In my opinion, three things thwarted Kristi Noem’s attempt to interfere in Brad Lander’s campaign to be NYC’s Mayor by detaining him yesterday:

• Independent media
• Solidarity
• The law

Independent media

I’m increasingly perplexed that when people make lists of prominent Democrats that Noem’s goons have targeted, they leave off David Huerta, the CA SEIU President arrested on a public sidewalk in front of a garment factory where ICE was conducting a search.

I increasingly think the omission may stem from the dearth of video coverage of his arrest — which basically consisted of two ICE guys picking him up and then pushing him down, leading to him knocking his head on the curb (for which he got hospital treatment).

Brad Lander’s detention, by contrast, was quickly covered by independent media present or close by.

I first learned about the detention when The City’s Gwynne Hogan reported it (and posted a shorter version of the above video) in real time. Here’s their story on the detention.

Hell Gate provided updates, including about the protest outside and Lander’s past visits to the courthouse to accompany migrants to court hearings.

AMNY’s Dean Moses posted this picture, which contrasted the fully masked man conducting the arrest with the violence the  ICE goons were using in their detention of Lander.

Mainstream media (with exceptions like Wired) may not save us. But the diligence of independent outlets could.

NYT has the ability to sustain all that independent journalism. But if you can — especially if you live in New York — you might consider supporting them (recall that The City did a lot of the reporting on Eric Adams’ corruption before bigger outlets picked up the story).

• The City
• Hellgate

Solidarity

That reporting allowed a group (including Zohran Mamdani and four other Mayoral candidates) to peacefully assemble in front of the courthouse. Eventually, even Kathy Hochul came to the courthouse and accompanied Lander as he was released, calling his arrest “bullshit.”

Hochul announced she’ll provide some state funding for the migrants who’re being targeted as they attend court hearings, the problem that Lander was trying to address.

Lander, after he was released, emphasized that he gets to go home but the man he attempted to accompany today, a man named Edgardo, was in ICE detention.

One important point of all this is the underlying solidarity. This was not Lander’s first visit accompanying people; among the folks respond to his detention were one who had been inspired by his actions to engage as well, and another who had provided an Arabic translator some weeks ago. Contrary to what silly pundits have started to argue, the point is not to get arrested. The point is to create friction for Stephen Miller’s dragnet. The point is to bring visibility and opposition to inhumane treatment.

American Prospect’s story on the arrest focused on that.

It’s not only the courtroom treatment of defendants that’s egregious. So are the living conditions at 26 Federal Plaza. In an interview with the Prospect, Daniel Coates, director of public affairs at Make the Road New York, said that ICE is using the building to hold people for multiple days before transferring them elsewhere, packing them in so tightly that some have no room to sleep except for on the bathroom floor. The rooms are hot because the air-conditioning is inadequate, detainees have “no opportunities to get a change of clothes or clean themselves,” have no access to medical treatment, and cannot maintain their dietary restrictions, said Coates, who spoke at the press conference held after Lander’s detention.

“The space is exploding,” Coates said, “and it’s sort of a black hole there because ICE is refusing entry to members of Congress,” who are supposed to be allowed to oversee such buildings. It’s an open question of “what actually 26 Federal Plaza is being used for,” he said.

The point is not the arrest. The point is to expand solidarity.

The law

I think there were a number of reasons SDNY couldn’t charge Lander, at least not yet:

• According to one of the journalists there, one of the ICE goons said to another before Lander did anything “do you want to arrest the Comptroller?” Like the Ras Baraka arrest, it was premeditated and had little to do with his own actions.
• Because media was there, because Moses took that really damning photo, it ensured that there was plenty of footage that would make it viable to rebut a prosecutor’s hypothetical claim that Lander was resisting or (even more outlandish) assaulting them. It’s true that cops can convict on 18 USC 111 charges where someone wrestles with the cop, but here Lander would have a viable argument that this was all about assaulting him.
• At one point, Lander asked for one of the ICE officers’ badge number but didn’t get it, and both the goons who arrested him were in plain clothes and one was entirely masked. He repeatedly asked to see a judicial warrant (only an administrative warrant is required); but the ICE officer merely waved a paper at him. To sustain an 18 USC 111 case, the government would have to show that these were officers conducting their duty, both they refused to prove that to Lander before they detained him.
• While Lander did get the law wrong on at least one count (that ICE couldn’t arrest US citizens at all), the law does say that they can only arrest without a warrant in case of a flight risk. There is not a chance in hell that NYC’s current Comptroller and aspiring Mayor would flee, so he could make a good case that the arrest itself was illegal.
• The problem I laid out yesterday; Emil Bove already told an SDNY judge that Eric Adams merely being prosecuted was election interference. Lander was going to have a very good case that DHS was attempting to help Adams and hurt Lander.

But for both the last two reasons, this may not be over. The NYT quoted a SDNY spox suggesting the government could still charge this, perhaps after the Mayoral race.

A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement that the office was investigating Mr. Lander’s actions, but said nothing about criminal charges. The spokesman, Nicholas Biase, noted that federal law prohibited assaults on law enforcement and other public officials and obstruction of official proceedings.

That doesn’t mean those charges would succeed. It means they might try to avoid the obvious hypocrisy of dismissing charges against one NYC mayoral candidate by waiting to charge another.

Update: I asked SDNY if they had opened an election interference investigation into the people who arrested Lander. Spox Nicholas Biase declined to comment.

In Jimmy Kimmel’s attack on Trump’s authoritarian interference in California last night, he recalled how, earlier this year, Trump claimed California had so many fires because they don’t sweep its forest floors.

It was a funny dig. Except it is also dead serious.

