“A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is wielding so much power that its records will likely have to be opened to the public under federal law.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the vast and “unprecedented” authority of DOGE, formally known as the U.S. Digital Service, combined with its “unusual secrecy” warrant the urgent release of its internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
“The authority exercised by USDS across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented,” Cooper wrote in a 37-page opinion.”
MAGA Republicans ranted and raved about a deep state they mostly imagined, and then created a real one…
“at the same time that he’s focused on dismantling the deep state, Trump seems to have built his own undemocratic, unaccountable executive apparatus.
How else should we view the incident that The Washington Post reported on last week involving Elon Musk, the unofficial head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Secretary of State Marco Rubio?
As DOGE was slashing its way through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Rubio issued a waiver ensuring that “existing life-saving humanitarian assistance programs” should continue, despite the announced shutdown of USAID. “Several times, USAID managers prepared packages of these payments and got the agency’s interim leaders to sign off on them with support from the White House,” the Post reported. “But each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, [Luke] Farritor and [Gavin] Kliger would veto the payments—a process that required them to manually check boxes in the payment system one at a time, the same tedious way you probably pay your bills online.”
As a result, USAID clinics that were supposed to be protected by Rubio’s order were shuttered.
That is an almost perfect illustration of how conservatives used to believe the deep state operated—with unelected, unofficial back-channel operatives overruling the plainly stated instructions of those who are nominally in power.”
…
“this should be worrying to anyone who takes seriously the threat of the deep state or values the rule of law.
Whatever your views of Musk and Rubio as individuals, it simply cannot be that the Senate-confirmed secretary of state is having his decisions overruled by a man (or his lieutenants) who still lacks any official place in the White House’s organizational chart and who runs a rebranded version of the U.S. Digital Service, an agency meant to streamline the executive branch’s digital outreach efforts that has no statutory authority to make spending decisions.”
…
“while the situation with USAID and Rubio is the most high-profile, it is not the only example of DOGE and Musk operating like the very deep state Republicans used to criticize.”
…
“Overruling the decisions made by legally appointed officials. Dodging transparency. Refusing to identify who is running the show. Are Musk and the DOGE just the deep state by a different name?”
Elon Musk thought Covid would remain under 100 cases in the United States, and was extremely confident about this belief. Disagreements over this ended his relationship with Sam Harris.
Elon would publicly insult Sam over misleading clips of Sam that misrepresented what Sam said. Sam would email Elon explaining the context, and Elon would tell Sam to fuck off.
“For 11 days, Musk — the world’s richest man and a prominent backer of President-elect Donald Trump — allegedly failed to properly disclose that he had acquired a major stake in Twitter, the SEC said in a court filing in Washington. As a result, the agency said Musk benefited from “artificially low prices” as he snatched up shares in the company, which he eventually purchased for $44 billion and renamed X.
“In total, Musk underpaid Twitter investors by more than $150 million for his purchases of Twitter common stock during this period,” the SEC said in its complaint. “Investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm.””
“The Department of Veterans Affairs has temporarily suspended billions of dollars in planned contract cuts following concerns that the move would hurt critical veterans’ health services, lawmakers and veterans service organizations said Wednesday.
The pause affects hundreds of VA contracts that Secretary Doug Collins a day earlier described as simply consulting deals, whose cancellation would save $2 billion as the Trump administration works to slash costs across the federal government.”
“A group with ties to Elon Musk is pouring more than $1 million into Wisconsin’s upcoming Supreme Court race — a sign that even as Musk races to overhaul Washington, his influence extends beyond it.
Musk has directly boosted the Republican-backed candidate in the Wisconsin race on his powerful X platform. And a Republican-aligned group, Building America’s Future, is spending at least $1.5 million in the state, with ads set to start running later this week. Musk has donated to the group in the past, and it has backed some of President Donald Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks.”
“Forest Service Chief Randy Moore will retire effective March 3, according to an email sent to agency staff Wednesday and viewed by POLITICO.
Moore wrote in his staff email that the past several weeks have been “incredibly difficult” due to the Trump administration’s mass layoffs, which have led to 3,400 Forest Service employees — or 10 percent of agency staff — being fired.”
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“Lawmakers and officials from Western states have warned that President Donald Trump’s cuts to agencies like the Forest Service and funding freezes will threaten critical prevention and mitigation work, leaving the region woefully unprepared for the coming wildfire season.”
““We weren’t just hired — a lot of us were working with NOAA for a very long period,” he said. He also noted that his termination email cited that he was fired “because of his ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs” — though he said he had received glowing performance reviews.
Several other people who identified themselves as NOAA or weather service employees wrote on social media that they, or family members, had received an email Thursday notifying them that they had been terminated. It appeared that many were considered probationary employees, meaning they were recently hired or promoted.”
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“”The fact of the matter is that the private sector, as it presently exists, simply cannot quickly spin up to fill any void left by substantial dismantling of NOAA and/or the NWS,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, said in a statement on social media. “The now-confirmed and rumored additional cuts to come at NOAA/NWS are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.””
“at the Food and Drug Administration, the Trump administration is backpedaling on some of its terminations, reinstating workers in the agency’s medical devices division after realizing they were responsible for approving and monitoring the safety of life-saving equipment like pacemakers and defibrillators.”