims they’re laying down on the job. Instead, they argue today’s GOP is in lockstep with the Trump White House.

“What do you view as your guy's role in this Congress?” Raw Story asked Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ). “Is it oversight of the executive, or is it working in tandem because you all are so aligned?”

“I don't know of anybody here who ran away from the president in their campaign. You know what I mean?” the former Freedom Caucus chair told Raw Story. “So everybody sorta ran on the same stuff that included reducing spending, continuing tax cuts, planning for security, that inflation would be dealt with by reducing spending — you know, the whole thing.”

So, instead of passing new measures to bolster the Trump administration’s prerogatives, Republicans are sitting back and enjoying the rowdy show just down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“We're going to do those mandates. We view it as a voter mandate, which gives us a mandate,” Biggs said. “So we move, we work together.”

Besides made-for-TV flurries of executive action from Trump and Musk, there’s not that much working together going on. As each day passes, the threat of a government shutdown increases ahead of the current funding deadline, March 14.

Instead of conducting formal oversight on the administration — like the GOP conducted at the end of the Obama administration and throughout the Biden administration — many Republicans now say their job is to oversee taxpayer dollars. Thus, Republicans say they’re in lockstep with Trump, Musk and DOGE.

“The oversight role still continues, though,” Biggs said. “It's not a new idea to have an independent third party, you know, looking into something like this, so our oversight is to make sure that we know where the dollars are going, just like we've been trying to do for the last — ever since I got here.”

“Now Democrats, they say you guys are just puppets for Musk and Trump,” Raw Story pressed. “You all see it differently?”

“No, that's not true,” Biggs said. “That's kind of a talking point narrative that they're trying to build on, because they don't have jack squat on policy.”

Republicans remain light on policy themselves. That’s despite the new Supreme Court mandate — when it struck down the ‘Chevron doctrine’ last summer — that Congress get serious about writing legislation instead of leaning on federal agencies to think for Congress.

Don’t tell DOGE…

The day’s quickly approaching when Trump will run out of executive orders to sign, and he’ll need Congress to send him actual bills to sign into law.

Lawmakers are braced. Their jobs — or, at the very least, those of their staff — have already gotten noticeably harder since Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s conservatives upended the precedent set in the 1984 Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council decision.

“I haven't thought of it that way. I do think it's put an extra burden on us,” Sen. Lummis — the Wyoming Republican who used to be on the Freedom Caucus — said. “It ramps up our drafting. We're more detailed about our drafting because Chevron.”

It’s not just making drafting legislation more meticulous: it seems to be melding lawmakers from the president’s own party with the very federal agencies lawmakers are supposed to oversee.

“Just more hard work. And it is all specifically geared towards Chevron, but I can't really say that it has affected the relationship between the legislative and executive branch, yet,” Lummis said. “It might, but more the agency level than the White House level. You know, the agencies we work with.”

But soon, the agencies won’t be much assistance as this Congress will be required to stand on its own.

“The Supreme Court said, ‘Hey, you guys gotta do your job,’” Raw Story reminded Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).

“I think we're early in trying to figure out how to mechanically put all that in place,” Roy told Raw Story at the Capitol. “Like, I think, honestly, a lot of what DOGE is doing and what Elon's doing, we've got to embrace and put in our own orbit in Congress.”

While Musk, Trump and many rank-and-file Republicans are promising some $2 trillion in federal budget cuts, Roy and a handful of other Republicans argue increased funding is needed now to save money in the long run.

Roy argues efforts to cut Congress’ own budget — legislative branch appropriations, to be precise — are misguided, because expertise is needed to upend the administrative state legislatively.

“Guys that are always wanting to slash and burn [legislative] branch approps, I’m like, ‘You got to have your own,’” Roy said. “You’ve got to understand in a post-Chevron world, we got to be able to do our jobs. We need to have, certainly, in some organized fashion — I'm not sure every office has to be beefed up — but our ability to be able to have overview and constraint.”

Roy says that’s where Republicans are rooting for Musk most.

Instead of the time it takes to investigate and then issue a formal report or to “have somebody come testify,” Roy believes the technology-driven Silicon Valley approach will leave a lasting imprint on on not just the executive branch but Congress itself.

“Look, with technology now, I mean, what Elon’s showing — whether you love him or you don’t — the ability to use algorithms and computers and AI to go pore over the government and expose all of the horse crap that we've all been seeing, that we have observed,” Roy said.

“Democrats say you guys are puppets of Musk and Trump,” Raw Story pressed. “But you guys don't see it that way?”

“No — at all, actually,” Roy said. “So far, what I've seen is the president empowering an individual to root through the crap and expose it…and I think this will now empower Congress in the future — both sides of the aisle — to be able to go forward and pore over all of this crap.”

“Because, essentially, when you do spending bills, you'll fill in some of the things that they're currently doing?” Raw Story asked.

“Correct,” Roy said. “But we're going to need to be able to use those same tools and have input and/or build out our own.”

The steady stream of complaints flowing from the left is mere white noise to congressional Republicans these days.

“I think the hyperbole coming from the Democrats is simply because they lost and all of their little pet programs that they've loved for years are going away,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told Raw Story. “That is fear-mongering. The same fear-mongering that had them ignore the reality of the southern border, and it is why they lost, not just the Senate, That's why they lost the White House.”

Republicans may have won in November, but Democrats say they’re already squandering their newfound populist appeal at the feet of unelected billionaires, like when Musk backed a government shutdown during Congress’ last funding fight in December.

“They have a chance to succeed on, like, big issues that they ran on, but if they're gonna do this nonsense, it'll all fall down on them,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told Raw Story earlier this winter after Democrats came to Republicans’ rescue and funded the government.

POT HED: MAGA Effect: “It's a different party, in so many ways”

The MAGA-mandate may be nebulous, but to card-carrying club members, part of their job is to dismantle American conservatism — or what became of it in recent neocon saturated decades — itself.

“Is part of the mandate also to upend the Republican Party of old?” Raw Story asked the House Judiciary chair.

“It just happens. It's a different party in so many ways,” Jordan told Raw Story. "Someone said this a few years ago, you know, 'We're no longer the wine and cheese party. We're a beer and blue jeans party.' And so we're much more, I think, a working-class, middle-class-focused party."

“I always say, we make the job too complicated. Job's pretty simple. We just tell the voters what you were gonna do when you ran for it. If you get elected, go do what you said. President Trump does that better than anyone,” Jordan said. “But when you have someone whose, like, singular purpose and focus is to identify that and say, ‘We need to stop this’ — that's a good thing.”

Democrats are still regrouping after their party’s stunning defeat in November, but they see one sliver of an opening — one many predict will only grow in the coming months — as they watch this, supposedly, populist president pal around with billionaires.

“He's good at taking care of people who can afford to join Mar-a-Lago, so that's, like, his crowd, whether it be a tax bill or whether it be for who he's bringing in the administration,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) told Raw Story. “It's just very different than what we've been used to, where you bring in experts in areas. Instead, he just brings in fellow rich people.”

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According to the Washington Post, as many as 200,000 federal workers may be fired because of efforts by the Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to greatly downsize the United States' federal government. And the criticism of their efforts is coming not only from Democrats, but also, from voices on the right.

Former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pennsylvania), during a February 17 appearance on MSNBC, slammed Trump and DOGE for carrying out mass government layoffs in a "haphazard" way. And the next morning, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough (a Never Trump conservative and ex-GOP congressman) argued that while government "waste" needs to be reduced and the U.S. needs to balance its federal budget, the Trump Administration and DOGE are recklessly jeopardizing "food safety" and "air safety."

The Guardian's George Monbiot also fears that Trump's second term could trigger some type of major crisis.

READ MORE:George Conway: Trump’s 'pathological narcissism' is fueling 'full-scale' DOJ 'revolt'

In a February 18 opinion column, Monbiot lays out a variety of frightening scenarios and offers some tips for surviving a worst-case scenario.

"Though we might find it hard to imagine," Monbiot warns, "we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure…. A financial crisis in the U.S. would immediately become a global crisis."

Monbiot continues, "But the hazards extend much further. Musk, calling for a 'wholesale removal of regulations,' sends his child soldiers to attack government departments stabilizing the entire U.S. system. Regulations, though endlessly maligned by corporate and oligarchic propaganda, are all that protect us from multiple disasters. In its initial impacts, deregulation is class war, hitting the poorest and the middle classes at the behest of the rich. As the effects proliferate, it becomes an assault on everyone's wellbeing."

The columnist warns that undermining regulatory government agencies could make everything from a pandemic to "future climate disasters" worse.

READ MORE:'Brutal': Ex-federal prosecutor reveals why Trump DOJ’s 'illegal order' was 'so corrupt'

"As Trump rips down environmental protections and trashes federal responsiveness," Monbiot explains, "the impacts will spiral. They could include non-linear shocks to either the insurance sector or homeowners, escalating into U.S.-wide economic and social crisis. If, or when, another pandemic strikes, which could involve a pathogen more transmissible and even more deadly than COVID-19 — which has so far killed 1.2 million people in the U.S. — it will hit a nation whose defenses have been stood down."

Monbiot urges Americans — as well as residents of the U.K., where The Guardian is published — by doing a lot of networking.

"So, though there is no substitute for effective government, we must seek to create our own backup systems," the Guardian columnist advises. "Start with this principle: don't face your fears alone. Make friends, meet your neighbors, set up support networks, help those who are struggling. Since the dawn of humankind, those with robust social networks have been more resilient than those without. Yes, we also — and urgently — need national and global action, brokered by governments. But it's beginning to look as if no one has our backs. Prepare for the worst."

READ MORE:John Roberts is to blame for Trump challenge of federal courts: analysis

*George Monbiot's full Guardian column is available at this link.

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Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former advisor, attacked Trump crony Elon Musk, saying his moves to cut the federal government are disrespectful to the country’s values. The comments were reported by UnHerd in an article posted Tuesday.

"Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and playact as God without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions," Bannon told UnHerd.

DOGE has made cuts at USAID, the Department of Education, and DEI programs.

READ MORE:'She was exactly right': Critics sound off as DOJ is rocked by 'yet another resignation'

"Musk is the one with power at the moment," Bannon said. "The Democrats are nowhere to be seen."

He also called Musk’s handling of the budget “performative.”

"DOGE is sitting there with the budget, but where the f--- are the DOGE cuts?" Bannon said. "We are 30 days away from approving a budget for the entire year with $2 trillion already baked in, and not one penny of anything that DOGE found. It's ludicrous."

READ MORE:**'Brutal': Ex-federal prosecutor reveals why Trump DOJ’s 'illegal order' was 'so corrupt'**

"There's hesitancy to take on the Pentagon," Bannon said, adding that he wants significant cuts. "I want $100 billion cut from its $900 billion budget—really a trillion."

“This is not the first time the 78-year-old strategist has attacked Musk's past. Bannon has gone as far as to call Musk a "racist," grouping him with other South African-born tech moguls, Peter Thiel and David Sacks, whom he accused of influencing U.S. politics without any real allegiance to the country,” Jesus Mesa writes at Newsweek.

Bannon pleaded guilty last week in a case involving defrauding people who donated to a private attempt at building a wall on the southern U.S. border.

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Millions of dollars meant to go toward feeding soldiers at U.S. Army bases are instead being redirected elsewhere, and it's unclear where those funds are going.

Military.com recently reported that more than $151 million out of $225 million in money contributed directly from service members' paychecks for food on bases — also known as a Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) payment — is not actually being spent for feeding troops. The outlet noted that it only examined BAS payments at the 11 largest bases, meaning that the actual dollar amount of redirected food budgets is likely far higher given that the Army operates 104 garrisons.

One of the most striking examples was at Fort Stewart in Georgia, where only $2.1 million out of $17 million in BAS payments went toward providing meals for soldiers, meaning 87% of troops' food money was redirected. And while Schofield Barracks in Hawaii took $14.5 million from troops' checks for food, only $5.3 million actually went toward feeding service members.

READ MORE:Pentagon in disarray as leaked Trump orders confound the troops

"Stealing food money from our soldiers is not how we achieve military readiness," Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) told Military.com. "The fact that at least $151 million was collected from soldiers and not spent on food as required demands not just an immediate investigation, but swift accountability."

The problem of soldiers not being fed sufficiently has persisted for several years, according to the outlet. At Fort Carson in Colorado last November, soldiers reported being fed just a slice of toast and a portion of lima beans. And in the summer of 2023, Military.com reported only two of 10 dining halls at Fort Cravazos in Texas were operational, which resulted in many soldiers "struggling to find meals."

Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston — who is the top enlisted member of the Army — reportedly attempted to revamp troops' meals to more closely resemble those fed to professional athletes. This included efforts to incorporate fresh protein shakes and healthier food options only to meet bureaucratic snags. Instead, bases invested more in "kiosks," which replaced hot meals cooked by food vendors on site with pre-packaged snacks and pre-made sandwiches akin to gas station deli meals high in sugar and low in protein.

Army spokesperson Major Andrea Kelly told the outlet that the food budgets are based on headcount at mess halls on base, which has been dwindling amid complaints of low-quality food, undercooked meat, a lack of seasoning and unhealthy options. This means less money is spent as fewer troops eat at mess halls. However, Military.com reported that former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) made an inquiry about BAS payments not going toward soldiers' meals before the Covid-19 pandemic, which went unacknowledged with no follow-up.

READ MORE:'Huge mistake': GOP senator trashes Trump's proposal to turn Army into deportation force

Click here to read Military.com's full report.

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READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife an 2 25

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'Time to think of Plan B': Musk ripped after forcing out Social Security chief

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fail fired nuke security, does not have info to recall

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Trump’s Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, pushed a claim Monday on Fox News that there may be many dead people receiving Social Security payments. Experts have pushed back against that idea, which has come from Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, indicating that the numbers are off or misinterpreted.

“President Trump has directed Elon Musk and the DOGE team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration. They haven’t dug into the books yet, but they suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments,” she said.

“And so their goal in going into the Social Security Administration is to identify three things. Number one, to identify duplicate payments and to end them. Number two, to identify payments that are going to deceased people who are no longer living and should no longer be receiving that money, and number three, to protect the integrity of this system for hard working Americans who have been paying into it their entire lives.

READ MORE:Author details link between 'Christian nationalism' and MAGA’s 'smashing of the administrative state'

“There are maybe hundreds of deceased people receiving fraudulent benefits, not tens of millions. There are about 70 million people TOTAL receiving Social Security — does anyone really think one third+ of them are dead???” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, posted on X.

Over the weekend, Musk posted a table supposedly showing that the Social Security database has millions of people in it over the age of 140.

“What's especially frustrating about Musk making it seem as if millions of Social Security checks might be going out to people aged 100+ is that we know how many Social Security checks went out in December to people aged 99+: 89,106,” journalist James Surowiecki posted on X. He added: “89,106 is, as it happens, fewer than the number of centenarians in the U.S., as estimated by the Census. So we are, again, not sending out billions in SS checks to people aged 130.”

Ninety-eight percent of social security number holders who are age 100 or older do not receive benefits, Justin Wolfers, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, explained on X. “Why are there dead people on (this one table of) the social security database? They died before the use of electronic death records,” he added.

READ MORE:'Time to think of Plan B': Musk ripped after forcing out Social Security chief

“Should government databases be cleaner? It's a cost-benefit question. Cost: $5-10m to clean out the old records Benefit: Only "limited benefit" because "almost none" of these records are receiving payments. This hardly feels like big potatoes, either way,” he explained.

At Wired, David Gilbert wrote: “Computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure,” or the idea that 150-year-olds were collecting Social Security, “was not evidence of fraud, but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written inCOBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.” He added: “COBOL is rarely used today, and as such, Musk’s cadre of young engineers may well be unfamiliar with it.”

“Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit paymentswhen anyone reaches the age of 115,” Gilbert wrote.

“When everything they say is designed to mislead, you're left to wonder why,” Wolfers wrote.READ MORE:Lawmaker vows 'strong resistance' if Musk agency recommends Social Security or Medicare cuts

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DOGE and Elon Musk, who may or may not be leading the arm of the White House, has drawn concern for trying to access Americans’ personal data at the IRS. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who is on the DOGE subcommittee, and CNN’s Pamela Brown had a heated discussion about his role cutting the federal government Tuesday morning. During this conversation Burchett compared young staffers at DOGE to World War II soldiers.

“Congress better get some guts and start backing [DOGE] up, or the next president could undo everything that's done. And that is really my biggest fear. I don't care what title you give Elon Musk,” Burchett said.

The conversation continued.

READ MORE:USAID refuses to Medevac employee's pregnant wife with 'life-threatening condition': lawsuit

“Hey, hold on for a second,” Burchett said.

“Okay,” Brown said.

“How many people at the IRS are elected?” Burchett asked.

“Okay,” Brown said.

READ MORE:George Conway: Trump’s 'pathological narcissism' is fueling 'full-scale' DOJ 'revolt'

“You’re proving my point. All these people are there. This is a very porous agency,”

“There's a difference between civil service and checks and balances, in place of a small group and politicals who are going in, many of them young staffers who we know nothing about, really.”

Burchett compared the young staffers at DOGE to U.S. soldiers.

