I will say I turn it off where necessary. I worry sick about the people I love. I don’t have the worry-bandwidth for politics. I do feel deeply sorry for those who will likely bear the brunt of whats to come. But I also know there is nothing I can do about it. I voted, lost, licked my wounds for a day or so and move on. Certainly won’t worry about it. We get to vote again soon enough.
Your comment about feeling defeated is interesting. First off, do not feel defeated. You aren’t defeated. But anyway, interesting because you mentioned being active in the streets last time around, and I remember seeing it plenty in masses. This time, no one in the streets. The masses are feeling defeated, it seems. The masses need to pick up their will, its grown fat and lazy. I hope the masses are feeling the same motivation that you are recently glowgirl. Until then, I will keep my eye on the ball, not the shiny objects.
I will say I turn it off where necessary. I worry sick about the people I love. I don’t have the worry-bandwidth for politics. I do feel deeply sorry for those who will likely bear the brunt of whats to come. But I also know there is nothing I can do about it. I voted, lost, licked my wounds for a day or so and move on. Certainly won’t worry about it. We get to vote again soon enough.
Your comment about feeling defeated is interesting. First off, do not feel defeated. You aren’t defeated. But anyway, interesting because you mentioned being active in the streets last time around, and I remember seeing it plenty in masses. This time, no one in the streets. The masses are feeling defeated, it seems. The masses need to pick up their will, it’s grown fat and lazy. I hope the masses are feeling the same motivation that you are recently glowgirl. Until then, I will keep my eye on the ball, not the shiny objects.
You know who else signed “executive orders” against their perceived and real enemies? The list is extensive but take a guess. Fuckers going Jim Jones on y’all. How long before martial music is played over loudspeakers in DC? There’s an anniversary coming up, ya know? From Letter From An American:
Tonight, Trump held a televised signing of a new executive order blaming former presidents Barack Obama, who left office in 2017, and Joe Biden for the crash. It says that “problematic and likely illegal decisions” during their administrations “minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).” They implemented “dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics,” it said, and recruited “individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.” The executive order says that his return to “merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion” will “ensure that all Americans fly with peace of mind.”
Happy to wake up and see She is still here. Beautiful as ever.
Helpful tip of the day- Instead of paying attention to eggs and gas and bird flu, take a look at your 401k that should ease your mind. Be well my fellow Americans.
You are assuming that my own personal wealth is all I worry about. I worry about those less fortunate than myself, those that are being persecuted and deported, people who are losing their jobs, and a government that doesn’t seem to care about maintaining democracy. My retirement fund could double and it won’t be worth all this.
Well said.
www.myspace.com
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,808
I want us to get angry and rage in the streets ....I really do... who will lead us there?
Many of us feel the same way. I think that kind of action made a difference 56 years ago when we were protesting the war in Vietnam. I don't know that that will work today. I think that is especially true because rioting would probably be equated with January 6th. I'm thinking more will be accomplished through calls and letter that put pressure on legislators to not give in to the dictator, support organization that have the staff and the skills to protect the rights of targeted individuals, and focus on a few areas of need that speak the most to you. It's really important that we not be consumed by our anger (and believe me, I understand that anger) and act rashly. We can do more by staying focused and each do our little part. Building a solid wave of many moves more than an angry slap at the water.
Also, remember you're in good company!
"Don't give in to the lies. Don't give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth. And to hope."
Yea, sure, just brilliant brilliance in all its brilliancy, ‘Murica, as beautiful and normal as ever. From Letter From An American:
Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans' personal information as well as information about Musk's competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers.
Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure.
From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices. According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X.
Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs.
By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within.
On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”
Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.”
“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”
Senator Murphy said: "[L]et's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.”
Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.”
While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending.
Speaking of normal, why don’t they just tattoo them? You know, say a number on the inside of their forearm, maybe inside the image of the outline of the Gulf of America? Or the 51st state? Then you’d know which border they came across the first time.
Red states, following Trump’s lead, pursue sweeping immigration measures
Legislatures are targeting undocumented immigrants with increasingly harsh proposals, including measures to certify bounty hunters and fingerprint children.
As 2025 legislative sessions power up across the country, red-state lawmakers who back President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans are pushing increasingly restrictive measures that could reshape immigration enforcement and further constrain migrants’ lives.