As laid out in California’s bid for an emergency Temporary Restraining Order filed Tuesday, among the problems with Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard is not just that Trump usurped Gavin Newsom’s authority to command the Guard and incited further unrest.

It also steals resources that California relies on to combat forest fires (and fentanyl trafficking).

Defendants’ unlawful federalization of 4,000 California National Guard members, over the repeated objections of Governor Newsom, diverts necessary state resources. See Eck Dec. ¶ 32 (noting the California Military Department has “has identified and committed 4,600 service members to achieve state specific missions, which is 38% of the available strength”); id. ¶ 33 (“In 2025, there have already been 3,332 services members activated for 89,061 duty days, indicating the state will need every available service member to meet the State’s operational needs.”). Most members of the California National Guard serve in a reserve capacity, meaning they work in civilian roles when not serving as part-time militia forces, often in specialized positions. Eck Dec. ¶¶ 21, 37. As one pertinent example, 2,500 California National Guard members were activated in response to some of the most destructive fires in Los Angeles County that occurred in early January 2025. Eck Dec. ¶¶ 35-36. Likewise, the federalized force includes elements of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team that serve in Taskforce Rattlesnake, the State’s specialized fire combat unit. Eck Dec. ¶¶ 14, 39-40. The 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team also includes Counterdrug Taskforce members that specialize in providing support to stop the trafficking of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Id. ¶¶ 15, 42-43. Members of the California National Guard also serve key roles in a variety of functions, from defending the state from cyber threats to conducting emergency traffic control. Id. ¶¶ 44-46. In short, Defendants’ federalization of the California National Guard jeopardizes vital resources on which the State depends to protect itself from emergencies, including the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team’s specialized fire suppression and drug interdiction teams. Id. ¶¶ 47-50.

In short, Defendants’ unlawful federalization of a significant subset of the California National Guard for 60 days at the expense of state resources jeopardizes the safety and welfare of the state’s citizens on two fronts: first, it removes these servicemembers from their vital roles combating drug trafficking in California’s border zones and fighting wildfires and second, their deployment risks inflaming an unstable and dangerous situation of Defendants’ own making, putting property and countless lives at unnecessary risk. See id. ¶¶ 13-16. [emphasis original]

The Deputy General Counsel in California’s Military Department, Paul Eck, described the specialized roles the Guard plays in combatting fires in a declaration accompanying the TRO request. There are 14 Task Force Rattlesnake crews that focus full-time on wildfire prevention (the kind of mitigation Trump demanded in January) and response.

38. For example, the California National Guard operates FireGuard, a wildfire satellite detection mission. During the last 18 months, FireGuard activated at least fire Emergency State Active-Duty Force Packages, consisting of 360 personnel total, in support of the Bridge Fire, Line Fire, and Park Fire in California. One hundred-forty additional Emergency State Active-Duty Military Police Soldiers were also activated to operate and augment Traffic Control Points at the Line Fire and Bridge Fire.

39. The California National Guard also operates Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a joint taskforce with CalFire to mitigate and prevent fires through fuels mitigation projects and direct fire suppression. Task Force Rattlesnake provides 14 full-time, year-round Type I Hand Crews to reduce fuels and respond to fire incidents and other emergencies across the State. Each Task Force Rattlesnake crewmember is trained to Firefighter 1C standards, which require at least 540 hours of training. Each of California’s 14 Crews are staffed with a minimum of 22 California National Guard personnel and maintain a minimum of 22 Firefighter 1C trained crewmembers (308 personnel in total).

40. Over the past 18 months, Task Force Rattlesnake responded to at least 738 wildland firefighting response missions, covering 10,243 acres of land. [my emphasis]

Best as I can tell, those filings were submitted around 11AM on Tuesday.

Around 1:30PM, a wildfire in Apple Valley was reported. The now-4,200 acre fire is currently just 10% contained.

Having predicted that Trump’s usurpation of control over California’s National Guard might deprive the state other other emergency response resources on Tuesday, yesterday at 9AM (my screen cap is Irish time, so ET+5 and PT+8), Newsom pointed to the way Trump’s federalization of the Guard has depleted those dedicated fire response Guardsmen.

Trump’s bozo-the-clown response to the TRO request (which forgot to include its Table of Authorities and cited a Fox News story that misrepresents when Newsom and Trump spoke, all the while hiding that Trump can’t even remember when that happened) mentions fires or fireworks nine times — claiming at one point that protestors “lit fires in dumpsters and trans bins,” whatever “trans bins” are. (Whatever they are, they don’t seem like the kind of federal property to which Whiskey Pete Hegseth can assign Guardsmen and Marines.)

But Trump’s response doesn’t address how he’ll undermine efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and wildfires. Trump’s response doesn’t address how his actions will make California less safe.

In January, Trump lectured California about preventing fires; then he manufactured an emergency to steal the personnel who perform that role.

In January, Trump declared emergencies because (he claims) Mexico, Canada, and China aren’t doing enough to combat fentanyl trafficking. Then he manufactured a different emergency via which he stole some of the personnel California uses to respond to that threat.

Even on Trump’s own terms, Trump is making California less safe.

Update: Paul Eck filed an updated declaration to accompany the state’s reply. He describes over half of the specialized firefighting members.

6. Task Force Rattlesnake, California’s highly trained fire mitigation and ‘ prevention and direct fire suppression unit, lost 190 out of its total 340 members to the Title 10 federal activation. A reduction of 55.88% of California National Guard’s fire prevention and fighting force.