“Those are Japanese rifles,” he said, referring to rifles on his wall. “Guess what? My dad was 20, 21, years old when he killed the people that carried that you all don't question the fact that, you know we've with these 20, 22, year old people, the ones that fight our daggum wars.”

READ MORE:'It’s unusual': Trump’s DOJ does an about-face on voting rights cases

“There's a difference between members of the greatest generation… risking their life to serve our country, and young staffers going in with their computers and trying to get access to personal data. There is a big difference.”

The conversation continued, and eventually Brown cut him off.

“All right, we’re going to leave it there,” Brown said.

Watch the video below or at this link:

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gmail

*in partnership with The Guardian.

In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.

This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.

The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.

It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.

Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.

Pledge your support

The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.

The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.

Close ties to world’s richest man

The Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.

The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.

The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.

The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.

Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.

Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.

The Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.

The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.

Pledge your support

In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.

A detour into third-party ballot access

The Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.

Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.

Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.

Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.

The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.

The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.

Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”

The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.

For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.

The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.

In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.

You’re on the free list for*The Shakedown

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House Republicans advanced their budget plan out of committee Thursday night after a 12-hour markup session during which they rejected dozens of Democratic amendments, including proposed changes that would have protected Medicaid and federal nutrition benefits from the deep cuts the GOP hopes to impose to help finance trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the richest Americans.

The House Budget Committee advanced the Republican resolution, unveiled earlier this week, in a 21-16 vote along party lines. Prior to the vote, GOP members agreed to adopt an amendment offered by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) that, according toPolitico, effectively caps "the cost of the tax cuts at $4 trillion, with a dollar-for-dollar increase in that ceiling if Republicans cut more spending, up to a total of $2 trillion in cuts."

Democrats on the panel offered more than 30 amendments to the budget resolution, all of which Republicans rejected.

"Each of our amendments was a direct effort to shield the American people from the reckless cuts embedded in this proposal, cuts that will hurt the most vulnerable while giving trillions of dollars of handouts to the ultra-rich," Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in his closing remarks at Thursday's hearing. "We fought to protect Medicaid and Medicare, ensuring that seniors, low-income families, children, and people with disabilities don't see their healthcare stripped away."

"We proposed amendments to maintain funding for public education, ensuring that schools remain adequately resourced and that teachers don't bear the burden of budget shortfalls," Boyle continued. "And we stood up for veterans who risked their lives for this country and deserve more than empty rhetoric. They deserve fully funded healthcare, food assistance, and the benefits they earned through their service. Yet, despite the clear benefits of these proposals, Republicans oppose all of them."

"Instead of choosing to protect the American people," he added, "they chose to protect billionaires and corporations."

"This isn't government of, by, and for the people; it's government of, by, and for billionaires."

The Republican budget blueprint calls for more than a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provide healthcare and food aid to tens of millions of low-income Americans.

"These aren't just numbers," Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, stressed in response to the House GOP resolution. "The loss of Medicaid means, for example, a parent can't get cancer treatment, and a young adult can't get insulin to control their diabetes. Cuts to food assistance mean a parent skips meals so their children can eat or an older person who lost their job has no way to buy groceries."

In addition to advancing the GOP's far-right ideological project, such cuts would partly offset the costs of Republicans' proposed tax breaks—which would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest people in the country, including the billionaires in President Donald Trump's Cabinet.

"Republicans are cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for tax breaks for the richest 1% of Americans," the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness wrote in a social media post on Thursday. "They are literally taking $1.1 TRILLION away from you, and giving it to the wealthiest people in the country."

IFrame Content

Thursday's vote marks a first step toward passage of a sprawling, filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package that will include a slew of Republican priorities.

But the House GOP must resolve its differences with Senate Republicans, who are pushing for two bills instead of one. The Senate plan, which Republicans advanced out of committee earlier this week, also calls for major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

"This Republican budget opens the door to massive cuts for families," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said Thursday. "Democrats on the committee offered amendment after amendment to protect healthcare, housing, and education—all of the foundations working families need to thrive—and Republicans blocked every single one of them, all to later divert those cuts into massive tax breaks for the richest Americans."

"This is the Great Betrayal," Merkley added. "Trump campaigned on protecting families, but President Trump and Senate Republicans are all about protecting their billionaire friends. This isn't government of, by, and for the people; it's government of, by, and for billionaires."

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FAIL? 150 YR OLD IS COBOL 1875 CODE

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The website for Elon Musk’s Department for Government Accountability, doge.gov — which tracks their cuts to the federal government — is not secure, 404 Media reported Friday. Musk has been leading a Trump-sanctioned push to slash agencies, freeze funding and lay off government workers.

The site “pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone,” writes 404 Media co-founder Jason Koebler. A website database stores and manages a site’s information.

Two database entries visible on the live site say: “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”

READ MORE:'Unthinkable': 'Massive layoffs at VA' as Trump tries to balance 'the budget on the back of veterans'

DOGE is “trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions—we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X, and to the DOGE website,” Musk told reporters Tuesday. The website, built out Wednesday and Thursday, has a feed that includes DOGE X posts and images of government contracts.

Koebler writes, “Two different web development experts who asked to remain anonymous because they were probing a federal website told 404 Media that doge.gov is seemingly built on a Cloudflare Pages site that is not currently hosted on government servers. The database it is pulling from can be and has been written to by third parties, and will show up on the live website.”

“Feels like it was completely slapped together,” one source said. “Tons of errors and details leaked in the page source code.”

READ MORE: 'Blob the Builder': Late-night hosts Meyers and Kimmel destroy Trump’s 'ridiculous' plans

Musk said Thursday that he could be cutting entire agencies.

"It's kind of like leaving a weed: If you don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back," he said at the 2025 World Governments Summit in Dubai. "But if you remove the roots of the weed it doesn't stop weeds from ever growing back, but it makes it harder."

404 Media reported Wednesday that another site, waste.gov, “was sitting live with a placeholder Wordpress default template page and sample text.” Now a password is needed to access the site.

mta 2 25 email

The actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed up by billionaire Elon Musk, has been among the most controversial of any following its creations by executive order. Exposing and resisting several major actions of DOGE are important. These include the multiple conflicts of interest between Musk and DOGE’s agency targets; efforts to gut agencies (e.g, USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Education Department and EPA), and cutting federal spending of DEI programs, National Institute of Health biomedical research and federal workers. On the horizon are eliminating scores of so-called “inefficient” federal regulations that hinder corporations.

People protest against President Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2025. Drew Angerer/AFP

At the root of DOGE’s mission, however, is to not simply reduce government size or even loot public spending (i.e. Musk has received billions in federal subsidies for Tesla, as well as tens of billions more in government contracts and programs). The ultimate goal of Musk/DOGE and reactionary right technocrats accomplices is the replacement of “democratic” government with a corporate state.

Access to the Treasury Department’s system that pays the nation’s bills is not only a concern about personal information and the potential to cut payments to people and entities. Of greater concern is what Mike Brock lays out in excruciating detail in The Plot Against America.

“Inside the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), teams of young tech operatives are systematically dismantling democratic institutions and replacing them with proprietary artificial intelligence systems. Civil servants who raise legal objections are being removed. Government databases are being migrated to private servers. Decision-making power is being transferred from elected officials and career bureaucrats to algorithms controlled by a small network of Silicon Valley elites…

“DOGE is not about efficiency. It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models. It is a coup, executed not with guns, but with backend migrations and database wipes.”

Brock goes on to explain the 16-year backstory, beginning with the 2008 financial crisis that led to not only massive financial hardship, but a significant loss of faith in financial and governmental institutions. Techno-libertarian ideologues began shifting their analysis that the ultimate problem was government regulation rather than democracy itself was unstable and inefficient. The solution was a technologically “rational” system, based on artificial intelligence, with governance privatized/corporatized. He explains the roles played by the Tea Party, Zero Hedge, InfoWars/Alex Jones, Steve Bannon and Silicon Valley in creating an anti-democratic alternative culture.

Techno-libertarian ideology gave way to “neoreactionary” ideology, which included the concept of “exiting” or opting out entirely of existing political structures.

“The pipeline from techno-libertarianism to neoreaction often follows a predictable path: It begins with a libertarian critique of government inefficiency and overreach. This evolves into a broader skepticism of all democratic institutions, seen as slow and irrational compared to the speed and logic of technology. Eventually, this leads to the conclusion that democracy itself is an outdated system, incompatible with rapid technological progress. The final step is embracing the idea that democracy should be replaced entirely with more ‘efficient’ forms of governance, often modeled on corporate structures or technological systems…

“This is precisely where libertarianism morphs into neoreaction. Instead of advocating for a constitutional republic with minimal government, this new strain of thought pushes for a private, post-democratic order, where those with the most resources and technological control dictate the rules. In this vision, power doesn’t rest with the people – it belongs to the most competent ‘executives’ running society like a CEO would run a company…

The rise of cryptocurrencies assumed a critical role in this evolution. Musk has been a huge influencer of cryptos, including Dogecoin. Trump’s executive order creating DOGE was a nod to Musk’s support of the meme coin.

Brock explains the connection of cryptocurrencies to this attempted anti-democratic techno-takeover: “What started as a tool for financial freedom became…the foundation for entirely new forms of governance outside traditional state structures. This transformation – from seeing crypto as a means of individual empowerment within existing systems to viewing it as a way to build entirely new political entities – mirrors the broader shift from techno-libertarianism to neo-reaction in Silicon Valley.”

People like Silicon Valley billionaire and J.D. Vance financial backer Peter Thiel “began to see cryptocurrency not just as a new financial instrument, but as a tool for fundamentally restructuring society…

“When Musk gains control of Treasury payment systems, or Trump declares he won't enforce laws he dislikes, they're implementing ideas incubated in the crypto world. The notion that code can replace democratic institutions, that technical competence should override democratic negotiation, and that private power should supersede public authority – these ideas moved from crypto theory to political practice…

“First, remove career officials who might resist on legal or constitutional grounds. Then, install private technical infrastructure that makes oversight impossible. The goal isn’t just to change who runs government agencies – it’s to fundamentally transform how power operates, shifting it from democratic institutions to technical systems controlled by a small elite…

“[T]hese thinkers argued that democracy was inefficient. Then, they created technological tools – cryptocurrency, blockchain governance, and AI-driven decision-making – to bypass democratic institutions entirely. Now, they’re no longer experimenting. They are seizing control of government infrastructure itself, reprogramming it in real-time to function according to their vision.

“This is why focusing solely on the technical aspects of what's happening inside agencies misses the deeper transformation underway. Every unauthorized server, every AI model, every removed civil servant represents another step in converting democratic governance into…a system where society is run like a corporation, with clear ownership and control rather than democratic deliberation. The infrastructure being built isn't meant to serve democratic ends – it's meant to make democracy itself obsolete…

“What’s happening inside the Department of Government Efficiency is the final phase of this plan. The old democratic institutions, weakened by years of deliberate destabilization, are being replaced in real-time by proprietary AI systems controlled not by elected officials, but by the same network of Silicon Valley operatives who engineered the crisis in the first place.”

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Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order handing an Elon Musk-led commission sweeping power to oversee federal hiring across non-military departments, entrenching what's been described as a "shadow government" spearheaded by an unelected billionaire.

The new order states that the leader of each non-military federal agency "shall develop a data-driven plan" in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), an advisory body that has infiltrated departments across the U.S. government—and accessed highly sensitive data—as part of an unprecedented effort to gut spending and the federal workforce.

"This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency's DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law," the order continues. "The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled."

The order also instructs agency directors to prepare for "large-scale" cuts to the federal workforce.

"It's a complete takeover of the federal government by Musk," investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr wrote in response to the executive action.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office with Musk at his side, Trump on Tuesday called the order "very important" and attacked federal judges who "want to try and stop us," alluding to court orders against DOGE's attempt to access vital government systems.

Musk, who is leading DOGE while simultaneously heading companies that are benefiting directly from his work inside the Trump administration, insisted he's not orchestrating a "hostile takeover" of the federal government, declaring that the public voted for "major government reform" and "they are going to get what they voted for."

The mega-billionaire also falsely claimed DOGE has been transparent as it rampages through the federal government.

"In reality," The Guardiannoted, "Musk has taken great pains to conceal how DOGE has operated, starting with his own involvement in the project. Musk himself is a 'special government employee,' which the White House has said means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public. The DOGE team involves about 40 staffers, but the actual number is not known. Staffers have tried to keep their identities private and refused to give their last names to career officials at the agencies they were detailed to."

Trump's latest executive order (EO) is poised to supercharge the Musk-led assault on and total dismantling of federal agencies, from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government," Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memowrote late Wednesday, adding that the order "seems to make Elon as head of DOGE functionally the president or perhaps something more like a prime minister."

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, warned in a statement that "this latest attack on public service gives Elon Musk, an unelected, hyper-partisan billionaire, unfettered authority over this country's civil service."

"People and communities across the nation depend on a non-partisan, committed civil service," said Perryman. "Democracy Forward will pursue all legal options available to protect our civil service and the American people from harms that would stem from this executive order."

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sotomayor

Supreme Court justice sounds alarm over executive power grab as Trump launches attack on judiciary

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Oregon’s Senate Republican leader shared debunked claims from a social media parody account about federal government spending in a state-issued email newsletter decrying “fear-mongering and misinformation.”

Sen. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, dedicated the first 400 words of his official legislative newsletter on Monday night to “cutting through the rhetoric” on several of President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders.

“There has been a lot of fear-mongering and misinformation on Trump’s recent executive orders,” Bonham wrote. “While I am not surprised, the rhetoric is absolutely counterintuitive to having intellectually honest policy discussions. Agree or disagree, seeking truth around these policy decisions is important.”

He proceeded to describe examples of “gross mismanagement” uncovered by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, a commission Trump created to slash federal spending. Bonham’s examples included more than half a billion dollars spent on sushi, hundreds of thousands on coffee and thousands on paper coffee cups — but those examples, which have spread like wildfire on conservative social media, aren’t real.

They originated with a Jan. 24, 2025, post on X, Musk’s social media company, by a user named “Not Elon Musk” that is clearly marked and reads as a parody account:

“Good morning X! My experience with DOGE has been totally wild so far. I told you yesterday about the $600 million per year the Pentagon was spending on Sushi…

Well, I just found another wild one! The Air Force was spending $1,280 per paper coffee cup! Like literally those ones you find at the office. $1280!!! We also found that $230k per month was being spent by the IRS on Starbucks Cinammon Roast K Cups, but everyone was working from home!

Anyway, back to work! Have a great day!”

Right-wing users spread those claims around the internet, posting on Facebook and TikTok but without the parody disclaimer.

And on Monday they made it to Bonham’s newsletter.

In an email to the Capital Chronicle, Bonham said he didn’t know those claims originated from a parody account. He said they’re minor compared to billions “squandered” by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which handles most overseas humanitarian aid.

“I’m not without fault, but I definitely didn’t pull it from a parody account,” he said. “Those examples were all over the internet — shared widely. Your question feels like a smoke and mirror attempt to not cover the real issue — the gross mismanagement of spending.”

The Air Force does have a history with expensive coffee cups, but they weren’t paper cups: In 2018, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pressed the agency for answers on why it spent nearly $1,300 apiece on special reheatable coffee cups that plugged into airplanes. The Air Force used them to heat coffee and soup on long flights and stopped buying them under congressional scrutiny in 2018, the Air Force Times reported.

After questions from the Capital Chronicle, Bonham sent his constituents a second newsletter on Wednesday morning, noting that he received questions about his analysis of federal spending. Moving forward, he wrote, he’ll use official government sources like USASpending.gov and the Government Accountability Office, as well as the nonprofit fiscally conservative watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

And this time, as Bonham decried spending he disagreed with — money for trans health care in Guatemala, purchases of Politico Pro’s legislation tracking and policy newsletters, and “improper” payments of the wrong amount or made to the wrong person — he cited his sources.

“The more I research the worse it gets,” he wrote. “On a positive note, while people are questioning sources of certain waste examples, more attention is brought to this glaring issue — and our nation will be better for it.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.

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$50 100?m condom gaza bomb ends up being mozambique? aids?

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msnbc maddow musk has fired bunch of IG agy eg neuralink abuse chimps, IG showed up for work, made to leave by sec; 13.5B in 5 yrs

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Musk will personally profit from dismantling consumer protection agency: Ex-CFPB Official

AN 2 25

Leaked filing shows Musk still getting new contracts while his team cancels other contracts

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Billionaire Mark Cuban goes to war with Musk's team: 'They don’t want anyone questioning'

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Although some of President Donald Trump's nominees enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Senate confirmation votes — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — others were confirmed along bipartisan lines.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth didn't receive a single Democratic vote, and three GOP senators joined Democrats in voting against him. But a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance got Hegseth, controversy and all, confirmed by a U.S. Senate consisting of 53 Republicans and 47 senators who are either Democrats or independents who caucus with Democrats (including Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King).

If all senators on the Democratic side vote against a Trump nominee, four GOP defections are needed. And three of Trump's most controversial nominees — Kash Patel for FBI director, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for director of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — appear to be on track for confirmation.