Missouri and Mississippi lawmakers have proposed allowing bounty hunters to detain undocumented immigrants and offering $1,000 rewards for tips that lead to arrests. A Tennessee lawmaker, meanwhile, wants his state to bill parents for enrolling undocumented children in public schools. He titled his effort the TRUMP Act — for the Tennessee Reduction of Unlawful Migrant Placement.
In the Midwest, Iowa and South Dakota lawmakers introduced bills requiring state driver’s licenses to indicate whether the driver is a U.S. citizen. Out West, Montana lawmakers would make immigration status checks a mandatory part of traffic stops there and compel employers to check the immigration status of those they hire.
“The thrust is costs and how do we help President Trump on the enforcement side?” said Andrew Good, director of state government relations at NumbersUSA, a right-wing group advocating for immigration restrictions. “It’s definitely exciting.”
This wave of proposed laws and policies — the biggest in a decade, say legal experts — challenges long-established legal precedents ensuring undocumented immigrants have access to state legal, medical and education services.
Tim Storey, chief executive of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan research and training group, had predicted as much following the November election. Given a record surge of migrants during part of the Biden administration, Trump had campaigned hard on repelling an “invasion” at the southern border.
“The tone from Washington, and the issues that the Trump administration and the Republican majority in Washington will emphasize and highlight, will have an effect in the states even though partisan change didn’t happen in the states,” Storey told a December briefing on “hot topics and policy trends.”
Texas is leading the way. Legislators in Austin are pursuing a slew of actions, building on Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2024 order that hospitals track the cost of treating undocumented immigrants. Among the measures: fingerprinting undocumented migrant children, barring undocumented migrants from receiving taxpayer-funded legal aid, creating a Texas Border Protection Unit and giving state law enforcement the power to deport migrants stopped near the border.
Florida lawmakers also have an extensive agenda. They have passedthe Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy — another TRUMP Act — to create a state immigration czar with 150 staff and $500 million in funding, increase penalties for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, force law enforcement agencies to join detention efforts, offer bonuses to policewho assist in raids and block in-state tuition for undocumented students.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to veto the act as “weak” and “watered down,” state Sen. Joe Gruters said he and other GOP legislative leaders wrote it in consultation with the Trump administration and predicted it would ultimately become law.
“I talked to the president and Stephen Miller and others in his administration to get technical guidance on their needs,” said Gruters, a former state GOP chairman and longtime Trump ally. “That’s our goal: to support the president.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Can we keep the Letter from the American posts in the Letter from the American propaganda thread, please?
huh. Thought Kat and Sea were the mods.
Hi mick. Last I checked that is still the case.
I was just politely asking. You dont want me moderating this place, mickey.
ahh. ok. guessing the answer to your question then is a resounding no?
That is likely an accurate assumption. Doesn’t hurt to politely ask anyway, I guess.
did want to ask, what in your estimation makes her writing propaganda? she is a historian and has a phd in history, teaches same at boston college. has written several books about specific periods of our history and that letter is a view of current events pulling from several cited current news sources juxtaposed against the backdrop of our history.. in so many cases repeating itself or is providing context of where current events originated from in our history.
so do tell, just how is it propaganda?
I pull a copy/paste from adbook given its easy to do to share here. what I dont do is pull the first comment citing her source material.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Can we keep the Letter from the American posts in the Letter from the American propaganda thread, please?
huh. Thought Kat and Sea were the mods.
Besides, it's a video not a letter.
My polite request and discussion with mickey was in reference to the post from Max above, where the letter to an american was copy and pasted. Actually, I never saw your link until right now. I never open anything that is posted here, but I’m sure it is the same fear and rhetoric as the letter to the american thread. Admittedly, I don’t read those either. I did once, and will never subject myself to that nonsense again. Be well, my fellow Americans.
205.8 weeks to go. Good luck. And pssssssst, it’s too late.
Trump 2.0: The most damaging first two weeks in presidential history
Trump’s second term is all about curtailing government’s power and reach.
No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1.0. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States’ standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government’s fundamental capacity to operate effectively — all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all.
This column will concentrate on the third piece of that trifecta: efforts to undermine the basic functioning of government. A unifying theme of much of Trump’s activity since Jan. 20 has been his unrelenting and broadscale assault on the federal workforce. In his first term, Trump railed about what he termed the “deep state” and its seeming ability to frustrate his plans. In his second, he has unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on career employees — one designed to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies, to oust or neuter those with years of expertise, and to set the stage for a new spoils system, replacing seasoned, nonpartisan career workers with compliant loyalists.