7. The negative impacts of the reduction in force to Task Force Rattlesnake are imminent.

8. Prior to the Title 10 Federal activation of California National Guard forces, Task Force Rattlesnake (Rattlesnake) maintained Fourteen (14) Type 1 Wildfire Handcrews. Post the mobilization, Rattlesnake has been whittled down to Nine (9) Type 1 crews.

9. The reduction in the number of Rattlesnake Type 1 crews has limited the CMD’s, and consequently Cal Fire’s, ability to conduct ground fuels reduction missions, and more importantly, it has negatively impacted CMD’s ability to respond to wildfires.

10. The consequences may be felt soon. As of June 11 there are 13 fires over 10 acres burning in California, including the Ranch Fire in San Bernardino which has consumed over 4,200 acres. If it continues to grow at its current rate of spread, it would necessitate the use of Rattlesnake. [emphasis mine]

He also described that 31% of CA’s drug interdiction team has been affected.

Docket Newsom v. Trump

The year of our lord 2025 started with a rabid Musk-Trump supporter self-immolating himself in a Cybertruck parked in front of a Trump casino, trying to send us all a message.

The most interesting development in the burgeoning Civil War between two historical narcissists is that Elon unfollowed both Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk (the latter whom drooled a bit about how wonderful it was Elon decided to platform Nazis after he bought Twitter).

But that’s just one girl’s opinion. Feel free to share yours below!

There’s a detail that often gets missed from slobbering transcription of DOGE propaganda. When Elon Musk first said DOGE would save $150 billion, he said that money would be saved in FY26 — that is, the year starting in October, the year for which Republicans are pushing through a budget now.

That’s important background to the expected release today of Trump’s topline proposed budget, which cuts … $163 billion from discretionary spending, largely consisting of the things that Elon has been putting through a woodchipper.

The fiscal 2026 budget proposal, which the White House is planning to release on Friday, is a largely symbolic wish list that lays out the president’s spending and political priorities. Congress, which Republicans control by narrow majorities in both chambers, will spend months debating which elements of the proposed plan should be turned into law.

The budget plan will propose $557 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, officials said. It would reduce nondefense discretionary spending by $163 billion, the officials said. The administration said that represents a 22.6% cut from projected spending in fiscal 2025, which ends Sept. 30. It wasn’t clear how the administration calculated that percentage.

[snip]

According to administration officials, Trump’s proposed budget cuts include:

• Eliminating offices at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
• Defunding “environmental justice” initiatives at the EPA
• Closing USAID and reallocating grant funding
• Eliminating a federal program that provides grants to nonprofits that help people who face housing discrimination
• Defunding the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit that supports democratic institutions around the world
• Cutting what it calls “wasteful and woke FEMA grant programs”
• Closing the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank that seeks to prevent global conflict
• Refocusing the National Institutes of Health on research that aligns with Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda
• Eliminating a $315 million grant program for preschool development that the administration contends pushed DEI initiatives
• Cutting $77 million in grant funding for teacher preparation and professional development the administration says pushed “Critical Race Theory” and DEI initiatives
• Eliminating the Minority Business Development Agency, which promotes minority-owned businesses
• Eliminating the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which promotes economic growth in poor communities
• Cutting $5.2 billion from the National Science Foundation
• Canceling $15 billion in funding in the infrastructure law signed by former President Joe Biden for renewable energy technology
• Eliminating U.S. investments in global funds to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change
• Eliminating EPA research grants to nongovernmental organizations
• Cutting $2.5 billion from the Energy Department’s renewable energy program
• Cutting $80 million from renewable energy programs at the Interior Department
• Eliminating grants at NOAA, which forecasts weather and monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditions, among other things

If these cuts aren’t made, it’s not clear whether DOGE will have saved anything, even while incurring hundreds of billion in costs.

There’s already some discomfort between Congress and the Administration about this process.

Tom Cole and other budget Chairs were supposed to meet — and provide advance feedback — both about the prospective budget and the rescissions (the money not spent in this current year for which Trump needs Congress’ retroactive sanction). But Russ Vought rescheduled the meeting to do so from Thursday morning to Thursday afternoon, after members go home for the week.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole vented Thursday about the White House’s seemingly inattentive approach to its relations with congressional funders, saying that President Donald Trump is not the “commander” of Congress and that top Republicans need the White House to quickly share their funding plans.

The unusually tart comments from Cole (R-Okla.) came after White House budget director Russ Vought canceled a planned Thursday morning meeting with the House’s GOP funding leaders because of a “presidential request,” Cole said.

While a White House official said that was “fake news” and that the meeting was rescheduled for later Thursday, Cole noted that most lawmakers would already be headed back home.

“It’s not going to be happening with all the cardinals later today, because we’re not going to be here later today,” Cole said of the dozen chairs of the House’s appropriations panels.

Those leaders are increasingly vexed that the White House budget office has not shared details of the funding cuts it is already undertaking at federal agencies and its plans for the fiscal year that starts in October.

“Look, no president — and administrations — don’t get to dictate what’s going to happen here,” Cole told reporters Thursday morning. “Congress is not the Army. And the president is the president, but not the commander in chief of Congress.”

Having advance influence on the rescissions package is particularly important because there are some things that DOGE cut (and more specifically, Pete Marocco cut while Marco Rubio claimed he had not) that Republicans don’t want to sanction, starting with PEPFAR.

The administration initially floated sending $9.3 billion of DOGE cuts to the Hill, which would encompass DOGE’s elimination of the main agency providing foreign aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as zeroing out some money for public broadcasting. The cuts would take just 51 votes in the Senate to pass, which means lawmakers would not need to worry about a Democratic filibuster to make the cuts permanent, under a provision in the 1974 budget law that allows requests for rescinded funding to be expedited. Musk has claimed $160 billion in savings so far.