READ MORE:**'Mark my words': George Conway predicts alarming showdown**

According to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, GOP senators are facing intense pressure to confirm Trump's nominees — not only from Trump himself, but also, from Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X.com (formerly Twitter) and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

"GOP senators are terrified over the prospect of facing primary challengers funded by Elon Musk if they stick their necks out by opposing President Trump's agenda," Bolton reports. "The White House has signaled that Republicans who thwart Trump's agenda by voting against his controversial nominees or opposing efforts by Musk to freeze government funding and slash federal agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, will pay a political price. And that's a threat that carries a lot more weight when Musk, the world's richest person, could easily pour tens of millions of dollars into a Senate Republican primary."

GOP senators, according to Bolton, "have taken Musk's warning to heart."

A GOP senator, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Hill that Senate Republicans "who are close to an election" are "voting for certain nominees" because they fear primary challenges.

READ MORE:**Trump is already out gaming America's last line of defense**

The senator told The Hill, "The White House hasn't been too subtle about that. I think they've been fairly threatening."

A Democratic senator, also quoted anonymously, said of Musk, "They're all terrified of the power he's wielding right now."

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Steve Bannon, "War Room" host and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration, famously said that the MAGA movement's strategy is to "flood the zone with s---." The idea is to overwhelm and wear down opponents by creating chaos as often as possible.

In an article published on February 10, Salon's Chauncey DeVega argues that President Donald Trump is implementing a "strategy" of "chaos" — and it's working.

"President Trump and his MAGA Republicans and their forces are smashing American democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the institutions and norms," DeVega warns. "Trump has enacted over 50 executive orders since January 20, the most in a president's first 100 days in more than 40 years. Some of the most egregious ones are blatantly unconstitutional and violate current law."

READ MORE:**'Mark my words': George Conway predicts alarming showdown**

DeVega continues, "It has only been three weeks since Trump returned to power; these are the good times compared to what will come next…. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's strategy is chaos. Moreover, that chaos is in service to their shock and awe strategy to end America's pluralistic democracy and to replace it with a form of autocracy if not outright fascism modeled on Viktor Orbán's Hungary or Vladimir Putin's Russia with Trump as de facto leader for life."

The Salon journalist argues that the "resistance" to "American fascism's quick ascendance" is "pitiful" and shows a "profound failure of imagination." During the 2024 election, DeVega notes, Trump and his allies, "were direct, vocal, and public" in expressing their desire to create a country in which "plutocrats and kleptocrats and [w]hite Christian [n]ationalists and other [w]hite racial authoritarians are given free rein over American life."

"In many ways," DeVega laments, "the failure of imagination by the country's 'responsible' political leaders, the mainstream news media and the American public that empowered Trump and MAGA's ascendance is willful and negligent. For years, these so-called responsible voices repeatedly proclaimed that Donald Trump was done for after his first term in office after a coup attempt on January 6, twice impeached, multiple criminal and civil trials, a botched COVID response and an economy left in tatters. That did not happen."

DeVega adds, "These same 'responsible' and 'mainstream' voices also declared that there was no way that the Republican Party would nominate Trump to be its candidate in 2024, he is damaged goods with too much baggage — and the 'adults in the room' would step in and rise to the occasion. Again, this did not happen…. Donald Trump's autocracy is not a hypothetical or possibility far off in the future. It is here and now and very real. America's crisis and failure of imagination has been subsumed by a horrible reality — one that is not going away anytime soon."

READ MORE:**Trump is already out gaming America's last line of defense**

*Chauncy DeVega's full article for Salon is available at this link.

===

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He is the most lawless president in American history.

He’s allowed Musk’s rats unfettered access to the Treasury’s payments system. Banned birthright citizenship. Refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Closed independent agencies without Congress’s approval. Substituted political loyalists for civil servants. Unleashed the military on civilians. And on it goes.

Republican lawmakers won’t restrain him. In one of the most shameful apologia for dictatorship I’ve ever heard coming from a public official, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina admits that much of what Trump is doing “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” But, Tillis adds, “nobody should bellyache about that.”

We shouldn’t bellyache about Trump’s torching the Constitution?

As Trump’s marauding continues, America's last defense is the federal courts. But the big story here (which hasn’t received nearly the attention it deserves) is that the Trump-Vance-Musk regime is ignoring the courts.

On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

This is bonkers. In our system of government, it’s up to the courts to determine whether the president is using his power “legitimately,” not the president.

Consider Trump’s freeze on all federal spending. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to appropriate money, not the president.

So far, two federal judges have stopped Trump’s freeze, pending full hearings on the lawsuits. But Trump is ignoring these court decisions and continues to freeze funds Congress has appropriated, notwithstanding.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, says the freeze will continue even though Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has withdrawn the memo implementing it -- an Orwellian move that last week prompted U.S. District Judge AliKhan to reprimand the OMB.

“It appears that OMB sought to overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct. The court can think of few things more disingenuous.”

On Saturday, federal district court Judge Paul A. Engelmayer temporarily denied Musk’s young recruits access to the Treasury’s payment and data systems, finding a risk of “irreparable harm.” The judge ordered anyone who had been granted access to the systems since January 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded” from it.

Well, good luck with that. How will Engelmayer know all copies have been destroyed in an administration that denies judges have the power to control what the president does?

Worse yet, Musk’s gang have access to the computer code. How will the judge prevent them from changing that code?

Another federal judge, John Coughenour, has blocked Trump’s executive order altering birthright citizenship, calling it “clearly unconstitutional.” The judge didn’t pull any punches:

“It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain.”

Exactly. But how can Judge Coughenour guarantee that the Trump regime will grant citizenship to all children born in the United States to undocumented parents? Trump and Musk have tunneled into the entire federal government, even including the passport office. (When transgender people try to renew, new passports list their sex at birth.)

Federal judges considering the legality of Trump’s mass deportations are bound by Supreme Court rulings that noncitizens have a right to due process before being deported — including the right to be informed of the charges against them, the right to an attorney, and the right to present evidence in their defense.

Here, too, Trump’s regime has ignored these rulings.

Meanwhile, in a lawsuit filed Friday, several “sanctuary” cities and counties are challenging both Trump’s executive order withdrawing federal funds from places that refuse to help carry out his immigration agenda and his Justice Department's threat to prosecute any jurisdiction that refuses to comply.

Plaintiffs are seeking to “check this abuse of power” by asking the courts to declare the Trump regime’s actions unlawful and prevent their enforcement.

The law is clearly on the plaintiff’s side. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the federal government cannot force cities and states to adopt laws or to enforce federal mandates.

But Trump isn’t budging.

Over the next months, these and dozens of other federal cases will be appealed to the Supreme Court — either by the plaintiffs arguing that Trump is ignoring lower-court decisions, or by Trump’s Justice Department appealing those decisions.

Then what?

You have every reason to be cynical about the current majority on the Supreme Court. But the cases I’ve just cited, along with many others, are based on the Supreme Court’s own precedents that say that Trump cannot legally do what he’s doing.

Yes, the Roberts court has shown itself willing to reverse its prior opinions (see: Roe v. Wade), but my betting is that at least on some of these issues the high court will rule against Trump.

All of which raises a final, perilous question: What if the Trump regime ignores the Supreme Court just as it has ignored lower courts?

In his 2024 year-end report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts anticipated this possibility, noting that judicial independence “is undermined unless the other branches [of government] are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.”

Roberts mentioned defiance by southern governors of the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Their defiance required that federal troops enforce the Supreme Court’s decision.

Roberts then commented on more recent defiance:

“Within the past few years … elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.

There’s no secret whom Roberts was referring to. His first initials are JD and he ought to know better. Vance graduated Yale Law School Class of 2013, and his wife, Usha, clerked for Roberts from 2017 to 2018.

Yet Vance said on a 2021 podcast, “When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Here’s Vance in a February 2024 interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:

Vance: “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”

Stephanopoulos: “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”

Vance: “The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this — but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”

In other words, if the Supreme Court rules against Trump on an important issue, there’s a fair chance the Trump-Vance-Musk regime will thumb their nose at it.

What then? Impeachment isn’t a possibility because Republicans run both chambers of Congress and haven’t exactly distinguished themselves with integrity or independence.

If Trump simply ignores the high court, is that the end of law?

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AN 2 25

President Donald Trump has been back in the White House less than three weeks, and his executive orders have already inspired a long list of lawsuits.

In an article published by The Nation on February 7, progressive legal expert Elie Mystal applauds these "good faith" lawsuits against Trump orders that are "illegal and unconstitutional, and brazenly so." But Mystal, a frequent guest on MSNBC, emphasizes that "the courts alone will not save us" and lays out some reasons why.

"They will not be the backstop protecting us from the Trump-(Elon) Musk takeover," Mystal argues, "and any person who tells you otherwise — especially if that person is an elected Democrat in Congress — is selling you an excuse for inaction and complacency. Trump and Musk are barbarians at the gate; calling in the lawyers to tell them they're trespassing isn’t going to halt their advance."

:{READ MORE: How Michigan would pay bigly for Trump's trade war

The attorney adds, "Courts are not known for their harm prevention — they're best used when trying to hold someone accountable for the harm they already caused."

Courts, Mystal notes, are "designed to move slowly" — whereas Trump, with his executive orders, is moving rapidly with his far-right agenda.

"The Trump Administration has already been hit with TROs (temporary restraining orders) over a number of its illegal and insane executive orders — including its unconstitutional revision of the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship, its illegal funding freeze on money already appropriated by Congress, and its immoral and dangerous prisoner transfer of trans-women to male prisons," Mystal explains. "In theory, these orders should be effective stopgaps. The problem is that the court has no enforcement mechanism. It has no army, no police force, no power to impose its will. Instead, the executive — in this case, the president — is supposed to enforce the court's orders. But what if Trump doesn't?"

Mystal adds, "There is little reason to believe that Trump will enforce an adverse court ruling against himself."

READ MORE:'Not going to be replaced': Reformed white supremacist met with protest from extremists

The attorney argues that Democrats "who think the courts will save us" are forgetting how many "Federalist Society judges" are part of the federal judiciary — and how far to the right the U.S. Supreme Court has moved with "Chief Justice John Roberts and his crew of legal arsonists."

"A court order cannot enforce itself," Mystal warns. "It cannot change a mind. It cannot make white folks less racist. It cannot recapture things that have been lost, or stolen. The only thing that can save us is us."

READ MORE:Americans' 'legally protected' info now 'exposed' as Trump budget chief gets new powers: union

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Some critics of President Donald Trump are wondering why his narrow victory in the 2024 election wasn't followed by an outspoken "resistance" or the type of large protests that followed his victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, during an appearance on The Bulwark's vodcast posted on February 7, argued that Democrats are now in "resistance mode."

"After Democrats lost in 2024," Klein told host Tim Miller, "they were psychologically pretty shattered. And there were quite a few of them who were willing to say, 'OK, this is a new world. This time, the American public voted for Donald Trump fair and square. We have to work with this'…. And everything Trump has done has been a giant middle finger to them personally, to make them look like idiots personally."

READ MORE:Americans' 'legally protected' info now 'exposed' as Trump budget chief gets new powers: union

Klein argued that if Trump had entered the White House with a "different strategy," Democrats would be willing to "work with him."

"And now," Klein told Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist Miller — "Trump has gone into a place where he is threatening, both in their view and objectively, the structure of American government itself. I think he is a fairly weak president but is acting like a strong king."

According to Klein, Democrats who told Trump, "We are willing to work with you" after he won the election have "moved into opposition and resistance mode."

Klein told Miller, "Whatever possible quanta of good will he had… is gone…. (Democrats) have moved into 'He is a threat to the republic mode.'"

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AN 2 25

For Christians here and across the world, the ongoing confrontation over the fate of USAID dramatically illustrates the moral degeneration of the politicians who most fervently profess their piety. While Donald Trump wraps himself in the mantle of the Almighty, his assault on the world’s largest relief agency is a modern passion play, with scheming malefactors of great wealth sadistically persecuting sincere people of faith who seek to serve the poor.

Not everyone who works for USAID, a government agency that employs hundreds of private contractors, is motivated by charity or religious conviction. While many are nonprofits, others are profitable companies. But the agency’s single largest contractor is Catholic Relief Services, which has provided billions of dollars in assistance to impoverished communities on every continent.

Nearly every denomination is represented among the recipients of USAID funding, including major evangelical and conservative organizations such asSamaritan’s Purse, the global charity operated by Franklin Graham** -- who happens to be among Donald Trump’s most sycophantic admirers. Graham's reputation as a "humanitarian" has surely benefited from his organization's association with US relief efforts, not to mention $90 million in taxpayer support. And he knows that Musk and Trump are lying about USAID.As *Christianity Today*reported on February 4:

Most of USAID’s budget goes to grants for specific development projects, including at Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, and many other faith-based groups. It supports local Christian health clinics in Malawi and groups providing orphan care.*

In Kenya, PCEA Chogoria Hospital, a historic mission hospital now run by Kenyan churches, provides comprehensive health care to HIV patients through support from USAID. On January 24 the hospital received a stop-work order for that care and has had no indication of a return of funding despite [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio’s promises that life-saving HIV care could continue. The hospital has 3,162 HIV patients in that USAID-funded program, and 42 staff members caring for those patients…“It is exceptionally painful to watch all this,” said Kent Hill, a former top official at USAID who also worked at World Vision and in Christian higher education as the president of Eastern Nazarene College. If USAID has specific problems, shutting the whole agency down instead of addressing the problems is a “tremendous overreaction” and “inhumane,” he said.*

“Few American investments, if any, bring such a remarkable return,” Hill said. “To talk about shutting USAID down is callous and represents a tremendous a lapse in judgment which ought to call forth bipartisan condemnation.”*

What do Rev. Graham and other evangelical leaders on the right think when they hear Elon Musk accuse USAID of corruption, with zero evidence, and denounce it as a “criminal” organization that must “die"?” The foreign-born billionaire boasted about putting the agency “in the wood chipper,” as if the deprivation and suffering that would ensue among the ill and hungry is a funny fratboy joke.

What seems truly amusing, by contrast, is the notion of Donald Trump as a follower of Christ, specially anointed by the Lord. From the beginning of his political career, the former casino owner has cultivated the tawdriest characters in Christianity, from the pants-dropping Jerry Falwell Jr. to TV evangelists Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and other exponents the “prosperity gospel.” Like Trump, these are individuals whose unbridled avarice leaves little space for good works of any kind. It isn't hard to imagine them mocking the actual Christians who minister to the poor instead of swindling them.

Perhaps to promote sales of Trump-branded Bibles, he played the devout Christian at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6. “Well, we wanna bring religion back stronger, bigger, better than ever before. It’s very important,” the president declared. “We have to have religion and it suffered greatly over the last few years, but it’s coming back.”

As for Musk, oncelionized by libertarians for his atheism, the world’s richest man has taken to proclaiming his belief in “the teachings of Jesus Christ,” notably to “love thy neighbor.” In alate 2022 tweet, he wrote: "Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom." This alleged attraction to Christian principles accompanied Musk’s turn toward the far right, with its hostility toward racial minorities, immigrants, and all of the destitute and oppressed.

In short, Musk now qualifies as that most MAGA brand of Christian -- a hypocrite who exploits religion to amplify his own power and wealth, with a heavenly license to bully the weak. Somehow ruining the lives of people who depend on USAID for their very sustenance seems much more like the devil’s work.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund.His latest book isThe Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

===

an 2 25

JD Vance is under fire after encouraging Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk to re-hire the 25-year old whose racist posts led to his reported resignation.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story that a “key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department’s central-payments system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social-media account that advocated racism and eugenics.”

“Marko Elez, a 25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending, resigned after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account,” the Journal reported.

According to The Journal, that account posted, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” and, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”

READ MORE: Trump Inherits Biden’s ‘Astonishing’ Jobs Legacy, But Prices Are Now Climbing on His Watch

“Normalize Indian hate,” was another post, according to the Journal, which noted that it was “in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.”

“The user appeared to have a special dislike for Indian software engineers,” the WSJ added.

That account also posted, according to the Journal, “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”

U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) added, “Elon Musk thinks racism is OK, as long as Twitter says so. This man should not be anywhere near our government.”

Journalist Jay Bookman, a columnist for the Georgia Recorder, also weighed in. He wrote, “I wonder what made the kid think racism had suddenly become cool. Who was he hanging out with that would make him think such a curious thing? Elon, do you know?”

READ MORE: Pam Bondi Quietly Disbands DOJ Task Force Targeting Russian Oligarchs

Friday morning, Musk asked his 216 million followers on his social media site X, “Bring back @DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now deleted pseudonym?”

As of this writing, 78% said “Yes.”

The Vice President, a Republican from Ohio, responded to Musk.

“Here’s my view,” Vance, unprompted, wrote. “I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life. We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”

Critics were quick to chastise the Vice President.

“Then bring him back! You’re the big tough guy with all the power now, right? (or at least you work with those two guys),” scolded former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau. “You don’t get to play the victim anymore and hide behind the mean journalists and the cancel culture libs. You’re in charge now. If you want to hire back the guy who says he’s ‘racist’ and couldn’t be paid to marry outside of his ethnicity – who said he wants to ‘normalize Indian hate’ – do it! Not sure I could look my family in the eye if I did something like that, but maybe you can. So live your truth, pal. Bring back the racist.”