Trump “is destroying whatever gets in the way of what he wants to do,” Max Stier, the normally mild-mannered president of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. “That includes having loyalty be the primary screen for choosing his direct lieutenants and crushing the civil service and converting it into a tool for his private agenda, as opposed to a force for the public good and the rule of law.”
Contempt for civil servants — sneering at “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” — is not unique to the Trump administration. But Trump 2.0 is unrivaled in its willingness to barrel through the guardrails that have protected government workers since 1883, ignoring legal requirements in its quest to retaliate against some employees and intimidate the rest.
Trump “is the executive of the executive branch, and, therefore, he has the power to fire anyone within the executive branch that he wishes to,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted. This is manifestly incorrect, like so many other proclamations since Jan. 20, but that does not make it any less bone-chilling.
And it is a piece of a larger presidential power grab. As I laid out shortly after the election, Trump had a detailed road map to enhance executive power: challenging congressional authority to control spending, putting independent agencies under his thumb, seizing control of the civil service, and abusing his authority to install officials through recess appointments rather than having to endure the inconvenience of Senate confirmation.
We knew this was coming. Trump and his allies trumpeted their plans during the campaign. Still, I had expected this revolution would take months to unfold. Astonishingly, all but the last of these has already come to pass — and we haven’t seen a showdown over recess appointments for the simple reason that the Senate, with the sole exception of the failed effort to install Matt Gaetz as attorney general, has caved to Trump’s desire to install evidently unqualified candidates in many of the most sensitive positions in government.
The onslaught against government itself has been the most alarming. Some of it involves the operations of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” operating with unclear legal authority as a kind of roving strike force to terrorize the bureaucracy.
Over the weekend, DOGE operatives forced out a senior Treasury Department official and gained access to the government’s highly sensitive centralized payment system, potentially exposing vast amounts of personnel data. They executed a hostile takeover and the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that was established by Congressand that can’t be disappeared without congressional action. “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” the unelected Musk assertedabout an entity that provides humanitarian assistance abroad. Reuters reported that DOGE officials “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.” And, in an echo of Musk’s “fork in the road” email to Twitter employees after he bought the platform, federal workers have been encouraged to resign en masse, with an email offering inducements of questionable legality.
It’s not just the world’s richest man running amok. Trump wasn’t satisfied with a pair of Day 1 executive orders asserting new authorityto fire certain civil servants. And so:
Trump fired two of three Democratic commissioners on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Democratic chair of the National Labor Relations Board, setting the stage for a constitutional challenge to independent agencies.
He dismissed at least 15 inspectors general, most of them appointed by him, ignoring the legal requirement that he provide 30 days’ notice to Congress, along with an explanation for his action.
The Education Department put on administrative leave at least 50 employees who didn’t work directly on diversity, equity and inclusion but belonged to “affinity groups” or attended voluntary training sessions.
At the Justice Department, the acting attorney general fired more than a dozen career prosecutors who had worked for former special counsel Jack Smith on prosecutions of Trump, crossing a dangerous red line. “Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully,” acting attorney general James McHenry informed them.
Acting at the instructions of the acting deputy attorney general, previously Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, an election denier who has represented Jan. 6 defendants, fired about 30 prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the insurrection. The department earlier transferredsenior officials in the divisions that oversee civil rights, environmental enforcement, national security and public corruption to a newly created office to take action against sanctuary cities.
And the acting deputy attorney general ordered the firing of eight senior officials and told the FBI’s acting director to compile a list of all bureau employees assigned to investigate the Jan. 6 attack “to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.” This despite a confirmation hearing pledge from Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to run the bureau, that “all FBI employees will be protected from political retribution.”
None of this is normal.Little of it is legal. All of it is misguided, and that’s a mild term. The damage to the federal workforce is incalculable. Years of expertise down the drain. The ability to recruit talented employees: same. Why would anyone join an operation that treats its workers this way?
The reason to worry about this is not because of unfairness to federal employees, although there is that — it’s because of the debilitating, even dangerous, impact on government operations. Disruption is one thing in Silicon Valley, where the stakes are merely profit and loss. It is quite another when you are talking about a government charged with ensuring the safety of its citizens.
“What is happening right now,” Stier said, “is the destruction of the institution itself.”