This week, however, lawmakers began to raise concerns about even that smaller effort, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) telling colleagues she would have trouble supporting cuts to PEPFAR, an effort to combat HIV/AIDS abroad that other foreign-policy minded senators also support.

“I think it depends what’s in it precisely,” Collins said of the package’s chances of passing in the Senate. “For example, the $8.3 billion in foreign aid cuts, if that includes the women’s global health initiative as is rumored, if it cuts PEPFAR as it may, I don’t see those passing.”

[snip]

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said passing DOGE cuts could be difficult even in the Republican-controlled Congress, given the chamber’s tiny majority. He’s asked the administration to review the package before it is submitted to ensure the cuts have political support.

“Do you really want to roll out and have a failure?” Cole asked. “I think if they put it out there, they need to succeed at it.”

The futility of this process — having someone like Elon cut a bunch of things, in hopes Congress would take the politically risky vote to sanction it — has people like Rand Paul and Tom Massie mocking the whole process, to say nothing of Mike Johnson’s servitude to Trump.

“One of the most surreal moments this year was at the State of the Union, when my colleagues all got up and clapped because DOGE found all of these cuts and all this wasteful spending,” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who often wears an electronic national debt-tracker clipped to his suit, told NOTUS on Thursday. “It was all stuff they funded, and all stuff they were going to fund again in the CR. And they were just, like, clapping.”

“They didn’t realize it was actually an insult and an indictment of their own performance,” Massie said. “Not only do we write the checks, we’re responsible for the oversight after we do write the checks. And clearly we failed.”

[snip]

Massie, for his part, thinks there are plenty of institutional changes that could help Congress do more work to monitor spending, instead of relying on an outside panel like DOGE. One tweak he’d like to see would allow members to hire contractors to do short-term oversight projects instead of relying only on full-time staff.

But, he said, getting serious about spending would also “take a speaker who wants to breathe life back into this institution.”

“Mike Johnson’s stated goal is to carry water for Trump,” Massie complained. “That’s not going to get it done.”

But it may be bigger than that.

If Congress doesn’t approve of Trump’s rescissions — the gutting of foreign aid that is popular with Republicans by boys who know nothing about it — it will make Trump’s legal justification for having made these cuts before a score of judges around the country far more fraught. In the same period Congress will be debating these rescissions, judges will be considering whether the cuts were legal.

This may be Russ Vought’s goal, to treat Congress as an appendage. But in theory, at least, it should create a Constitutional crisis. And this time, the courts will have a say.

This is one of many reasons why I think it so important that Trump’s self-imposed tariff disaster will start causing excruciating pain before Congress works through retroactively codifying the things he has been doing.

Right now, it looks increasingly likely that Trump’s tariff emergency will pre-empt — and likely dramatically disrupt — both the effort to codify his agenda and his bid to get SCOTUS to neuter Congress entirely.

[snip]

The shit is going to start hitting the tariff-inflated fan in the next few weeks. We’re beginning to see spikes in certain items (including toilet plunger parts). We’re beginning to see increasingly large layoffs tied to the expect drop in shipping. In the coming weeks, we expect to see expanding shortages.

Unless something dramatic changes, the US will experience a COVID-like crisis without the COVID, and with no appetite or excuse to start throwing money at people to stave off further crisis.

[snip]

[M]aybe Trump will get a deal and convince people who can’t buy fans and toilet plungers — to say nothing about small businesses who will be filing for bankruptcy and farmers watching their crops go to waste — that his tariffs aren’t a disaster. Maybe he will make a humiliating reversal on tariffs, one of the few things in which Trump actually believes. Maybe that will happen. Republican members of Congress, in particular, have a near-infinite ability to allow themselves to buy rank bullshit and that may well happen here.

Or, maybe, the economy will be in meltdown by May, June, July, when the Administration needs near-total unity from Congressional Republicans to codify Trump’s policies into law.

How’s that going to work out?

[snip]

What I am certain of, though, is that the wavering unanimity we’re seeing as everyone rubbernecks at the car crash of Trump’s trade policy may dissolve if Trump continues to willfully destroy the US economy.

Tom Cole is already pissy at Russ Vought, and pissy especially because Vought has snubbed Congress’ power of the purse. Susan Collins, his counterpart on appropriations in the Senate, is already warning Trump things may not work out like he imagines.

That’s this week, when the impact of Trump’s tariff emergency is mostly anxiety and initial lost jobs.

Next week, when the Chairs who had a meeting with Vought that he unilaterally rescheduled will return to work,  is when the shit hits the tariff-inflated fan.

Some of the last cargo ships carrying Chinese goods without crippling tariffs are currently drifting into US ports. Come next week, though, that will change.

Cargo on ships from China loaded after April 9 will carry with them the 145% tariff President Donald Trump slapped on goods from that nation last month. Next week, those goods will arrive, but there will be fewer ships at sea and they will be carrying less cargo. For many importers, it is too expensive to do business with China.

[snip]

“Starting next week is when we begin to see the arrivals off of that (tariff) announcement on April 2,” said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, where nearly half of the business comes from China. “Cargo coming into Los Angeles will be down 35% compared for a year ago.”

Again, I’m not saying this will grow Republicans a spine (though this negotiation was always going to be difficult given the majorities). I’m not saying this will change the outcome.

I am saying that the already-testy negotiating environment is going to get far testier as shelves start to go bare.

Update, May 12: In a very good state of play on the fragile status of negotiations, David Dayen notes:

There’s a mechanism in the reconciliation instructions that ties the amount available for tax cuts to the spending cuts; if Republicans fail to hit $2 trillion, they have to pull the tax cuts back. That could mean time-limiting them, pulling parts out, or raising taxes elsewhere in the package, like the tax increase for millionaires that Trump has gently proposed. “Gently” is precisely the word, as on Friday Trump spat out a word salad about such a tax increase that concluded, “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!”

