Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

I am surprised Trump is ceding so much power to Musk to clear out the bureaucracy. I knew he was going to do this but I thought it would be Heritage Foundation appointees leading the effort and doing it in a less chaotic way.

In a way maybe this is better. Musk might screw up and fail to execute the project 2025 vision

I have a neighbor who works at USAID , I know others who work at other fed agencies. I guess we have to hope that when Schumer and Dems get back from their weekend off and meet at 3 pm et they will get on this Musk stuff.

Meanwhile Musk tweeted : We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter on Monday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demanding answers for why the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was granted access to the federal payments system, giving Elon Musk and his team a powerful tool that could be used to track and potentially limit government spending.

From NY Times

God I loathe the NYT. They are doing so much water carrying for Musk just by framing the data breach as "a powerful tool that could be used to track and potentially limit government spending" instead of "massive amounts of personally identifiable information that is legally prohibited from being shared with them."

otm

The federal employees I know do not tend to be gun people
― Dialysis Den (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, February 2, 2025 11:57 PM (yesterday)

I could see a lot of former fed employees getting into politics real quick though

xp And like, the DOGE spokesperson saying on Twitter that "no classified information was accessed" should obviously never be printed unless the next sentence is "Unlike information that is kept secret for national security interests, Social Security Numbers and other sensitive PII stored in the federal payment databases is not considered classified."

Trump did an Executive Order earlier granting lots of people security clearance, so nothing to worry about

FYI the DOGE spokeswoman is married to Stephen Miller.

Lolll

checks out:

In 2012, she was involved in a scandal when she was caught destroying hundreds of copies of the school's newspaper, after it endorsed an opposing student government candidate.

My sister sat across the sofa from me last fall and was so sure that his tariffs were a bluff, that they would never be imposed

What does she say now?

― anvil,

she'll say mexico backed down and trump is powerful and good (if the news this morning about mexico sending national guard troops to the border and the tariffs being delayed is accurate), and if that's not true, she will say that it's inevitable that mexico and canada are about to be dominated under trump's pressure. if they never do, that will become someone else's fault

Not bad if true:

https://bsky.app/profile/marklemley.bsky.social/post/3lhbmwfn2qc2n

Dude's a Stanford Law guy so I suspect he'll bring some heat.

From the Wall Street Journal (this is all I could get pre-paywall):

Democratic Senator Says He Will Stall Trump Nominees Until USAID Is Back
Schatz said he would hold up Trump’s diplomatic confirmations

WASHINGTON—Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said he would place a “blanket hold” on all of President Trump’s State Department nominees until his administration’s attack on the leading foreign-assistance agency ends, a move that threatens to stall Trump’s ability to get his foreign-policy team in place.

Raskin, Van Hollen, and Beyer are apparently Doing a Thing at USAID at 1.

Before throwing the tomatoes can we at least note that they're at least trying? They can protest and investigate but they don't have a lot of power to compel the uncompellable

well, that's all you can hope for, right? like I get the tools at the Dems' disposal are limited right now, but...we all saw what the GOP did when Obama had a mandate, a much larger one than Trump does now in fact. maybe they don't have much power now, but I strongly suspect they will win big in 2026 and 2028 (as they may need to, given how much Trump will put his finger on the scale), and the voters need to know they're actually serious about unfucking this country and defending trans people along with every other minority he's targeting. stop with this "the people want bipartisan solutions" thing, even the imaginary family in Schumer's head has got to be fed up with this

lol wait, so now Rubio claims he is "acting director" for USAID?

can't believe the CIA is so weak they won't even take out a tweaker billionaire to protect their slush fund

you don't need an exploding cigar or headache gun that drives him to suicide, precisely zero people would be surprised to wake up to the news that Musk ODed

looks like tariffs on Mexico are off for now since they agreed to send 10000 more border agents. of course, as it turns out, this is just something Biden negotiated a while ago

xp
"We're secretly replacing Musk's ketamine with fentanyl ..."

Are we supposed to be pro-USAID now?

Today's executive orders are amazing btw.

> Trump also expressed interest in acquiring Ukrainian rare earth minerals in exchange for more American aid to the war-torn nation.

As the plan is to subsume USAID is under State then yeah, Rubio.

CIA's needs are adequately hidden in the Defense budget (which no one is coming for). Plus, as noted above, no one is going to stiff Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed, etc.

Etaeoe, the #resistance may entail some strange bedfellows in these times.

> Trump also expressed interest in acquiring Ukrainian rare earth minerals

Why because they interesting

lol wait, so now Rubio claims he is "acting director" for USAID?

Very Alexander Haig.