And if you think that can be repaired four years from now, ask yourself: If Trump is successful in purging the government of perceived opponents and putting loyalists in their place, would a new Democratic administration politely play by old-school rules — or would it be justified in engaging in a tit-for-tat response?
The damage has already begun, and it will be difficult to reverse.
If you’re not concerned about this, you never loved ‘Murica. From Letter From An American:
Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”
According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”
“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."
The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.
The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”
Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.
Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.
At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”
But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”
When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] 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.”
A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”
Comments
https://youtu.be/OPeD6gIBtC0
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
-EV 8/14/93
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFCnd7YxaRa/?igsh=MWU5MGtjenRyNHFybg==
-EV 8/14/93
Tonight, Trump held a televised signing of a new executive order blaming former presidents Barack Obama, who left office in 2017, and Joe Biden for the crash. It says that “problematic and likely illegal decisions” during their administrations “minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).” They implemented “dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics,” it said, and recruited “individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.” The executive order says that his return to “merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion” will “ensure that all Americans fly with peace of mind.”
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans' personal information as well as information about Musk's competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers.
Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure.
From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices. According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X.
Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs.
By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within.
On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”
Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.”
“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”
Senator Murphy said: "[L]et's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.”
Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.”
While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Red states, following Trump’s lead, pursue sweeping immigration measures
Legislatures are targeting undocumented immigrants with increasingly harsh proposals, including measures to certify bounty hunters and fingerprint children.
As 2025 legislative sessions power up across the country, red-state lawmakers who back President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans are pushing increasingly restrictive measures that could reshape immigration enforcement and further constrain migrants’ lives.
Missouri and Mississippi lawmakers have proposed allowing bounty hunters to detain undocumented immigrants and offering $1,000 rewards for tips that lead to arrests. A Tennessee lawmaker, meanwhile, wants his state to bill parents for enrolling undocumented children in public schools. He titled his effort the TRUMP Act — for the Tennessee Reduction of Unlawful Migrant Placement.
In the Midwest, Iowa and South Dakota lawmakers introduced bills requiring state driver’s licenses to indicate whether the driver is a U.S. citizen. Out West, Montana lawmakers would make immigration status checks a mandatory part of traffic stops there and compel employers to check the immigration status of those they hire.
“The thrust is costs and how do we help President Trump on the enforcement side?” said Andrew Good, director of state government relations at NumbersUSA, a right-wing group advocating for immigration restrictions. “It’s definitely exciting.”
This wave of proposed laws and policies — the biggest in a decade, say legal experts — challenges long-established legal precedents ensuring undocumented immigrants have access to state legal, medical and education services.
Tim Storey, chief executive of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan research and training group, had predicted as much following the November election. Given a record surge of migrants during part of the Biden administration, Trump had campaigned hard on repelling an “invasion” at the southern border.
“The tone from Washington, and the issues that the Trump administration and the Republican majority in Washington will emphasize and highlight, will have an effect in the states even though partisan change didn’t happen in the states,” Storey told a December briefing on “hot topics and policy trends.”
Texas is leading the way. Legislators in Austin are pursuing a slew of actions, building on Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2024 order that hospitals track the cost of treating undocumented immigrants. Among the measures: fingerprinting undocumented migrant children, barring undocumented migrants from receiving taxpayer-funded legal aid, creating a Texas Border Protection Unit and giving state law enforcement the power to deport migrants stopped near the border.
Florida lawmakers also have an extensive agenda. They have passedthe Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy — another TRUMP Act — to create a state immigration czar with 150 staff and $500 million in funding, increase penalties for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, force law enforcement agencies to join detention efforts, offer bonuses to police who assist in raids and block in-state tuition for undocumented students.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to veto the act as “weak” and “watered down,” state Sen. Joe Gruters said he and other GOP legislative leaders wrote it in consultation with the Trump administration and predicted it would ultimately become law.
“I talked to the president and Stephen Miller and others in his administration to get technical guidance on their needs,” said Gruters, a former state GOP chairman and longtime Trump ally. “That’s our goal: to support the president.”
Continues
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/02/04/undocumented-immigrants-states-legislatures-bills/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
1996; 9/28 New York
1997: 11/14 Oakland, 11/15 Oakland
1998: 7/5 Dallas, 7/7 Albuquerque, 7/8 Phoenix, 7/10 San Diego, 7/11 Las Vegas
2000: 10/17 Dallas
2003: 4/3 OKC
2012: 11/17 Tulsa(EV), 11/18 Tulsa(EV)
2013: 11/16 OKC
2014: 10/8 Tulsa
2022: 9/20 OKC
2023: 9/13 Ft Worth, 9/15 Ft Worth
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
ahh. ok. guessing the answer to your question then is a resounding no?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Besides, it's a video not a letter.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Trump 2.0: The most damaging first two weeks in presidential history
Trump’s second term is all about curtailing government’s power and reach.