Some were quick to remind Vance that his wife, who has faced attacks from white supremacists, is of Indian heritage.

Technology executive Anil Dash commented, “This is about the CRIME of giving this man access to the treasury — everyone already knows you don’t care about having your wife and children humiliated by your fellow MAGA racists. He’s not a child, and no one appointed him or the other known security threats at DOGE.”

Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen added, “The husband of an Indian-American wife and the father of 3 Indian-American kids wants to bring back the staffer who posted “normalize Indian hate.”

Others rejected the idea that a 25-year old is just a “kid,” especially since those posts reportedly were made last year.

“He’s either a kid who is too young and stupid to be held accountable for his actions. Or he’s an adult with a taxpayer-funded job that includes having access to American’s most sensitive information, which demands a high standards and accountability. Can’t have it both ways,” noted The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell.

“So he’s a racist kid with no impulse control, but he should have access to the system that doles out trillions of dollars of the federal budget and see all of our personal information,” observed Daily KOS’s Emily C. Singer.

Others pushed back against Vance’s attack on the media, making clear that America has a right to know.

“Setting aside everything else (i.e. ‘kid’), it would seem to be in the public interest to understand whether someone with such a consequential job is a secret racist,” wrote The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. “That’s what reporting is. People can react how they will. He’s not only in the arena; he’s a central player.”

“I get that there’s no shame and decency left,” economics writer Joey Politano said, “you can self ID as a racist eugenicist and still have insanely important roles in this admin, but the most insulting thing here is treating a 25 year old like a uwu smol bean child who can’t be held responsible for his actions.”

“A 25-year-old is not a kid. He made blatant and disgusting racist posts in the last few months,” commented veteran Jared Ryan Sears, who writes The Pragmatic Humanist. Quoting what someone said is not ‘ruining their life’ it is reporting. It is shameful to defend such a terrible person while demonizing a journalist for reporting about him.”

Former White House correspondent Sam Youngman offered a big picture view: “Too weak to stand up for his own family. Think he’ll stand up for yours?”

===

an 2 25

19 year-old Edward Coristine works for centabillionaire tech CEO Elon Musk as part of his "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE. But before he was hired by the world's wealthiest man, Coristine worked for a cybersecurity firm that fired him for disclosing company secrets.

That's according to a Friday article in Bloomberg, which reported that the Arizona-based firm, Path Network, fired him in June 2022, not long after Coristine graduated from high school. A company executive wrote in an email that "Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors."

"This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this," the Path Network executive wrote.

READ MORE:**'Bring him back': JD Vance wants Musk to rehire 25 year old DOGE 'kid' after racist posts**

"I can confirm that Edward Coristine's brief contract was terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure," a company spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Even though DOGE is not yet an actual federal agency authorized by Congress, DOGE workers like Coristine have managed to gain full access to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which houses federal government's human resources functions, and Treasury Department systems handling $6 trillion in annual payments. The Boston Globe recently reported that Coristine — who is a freshman at Northeastern University — was listed in OPM records as an "expert," suggesting he may have access to millions of federal workers' sensitive personal data.

In posts to gamer-centric messaging platform Discord, Coristine wrote after his firing that he "had access to every single machine" at Path Network and could have wiped all of the company's servers if he wished. However, he said he "never exploited it because it's just not me." Posting under the moniker "Rivage," which several of Bloomberg's sources confirmed was Coristine's username, the 19 year-old insisted he had done "nothing contractually wrong" at the company.

Two federal law enforcement officers told Bloomberg that they are aware of Coristine's posting history, both under the "Rivage" moniker and under the name "JoeyCrafter." The officers said they came across Coristine's posting history while investigating another hacker, though they didn't elaborate as the investigation is still ongoing. Both usernames consistently advocated that hosting platforms like Cloudflare should keep providing online support to controversial websites, including neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer.

READ MORE:**'Could do anything': 25 year-old Musk employee has admin access to $6 trillion payment system**

Newsweek reported earlier on Friday that Coristine, who is also known online as "Big Balls," manages more than a dozen web domains, including some registered in Russia. One of those websites reportedly offers an AI Discord bot known as "Helfie" that operates in Russia.

"If I was doing the background investigation on him, I would probably have recommended against hiring him for the work he's doing," former FBI agent E.J. Hilbert told WIRED this week. "I'm not opposed to the idea of cleaning up the government. But I am questioning the people that are doing it."

Coristine isn't the only DOGE employee in the spotlight this week: On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that 25 year-old Marko Elez, who was part of the DOGE team that gained administrator-level access to the U.S. Treasury's payment systems that oversee Social Security and Medicare benefits, resigned after he was revealed to have a pseudonymous social media account where he routinely posted racist statements.

On that account, Elez called to "normalize Indian hate," bragged about being "racist before it was cool" and said "you couldn't pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity." On Friday, Vice President JD Vance — whose wife, Usha, is Indian American — called for Elez to be reinstated, arguing: "We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever."

READ MORE:[DOGE employee steps down after racist posts uncovered: report

===

Department of Government Efficiency staffer resigned Thursday after racists posts across his now deleted X (formerly Twitter) account came to light, the Wall Street Journal exclusively reports.

Marko Elez, 25, was granted access to the US Department of Treasury's payment system by a federal judge Thursday morning, according to the report, but the judge also "limited" the Elon Musk ally's "ability to share the data."

He resigned from his role hours later.

READ MORE:**'Last thing I want is that guy': Dem warns against Musk 'trying to control the airspace'**

WSJ reports:

*The account, @nullllptr—a misspelling of a keyword in the C++ programming language—was deleted in December, but hundreds of brash, sometimes-sophomoric posts have been archived.

*The user appeared to have a special dislike for Indian software engineers. '99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys,' the user posted in December.

*'Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,' @nullllptr posted in July.

"You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity," a September 2024 post on the account also read, according to WSJ. "Normalize Indian hate," it continued.

Furthermore, the account also "advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act and backed a 'eugenic immigration policy' in the weeks before President Trump was inaugurated."

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an 2 25

It’s a coup.

As Trump talks about taking over Gaza (“beautiful shoreline”), Greenland (“great minerals”), Panama (“very strategic”), and making Canada the 51st state, the media has gone ape-shite wild.

Meanwhile, Trump’s goons are taking over the federal government without congressional authority and very little public awareness.

They’re using two techniques.

The first is to physically take over an agency or department.

Consider USAID. Elon Musk (now a “special government employee”) calls it a “criminal organization” that needs to “die” and brags about feeding it “into the wood chipper.”

Which is what he and his tech goons have done — dismantling the work of the 10,000-person, $40 billion foreign-assistance agency, along with the thousands of people in nonprofits and other groups that work with it.

The irony of the richest man in the world almost single-handedly destroying an agency designed to help the world’s poor, so that the U.S. federal budget has more room for another giant tax cut for the richest man in the world and his pals, should not be lost on anyone.

Yesterday, all of USAID’s Washington facilities were closed. Nearly all USAID’s 10,000 employees have been put on administrative as of Saturday. Staff working around the world have been ordered to return home within 30 days.

“Thank you for your service,” is the last message on USAID’s website, which for days was offline.

Make no mistake: The takeover and dismantling of USAID is a test case for whether Musk and the Trump regime can destroy a part of government without legal or political resistance.

So far, the answer seems to be yes.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he “doesn’t believe” the Trump administration is closing an agency without congressional approval, but that it is rather reviewing how the agency is spending money.

Thune is either a fool or a knave.

The second technique being used by Musk and his tech goons is to gain access to the Treasury Department’s payments system, responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government, and alter it — writing new code for programs that control more than 20 percent of the U.S. economy, including Social Security benefits and veterans’ pay.

Musk says he’ll be shutting down some Treasury payments in an effort to root out “corruption and waste.” That is, whatever Musk considers corruption and waste.

What’s next? Will Trump, Musk, and Musk’s tech goons take over, or stop funding, the Labor Department? (My sources there tell me Department of Labor workers have been ordered to give Musk’s DOGE access to anything they want — or risk termination.)

I don’t know, but I do know that nothing right now seems to be stopping them.

The Republican-controlled Congress has essentially surrendered Congress’s powers, including the power of the purse (it has already surrendered its powers over tariffs and foreign policy). There’s not much of a role for Congress left.

This afternoon, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee tried to subpoena Musk, but Republicans called a procedural vote without notice so the Dems wouldn’t get there on time. Here’s Congressman Ro Khanna’s account, followed by Musk’s response.

substackcdn.com

My friends, this is no longer about Democrats versus Republicans, left versus right, liberals versus conservatives.

The choice right now is democracy or dictatorship (or if you’d rather use the term fascism, go right ahead). And we are sliding faster than I ever thought possible into the latter.

Everyone must choose which side they’re on. Now.

More on this to come.

NOW READ:Don’t count on the Supreme Court to stop Trump’s new order — or uphold the Constitution

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he is in medicare server says that is where the big fraud is but

an 2 25

Medicare Advantage fraud is staring Musk in the face — but critics predict he'll ignore it

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lawsuits 2 5 25

:{Jay Michaelson

sdSrtoepno6l 6c5:F32tPm1a856tr7uc93 1ba1Mtue407a1u 8cl3ycmr

Hello! I'm posting in response to the many sincerely anguished claims that not enough is being done to stop Trump. This is not reflected in the facts.

And there are many more - I'll link to a great list of them in the comments.

Yes, there are Trump judges in the courts, and if Aileen Cannon types get these cases, Trump may prevail. But most judges are not like her. These actions are clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional, and they WILL be stopped.

Just like the tariffs were not meant to prevail -- Trump won that round, "forcing" Canada and Mexico to take "action" on fentanyl -- these actions are not meant to prevail. They're meant to flood the zone with shit, confuse and immobilize us. They said they'd do "Shock and Awe" and that's what they've done. Nothing here should be surprising.

Shock and Awe is up to YOU. I am not shocked, I am not in awe.

Oh, and the "mainstream media" has reported on all of these. The info above has come from Newsweek, the NY Times, and other mainstream sources. Please stop attacking journalists when we are being threatened by the FBI. Who do you think you're helping by doing that?

Stop it with the doomsaying and gloomsaying. Want to make a difference? Give thousands of dollars to Public Citizen, the ACLU, and similar groups. Show up at marches. Put your ass on the line and help protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things (like changing your social media pictures) to support people who are not safe. Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either. This is not the end of democracy. That is just what the bad guys want you to think. Get over it and fight.

===

tnr

Representative Ilhan Omar’s Republican colleagues are once again calling for her to be deported because they don’t understand U.S. law.

Representative Brandon Gill posted on X Tuesday in response to a post falsely claiming Omar was “hosting workshops” with Somali immigrants about their legal rights in the face of Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation orders.

“America would be a better place if @IlhanMN were deported back to Somalia,” Gill wrote, directing racist vitriol at a fellow member of Congress and a U.S. citizen.

Omar came under intense scrutiny after a whiny Elon Musk shared a link to a fake video that supposedly showed her “conducting seminars” with Somali immigrants on how to “evade” deportation. Musk claimed that she was “breaking the law. Literally. Outright.”

In the video, a clip of Omar explaining in Somali about Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination—a legal right that undocumented immigrants are free to exercise when encountering ICE agents—was spliced together with footage of unidentified people apparently of East African descent sitting in a room.

“She’s a major grifter and she hates America,” Musk wrote in a separate post on X.

Omar was quick to hit back at Musk Tuesday. “Well it just shows you how much he lacks an understanding of what our, of what the laws of this country are,” Omar said during an interview on CNN.

It appears that Gill has joined Musk in his weak understanding of American law—if that wasn’t obvious enough from his call to deport a U.S. citizen.

She clarified that the footage of her had been taken out of context from an interview with a journalist, who asked what her advice would be to undocumented Somalis, and that she hadn’t held a meeting like the one described.

Musk’s attacks against Omar come as she has been outspoken against his unlawful efforts to dismantle USAID.

...//

Elon Musk is sending his digital minions after Representative Ilhan Omar, all based on a fake video posted by the pitiable right-wing shill Ian Miles Cheong.

On Tuesday, Cheong posted an obviously edited video in which he claimed the progressive congresswoman was “conducting seminars for Somalians who are living illegally in the U.S. without documentation, providing guidance on how to evade deportation.”

The video shows a random room full of unidentified people of seemingly East African descent, then cuts to Omar being interviewed in a completely different room.

The richest man in the world shared the video, clutching at his pearls. “She is breaking the law. Literally. Outright,” he wrote on X of Omar allegedly telling immigrants that they were not required to answer questions if detained by ICE. And that didn’t even happen.

IFrame Content

Hundreds of Musk’s fans began flocking to Omar’s page, so much so that she had to clear the air herself.

“Hey Elon, every single person in this country deserves to know their rights. That’s legal. Maybe you should brush up on our laws given the fact you’re breaking them to steal American’s sensitive data,” Omar wrote, in reference to Musk’s aggressive takeover of the Treasury’s payment system. “PS. This video is manipulated, and I wasn’t even at the event shown.”

It’s ironic that a man who spends all day moaning about left-wing misinformation and suppression is using his massive platform to spread his own. And he’s just getting started.

---

tnr

Donald Trump’s administration has removed thousands of pages of information from the U.S. government’s websites as part of its sweeping effort to remove references to diversity, gender, and environmental justice.

As part of the de-wokeification process, Trump’s administration has eviscerated more than 8,000 pages of materials just since Friday about a range of topics, from census methodology to resources about postpartum depression, according to an analysis from The New York Times.

The biggest targets have been the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Census Bureau, which each lost more than 3,000 pages.

In the past week, the CDC’s website saw the removal of resources about HIV and STI treatment guidelines, as well as a guide for young people seeking gender-affirming care.

Other information struck from the record included warning signs for Alzheimer’s disease, materials for overdose prevention training, and vaccine guidelines for pregnant people. The Times noted that the use of the phrase “pregnant people,” as opposed to “women,” may have contributed to the guidelines’ removal.

The CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which uses census data to determine how at risk someone is to experience a natural disaster through the lenses of geography, race, income level, and education, was also removed, according to The Guardian.

The National Institutes of Health removed a portal with information about maternal morbidity and mortality.

Some CDC files, not included in the Times’ analysis, were removed and then restored with information missing. The agency’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey data briefly disappeared, but then was restored with one of its gender columns missing and its data documentation deleted, the Associated Press reported.

Of the more than 3,000 articles removed from the Census Bureau site, most were filed under research and methodology, but other areas with missing pages included data stewardship and documentation for several data sets. On Monday, users hoping to retrieve data on certain topics from the census were greeted by a response that said the area was “unavailable due to maintenance,” according to the AP.

But that wasn’t all.

More than 1,000 pages were removed from the website for the Office of Justice Programs, a research and grant-making organization that works to provide local and state law enforcement with resources and training. All state-level data on hate crimes was removed from the Justice Department’s website (the months after Trump’s first election saw a significant spike in hate crimes, according to FBI data).

The Food and Drug administration removed nearly 100 pages, including 60 that mentioned expanding diversity in drug trials. The Department of the Interior deleted several pages mentioning “environmental justice.” Head Start, the IRS, and several other agencies also saw hundreds of pages scrubbed out of existence. There are links to archived versions of some of these pages here.

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tnr

One of Elon Musk’s handpicked operatives for his fake “Department of Government Efficiency” has been given complete access to critical payment systems at the Department of the Treasury, despite being only 25 years old.

Marko Elez, whose total work experience consists of working for Musk’s companies SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), has administrator privileges on systems that are responsible for 95 percent of payments made by the U.S. government including Social Security checks, tax refunds, and virtually all contract payments, Wired reports. This contradicts earlier reports that Musk’s henchmen only had “read-only” access to Treasury data.

Wired, citing two unnamed sources, reports that Elez has the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which control government payments that amount to more than a fifth of the U.S. economy. Elez’s level of access could allow him to bypass security measures and possibly cause irreversible damage to these systems. Talking Points Memo further reports that Elez has already used his power to significantly rewrite code for the payment systems.

“You could do anything with these privileges,” one source with knowledge of the systems told Wired, adding that they couldn’t see a reason that such access was necessary for hunting down fraud or assessing how payments are disbursed, as DOGE claims it is doing.

“Technically I don’t see why this couldn’t happen,” a federal IT worker told the magazine Monday regarding whether a DOGE worker would get such a level of government access. “If you would have asked me a week ago, I’d have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*** knows.”

Musk and his cronies have already taken control of federal workers’ private data by installing an illegal commercial server at the Office of Personnel Management, giving them access to databases containing federal employees’ Social Security numbers, home addresses, medical histories, and other sensitive personal information. Senior government officials at OPM have even been locked out of employee databases.

Many, if not most, of Musk’s associates that he’s used in his government takeover are young and inexperienced young men between the ages of 19 and 26, like Elez. Whether the tech mogul or the people doing his bidding even have proper security clearances is not known, which would definitely make their efforts illegal, if they weren’t already. But with Donald Trump taking over federal law enforcement and prosecutors threatening critics of DOGE, who, if anyone, will take action?