Slightly increasing the top marginal rate on taxpayers who make above $2.5 million in income, as a policy matter, does not offset the large loophole on pass-through income, the lack of a wealth tax to deal with capital income, all the tax avoidance strategies (like “buy, borrow, die”) rich people use to skip taxes, and the gutting of the IRS that would track that money down. But it would close off a Democratic talking point about how the Trump tax cuts are only for the rich, while humiliating the last part of the Republican establishment Trump hasn’t corralled: the “no new taxes” fiscal zealots.

But that ideology is embedded in Republican DNA; while a couple of Freedom Caucus right-populists like Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) might go along with it, there are few others. As an example of the bind he and his party are in, Trump also floated closing the “carried interest” loophole that lowers the tax rates for hedge funders. Within days, four committee chairs and the head of the Republican campaign arm in the House joined a letter saying, basically, “No way.”

That incident shows that Trump’s falling approval ratings and the likelihood of a recession are diminishing his ability to dictate terms to Congress. The initial Energy and Commerce proposal I scooped last week included a White House proposal for “most favored nation” status for prescription drugs, a measure Trump tried by executive order in his first term that would attempt to limit drug purchases in Medicare to the price other countries pay.

But suddenly, Trump declared that he would announce the most favored nation initiative today, by executive order. As Bill Scher says correctly, this is a sign of weakness, that he couldn’t get the idea past Republicans in Congress and the phalanx of drug company lobbyists who surround the Capitol. Republican congressional opposition takes away one of the few budget-reducing measures that is actually popular, by dropping the cost of prescription drugs. [my emphasis]

Why you should use Signal (But maybe ditch Whatsapp?)

Pete Hegseth is Bad at His Job

The Secretary of Defense and Fox Host Pete Hegseth keeps using Signal to talk about war plans with people he’s not supposed to be talking with at his day job. He also gets caught, because he’s bad at security as well as his job. Hegseth uses his personal phone for Department of Defence business, including killing a lot Yemenis.

What Hegseth was supposed to use instead of his consumer cell phone is a SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. I’ve been in one. I was emphatically invited to leave my phone at the door. There were large men making this point to me, and I took it to heart. A SCIF is secure, but it is as much about control and legal obligations as it is about security, and rightfully so. Secure communications for a national government don’t just require security, they require accountability, integrity, and a durable record. After its classification period, that information belongs to all Americans. Historical accountability is something we’ve decided matters, and encoded into our laws.

On a technical level I wouldn’t be shocked if SCIFs use some of the same technology that’s in Signal to secure communications. It’s good stuff! But SCIFs are SCIFs, and consumer cell phones are cell phones. Your phone is not designed for government records retention, or hardened against specific nation-state threats. But modern, up-to-date phones have very good security, more hardened then most of the government systems that have ever existed. And it’s right there! In your phone without you having to do anything to get it! (Except apply new software updates when they turn up.)

So despite the fact that Hegseth’s phone would be one of the more targeted in the world, and Hegseth himself is an idiot, his phone isn’t necessarily compromised. It might be, but it’s hard to be sure. It’s quite hard to hack a modern phone, especially if the person using the phone updates it every time there’s an update released, and doesn’t click on things they don’t know are OK. There are fancy attacks, called Zero-Click Attacks, that don’t require any user interaction, but they’re hard to build and expensive.

At any given moment, you don’t know whether someone had a working attack against an up-to-date iPhone or Android until it’s discovered and patched. But mostly, the average user doesn’t have to worry about trying to secure their phone. You already secure your phone when you update it. The hackers aren’t in a race with you, or even Pete Hegseth, they’re in a race with large and well-funded security and design teams at Google and Apple — and those people are very good at their jobs. This is why the nerds (like me) always tell you to update software as soon as possible; these updates often patch security holes you never knew were there.

You’re more likely to download a vulnerability in something like Candy Crush, weird social media apps, or random productivity tools you’re tying out. But the folks at Google and Apple have your back there, too. They’ve put every app into its own software-based “container,” and don’t let apps directly interact with the core functions of your phone, or the other apps on it. Hackers try to break out of these containers, but again, it’s not easy. Even if they get a foothold in one, they might know a lot about how good you are at subway surfing, but not much else.

It’s hard out here for a phone hacker.

Sometimes the hackers hit pay dirt, and find some flaw in phone software that lets them take over the phone from the air, with no user interaction — that zero-Ccick attack. This is very scary, but also very precious for the hackers. Unless there’s a very good reason, no one is going to risk burning that bug on you. If an attack like that is found, it will be top priority for those big smart security teams at Google and Apple. There will be long nights. There will also be an update that fixes it; apply updates as soon as you see them. Once a vulnerability is patched, the malware companies have to go back to the drawing board and look for another bug they can exploit to get their revenue stream back.

The high profile malware companies often sell their software, especially if they have a zero-click attack, to governments and corporations. They don’t want normal people using it, because the more it gets used, the faster they will be back at square one after Google and Apple take their toys away.

Nerd’s Delight

Signal is usually the favorite app your exhausting nerd friend keeps badgering you to download. It’s risen to even more prominence due to Pete Hegseth’s repeated idiocy. But this has caused doubt and confusion, because if you found out what Signal was from Hegseth’s leaks and blunders, it doesn’t look so good. Using Signal for DoD high level communications is not only illegal, it is stupid. Signal isn’t meant for government classified communications.

But it is meant for you, and it’s very good at what it does.

