Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

Mueller, She Wrote‬ ‪@muellershewrote.bsky.social‬
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5m
NEW: “Bottom line — DOJ came over and wanted to fire a bunch of J6 agents. Driscoll is an absolute stud. Held his ground and told WH proxy, DOJ, to (expletive) Off.” YASSSS www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

[ti-amie]

Robert Reich‬ ‪@rbreich.bsky.social‬
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1h
An unelected billionaire, with no actual Congressional authority or govt experience, 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? www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/u...

[ti-amie]

Catherine Rampell‬ ‪@crampell.bsky.social‬
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4h
The National Association of Home Builders explains what happens if we make inputs for home construction, such as Canadian lumber, more expensive.

[Owendonovan]

They can Mirror the Romanov's

[ashkor87]

Of course tariffs are stupid and counter- productive BUT why did the Biden administration retain most of them,? Isnt it a bit hypocritical to howl now?

[skatingfan]

Of course tariffs are stupid and counter- productive BUT why did the Biden administration retain most of them,? Isnt it a bit hypocritical to howl now?

Once a war is started the country can't simply withdraw without a cessation of hostilities on both sides, and that requires a negotiated peace, and that takes time to complete.

[ashkor87]

Also too convenient - why give up a revenue source? Most tax increases are like that too

[ti-amie]

Jacqueline Sweet
‪@jsweetli.bsky.social‬

Follow
Contrary to some info I've seen, 19-yr-old Doge staffer "BigBalls" Edward Coristine did not delete his X account, it's just renamed and is private.

Wired reported that govt tech workers had to defend their work to the Neuralink intern in an Office Space-esque scene.

/ more for Canadians






‪Kevin M. Kruse‬ ‪@kevinmkruse.bsky.social‬
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1h
If a 19-year-old Canadian who calls himself Big Balls marches into your federal agency and demands access to your system, telling him to (expletive) right off should be the mildest reaction you have.

[ti-amie]

DHS to end temporary protection for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans
Kristi Noem’s decision to end temporary protective status for a large group of Venezuelans puts them at risk of being forced to return to the autocratic regime they fled.

February 2, 2025 at 3:13 p.m. ESTToday at 3:13 p.m. EST

By Maria Sacchetti and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has decided to end temporary humanitarian protections for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who sought refuge in the United States in the last few years, putting them at imminent risk of being forced to return to the autocratic regime they left behind in South America.

Noem wrote that conditions in Venezuela “no longer” met the criteria for its citizens to qualify for temporary protected status, which was set to expire in April for those who received the protection in 2023, according to a copy of the unpublished notice DHS released Sunday.

The Biden administration had extended their protections through the fall of 2026, citing extreme poverty, and economic and political crises. But the Trump administration quickly reversed that decision, and now the group that received temporary protection in 2023 could lose it 60 days after the memo is officially published in the Federal Register.

Noem also determined that allowing Venezuelans to live and work in the United States is “contrary to the national interest,” she said, citing gang activity — though criminals are generally ineligible for temporary protection — as well as the cost to cities such as New York to shelter migrants and other concerns.

Noem acknowledged that Venezuela is still struggling with many of the issues the Biden administration raised, but she said there were “notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime.”

“In particular, the Secretary has determined it is contrary to the national interest to permit the covered Venezuelan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States,” the memo reads. The New York Times first reported on the protection revocations.

Ending protections for Venezuelans is a marked shift for the Trump administration. In one of the last acts of his first term, Trump granted Venezuelans permission to stay in the United States because of the “catastrophic” conditions in their homeland. Secretary of State Marco Rubio lobbied intensively for the temporary protections as a senator, and wrote in 2022 that it would be a “very real death sentence” to force Venezuelans to return home.

Political support for Venezuelans waned, however, after the slaying last year of a Georgia nursing student by a man from Venezuela with a criminal record. The man did not have temporary protected status, but Trump repeatedly referred to the murder on the campaign trail. He recently signed into law the Laken Riley Act, expanding mandatory detention for immigrants arrested for theft-related crimes.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigrat ... rump-noem/

[ti-amie]

Musk says DOGE is halting Treasury payments to US contractors
BY Gregory Korte and Bloomberg
February 2, 2025 at 6:46 PM EST

Elon Musk said his “DOGE team” of government efficiency enforcers is shutting down payments to federal contractors, suggesting that the world’s richest man may have access to sensitive systems used at the US Treasury Department.

“The corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time,” Musk posted on X, saying officials reporting to his so-called Department of Government Efficiency are “rapidly shutting down” payments to a Lutheran charity.

The Treasury Department didn’t immediately respond to questions about the extent of Musk’s access. President Donald Trump has put the Tesla CEO — and largest donor to his election effort — in charge of an effort to modernize federal information technology.

But Musk seems to be expanding that mandate to include control over financial flows in other parts of the federal government. Top security officials at USAID were placed on leave Saturday after refusing to allow DOGE staffers access to systems at the foreign assistance agency, saying they lacked the required security clearances.

Musk on Sunday called USAID “a criminal organization” that should “die.”