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an 2 25

Employees of Elon Musk have made their way inside the highest echelons of several influential government agencies. And in new audio allegedly obtained from a recent meeting, one Musk associate is heard calling on colleagues to forge ahead with a plan one employee described as "illegal."

404 Media reported Tuesday that Musk's employees — who have seized control of operations within the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (which houses the federal government's human resources functions) and the General Services Administration (GSA), which is the agency responsible for the construction, oversight and maintenance of all federal buildings — are now planning to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) throughout federal agencies.

Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd, who now leads the GSA's Technology Transformation Services (TTS), said during a recent meeting that he hoped to transform the login.gov website federal employees use for work to more easily incorporate with the Social Security Administration "to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud." He specifically mentioned wanting to train AI on government contracts.

READ MORE:'Could do anything': 25 year-old Musk employee has admin access to $6 trillion payment system

“We want to start implementing more AI at the agency level and be an example for how other agencies can start leveraging AI ... that’s one example of something that we’re looking for people to work on,” Shedd said during the meeting, according to 404. “Things like making AI coding agents available for all agencies. One that we've been looking at and trying to work on immediately within GSA, but also more broadly, is a centralized place to put contracts so we can run analysis on those contracts.”

Musk employees training AI on analyzing contracts would be a significant conflict of interest for Musk, as his companies currently make billions of dollars from contracts with the federal government. The Los Angeles Times reported in November that since SpaceX was founded in 2002, it has received approximately $21 billion in federal contracts.

According to audio of the meeting obtained by 404 Media, one employee during that meeting said that aggregating data with login.gov would be an "illegal task," as the Privacy Act "forbids agencies [from] sharing personal information without consent." But Shedd reportedly shrugged off those concerns and said workers with 18F (a TTS team that writes software for federal agencies) should carry on with the original plan unless they hit a "roadblock."

"The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow,” Shedd said. “But again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

READ MORE:'Allow some of this to be privatized': GOP gov admits goal of DOGE is to gut Social Security

One of 404's sources told the outlet that "the reaction of the team, the whole group of 18F and TTS is pretty unanimously negative" in response to Shedd's remarks. They also expressed fear that 18F would be gutted and replaced by a team of software engineers who would report to Musk, rather than the GSA.

"The administration views TTS and 18F as a pool of talent that it will draw from, that it will poach from," the source said. "And it will take the people from TTS that it wants, and then most of the organization will wither away."

An FAQ posted to login.gov suggests that attempts to aggregate Social Security data is fluid. The site warns users to "not send Login.gov sensitive data about yourself or identifying numbers."

Click here to read 404's full report.

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an 2 25

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has been making unprecedented moves to slash federal spending with the blessing of President Donald Trump. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress), Musk is exploring major cuts to the Department of Education and plans to shut down USAID — the agency responsible for foreign aid. His team has also been granted access to the Treasury Department’s payments system. But unlike much of the country, some Senate Republicans couldn’t be bothered, NOTUS reported on Tuesday.

One major source of distress among experts is that Musk is rejecting appropriations laws passed by Congress -- in other words, taking authority over funding. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said these actions are indeed unconstitutional, but he is not concerned, saying: “Nobody should bellyache about that."

“That runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense,” Tillis said. But “it’s not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.”

READ MORE:These 'relatively traditional' Trump Cabinet picks are actually 'spineless cowards': analysis

Other Republicans are glad that Musk is looking at cutting costs.

“He’s doing exactly what he should be doing,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said Monday. “He’s going through every agency and looking at how to make sure the money’s spent right.” And while Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives that job to Congress, Scott argued: “It doesn’t look like Congress is doing their job."

“The actions that have been taken with USAID are long overdue,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said. “The agency is out of control.”

Unlike Tillis, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Musk has not violated the Constitution.

“Mr. Musk is acting under the authority of the president of the United States,” he said. “It’s perfectly legal, perfectly constitutional. And the issue, anyway, is not process. The issue is substance. Did they find wasteful spending, or not?”

READ MORE:'Unchecked power': Trump himself ordered firings of prosecutors working criminal cases against him

Still, some Republicans are concerned. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said she was “very concerned about Mr. Musk or any of his assistants going into federal agencies and demanding personal information on employees.” She said that his actions have not met “the requirements of the law.” BUT THEN VOTED FOR PAM BONDI?

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) joined Republicans in defending Musk. “He’s working with the president, and they’re making recommendations in some cases on agencies,” he told NOTUS. “But the whole program here is that we’re spending way more money than what we’re bringing in.”

He added: “The president has the authority to operate the executive branch of government. So.”

READ MORE:'Call somebody who cares': GOP senator slammed over response to 'friends who are upset' FOGHORN

Click here to read NOTUS' report in full.

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no lnx tdb

The U.S. Attorney for D.C. vowed to go after people who “impede” the work of DOGE.

Julia Ornedo

As DOGE chief Elon Musk stokes outrage for shutting federal employees out of their offices, a Trump-appointed prosecutor has vowed to protect the tech billionaire and his staff.

Ed Martin, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, threatened to take legal action against anyone who gets in the way of Musk and his team as they take over offices and demand access to sensitive data in a frenzy to cut down government spending.

“I recognize that some of the staff at DOGE has been targeted publicly,” Martin wrote in a letter to Musk that he posted on X, tagging the wrong account. “At this time, I ask that you utilize me and my staff to assist in protecting the DOGE work and the DOGE workers.”

The names of Department of Government Efficiency staff made the rounds online after they were identified in a WIRED magazine story that dove into Musk’s government takeover.

In recent days, Musk and his lackeys have seized control of the federal payment system and key workflows in the Office of Personnel Management.

The world’s richest man has also declared that he would shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides billions in humanitarian support worldwide.

Unmasked: Elon’s Secret DOGE Goon Squad—Every One Under 26

BEST PEOPLE

Josh Fiallo

A photo illustration of DOGE Akash Bobba, - 21 / Edward Coristine, - 19 / Luke Farritor - 23 / Gautier Cole Killian - 24 / Gavin Kliger - 25 / Ethan Shaotran 22

Musk claimed in an X post that some social media users had “broken the law” by making threats against DOGE staff.

“Any threats, confrontations, or other actions in any way that impact their work may break numerous laws,” Martin wrote of DOGE staff in his letter. “Let me assure you of this: we will pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people.”

“We will not act like the previous administration who looked the other way as the Antifa and BLM rioters as well as thugs with guns trashed our capital city,” he added. “We will protect DOGE and other workers no matter what.”

They have broken the law. https://t.co/KupH9lTOv9

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025

Musk’s response to Marin was brief: “Thank you, receipt via 𝕏 acknowledged.”

President Donald Trump appointed Martin as a prosecutor shortly after he returned to office. Martin was a prominent supporter of the “Stop the Steal” movement that claimed fraud in the 2020 election and was subpoenaed by the House’s committee that probed the Capitol riots.

Martin, a former head of the Missouri Republican Party, also represented three rioters who were charged in connection with Jan. 6, which he said was “like Mardi Gras” in an old post on X.

Shortly after he assumed his new role in D.C., Martin dismissed some 30 federal prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and ordered a probe of prosecutions linked to the Capitol riots.

Julia Ornedo

Reporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.

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During Wednesday’s heated House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, Chairman Jim Comer and his Republican colleagues blocked a vote on Democratic Ranking Member Gerry Connolly’s motion to subpoena Elon Musk. The Director of President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been accused of systematically dismantling federal agencies one by one, while his associates have allegedly gained access to the private data of potentially millions of Americans, as well as vast amounts of federal government information—including, reportedly, some classified material.

In Wednesday’s hearing on “Rightsizing Government,” Ranking Member Connolly was quickly blocked when he attempted to subpoena the person in charge of all those efforts testify before them.

The Oversight Committee’s mission is to “ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies,” according to its website. “We provide a check and balance on the role and power of Washington – and a voice to the people it serves.”

READ MORE: ‘Democracy Weeks Away From Disintegrating’: Democratic Senator Issues Warning — and a Plan

Connolly had filed formal notice on Monday requesting that Comer “invite” Elon Musk “to appear as a witness.”

“Who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement, and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight, or concurrence?” Connolly asked on Wednesday. “Mr. Chairman, given his prominence and his importance, I move that the committee subpoena Elon Musk to come to before it as a witness at the earliest possible moment.”

But Chairman Comer quickly squelched the Democrat’s motion, declaring it was “not debatable.”

A direction to “table the motion,” apparently from Comer, came, as Connolly asked, “Mr. Chairman, why don’t we want to debate Elon Musk coming in and talking to us about his work and how he’s enriched himself by 64 billion dollars?”

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) then moved to formally block the motion, sparking a chaotic exchange as members talked over one another while Comer reprimanded a Democrat he deemed “out of order.”

U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) blasted Comer: “You will not even entertain a motion to bring him (Elon) in front of the Oversight Committee?”

“Yes, let’s have order in this country,” she exclaimed before adding, “Mr. Elon Musk is out of order!”

READ MORE: Dems Blocked From Entering USAID Offices: ‘Illegal and Corrupt’

Comer accused her of “demagoguery.”

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U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-FL) wrote, “I’m in Oversight Committee right now. Ranking Member Connolly just called for a vote to subpoena Elon Musk. Republicans out-number us on this committee, but many aren’t in the room. We’ll see who wins this vote. We deserve transparency and answers.”

Just minutes later he added: “Republicans ran into the room to SHEILD Elon Musk from having to come and speak to Congress. They want their billionaire takeover done behind closed doors. The people deserve transparency. No one elected Elon Musk.”

Responding to a video of the event Connolly wrote: “You read that right – blocked without debate. If Republicans are such big fans of Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of our government, why are they so afraid to hear from him? Because they know you, the American people, aren’t gonna like what he has to say.”

“They will stop at nothing to cover up Elon Musk’s lawlessness,” he added.

In a press release, Chairman Comer accused Democrats of “hyperventilating and sensationalizing the Trump Administration’s efforts to advance necessary reforms,” while he vowed to “continue working with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on solutions to make federal operations more efficient and effective for all Americans.”

IFrame Content

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Blind to What’s Happening on His Watch’: Rubio Slammed After ‘Cheap Shot’ at Aid Groups

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Trump's election to a second term and his wave of executive actions in the early weeks of his return to power have a lot in common with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's consolidation of power. Now, Hungarians are urging Americans to act quickly before Trump carries out a similar power grab.

On Wednesday, Vox's Zack Beauchamp compared Hungary under Orbán to the United States under Trump, and documented the numerous similarities that Trump's second term has with the Hungarian leader's tenure. Several Hungarians who live under the Orbán regime said that while the United States has more tools at its disposal to stop authoritarian tactics, it's important for civil society and the media to take action.

“There’s no time for waiting and watching,” one Hungarian said anonymously out of fear of retribution. “They can do so much — so much — counting on the fact that everyone is paralyzed.”

READ MORE:'Horrible' ways Americans were 'sleep-marched into fascism' detailed by scholars

Like Trump, Orbán's power grab didn't begin until after he took office for a second time in 2010. And like Trump's relationship with billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Orbán also got help early on from a wealthy businessman named Lajos Simicska. Just as Musk spent weeks at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in the aftermath of the 2024 election, Simicska "many weeks at Viktor Orbán’s country house" following the Hungarian leader's 2010 victory.

While Musk's allies have since taken operational control of the Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Treasury Department's internal systems that handle trillions of dollars of payments each year, Simicska likewise took over Hungary's National Development Agency, which oversees the distribution of funds from the European Union. And just like Musk, Simicska managed to do this without having to undergo any public vetting process.

There are, however, several structural advantages Americans in 2025 have that Hungarians didn't have in 2010. The U.S. is a much larger country and has been a democracy for longer than Hungary, and there are numerous powers the U.S. Constitution delegates to states, whereas Hungary's system is more centralized. And while Orbán passed several constitutional amendments through a compliant legislature, the U.S. Constitution is much harder to amend, and Trump does not yet have the Congressional majorities needed to ram through policies via statute. Hungarian scholar Zsuzsanna Végh expressed hope that the federal judiciary could rein in the Trump administration's worst abuses of power, while Americans at large can maintain visible opposition in the streets and the media.

“Whenever there is a power to constitutional practices, the judiciary needs to step in,” Végh told Vox. “Civil society and the general public [need] to call out unconstitutional and undemocratic practices … to not shy away from speaking truth to power and drawing attention to what’s going on.”

READ MORE:'It's fascism, OK?' Federal worker union boss reveals why he's suing agencies Musk took over

Click here to read Beauchamp's article in Vox (subscription required).

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wired doxxed? ed martin

judd 2 25

Several of Elon Musk’s associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees. According to two members of OPM staff with direct knowledge, the Musk team running OPM has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data. The staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared professional retaliation. Musk Watch also reviewed internal OPM correspondence confirming that expansive access to the database was provided to Musk associates.

The arrangement presents acute privacy and security risks, one of the OPM staffers said.

Among the government outsiders granted entry to the OPM databases is University of California Berkeley student Akash Bobba, a software engineer who graduated high school less than three years ago. He previously interned at Meta and Palantir, a technology firm chaired by Musk-ally and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel. Edward Coristine, another 2022 high school graduate and former software engineering intern at Musk’s Neuralink, has also been given access to the databases.

Other Musk underlings embedded at OPM following President Donald Trump’s inauguration include the agency’s new chief of staff, Amanda Scales, who until January was a human resources staffer at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, and Brian Bjelde, who has spent the past 21 years at Musk's SpaceX, including the last 10 leading the human resources department. They are joined by Gavin Kliger, a former Twitter software engineer serving as a special advisor to the director of OPM, and Riccardo Biasini, a former software engineer at Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company.

OPM did not respond to a request for comment.

Shortly after Trump took office, OPM installed Greg Hogan to serve as its new chief information officer (CIO). Hogan was tapped to replace OPM CIO Melvin Brown, who had accepted the job less than a month ago.

The civil servants who oversee the OPM’s information technology services were then instructed to provide access to Musk's associates, according to the OPM staffers who spoke to Musk Watch. One of the OPM staffers received an email from the agency’s new leadership instructing them to give Musk’s team “access [to] the system as an admin user" and "code read and write permissions."

“They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything that they want,” the staffer explained.

USAJOBS, the federal government’s official hiring site, was one of the systems that Musk's associates were given access to. The database stores personal information — Social Security numbers, home addresses, employment records — provided by private individuals who have applied for federal jobs, regardless of whether the applicants went on to work for the government.

Musk’s aides were also given access to the OPM’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) system. Contained within the EHRI are the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salaries, home addresses, and job descriptions of all civil government workers, along with any disciplinary actions they have faced. “They’re looking through all the position descriptions… to remove folks,” one of the OPM staffers said of Musk’s team. “This is how they found all these DEI offices and had them removed — [by] reviewing position description level data.”

Other databases Musk’s team has access to include USA Staffing, an onboarding system; USA Performance, a job performance review site; and HI, which the government uses to manage employee health care. “The health insurance one scares me because it's HIPAA [protected] information, but they have access to all this stuff,” the OPM staffer noted.

A former OPM director, who spoke to Musk Watch on the condition that they not be mentioned by name, agreed with the staffer’s concerns. “What [Musk is] doing will put so many government employees at risk. It’s not at all what the office is intended for,” said the former OPM director. “I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

There are also potential security risks. “China and Russia are literally trying to hack us every day and we just gave all this data over to somebody that's not been properly vetted,” one of the OPM staffers said. “It's not just Amanda Scales, it's all the [political appointees] in that office right now. So it's multiple vulnerability points.” Outside actors have already gained access to some of the massive email lists that OPM created as part of Musk's effort to convince federal employees to resign.

A new server being used to control these databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process.

There is a legal requirement that the installation of a new server undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal process to ensure the change would not create any security vulnerabilities. But in this instance, the staff believes there was no PIA. “So this application and corresponding hardware are illegally operating,” they added.

On Friday, Reuters reported that some senior civil servants have been blocked from accessing the EHRI and other OPM systems, making it difficult for career OPM employees to know what Musk’s team has been examining or modifying. In the same report, the outlet revealed the team had moved sofa beds into the agency's headquarters to continue their work around the clock.

Upon gaining access to the OPM databases last week, Musk used the agency to email all federal civil employees simultaneously. The email announced a “deferred resignation” program, claiming that any federal employee who wished to resign effective September 30, 2025, would receive pay and benefits until that date and would not have to show up for work except in rare cases. Musk and the White House falsely described the offer as a "buyout" or "severance." The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, has condemned the program, saying it “will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.”

Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars bankrolling Trump’s election campaign, is not a federal employee or a congressionally confirmed member of the Trump administration. His vast and growing powers in Washington stem from Trump choosing him to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, itself a successor to the U.S. Digital Service. In the past, the Digital Service had a relatively narrow mandate, serving primarily to maintain websites and technology systems used by the federal government.

Musk’s influence now extends to the U,S. Treasury Department, where he and his team took over the federal government’s enormous payment system despite the protests of a top career official who has since been forced out. Over the weekend, Musk said he would use his access to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal grants.

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Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation reacted with shock Monday to reports that a team led by Trump administration-empowered Elon Musk had infiltrated sensitive data and financial systems overseen by multiple federal government agencies.