Signal is two things: First, an app for Android and iPhone (with a handy desktop client) which encrypts chats and phone calls. That’s the Signal app you see on your phone. second, the other part is the Signal Protocol, Signal’s system of scrambling communications so that people outside of the chat can’t see or hear anything inside the chat.

Signal Protocol, the encryption system Signal uses, is a technology called a Double Ratchet. It is an amazing approach that is pretty much unbreakable in a practical sense. The very short version of how that encryption works is this: Your computer finds a special number on a curve (think of the pretty graphs in trig class) and combines this number with another number the other person has, from a different spot on another curve. These numbers are used to encrypt the messages in a way that only you both can see them. (This number generation is done by your phone and servers on the net in the background of your chat, and you never have to see any of it.) You each use the numbers from picked out these curves to encrypt a message that only the other person can read. Picking out the number from the curve is easy, but guessing it from the outside is functionally impossible. Any attempt to figure out the points on the curve you used is very hard and tiring — meaning it takes the computer a lot of energy to try. In computers, very hard always translates to expensive and slow. The extra trick in Signal’s double ratchet is a mechanism for taking that already hard number to guess and “ratcheting” it to new hard numbers – with every single message. Every Hi, Whatup, and heart emoji get this powerful encryption. Even if someone was using super computers to break into your chat (and they aren’t) every time they broke the encryption, they’d just get that message, and be back at square one.

That’s expensive, frustrating hard work, and your chats aren’t worth the bother.

The Strongest Link, Weakened?

Messenger also uses the Signal protocol

Whatsapp adopted Signal Protocol in 2014, granting encrypted privacy and safety to over a billion people.

Signal is secure. Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger use Signal protocol too, and are also secure, for now… but Meta has made some decisions that complicate things. In a rush to add AI to everything whether you want it or not, Meta has added AI to its Signal Protocol-secured chat rooms. This doesn’t break the Signal Protocol, that works fine. But to have AI in chats means that by definition, there’s another participant listening in your chat. If there wasn’t, it couldn’t reply with AI things. If you’re not comfortable with this, it might be time to ditch Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger for Signal.

I’m personally not comfortable with it, in part because as far as I can tell, there’s nothing technically or legally stopping law enforcement from demanding access to that listening function in any chat room. It may only give the police access to parts of the conversation, but I’d like the chance to defend my data myself if it comes to it. I don’t want to have it picked up from a third party without so much as notice to me.

Meta is in the the room with you, like it or not. Is it recording all your chats somewhere? I doubt it. It’s a bad idea that would make too much trouble for Meta if it got out. But I can’t know for sure. I know there’s no listener in Signal, because the protocol makes hiding a listener functionally impossible. (To be clear, Meta isn’t hiding it, they’re advertising it. But it’s still a listener.)

Encryption for All

Make no mistake, that Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger use Signal’s protocol is wonderful news. It means that, without having to know anything about internet or computer security, one day there was an update, and billions of users got to rely on some of the best encryption ever designed, without even knowing it. This is important both for keeping people safe online, and for making society better, as activists, small businesses, families, and everyone with and internet connection can talk freely and safely to their people and their communities. It doesn’t stop ill-intentioned people from doing bad and deceptive things like lie, cheat, and steal, but it makes it harder for them to enlist the computers into their schemes.

The problem with Pete Hegseth using Signal is two-fold: He has to retain records legally, and ratcheting encryption is intentionally ephemeral. Signal is the worst way to retain records, beyond perhaps toilet paper and sharpie. The second problem is that if he does have a vulnerable app on his phone, or there’s a general vulnerability the teams at Apple and Google haven’t found yet, someone could be listening into what his phone is doing. Maybe even through his Candy Crush Saga, a fun game you will never find in a SCIF, no matter how much you wish you could.

SCIFs are kind of boring. No phones, the windows are weird (to defeat directional mics) and in my case, I had to have security escort me to the bathroom. I imagine that’s why an exciting guy like Hegseth doesn’t use them. But he is not only putting people in danger with his shenanigans, he’s also robbing the American people of a record that is, by law, our right to have. And it’s looking like an era of American history in which we want to be preserving evidence.

The Online Lives of Others

If you’ve never seen the movie The Lives of Others, go watch it. It’s great, and annoyingly relevant right now.

There is another threat coming from the EU and UK that rears its head every few years, and probably from the US soon enough as well. Many governments and law enforcement agencies want, have wanted for years, a scheme digital rights advocates call Chat Control. Law enforcement would have a back door into everyone’s encryption, usually a listener, like the Meta AI, but much worse. It would bug all chats — a spook in every phone. The excuse is always CSAM, or Child Sexual Abuse Material, but the proposal is always the same – to strip every person of privacy and the technical means to protect it, in the name of protecting children. This ignores a lot of of issues that I won’t go into here, but suffice to say the argument is as dishonest as it is ineffectual.

It’s an ongoing fight pitting children against a right of privacy and personal integrity, and it always will be an ongoing fight, because it would give the police and governments nearly limitless power to spy on the entire populous all the time.

Total digital surveillance is simply not a feasible way to run a society. It is the police state the East German Stasi dreamed of having. It must be resisted for human decency and flourishing. Let’s give the totalitarian desire for a spy in every phone no oxygen, it has no decency, no matter who it claims to be protecting.

Even if you never do anything that could be of interest to governments or law enforcement, using encryption creates more freedom for all. If only “criminals” or “enemies” use Signal, then using Signal becomes a red flag. If everyone uses Signal (or Signal protocol in Whatsapp/Messenger), then it’s normal. You get the measure of protection it provides from scammers and hackers, and you help people fighting criminals and resisting tyranny, all over the world. This is one of the reasons adding Signal protocol to the Meta systems was such a great moment in the history of the net. A good portion of humanity gained a real measure of privacy that day.