Musk is targeting systems that process tens of billions of dollars in payments for US government agencies and the officials that oversee them. Musk’s statements on Sunday follow last week’s departure of David Lebryk, the Treasury Department’s most senior career official, who had been in charge of payment systems at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

Trump gave Musk’s efforts his seal of approval Sunday night. “Elon’s doing a good job,” Trump told reporters Sunday night.

“He’s a big cost cutter,” Trump said. “Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go, but I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy, very smart, and he’s very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.”

Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday that he’s been told that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has granted DOGE full access to Treasury’s payment systems.

“Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies,” Wyden said on BlueSky, a social media rival to Musk’s X. “All of it.”

Treasury officials have long maintained that its role is to serve as the federal government’s checkbook — and that the decision about whether to approve or deny payment belongs to individual agencies based on funds appropriated by Congress.

“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. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once,” Musk wrote on X.

Musk said DOGE was shutting down payments by the US Department of Health and Human Services to Lutheran Family Services, a faith-based charity that has been providing social services to refugees. HHS and Lutheran Family Services didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

https://fortune.com/2025/02/02/musk-dog ... n-charity/

[ti-amie]

‘This Needs To Stop Now’—Elon Musk Confirms Radical Doge U.S. Treasury Plan
By Billy Bambrough, Senior Contributor.

Feb 02, 2025, 05:59pm EST

Elon Musk has become deeply embedded in U.S. president Donald Trump’s White House after declaring a U.S. “financial emergency" while on the campaign trail.

Musk, the Tesla billionaire-turned-government-cost-cutter, is leading the so-called Doge department of government efficiency, proposed by Trump’s Commerce department nominee Howard Lutnick to “rip the waste out of our $6.5 trillion budget.”

Now, as fears emerge Trump’s administration is “dangerously” undermining the U.S. dollar, Musk has confirmed he wants to put the U.S. Treasury on a blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—including Musk’s pet project dogecoin.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-as ... sury-plan/

[ti-amie]

Anne Applebaum‬ ‪@anneapplebaum.bsky.social‬

"Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup."
nymag.com/intelligence...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article ... ments.html

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Elon Musk Suggests Getting Rid Of All Regulations In Midnight Call
"If it's not possible now, it'll never be possible," Musk said of his proposal to simply ignore all federal regulation as a baseline.

By
Matt Shuham
03/02/2025 09:25pm GMT

President Donald Trump’s “government efficiency” cheerleader Elon Musk proposed simply ignoring all federal regulations during a public call shortly after midnight Monday morning.

Musk, whose newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” team has in recent days executed a dramatic power grab at several government agencies, called for “wholesale removal of regulations.”

The public call was hosted on his website X, formerly Twitter, and included two senators and the Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy.

“Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”

“These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done,” Musk said, adding later: “If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.”

Later, Ramaswamy — who briefly co-led Musk’s White House DOGE project — said, “I think it’s possible now, it’s actually possible” thanks to Trump’s second term and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court.

Musk replied, “If it’s not possible now, it’ll never be possible. This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen, so we’re going to do it.”

“Now or never,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ramaswamy agreed. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also spoke on the call.

Federal regulations, which are enforced by the executive branch agencies, govern everything from pollutants to construction safety to banking requirements. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and a key player in several industries, would benefit immensely from the ability to pick and choose which regulations to follow.

Musk on the call also appeared to claim credit for the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S.-funded aid agency that oversees humanitarian projects around the world, calling it a corrupt “ball of worms.” Shortly after the call, he wrote on X that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

He said on the call that “we’re shutting it down” and that Trump “agreed that we should shut it down” — though the executive branch’s legal authority to do so without congressional action is highly in doubt, as the agency’s existence is established in law. Trump on Monday said he didn’t need an act of Congress to shut down USAID.

USAID’s homepage has been shut down for days, as is its X account. Dozens of career staff at the agency have been put on leave, and hundreds have been shut out of agency computer systems. Musk aides have gained access to classified USAID information over the objection of agency security personnel, who were subsequently placed on leave, The Associated Press reported.

One of Musk’s aides — a small group of 20-somethings reportedly are his primary foot soldiers in the war for “government efficiency” — emailed USAID staff over the weekend to tell them not to come into the office Monday, as it would be closed. A protest featuring several members of Congress formed outside the building on Monday.

Capping off the apparent takeover of the independent agency, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday asserted that he was himself the acting administrator of USAID.

The X call came after a week straight of Musk and his aides, acting with Trump’s blessing, asserted aggressive and potentially unlawful control over a series of choke points in the executive branch.

At the Office of Personnel Management, Musk aides reportedly have not only gained access to federal human resource databases that contain sensitive personal information — and locked career officials out of the systems — but reportedly also have installed their own commercial server, presumably without a required privacy impact assessment.

Musk aides also have been granted access to the Treasury Department’s federal payment system. The career civil servant who had overseen the system was put on leave and then suddenly retired after resisting Musk’s team being granted access, The New York Times and others reported.

On Friday, the X account for “DOGE” claimed to have canceled $1 billion of federal contracts.

And on X in recent days, Musk has publicly bragged of shutting down payments that, presumably, were specifically approved by Congress and the president — indicating numerous potential violations of the Impoundment Control Act.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... 02376043c7

[Owendonovan]

I suggest he finds out how long it takes him to reach the water diving off the Golden Gate Bridge.