Several of the members said Musk’s actions are illegal and promised to oppose them, though they offered few details on how they would check him.

“My constituents are terrified and feel that this is an immense breach of privacy,” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, said in a statement. “We cannot allow an unelected billionaire to access the most sensitive information, and I will not stand idly by while Trump does nothing to lower everyday costs for Denverites or the American people.”

After he was elected president in November, Donald Trump assigned Musk, the world’s richest person and a Trump megadonor, to lead a new White House entity, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

In recent days, Musk deputies gained access, in the face of resistance by a senior career civil servant, to a Treasury Department system that handles federal government payments worth trillions of dollars. Data in the system includes personal information about millions of Americans who receive Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and other federal payments. They also shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was established as an independent entity by Congress. It manages projects and distributes funds in about 130 countries and is credited with generating international goodwill toward the U.S. The Musk team also reportedly locked civil servants out of systems at the Office of Personnel Management, potentially compromising the data of millions of federal employees.

“This is an unprecedented abuse of power by a dangerous, unelected, and unhinged person,” U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Lakewood Democrat, said in a statement to Newsline. “Americans shouldn’t have to worry that an unelected billionaire could stop payments to lifesaving programs all so he can further enrich himself and further his own self-interest at our expense.”

Joe Neguse of Lafayette, the assistant minority leader in the U.S. House, said, “The President does not have the authority to eliminate statutorily authorized agencies, impound funds lawfully appropriated by the Congress, or to give unfettered access to core government financial payment and personnel systems to his billionaire campaign donors. These actions are dangerous, reckless and unlawful.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which has Treasury Department oversight responsibilities. In a social media post Monday, Bennet wrote, “Reports of meddling in important Treasury payment systems is incredibly dangerous and risks severe damage to our country and economy. I will be pushing for answers alongside my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Windsor, however, expressed support for Musk’s actions. In a social media post Sunday, she wrote, referring to USAID, “America is tired of being the world’s ATM. We need to take care of our own people first.”

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.

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Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) has advice for anyone concerned about President Donald Trump's pending funding freeze, and potential shutdown of the Department of Education: get over it.

According to a Politico report, Trump is planning to "dismantle" the Education Department through an executive order in the coming days — which comes after the president and billionaire "Elon Musk moved to eradicate" the US Agency for International Development Monday.

Democratic lawmakers were even blocked from entering the USAID building.

READ MORE:Dems blocked from entering USAID offices: 'illegal and corrupt'

"To my friends who are upset.. call somebody who cares," Kennedy said during a Fox News interview. "You know, they better get used to this. It’s USAID today, it’s going to be the Department of Education tomorrow."

Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong Fast replied: "Yeah but none of these people have the constitutional authority to dissolve parts of the federal government"

Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) commented: "Exactly what I was saying earlier: piece by piece, department by department, they are working to purge employees, consolidate power, gut programs -- even if they can't get everything immediately through executive fiat, they will decimate the federal government and sell it for parts. No program will be safe.

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an 2 25

no lnx

Elon Musk's Doge boys think this is a video game as Trump plots his 2nd coup

Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryFebruary 03, 2025

Trump has given Elon Musk and Musk’s group of six boys at DOGE, ages 19-24, control over the US Treasury Department’s data and financial transfers.

These kids, still hooked on video games, have moved cots into the Treasury Department for pizza-and-drunk-power fueled sleepovers. They have already accessed your private data, data worth hundreds of billions to Musk and his friends governing Russia and China. Equally dangerous, their trigger-happy fingers, presto, can stop all federal money going to any person, corporation, or organization they dislike. Ditto, to any competitor they’d like to see hobbled, and there are hundreds.

They can open competitors’ tax returns and study any corporate expenditures and strategies that interest Musk; they can open their neighbors,’ their in-laws,’ their professors’ and their x-girlfriend’s tax returns. They can open the return of anyone who insults them on the news or social media. They can wreak havoc on any tax refund, deduction, social security payments or any other federally funded transaction, and with the press of a button, wipe out all funding for any organization that displeases them.

Trump is attempting his second coup

In a nutshell, any organization that helps people, or provides services that don’t profit the oligarchy, or holds government to account, or reports the truth about Trump or Musk displeases them.

Musk just pressed the button on USAID, the largest humanitarian org in the world, calling them a “criminal organization.” He posted this disinformation on X, where he uses a special algorithm to force his own Nazi-adjacent opinion down the throats of more than 600 million users.

Trump’s efforts to freeze and seize federal funds is unprecedented and presents a Constitutional crisis. Trump has already begun his second coup attempt, and federal litigation is brewing.

American heroes are fighting back

Ketamine-addled Musk, emotionally stunted and apparently stuck on 16, bragged about his new “powers” on X like the playground bully he is.

Last week when Musk and his testosterone-jacked goons tried to access Americans’ private personal data, Treasury Department heads at first refused. The Department’s longtime Fiscal Assistant, Secretary David Lebryk, rebuffed Musk’s and DOGE’s request for “source code information,” specifically relating to the technical ability to stop federal payments.

Lebryk and his colleagues stood up to protect Americans. They were placed on leave, then quit, but the drama is only beginning. Call it intuition shaped through too many years of litigation, but Trump and Musk will eventually implode in spectacular fashion. Honorable organizations will sue, as will most of the 2.6 million federal workers locked out of their offices, blocked from their computers and forced off the job, as will everyone who loses a family member because Trump through Musk has cut air traffic controllers, as will farmers in central California with no water for crops this year because the moron-in-chief released the reserve water for a photo op to prove his idiotic rant about there being a “giant spigot the democrats refuse to turn.”

The People are waking up

The absurdity has been so extreme it took a minute, but people are rising up, fighting back. There are, and will continue to be, heroes in this fight, so take heart.

Have courage. Speak out. Watch Colbert and Kimmel, they’re snot-worthy funny and deliver the response Trump hates most: laughter. Another fun thing is to go on TruthSocial, follow Trump’s account, and tell Trump every day, every minute if you want, what a sick and ignorant infant he is. Try it- it’s cathartic. He goes under @realDonaldTrump. (“@lord and savior” wasn’t available.)

Remember, Trump is an imbecile surrounded by children and empty-heads from Fox News. Also remember that he was elected by a hair, not a mandate. I’m going to start posting these numbers all the time to remind everyone that Trump, Johnson and Fox News, calling it a landslide, are lying again. Also, because posting this might get the nearly 40% of us who didn’t bother to vote to the polls next time, if there is a next time:

Trump won 77 million votes compared to Harris’ 75 million votes; 49% of the vote compared to 48%, a difference of 1%. More importantly, 90 million eligible voters didn’t vote at all, a number that exceeds the number of voters for either Trump orHarris.

In short, out of 245 million eligible US voters, nearly 70% did not vote for Trump. (75m Harris voters + 90m non-voters= 165 million, or 67% of 245 million eligible voters.) Only a math moron would present this as a mandate.

Ending on a hero’s note, here are the groups suing Musk and his band of children who need to be in school, AFTER they get a spanking. They are suing DOGE for violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

You can look this case up online, Case No. 1:25-cv-00167, pending in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. It’s still public information because Musk hasn’t taken over the judiciary’s database (yet):

American Public Health Association, American Federation of Teachers, Minority Veterans of America, VoteVets Action Fund, the Center for Auto Safety, Inc., and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington vs. the Office of Management and Budget, the Acting Director of OMB, and the Department of Government Efficiency.

Don’t be afraid! If Musk decides to round up 70% of us for hurting his feelings, at least we did the right thing. Hitler only happened because Germans were too tired to stop him. They didn’t know how far he’d go until they did know, and then it was too late.

NOW READ: There will be a reckoning: Trump nightmare not all bad if it wakes America up

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, the Haake Take, is free.

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02/03/2025 RWW

by

Kyle Mantyla

Now it appears that [Ed] Martin is positioning himself to “investigate the investigators,” as Trump and his minions have promised, perhaps looking for words in charging documents that he can twist into a false narrative of prosecutorial malfeasance on the part of the government lawyers who charged the insurrectionists.

Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

The ADL has condemned appointing Darren Beattie, who invoked the antisemitic trope that George Soros orchestrated efforts to oust President Trump

At his confirmation hearing, Kash Patel — President Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI — was grilled over his association with Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer Stew Peters. On a Friday livestream, Peters denied being a white supremacist, shortly before introducing former Klan leader David Duke as a “living legend.”

We might need to update that famous saying by German Lutheran theologian Martin Niemöller. First they came for the Episcopalians … then they came for the Catholics … then they came for the Lutherans.

This week, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a “joint memorial” (i.e. resolution) of the Legislature calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark decision that in 2015 established a constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples and insisting that “the issue of marriage and enforcement of all laws pertaining to marriage” be returned to the states. The state Senate is expected to take up the memorial shortly.

"Isn't she Jewish?" an unapologetic state Rep. Nico Rios asked when reached by phone. "Why is it wrong that I state a fact?"

REF

NO LNX

Vittoria Elliott

Politics

Feb 2, 2025

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

Wired Staff;

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

Got a Tip?

Are you a current or former employee with the Office of Personnel Management or another government agency impacted by Elon Musk? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact Vittoria Elliott at vittoria_elliott@wired.com or securely at velliott88.18 on Signal.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman.

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Our latest scoop reveals the young, inexperienced engineers aiding Elon Musk’s government takeover

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Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.

Newly approved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk surrogates access to the system late on Friday, five people familiar with the situation toldThe New York Times.Bessent's decision came the same day as news that David Lebryk, a career Treasury official who was acting secretary before Bessent's confirmation, would step down after arguing with DOGE members over access to the system run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service that pays out over $6 trillion a year.

"Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on social media on Saturday. "Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it."

"Americans don't want an unelected and unaccountable billionaire dictating what working families can and cannot afford."

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich also responded with shock to the news: "An unelected billionaire, with no actual congressional authority or governmentt experience, now has access to Treasury payment systems and sensitive information about millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments. What could go wrong?"

The news heightens fears that Musk and the Trump administration are attempting to gain authoritarian control over the federal government by ousting or sidelining career civil servants and undermining Congress, which has the constitutional authority to decide how the government should spend its money.

DOGE gained access to the Treasury payment system on the same day that an official at the Office of Personnel Management said that Musk allies had locked career civil servants out of a computer system containing the personal information of federal employees. The news also capped a week in which the Trump administration attempted to freeze all federal grants and loans, a move that has been temporarily blocked by two judges.

Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter demanding answers from Bessent on Friday when reports first emerged that Musk's team had tried to gain access to the system.

"To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy," Wyden wrote. "I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems."

Other Democratic lawmakers also voiced concerns on social media about the news.

"Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, is rooting around in Social Security and Medicare payment systems. He's reaching his hands into our pockets and firing anyone who tries to stop him. This reeks of corruption—it must stop," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D.-Wash.) wrote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the news "alarming' and said that Congress must investigate.

People familiar with the situation told The New York Timesthat no payments had yet been blocked and that the stated mission of the DOGE team was to review payments, not to stop them. Musk suggested in a social media post on Friday that he was looking for inapropriate expenditures, but also that blocking funds might be appropriate.

"The DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups," he wrote on social media on Friday. "They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once."

Former Treasury officials told the Timesthat funds are dispersed by a comparatively small staff who rely on the agencies that earmark the funds to vet them. Don Hammond, who ran the system at the turn of the millennium, also toldThe Wall Street Journalthat, while there were certain automatic safeguards in place, it was not the role of Treasury to approve or reject specific payments.

"Legally, if you want to stop a payment from taking place, the place to do that is at the agency level," Hammond said.

Responding to the article on social media on Sunday, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens wrote: "The Treasury system makes the payments (cuts checks). It doesn't decide who to pay or how much. A little like an employer using a payroll processor. Musk has infiltrated the system to stop payments. It's a coup."

In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system.

  1. He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts' block on the administration's spending freeze.
  2. He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend's companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.)
  3. He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE's goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending.

Owens noted that Musk wasn't "chasing these cuts for their own sake. He's helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself."

"It's nice to believe in a fantasy in which Musk and DOGE work alongside civil servants to improve technology and services for Americans and save a few bucks along the way. But all evidence points to the contrary," Owens continued. "The richest man in the world, whom no one elected to any government position, is seeking unprecedented access to confidential information, including information pertaining to his own business interests, and seems hell-bent on cutting off as much funding as possible for the programs that matter to the rest of us."

Owens pointed to a recent poll finding that only around one-third of Americans approve of DOGE, and that 52% disapprove of Musk.

"Americans don't want an unelected and unaccountable billionaire dictating what working families can and cannot afford," she concluded. "If Musk is going to continue running the government like one of his failed businesses, perhaps someone should force his 'resignation' too."

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Late Friday, newly sworn-in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave access to the agency’s payments system to representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and headed by Elon Musk. A strike force of Musk lackeys appears to be pursuing a takeover of key background systems of the US government—from human resources to physical buildings to software systems to, now, what is essentially the country’s central bank account. At this point, Musk’s people reportedly cannot control payments, only view them, but how long that arrangement will last is unclear.

Treasury’s payment system processes more than $5 trillion annually, paying the country’s bills. This includes Social Security checks and tax refunds, which means the system includes sensitive personal information on tens of millions of Americans. A Sunday headline from New York Magazine, “Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number,” is not an exaggeration.

When Musk, the world’s richest man, took over Twitter, he cut costs by simply refusing to make payments. From rent for the company’s headquarter offices in San Francisco to janitorial services, Musk’s approach was to simply stop paying the bills and see what happens. (Employees were forced to use bathrooms in other buildings.)

A similar approach to the United States government, however, promises to be catastrophic. One scenario is that shutting off payments to federal grantees and nonprofits could cause rapid harm. And this could come at the whims of extremist ideological allies of Trump. For example, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a Christian nationalist and purveyor of misinformation (who lied to the FBI and was later pardoned by Trump), posted on X information about federal payments to Lutheran Family Services, which along with its affiliates provides a wide range of services, including counseling. Musk retweeted Flynn’s post promising “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.” The illegal actions would in fact appear to be Musk’s own—Congress appropriates federal funds, but Musk is acting as if the law will never catch up to him.

Disgraced General Michael Flynn Has Made a New Movie—About Himself – Mother Jones

Musk’s tweet may be getting ahead of the reality of what he and his team are doing at the moment. But imagine if the US government were to stop paying bills because a billionaire saw a social media post from a conspiracy theorist urging him to do so.

“Fitch and everyone else should downgrade US credit,” Dean Baker, and economist at the progressive Center for Economy and Policy Research, posted on Bluesky. “If a bill gets paid only if Elon Musk or Donald Trump feels like it, then the US is not very creditworthy.”

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a similar warning. “To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” he said in a statement late Friday. “The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Economists have long warned that should the United States miss a debt payment, it would send shockwaves through the world economy. On the domestic front, the Trump administration this past week attempted to withhold billions in federal aid through an Office of Management and Budget memo instructing agencies to temporarily halt payments. The attempt was “wildly illegal,” according to experts, and two federal judges have halted much of that effort. Now, it may be possible for Musk and his underlings themselves to simply withhold payments they disagree with. Theoretically, rather than asking agencies to cut spending, Musk could move to cut off the funds from Treasury.

“I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs,” Wyden said in statement.

According to reporting in Politico, the Doge team doesn’t have the capability to withhold or change payments—at least not yet. Instead, access by Doge’s Treasury representative, software executive Tom Krause, is “read-only.” But warning signs of a hostile takeover have been flashing. For example, Musk’s team literally took over Office of Personnel Management computer systems this past week, locking OPM officials out of them. They have been taking down entire government websites and datasets, causing public-facing information and research to disappear before Americans’ eyes in Orwellian fashion. And over the weekend, Doge representatives demanded classified information from USAID that they lacked clearances for, according to CNN, despite that the executive order creating Doge explicitly exempts classified information from its efforts. When USAID security officials refused to comply, they were put on leave.

US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time | WIRED

The power that comes with controlling US government payments is vast. How Musk and Trump might try to leverage that against political or legal opponents—say, against states that file lawsuits they don’t like—is sobering to consider. So far, the GOP-controlled Congress seems willing to let them do whatever they want.

US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time | WIRED

Several government websites have been taken down, including the USAID.gov, ForeignAssistance.gov, NeglectedDiseases.gov, and ChildrenInAdversity.gov. A WIRED analysis of more than 1,000 federal .gov websites found that at least seven sites linked to a USAID server went offline in a two-hour span on Saturday afternoon.

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Tom Krause—the current CEO of Citrix and several other tech companies’ parent company Cloud Software Group—is reportedly helping Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with reviewing the nation’s federal payment system.

Krause, a longtime top IT executive and former CFO of Broadcom, played a critical role in Broadcom’s $61billion acquisition of VMware and was even initially slated to become the leader of VMware post-merger.

However, in 2022, Krause abruptly departed Broadcom to become CEO of Cloud Software Group (CSG) which owns Citrix, Tibco, Spotfire, Jaspersoft and other IT companies.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Krause is now helping the U.S. Treasury Department and serves as a liaison to Elon Musk’s DOGE.