No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1.0. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States’ standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government’s fundamental capacity to operate effectively — all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all.
This column will concentrate on the third piece of that trifecta: efforts to undermine the basic functioning of government. A unifying theme of much of Trump’s activity since Jan. 20 has been his unrelenting and broadscale assault on the federal workforce. In his first term, Trump railed about what he termed the “deep state” and its seeming ability to frustrate his plans. In his second, he has unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on career employees — one designed to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies, to oust or neuter those with years of expertise, and to set the stage for a new spoils system, replacing seasoned, nonpartisan career workers with compliant loyalists.
Trump “is destroying whatever gets in the way of what he wants to do,” Max Stier, the normally mild-mannered president of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. “That includes having loyalty be the primary screen for choosing his direct lieutenants and crushing the civil service and converting it into a tool for his private agenda, as opposed to a force for the public good and the rule of law.”
Contempt for civil servants — sneering at “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” — is not unique to the Trump administration. But Trump 2.0 is unrivaled in its willingness to barrel through the guardrails that have protected government workers since 1883, ignoring legal requirements in its quest to retaliate against some employees and intimidate the rest.
Trump “is the executive of the executive branch, and, therefore, he has the power to fire anyone within the executive branch that he wishes to,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted. This is manifestly incorrect, like so many other proclamations since Jan. 20, but that does not make it any less bone-chilling.
And it is a piece of a larger presidential power grab. As I laid out shortly after the election, Trump had a detailed road map to enhance executive power: challenging congressional authority to control spending, putting independent agencies under his thumb, seizing control of the civil service, and abusing his authority to install officials through recess appointments rather than having to endure the inconvenience of Senate confirmation.
We knew this was coming. Trump and his allies trumpeted their plans during the campaign. Still, I had expected this revolution would take months to unfold. Astonishingly, all but the last of these has already come to pass — and we haven’t seen a showdown over recess appointments for the simple reason that the Senate, with the sole exception of the failed effort to install Matt Gaetz as attorney general, has caved to Trump’s desire to install evidently unqualified candidates in many of the most sensitive positions in government.
The onslaught against government itself has been the most alarming. Some of it involves the operations of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” operating with unclear legal authority as a kind of roving strike force to terrorize the bureaucracy.
Over the weekend, DOGE operatives forced out a senior Treasury Department official and gained access to the government’s highly sensitive centralized payment system, potentially exposing vast amounts of personnel data. They executed a hostile takeover and the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that was established by Congress and that can’t be disappeared without congressional action. “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” the unelected Musk assertedabout an entity that provides humanitarian assistance abroad. Reuters reported that DOGE officials “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.” And, in an echo of Musk’s “fork in the road” email to Twitter employees after he bought the platform, federal workers have been encouraged to resign en masse, with an email offering inducements of questionable legality.
It’s not just the world’s richest man running amok. Trump wasn’t satisfied with a pair of Day 1 executive orders asserting new authority to fire certain civil servants. And so:
None of this is normal. Little of it is legal. All of it is misguided, and that’s a mild term. The damage to the federal workforce is incalculable. Years of expertise down the drain. The ability to recruit talented employees: same. Why would anyone join an operation that treats its workers this way?
The reason to worry about this is not because of unfairness to federal employees, although there is that — it’s because of the debilitating, even dangerous, impact on government operations. Disruption is one thing in Silicon Valley, where the stakes are merely profit and loss. It is quite another when you are talking about a government charged with ensuring the safety of its citizens.
“What is happening right now,” Stier said, “is the destruction of the institution itself.”
And if you think that can be repaired four years from now, ask yourself: If Trump is successful in purging the government of perceived opponents and putting loyalists in their place, would a new Democratic administration politely play by old-school rules — or would it be justified in engaging in a tit-for-tat response?
The damage has already begun, and it will be difficult to reverse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/04/trump-federal-government-workers-destruction/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”
According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”
“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."
The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.
The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”
Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.
Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.
At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”
But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”
When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] 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.”
A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©