If activists and people “with something to hide” are the only people using encryption like Signal, it’s grounds for suspicion. But if everyone is using it, the journalists and activists who need it for political reasons don’t stand out. The battered partners and endangered kids can find it and use it safely to get help. And everyone is safer from scams and hacking attacks — because what you do and say has some of the best protection we’ve every conceived of as a society, even if it’s just your shopping list.

Correction: A previous version of this article included a description of Diffie–Hellman key exchange in the explanation of how Signal’s encryption works. Signal changed from Diffie–Hellman to Elliptic Curve Cryptography, which is much more efficient, in 2023. I regret the error. 

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Where to begin:

“Damn! You over here like, damn, Kamala, come back to me!” Akademiks joked, speculating that Ross may regret his enthusiastic endorsement of Trump on the campaign trail, now that the president’s economic policy has cost him at least $10 million.

In August 2024, Trump appeared on Ross’s livestream, where the young influencer gifted Trump a $100,000+ custom Cybertruck, Rolex, and his endorsement. While he was visibly morose over the financial hit, he didn’t have anything negative to say about Trump.

Source: Latin Times

Nothing bad to say about the man who cost him eight figures — so far.

This influencer is among many who are why Harris-Walz made no inroads with white and Latino men. They feel a need to belong to a tribe and it’s one which pulls up the tree house ladder to prevent women especially those of color from joining.

Harris warned them and they still can’t fully acknowledge she warned them and they were wrong, let alone admit that really is a leopard sitting on their chests gnawing on their cheekbones.

I’d like to laugh but my investment portfolio is down by a lot and unlike 2008 there was no safe haven I could trust thanks to DOGE Muskrats mucking about in Treasury.

At some point we’ll have to rescue these guys like Bluebeard’s last wife because we’ll be rescuing ourselves at the same time.

~ ~ ~

And now for something critically important — an urgent call to action.

Go to Indivisible.org and read the explanation about H.R. 22, a bill which will disenfranchise a massive number of voters. This is one of the methods by which Trump will attempt to hang onto the White House as well as a stranglehold over executive functions. If voters are deprived of their right to vote, they won’t be able to remove bad representation at mid-terms let alone the general election.

https://indivisible.org/campaign/trumps-new-executive-order-eo-silence-americans-what-you-need-know

While all eligible voters will be affected, those most likely to be disenfranchised are married and divorced women because they will be assessed a poll tax in the form of additional identity documentation in the form of a marriage license. Trans persons and adoptees will also be affected negatively.

The bill also has a hole in it, and I’ll tell you right now it affects me, my father, and my sibling as an example. The word “territory” never appears in this bill, and my father is an American citizen born in what was then a territory, now a state.

Bill text at: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr22/text

This legislation needs to die and the 107 Republican House members who co-sponsored it need to hear from their constituents that they are failing their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution.

Don’t let this slip by you, take action. We can’t trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing and protect Americans’ right to vote.

Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121

CATO engaged in an interesting project: faced with all the uncertainty about what DOGE is up to, it attempted to lay out six possible models to explain what DOGE is doing.

Social science models simplify reality, spotlighting key variables that may shape DOGE’s actions in a way that can be tested. The models discussed above clearly simplify the complex endeavor of reforming the largest human organization ever by expenditures—the U.S. federal government. They help explain past decisions and anticipate future moves. The models above try to make sense of DOGE’s actions so far. They are not mutually exclusive, yet several can be informative together or alone, while some may only make sense temporarily. Other models not set out here might offer fresh insights, but scholars should try to develop them. Without doing so, one of the biggest policy initiatives of President Trump’s second term risks being under-analyzed or misunderstood.

It offered these six possible models:

1. DOGE is seeking to purge progressive influence within the federal government.
2. DOGE is a scaled-up public version of Musk’s style of corporate restructuring applied to the federal government.
3. DOGE is the first step of a public relations campaign to build popular support for spending cuts.
4. DOGE is an essential component of a Trump administration legal challenge to expand the president’s power of impoundment.
5. DOGE provides political cover for Congress to be even more fiscally irresponsible.
6. DOGE is about self-interest and cronyism.

Some of these — like the attempt to purge progressivism and cronyism — are partially convincing. Others, such as the claim that DOGE helps either the PR campaign or the legal one, are soundly rebutted by public facts. DOGE’s epic failures have increased pushback and provided legal bases to challenge cutbacks that wouldn’t exist if done more competently.

Even when it considers the possibility that Elon is self-dealing, CATO’s exercise is wildly credulous about DOGE’s own — Elon’s own — deceit. This piece, which they link, is far less so:

Elon Musk has many great strengths, but he is not a reliable narrator.

[snip]

As has been well covered in mainstream outlets, DOGE has been extremely sloppy about cutting contracts and reporting the numbers. Most of the biggest ticket savings have been the result of DOGE misreading federal contracting data, or killing contracts that were already dead. From the New York Times:

What’s more concerning than the sloppiness itself is that it does not appear to be getting resolved over time. The same kinds of data parsing errors and confusion about how federal contracts are awarded and then paid out have persisted over two months. Some of this comes back to the information environment: DOGE has instituted few if any ground-up mechanisms within the federal government to surface real savings opportunities.

Both pieces seem to treat the evolving explanation about what DOGE is (which CATO lays out in more depth and I’ve laid out here) as an evolving goal; neither considers whether it is an evolving cover story, necessitated, in part, by the inaptness of the USDS mission to what DOGE wants to do, exposed via various lawsuits.