President Donald Trump’s administration has approved plans to grant Treasury officials affiliated with Musk’s DOGE team access to the federal system that handles trillions in payments.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signed off on a plan to give access to the payment system to a team led by Krause, according to multiple reports.

Related: [Citrix Parent Cloud Software Group Confirms Layoffs]

Bessent granted DOGE access to the Treasury’s payment system Friday that included DOGE representative Krause, according to a report by The New York Times.

Krause’s role will be subject to safeguards that would not allow the ability to make changes to the system and that no one outside the Treasury Department would have access. “The secretary’s approval was contingent on it being essentially a read-only operation,” said sources familiar with the matter, according to a Politico report.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based CSG did not respond to comment on the matter by press time.

In January, CSG confirmed the vendor conducted layoffs worldwide, with LinkedIn posts from former workers revealing cuts of engineers, technical account managers and other roles.

Krause’s Broadcom-VMware Merger Role

In 2022, Krause was named CEO of Cloud Software Group, which has said more than 100 million users around the globe rely on the company to help them adapt and transform to meet the tech challenges across private, public, managed and sovereign cloud environments.

Prior to CSG, Krause spent over six years at Broadcom, where he played a critical role in Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.

As president of Broadcom’s Software Group, Krause spoken at length with investors, analysts and VMware employees about the benefits of the deal throughout 2022 and 2023. Krause even carried out a town hall with VMware employees alongside Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, while also writing several blogs regarding the benefits of the merger.

The initial plan for VMware, post-acquisition, was for the company to become part of Broadcom’s Software Group under Krause’s leadership. Instead, it was decided to rebrand Broadcom Software Group as VMware.

“VMware is an iconic software company with a vibrant ecosystem, including hyperscalers, system integrators and channel partners,” Krause said in 2022. “We don’t want to change any of that, and in fact, we want to embrace those relationships. We have tremendous respect for what VMware has built, supported by a skilled team of engineering talent. It is for all these reasons and more that we’ve committed to rebrand Broadcom Software Group as VMware.”

Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMWare in late 2023.

Musk On Treasury Officials

DOGE was created by the Trump administration to slash government staff and spending. DOGE, for its part, said its mission is to modernize "federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."

“Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress,” Musk recently wrote on his social media company X. “This needs to stop NOW!”

He said his DOGE team discovered “that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.”

President Trump this weekend commended Musk’s recent work on DOGE.

“Elon is doing a good job. He’s a big cost-cutter,” said Trump in an interview with reporters this weekend. “He’s very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.”

Krause’s Technology Career

Krause was vice president of corporate development at Avago Technologies in 2016.

When Avago Technologies and Broadcom merged, he soon became CFO of the newly formed Broadcom Inc. As CFO of Broadcom, he was responsible for all financial functions, mergers and acquisitions, human resources and investor relations.

In 2020, he was promoted to lead Broadcom’s six software divisions as president of Broadcom’s Software Group, which he helped form. Krause was responsible for all of Broadcom’s software divisions as well as software sales, customer support and software operations. He worked with a team of more than 6,000 employees and managed over $5 billion in revenue.

Prior to Avago and Broadcom, Krause ran his own financial advisory firm—Krause Consulting Group—for two years where he represented several public and private technology companies.

His IT career also includes a six-year stint at Techwell as vice president of business development; two years at venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures; and two years working as an investment banking analyst at wealth management firm Robert Stephens.

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Originally, Donald Trump had two people in mind to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory board he has proposed: Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the 2024 GOP presidential primary but gave Trump an enthusiastic endorsement after dropping out of the race.

But according to Politico reporters Adam Wren and Holly Otterbein, the 39-year-old Ramaswamy won't be part of DOGE after all — and was, sources say, pushed out in part because of Musk.

"Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk's preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them," Wren and Otterbein explain in an article published after Trump's return to the White House. "An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise."

READ MORE: Trump Inauguration dubbed 'a coronation of our country's descent into oligarchy'

A GOP strategist told Politico that Ramaswamy "just burned through the bridges, and he finally burned Elon." The strategist added, "Everyone wants him out of Mar-a-Lago, out of D.C."

Cincinnati native Ramaswamy, according to Politico sources, now plans to run for governor of Ohio — a position presently held by conservative Republican Mike DeWine.

Wren and Otterbein report, "One main reason for some Republicans' frustration with Ramaswamy was a post he made on X during a discussion of H-1B visas. In late December, Ramaswamy criticized American culture, saying that tech companies hire foreign workers in part because of a mindset in the country that has 'venerated mediocrity over excellence.'"

According to one of Politico's GOP sources, "They wanted him out before the tweet — but kicked him to the curb when that came out."

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Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against Donald J. Trump just moments after he was once again sworn in as president of the United States.

Here’s what you need to know:

Forcing DOGE to comply with the law is one way to shine light on the Trump regime’s conflicts of interest and to fight back against its extremist, pro-corporate agenda.

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Billionaire Trump advisor and donor Elon Musk's non-governmental "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE, is about to get hit with a lawsuit, alleging that it violates federal law, according to The Washington Post. The Post says the lawsuit "will be filed within minutes of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday."

The lawsuit claims DOGE legally meets the requirements to be a “federal advisory committee,” and is required to abide by specific rules surrounding disclosure, hiring and other practices, which the lawsuit reportedly says it does not.

"These groups, known as FACAs, are required by law to have 'fairly balanced' representation, keep regular minutes of meetings, allow the public to attend, file a charter with Congress and more — all steps that DOGE does not appear to have taken," the Post reports.

READ MORE: ‘Fear Small Crowds?’: Trump and Team Mocked as ‘Snowflakes’ for Inauguration Move

“DOGE is not exempted from FACA’s requirements,” the lawsuit states. It was written by Kel McClanahan, executive director of the public interest law firm National Security Counselors. NSC's website says it "was founded to further the twin ideals that the public needs to be as informed as possible, and that people entangled in legal matters in this field should have reasonable access to knowledgeable legal assistance, regardless of income."

“All meetings of DOGE, including those conducted through an electronic medium, must be open to the public,” the lawsuit adds.

Some supporters of DOGE disagree.

“DOGE isn’t a federal advisory committee because DOGE doesn’t really exist. DOGE is a branding exercise, a shorthand for Trump’s government reform efforts,” claims Sam Hammond, senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation. “The president is allowed to take advice from external experts without creating a formal advisory committee.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens FBI Office, Alleges ‘Corruption,’ Demands They ‘Preserve All Records’

But some government ethics experts say DOGE should be considered a federal advisory committee.

"DOGE must comply with the transparency requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Public access to records, public meetings, etc.," former Bush 43 White House chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter, a professor of law, said last week.

"Congress does not want federal agencies or presidents setting up advisory committees of wealthy businesspeople, or anyone else, who provide advice in secret without being subject to conflict of interest rules binding on government employees," Painter wrote in a November op-ed.

"Conflict-laden outside 'advisers' can still advise the president, but if the advisory role is formalized and regular, as DOGE will be, it must be conducted through a transparent and regulated entity called a federal advisory committee. Under FACA, such committees must keep publicly available records, have public meetings and allow for public participation," he noted.

"This shift of DOGE to outside the government was probably motivated by Musk and Ramaswamy both seeking to avoid the divestiture of financial assets that would be required for them to comply with ethics rules inside the government," Painter added. "Establishing DOGE as a department inside the government would have required these two men, and everyone else working for DOGE, to comply with the criminal conflict of interest statute, 18 U.S. Code 208, which prohibits any federal employee from participating in a government matter, including industrywide regulations, federal contracts and other matters, that has an effect on their financial interest."

READ MORE: ‘My Eyes and Ears’: Trump Names Ambassadors to Hollywood, Critics Question Motives

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During Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, billionaire Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer were among his aggressive, outspoken supporters. Musk was a major donor, and Loomer traveled with Trump's campaign.

Trump has proposed a new advisory committee that would be called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and he has chosen Musk and MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead it. But Loomer has been expressing her disdain for Musk and loudly questioning his MAGA credentials.

In a Christmas 2024 post on the Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, Loomer wrote, "Is DOGE real? Or is it a vanity project? Can we have this conversation without people crying?"

READ MORE:[Lauren Boebert's replacement in her old district vows to be different — but not by much

The following day, Loomer tweeted, "Is DOGE a way to 'cut spending' or REDIRECT the spending toward the pet projects of tech bro billionaires? It's looking like the latter TBH. 'Hey let's convince the peasants that we are saving them money as we enrich ourselves! Then when they find out and speak out, we will have the Indian Mods Ban them!'"

Loomer, in a separate December 26 tweet, predicted that Trump and Musk will have a falling out.

The Florida-based conspiracy theorist posted, "Don't worry guys. The divorce is coming soon."

Musk was dismissive of Loomer's posts, tweeting, "Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore."

READ MORE:['Very troubling': Leader of 'Abandon Harris' movement now anxious about Trump appointees

But Loomer has continued her attacks on Musk.

Loomer also tweeted, "The elephant in the room is that @elonmusk, who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition. @realDonaldTrump He's a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump's side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago."

The New Republic's Hafiz Rashid noted the "racism" that has been evident in Loomer's tweets.

Rashid, in an article published on December 26, wrote, "Loomer, renowned for her Islamophobia, racism, and conspiracy theories, appears to be opposing Musk for those very reasons, as her virulent racism drives her anti-immigration views. Her attacks on Musk are flavored with that racism, from her invoking of China to repeated attacks on people from India."

READ MORE: How one top Dem is building the 'strongest barrier against' Trump

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an online civil war between hardcore Donald Trump "America First" partisans and the men whom the president-elect chose to head up his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spilled onto Trump's Truth Social media platform.

The war began with a spat when longtime Trump supporter Laura Loomer lashed out at Trump's choice of tech entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan, who was born in India and is an avid supporter of removing caps on H-1B visas, as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence.

That, in turn, set off a battle on X with both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who pushed back at Loomer which in turn led to ugly attacks about the two leeching onto Trump for their own tech industry purposes and Musk firing back at Loomer for "trolling" for clicks.

Over on Truth Social under the #DOGE hashtag, supporters of Trump sided with Loomer and have begun questioning the motives of what some are calling the "DOGE twins."

AmericanGal_69, whose bio claims she lives in Tennessee and boasts, "The Constitution cause those are my God given rights," leveled accusations that the MAGA movement may have been defrauded.

In a post where she tagged the president-elect, she wrote, "Some dumb a-- comments from folks that are blinded by false prophets.

"Do your research. I knew all this crap was coming from him and CONSWAMY. Did @realDonaldTrump know?" she asked. "Is he in on it? Has #MAGA been duped? Let's see how the Boss @realDonaldTrump @TeamTrump reacts to all the negative feedback on the #DOGE twins."

USMC Veteran BlackBeardsFlag chimed in, "#Doge and #ElonMusk want to outsource our jobs instead of America first. They love H1B visas for cheap labor."

"How about a complete moratorium on immigration? That sounds about my speed, but then I'm #AmericaFirst #MAGA #Doge needs to hush #Truth #MAHA #Trump #elonmusk," wrote AnneOfTheWest whose bio states, "Pro-West, anti immigration. Christian, conservative, and a Patriot. Men are men, women are women. Return this country to what it was."

"Deport ALL illegal aliens with a lifetime ban from re-entering the US. NO EXCEPTIONS," is the bio for TruthSayer who also joined the pile-on by warning, "@realDonaldTrump, we didn't support you so you could bring and keep more foreign nationals here to further drain our resources. #AmericansFirst! Student visas in the US are hideously abused by foreign agitators, activists, fake-student criminals, and visa overstayers. We should NOT offer green cards to ANY US college graduate to encourage more to come or stay. Student grants, scholarships, school resources, and student housing, should be for AMERICANS FIRST. We should stop the importation of legions of student visas and focus on offering better opportunities for AMERICAN students instead! #RestrictStudentVisas"

Another Truth Social user raised red flags that Musk is impacting Loomer's reach.

"Kiss #Doge goodbye after the last 24 hours. Elon, aka Jack Dorsey 2.0 just took blue ✅ s from @LauraLoomer 💩 new rules w/ update seems to be deboosting the #MAGA Conservatives voices," wrote "pro-life scientist" Michael Szumega.

"There are at least 1.5 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. awaiting deportation that are not in custody. Perhaps we should pause immigration, with few exceptions, until they are removed. Then we can have a conversation about changes to legal immigration," contributed Alx who has a pinned picture of himself with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on his Truth Social page.

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) literally threw President-elect Donald Trump's promise not to cut Social Security on the floor as she met with the House DOGE Caucus for the first time on Tuesday.

As Greene was heading into a meeting with the caucus that will give recommendations to Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, she was confronted by advocate Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works.

"We're bipartisan," Lawson explained, presenting the lawmaker with a document detailing Trump's promise not to cut Social Security.

"No, you're not," Greene insisted. "You're out here asking bulls--- questions."

"This is a mailing from — this is Donald Trump," Lawson said as Greene snatched the document from him and threw it into the air.

"You know what? We don't care," the lawmaker ranted.

"That's Donald Trump's mailing," Lawson pointed out.

"This right here is for Democrat ads to attack Republicans," Greene insisted.

"Will you pledge to take Social Security and Medicare cuts off the table?" Lawson asked.

ALSO READ:It’s time to decimate the Republicans’ standing with the public — and the press

"I don't need to take a pledge because guess what? The sad story for you is the American people elected Trump, his agenda, and Republicans to lead the country because you guys suck so bad," Greene opined.

"I'm just wondering if you want to take a pledge to not cut Social Security and Medicare?" Lawson repeated while Greene walked away.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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i’ve shared with you the plans of Trump’s unelected multi-billionaires, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to undermine Social Security — the most popular and successful program in the federal government, into which you’ve paid your entire working life.

Today I want to share their plan to gut Medicaid.

Medicaid is less politically popular than Social Security or Medicare, because it mainly supports poor children and families who have little or no political voice.

But Medicaid covers far more Americans.

Medicaid insures nearly half of all children in the United States. It covers 1 in 5 women of childbearing age. It also pays for a large portion of the nation’s nursing home care and mental health treatment. States and the federal government share its costs, which totaled $880 billion last year.

How are the DOGE billionaires planning to gut it?

First, by turning Medicaid into “block grants,” in which states get lump sums regardless of how many people sign up for the program. Republican senator and founding DOGE caucus member John Cornyn has already publicly stated that he favors this approach.

As more poor children and needy families sign up, block grants will force states to increase their own spending on Medicaid or restrict who gets it. Given the strain on state budgets and the negligible political voice of Medicaid recipients, it will almost surely be the latter.

A second method for gutting Medicaid favored by Musk, Ramaswamy, Cornyn, and other DOGE caucus members is to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. They claim this would save the federal government at least $100 billion over the next decade.

But the reason for the saving is that work requirements would cause an estimated 600,000 people — most of them unable to work — to lose coverage (according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office).

The third idea DOGE is considering is to cut back on the expansion of Medicaid that came with the Affordable Care Act. That expansion enabled adults in families earning up to $43,000 a year to get health care coverage. (Under it, the federal government pays 90 percent of the costs.)

Step back for a moment and consider what’s being proposed.

If the Affordable Care Act’s expanded Medicaid is cut back, hundreds of thousands of Americans in families earning up to $43,000 a year will lose their health care.

If Medicaid is turned into block grants or if work is required of people unable to work, many hundreds of thousands more will lose their only access to health care, including large numbers of children.

The presumed goal of the DOGE exercise is to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Yet Trump and his billionaires are planning to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which disproportionately have benefited large corporations and wealthy people like themselves, along with additional tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthy.

The estimated cost of extending the Trump tax cuts is at least $5 trillion — more than twice the amount Musk has stated DOGE will cut in “wasteful” government spending.

The richest man in the world and his billionaire colleagues are seeking to reduce money spent for the health care of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, at the same time they’re seeking to reduce taxes on themselves and others who are the richest and most privileged.

Anything wrong with this picture?

Many of the Americans who will be shafted by all this voted for Trump in 2024.

They may never discover that Trump is behind this because Trump won’t have his fingerprints on the Medicaid cuts. He’ll hide behind Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE and the newly formed DOGE caucus in Congress.

Not even their fingerprints will be obvious because block grants to the states, work requirements, and elimination of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion will all do the dirty deed quietly.

Nor will working Americans discover that big corporations and the wealthy are reaping most of the savings from the gutting of Medicaid in the form of lower taxes. Most working Americans haven’t yet discovered how skewed the 2017 Trump tax cut has been to the wealthy and big corporations, so why should they discover it in future years?

One more thing.

Employer-sponsored health insurance — available to most salaried workers in large corporations but rarely to hourly workers or contract workers — remains untaxed.

This is one of the largest tax expenditures in the federal government.

As I said, Medicaid costs about $880 billion a year. The exclusion from taxes of employer-provided health insurance costs the federal government a very large fraction of that — the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated $299 billion in 2022; the Congressional Budget Office projects $641 billion by 2032.

It’s another well-disguised benefit for the privileged that’s underwritten by the non-privileged. Yet I’d be astonished if DOGE touched it.