I am expecting some territorial pushback from heads of departments against Elon snooping around and shutting things down.

I am expecting some territorial pushback from heads of departments against Elon snooping around and shutting things down.

I mean, bureaucratic territory pissing is a constant in any administration.

it sure does feel like Dems have joined GOP voters in thinking this country just isn't worth saving

Parker Molloy doing her best to sound alarms: https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-media-is-missing-the-story-elon

Think about what's already happened: A billionaire with extensive business interests in China now has access to sensitive national security information. A man who publicly mocks federal workers can now monitor their emails and computers. Someone who treats government agencies like hostile takeover targets has gained control of the systems that deliver Social Security checks to elderly Americans and food assistance to hungry children.

This isn't just about destroying the administrative state — though that's certainly part of it. It's about replacing government accountability with private control. When Musk's team tells federal workers they should seek "higher productivity jobs in the private sector," as reported by Wired, they're telling on themselves. The goal isn't to make government more efficient; it's to transfer its power and resources to private hands.

Democracy requires public servants who answer to the people, not to billionaires. It needs civil servants who can't be fired on a billionaire's whim. It requires systems that distribute public resources based on law and need, not private interests. Instead, we're watching the systematic dismantling of these democratic safeguards, carried out by someone who treats the Constitution like terms of service to be rewritten at will.

> Trump also expressed interest in acquiring Ukrainian rare earth minerals

Why because they interesting

Hey, mineral collecting is serious business.

It’s all just so far beyond how bad I expected it to be. The shock hasn’t fully sunk in.

Ending OSHA being floated now too, not an executive order (yet) but Rep. Andy Biggs from Arizona introduced a bill to do so. Not even hiding that they don't just want people poor, they want them dead too.

Anything radical that involves Congressional votes to pass is aspirational rather than a serious threat. It's the breadth of preemptive unilateral executive actions, whether legal or not, that's the flashing Drudge siren.

i expect that before the term is over, the fecklessness of the democratic party (and their real lack of powers, in terms of numbers and their ability to persuade normal people that they care about their wellbeing) will create a vacuum that will be filled with citizen violence, which trump and his regime (they are fascists, start calling them what they are) will compare to jan 6, "this is the real jan 6", etc

xp - Agreed, I just hope someone is keeping track of all of these "mask off" moments of what they'd really like to accomplish.

Hey, the left also wants a day of love. Is that too much to ask?

(they are fascists, start calling them what they are)

and sorry, pet peeve, but if you're one of those pedantic people who refuse to say "fascist" because it's not playing out the way it did with mussolini, invent a new word and use that one. say SOMETHING to differentiate this what you thought was normal

(same with genocide and gaza. call it ethnic cleansing, invent a new word, just stop ignoring it)

good thing nobody should ever give a fuck what Trump and his regime say, like can we start by not paying attention to their rhetoric at least

this shit should not be surprising - trump ran on this platform, everyone in the party is in on it and wants it, white evangelicals want it, rich people want it. in the same way, you should not be shocked when trump refuses to leave office ever again. he may well die, or be forced out by someone even more evil. but he's not leaving unless he's forced out, and to act like the 2026 or 2028 elections are something normal to look forward to and that 2016 - present is some abberation is not only misguided and unhelpful but completely wrong and wrong in a dangerous direction of complacence

xp - Agreed, I just hope someone is keeping track of all of these "mask off" moments of what they'd really like to accomplish.

why? they already SAID what they wanted to do, before they regained power! the masks have been off for a very long time now

anyway, sorry self-banning for a bit, logging off etc. this shit is DISMAL, but it's not SURPRISING

I just mean that someday it might be handy to have a list of all the shit they even floated, part of Project 2025 or not.

Resistance works.

Two days after nonprofit groups sued the federal government over a stop-work order targeting programs that provide information and guidance to people facing deportation, the U.S. Justice Department reversed course and ordered that funding to the programs be restored.

The four federally funded programs educate people in immigration courts and detention centers about their rights and the complicated legal process. The Justice Department instructed the nonprofits on Jan. 22 “to stop work immediately” on the programs, citing an executive order targeting illegal immigration that President Donald Trump signed the day of his second inauguration.

A coalition of nonprofit groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging the stop-work order and seeking to immediately restore access to the programs. The Justice Department rescinded its stop-work order for all four programs Sunday afternoon.

Musk did not say what legal authority he believed the White House has to shut down a federal agency without congressional approval, or how quickly the administration planned to act. He said the idea had “the full support of the president” and that he had spoken with Trump on the matter several times.

Guess what? I'm reopening it

Acknowledged, z_tbd.