Why go after the costs of Medicaid and not the costs of employer-provided health insurance? For the same reason Trump’s billionaires will happily cut taxes on themselves even as they gut health care for millions of poor kids and working-class families.

What’s considered “waste and fraud” often depends on whether one is looking downward or upward, and the billionaire DOGEs look only downward. But the biggest waste and fraud is found at the high rungs — in tax loopholes and tax expenditures used by wealthy individuals and big corporations. (Did I hear anyone say “carried interest?”)

When Trump chose Dr. Mehmet Oz, the multimillion-dollar celebrity doctor (who infamously promoted hydroxychloroquine while holding over $615,000 in shares of the drug’s distributor) to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Trump said Oz will “cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency.”

Believe that, and you should believe in hydroxychloroquine.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

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an 12 24

Some advisors to President-elect Donald Trump have reportedly floated several ideas to gut regulations on banks, including one proposal to eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that several unnamed advisors and officials close to Trump — including some who part of the "Department of Government Efficiency" (which is not yet an actual federal agency authorized by Congress) — are mulling several major changes to government oversight of the banking sector. The Officer of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve have also been eyed for "restructuring," according to the Journal.

Under the plan, the FDIC would be eliminated, but deposit insurance would be rolled into the Department of the Treasury. Still, the proposal set off alarm bells among various experts on social media. Historian Kevin Kruse wrote on Bluesky that past major reforms to financial regulators sometimes led to catastrophe.

READ MORE:'Extraordinary situation': How Musk could personally reap billions from 'efficiency' panel

"When I lecture about New Deal banking reforms, I note that some of the key measures — like Glass Steagall — were repealed by the right with disastrous results like the 2008 financial meltdown, but ha ha, no one will ever be stupid enough to kill FDIC and bring back the old bank runs," Kruse wrote.

Journalist Walker Bragman further elaborated on why the FDIC was established in the first place in the wake of the 1929 financial crisis and subsequent bank failures of the 1930s. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had explicitly sought to create more stability in the financial sector by guaranteeing all Americans' bank deposits would be insured up to $2,500 (the FDIC now insures deposits up to $250,000).

"This is so bad," Bragman lamented. "FDR created the FDIC amid The Great Depression in order to restore faith in American banking. People were basically losing everything when their banks failed. The FDIC was meant to prevent so-called 'bank runs' where people would pull their money out to save what the could get."

MSNBC host Chris Hayes sarcastically wrote that he would "love to have to re learn all the lessons of the New Deal again." Writer Karl Folk responded to the Journal's report by arguing that Americans "are all about to get robbed by the wealth class in a way that really can not be described." Civil rights lawyer Joshua Erlich was more blunt: "[G]etting rid of the FDIC is so cartoonishly evil that it’s hard to even process."

READ MORE:'Deep cuts that hit hard': Why Trump's budget will be especially painful in red states

Click here to read the Journal's report in full (subscription required).

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AN 12 24

Billionaire Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was a major donor to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, and now that Trump is president-elect, he has picked Musk and MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to head a proposed new agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Its goals, according to Trump and his transition team, include finding ways to cut federal spending and reducing the United States' federal deficit.

In an article published on December 11, Reuters reporters Andy Sullivan and Ally J. Levine examine possible areas in which Musk and Ramaswamy could recommend "deep cuts." And those cuts, they stress, could be the most painful in red states where Trump enjoyed the strongest support.

"Roughly two out of every three dollars is spent on pension, health care and other programs that provide tangible benefits to U.S. residents, meaning that any cutbacks could cause an outcry," Sullivan and Levine explain. "Consider the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare expansion that was the signature accomplishment of Democratic President Barack Obama. Republicans vowed to roll back 'Obamacare' when Trump was first elected in 2016, but they failed to do so. The program has dramatically grown since then."

READ MORE: Millions will see rise in health insurance premiums if federal subsidies expire

Like Musk and Ramaswamy, Russell Vought — Trump's choice for White House budget director and a major architect of Project 2025 — has, according to Sullivan and Levine, "called for tightening veterans programs." And this, the Reuters reporters note, "could have an outsize effect in Trump country."

A chart published with the article shows that 63 percent of the United States' "total spending on veterans' benefits" is in states that Trump won in the 2024 election — while only 37 percent is in states that went to Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Trump has ruled out benefit cuts to the two biggest safety-net programs, Social Security and Medicare," Sullivan and Levine report. "The two programs, which provide pension and health benefits to seniors, play a bigger role in the states that backed his presidential bid. Other benefit programs aimed at low-income people may be easier for a Republican president like Trump to tackle."

The journalists continue, "Both the Medicaid health plan for the poor and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, which helps pay for groceries, tend to play a bigger role in Democratic-leaning states. But cutbacks in these areas also would hit hard in poor, conservative states like Louisiana."

READ MORE:['About to cut my mic': Frustrated CNN host told to end segment amid fight with GOP guest

*Read Reuters' full report at this link.

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an 12 24

'Everything is on the table': There's a new development in the Trump-Musk plot to kill Social Security

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AN 12 24

Reacting to Vivek Ramaswamy glibly claiming it will be "good for many of the [government employee] individuals when they make a transition from government service back to the private sector," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and "Morning Joe" regular Steve Ratner thoroughly dismantled the Donald Trump advisor's economic plans for the country.

Newly installed into Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), the tech entrepreneur, along with co-chair Elon Musk, have been making broad claims of eliminating trillions in government expenses without providing much in the way of messy details.

On Thursday morning, host Scarborough introduced the clip of Ramaswamy speaking and, after admitting he is in favor of government cutbacks, bluntly said of the Trump's appointees proposals, "This is a scam."

"Steve, let's cut straight to this," Scarborough said to his guest. "I know you're going to go through these charts, but his is something that you want to hear these two guys talking about: how they are going to cut $2 trillion from the budget."

"It's a joke," he pronounced before adding, "And it's a joke because this is something you and I have been obsessed about for very long time, the national debt, getting the deficit under control. Just looking at your first chart here, people need to understand, Social Security and Medicare make up about 50 percent of what the government spends. You add defense and veterans benefits, that's another 20 percent, you are up to 70 percent. You then add debt, and how much it costs to service that debt, that's another 10 percent."

"So Steve, before they even start talking about cutting these so-called federal employees that are bankrupting us, the United States government has already spent 80 percent of its budget on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, vets, defense and interest on the debt," he added.

"I love some of these other numbers," he joked. "Again, forgive me for killing Hamlet in the first act here: let's cut law enforcement, that's 1 percent of the budget., but let's cut sciences and medical research, we spend too much on that they may be saving 1 percent of the budget.

"Transportation, those barrel projects is going to bankrupt us, it's only 2% of the budget," he jokingly exclaimed. "Again, I will actually let you explain this far better than I am right now, but this is a scam unless they are going to slash Social Security and Medicare and Veterans Affairs. They are never going to get the $2 trillion so they need to just stop pretending."

Watch below or at the link here.

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an 11 24

The two right-wing billionaires President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading a new "government efficiency" commission outlined their vision Wednesday for the mass firing of federal employees, large-scale deregulation, and major spending cuts that could impact antipoverty programs, drug research and development, and more.

For the first time since Trump announced plans to create the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which, despite its name, would be an advisory commission rather than an actual federal department—Tesla CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy offered a detailed look at how they plan to achieve their stated objective of taking a "chainsaw" to federal operations.

"We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America," the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. "The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws."

Decrying rules crafted by "unelected bureaucrats," Musk and Ramaswamy—unelected outside advisers—wrote that they intend to present to Trump "a list of regulations" they believe should be eliminated. The culling of regulations would, they argued, provide the justification for "mass headcount reductions"—corporate-speak for sweeping firings—across federal agencies, a plan the two wrote would not be deterred by civil service protections.

Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission's co-leaders would likely benefit Musk's companies, at least three of which are currently under scrutiny from nine federal agencies.

"Based on Elon Musk's comments, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is poised to make far-reaching recommendations that could have a devastating impact on Americans and enormously benefit insiders, starting with Musk himself," Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said Wednesday.

"A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge."

Musk and Ramaswamy also laid out a plan under which Trump would evade existing federal statutes such as the Impoundment Control Act to cut spending already allocated by Congress.

"DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood," they wrote.

As The Washington Post's Jacob Bogage recently observed, the federal programs "without separate spending authorization" that Musk and Ramaswamy are targeting "represent more than $516 billion" and encompass key areas including veterans' healthcare, education spending, housing assistance, childcare aid, student loan programs, Head Start, opioid addiction treatment, and NASA.

Musk, a megadonor to Trump's 2024 presidential bid, claimed on the campaign trail that he would be able to identify "at least $2 trillion" in possible cuts to federal spending.

Casey Wetherbee, an Argentina-based writer, warned Wednesday that "Musk and Ramaswamy's admiration of Argentine president Javier Milei offers us a glimpse into their ideal end state."

"Ramaswamy tweeted on November 18: 'A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids,'" Wetherbee wrote for Jacobin. "When Milei assumed office last year, he declared that conditions would worsen before things would get better; Musk similarly warned that DOGE’s recommendations may cause 'temporary hardship.' Meanwhile, in Argentina, Milei's austerity measures have targeted the country's social safety net, causing the poverty rate to skyrocket while only lowering taxes for the country's wealthiest citizens, a troubling outlook for a second Trump administration if DOGE's advice is ever implemented."

"A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge," Wetherbee added. "After all, in DOGE's public call for collaborators, it seeks 'super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries'; that's how they see themselves. We can only hope that, by virtue of how evidently insufferable they are, DOGE's relationship with the Trump administration flames out spectacularly."

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RAW

11 24

Relying on a chart from USA Today and a Reader's Digest article on weird things the government spends money on, Elon Musk's analysis can only be intended to distract.

Either corporations can pay their fair share, or we can start cutting the military budget. Analysts are pointing out that Musk's tweeted-out plan can not work; there isn't enough for the government to cut. Most of the items he's pointing at, like a Superbowl ad for the census save money elsewhere, but there is no effort to get to any sort of understanding — just a mad rush to vomit out fables his mad troll base to repeat.

DOGE, the incoming Trump administration advisory panel headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has been posting on X, the social media platform owned by Musk, about the federal government's spending. The posts have featured a mix of facts and figures, including those drawn from a USA Facts chart and a Reader's Digest article on "11 Bizarre Things the U.S. Government Actually Spent Money On."

Washington Post

IFrame Content

Get ready to see ourNational Parks sold off. When they Musk talks about getting used to living with less, maybe they mean less Medicare and food.

The remainder of the budget, wrote Kessler, is everything else: Medicaid, food aid, grants to states for various partnerships and projects, scientific research, critical agencies like the National Weather Service, and the list goes on. For DOGE to meet its promise of balancing the budget absent new tax increases — and Trump has pledged to cut taxes on top of all this — pretty much the entire rest of the federal government that isn't defense and retirement programs would have to be eliminated.

DOGE has put forward a number of examples of government spending it considers to be wasteful, Kessler continued, but aside from the cost of these programs being negligible, many of them are more useful than Musk is making them sound.

For instance, DOGE criticized a $2.5 million Super Bowl ad for the Census — but in fact, Kessler noted, "for every 1 percent increase in mail-in responses [the Census Bureau] received, it would save $85 million sending workers door-to-door to collect information. So what appears to be a waste of money was intended to reduce spending over time."

RawStory

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an 11 24

Democrats on the House Budget Committee said Friday that the plan Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy outlined to eliminate spending already appropriated by the U.S. Congress would run afoul of a federal law enacted in response to former President Richard Nixon's impoundment of funds for programs he opposed.

In a Wall Street Journalop-ed published earlier this week, Musk and Ramaswamy specifically mentioned the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (ICA) only to wave it away, arguing it would not hinder their effort to enact sweeping spending cuts as part of the "government efficiency" commission President-elect Donald Trump appointed them to lead.

But House Budget Committee Democrats said Friday that the Nixon-era law and subsequent Supreme Court rulings make clear that "the power of the purse rests solely with Congress."

"Fifty years after the ICA became law, Congress once again confronts a threat attempting to push past the long-recognized boundaries of executive budgetary power," the lawmakers wrote in a fact sheet. "During his first administration, President Trump illegally impounded crucial security assistance funding for Ukraine in an effort to benefit his reelection campaign. Now, Donald Trump and his far-right extremist allies are pushing dangerous legal theories to dismantle that system."

"They want to give the president unchecked power to slash funding for programs like food assistance, public education, healthcare, and federal law enforcement—all without congressional approval," the Democrats continued. "American families would be forced to pay more for basic necessities, investment in infrastructure and jobs would decline, and our communities would become less safe. Instead of working within the democratic process, Trump and his allies want to sidestep Congress entirely. But the Constitution is clear: only Congress, elected by the people, controls how taxpayer dollars are spent."

"House Democrats are ready to fight back against any illegal attempt to gut the programs that keep American families safe and help them make ends meet."

The fact sheet was released days after Musk and Ramaswamy, both billionaires, offered for the first time a detailed explanation of their plan to pursue large-scale cuts to federal regulations and spending, as well as mass firings of federal employees, in their role as co-heads of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The pair noted that Trump "has previously suggested" the ICA is unconstitutional and expressed the view that "the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question." The former president appointed half of the court's right-wing supermajority.

"But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood."

Other programs that would be vulnerable if Musk, Ramaswamy, Trump, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—who's set to lead a new related House subcommittee—get their way are veterans' healthcare, Head Start, housing assistance, and childcare aid, according toThe Washington Post.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Friday that "the legal theories being pushed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are as idiotic as they are dangerous."

"Unilaterally slashing funds that have been lawfully appropriated by the people's elected representatives in Congress would be a devastating power grab that undermines our economy and puts families and communities at risk," said Boyle. "House Democrats are ready to fight back against any illegal attempt to gut the programs that keep American families safe and help them make ends meet."

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YMAIL 11 24

Trump has appointed Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficency. Despite the name, it is not a government department. In fact, it is not part of the government at all. It is a non-governmental commission that will provide advice to the Trump administration.

Musk says he will identify "at least $2 trillion" in savings from the $6.5 trillion federal budget. How will Musk do it? Details are scarce. Musk is recruiting "high-IQ revolutionaries" to work 80-hour weeks for no pay to help him with the task.

Cutting $2 trillion is impossible politically. But if Musk is serious about cutting government spending and waste there is only one place to start: the defense budget. About half of the discretionary budget — the spending that Congress approves each year — is spent on defense. For the 2024 budget, the amount allocated for the Department of Defense exceeded $840 billion.

About half of the massive defense budget goes to military contractors, with tens of billions directed to "Big 5" firms — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. These contractors, according to a 60 Minutes investigation last year, "overcharge the Pentagon on almost everything the Department of Defense buys." The misuse of taxpayer dollars became more acute "in the early 2000s when the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts." Another factor is the consolidation of the defense industry, resulting in less competition for contracts.

Still, Musk may have a difficult time cutting Department of Defense spending. First, Musk is the CEO of the company, SpaceX, that actively seeks billions in defense contracts. Second, if Musk is able to overcome his conflict-of-interest, defense industry lobbyists will lobby Congress to reverse any planned cuts. Finally, Trump has pledged to increase military spending during his second term.

"I will provide record funding for our military," Trump said in a video posted on his campaign website.

Popular Information is an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism since 2018. It is made possible by readers who upgrade to a paid subscription.

Trump is calling for more defense spending even though defense spending has doubled over the last 20 years. The Department of Defense struggles to accurately account how it spends this gusher of money. For the seventh year in a row, it has failed an independent audit.

Redefining failure as success

This year’s audit failure means that the Department of Defense has not passed since Congress began mandating the audits in 2018. The 2024 audit, which surveyed 28 separate agencies that operate under the Pentagon’s umbrella, found that 15 agencies failed to provide enough information for the auditors to assess how they handle their money.

Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer, was unfazed by this failure, calling it “expected.” He also argued that because some agencies passed, the audit was actually a success. “So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” McCord told reporters at a press conference on Friday. “We have a lot of work to do, but I think we’re making progress.”

Nine agencies passed their audit and three agency audits are still pending. In 2023, auditors failed 18 agencies.

Eight agencies also did a better job this year of balancing their spending and the amount of cash they have in government accounts. But of those eight, only two agencies actually passed their audit. The other six, while properly accounting for their cash, did not have enough information about their other assets to pass the audit.

Even with the improvements McCord touted, the scope of the Pentagon’s failure to keep track of its assets is still vast. According to the audit, the 15 agencies that could not properly account for their finances make up 44 percent of the Pentagon’s total assets and 68 percent of its budget. This year, the Pentagon held over $4.1 trillion in assets and had a budget of over $840 billion, meaning that auditors were unable to pin down $1.8 trillion in assets and $571 billion of the budget.

Despite these failures, Congress continues to appropriate more money every year to the Department of Defense. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Department of Defense to pass its audit by 2028, but has no mechanism for penalizing failure.

McCord insisted that the Pentagon was on track for a clean audit by 2028, but that it would take the cooperation of the incoming Trump administration to reach that goal. If Trump is serious about improving government efficiency, he could push his Department of Defense to do a better job tracking its assets. But if he decides not to, the Pentagon will not face any consequences.

Popular Information is an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism since 2018.

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