Importantly, both ignore the most troubling aspect of DOGE: Its repeated rush to access the live data from these agencies. That has happened over and over — at OPM, at the Social Security Agency, at HHS. As Tiffany Flick wrote in a widely reported declaration, these boys are being granted access for which they have no obvious need to know, and they’re accessing that data in insecure ways, to use in rooms remotely with other DOGE boys.

You don’t need to access the Personally Identifiable Information of all Americans to cut costs. You don’t need to access the PII of all Americans to harmonize benefit programs across agencies, in the process making it easier to identify fraud. You don’t need to access the PII of all Americans to cash in (unless using it for extortion). Doing so doesn’t help your PR case or your impoundment case.

It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.

And that application might explain one of several troubling new details from recent weeks: the court filing that revealed that, before he left Treasury, Marko Elez emailed two unnamed people at GSA the name or names of people with transaction details.

12. The forensic analysis also revealed that Elez sent an email with a spreadsheet containing PII to two United States General Services Administration officials. The PII detailed a name (a person or an entity), a transaction type, and an amount of money. The names in the spreadsheet are considered low risk PII because the names are not accompanied by more specific identifiers, such as social security numbers or birth dates. Elez’s distribution of this spreadsheet was contrary to BFS policies, in that it was not sent encrypted, and he did not obtain prior approval of the transmission via a “Form 7005,” describing what will be sent and what safeguards the sender will implement to protect the information.

Over a month after the investigation into what Elez was up to, Treasury reveals that he was alerting others to specific details about entities, with no explanation of why. That has nothing to do with the optimization he was supposed to be doing!

So sure, that could arise from an effort to target specific adversaries of Elon or Trump.

But that doesn’t explain another alarming revelation about DOGE: That Elon set up Starlink for the White House and GSA (not coincidentally, where most of his DOGE boys are working with the PII of Americans).

Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.

[snip]

White House officials said the installation was an effort to increase internet availability at the complex. They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.

[snip]

In recent weeks, Starlink was also set up at the General Services Administration, which has served as a hub for Mr. Musk’s government-shrinking efforts, according to documents and people familiar with the service.

[snip]

It was also unclear if Starlink communications were encrypted. At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.

“It’s super rare” to install Starlink or another internet provider as a replacement for existing government infrastructure that has been vetted and secured, said Jake Williams, a vice president for research and development at Hunter Strategy, a cybersecurity consultancy. “I can’t think of a time that I have heard of that.”

“It introduces another attack point,” Mr. Williams said. “But why introduce that risk?”

It’s certainly true that these two details could just be consistent with Elon’s plan to adopt totalitarianism himself, using his own personal satellite network.

But taken in tandem with other priorities of DOGE, such as dismantling almost the entirety of USAID, starting with the programs that Russia and Hungary most loathe, but also including those Republicans cherish, you need to at least consider whether this is an intelligence operation. Elon, his sidekick installed at the White House, David Sacks, and the VP they foisted on Trump, JD Vance, all parrot Russian propaganda. Dangles for Elon — cooperation on Mars! — have been included in Russia’s efforts to cultivate Trump.

And Musk was cemented as part of the this team at the same time as two other people whose inclusion in the Administration only helps America’s adversaries, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.

DOGE has not been cost-cutting, though that has confused the good government types and libertarians for months. Rather, DOGE has been capacity-cutting, even while it conducts the most intrusive data dive into Americans this side of consumer profiling.

I’m not saying a Russian intelligence operation is the only explanation for DOGE’s actions (again, I think a totalitarian plan is another missed possibility, though question why an aspiring totalitarian would want to destroy so much capability in advance of solidifying power).

I’m saying that experts like those from CATO look at it and cannot tell what it is doing, even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false. But no one has ruled out something far more sinister is hiding behind a cognitive (if evolving) model designed to look familiar.

Both WaPo and MuskWatch have written about the declaration that former acting Chief of Staff to the then-Acting Social Security Commissioner, Tiffany Flick, submitted in a union lawsuit against the Social Security Agency on Friday. To support a bid for a Temporary Restraining Order arguing, in part, that the way DOGE has handled Social Security data exposes the unions’ members to fraud, Flick described how DOGE boys were given rushed access to the most sensitive kind of Social Security data, including:

The Enterprise Data Warehouse, which houses SSA’s master files and includes extensive information about anyone with a social security number (including names, names of spouses and dependents, work history, financial and banking information, immigration or citizenship status, and marital status);

The Numident file, which contains information about the assignment of social security numbers; and

The Master Beneficiary Record and SSI Record files, which contain detailed information (including medical data) about anyone who applies for or receives Social Security or SSI benefits

While WaPo’s Lisa Rein (who has been covering this particular takeover closely and was cited in the filing) ends her piece quoting Flick saying, “the risk of data leaking into the wrong hands is significant,” neither Rein nor MuskWatch considers the full implications of this. (And to be fair, the union’s lawsuit, which represents general government employees, doesn’t either.)

Though this complaint includes a FISMA component, meaning the unions are arguing, in part, that the government is violating its own cybersecurity rules, it does not and cannot make a national security argument: That treatment of the entire country’s data in this fashion presents enormous national security risks.

As Flick describes, Elon’s DOGE boys came into the Social Security Agency harboring and clinging to conspiracy theories about fraud, even when offered explanations to debunk them.

20. [snip] We proposed briefings to help Mr. Russo and Mr. Bobba understand the many measures the agency takes to help ensure the accuracy of benefit payments, including those measures that help ensure we are not paying benefits to deceased individuals. However, Mr. Russo seemed completely focused on questions from DOGE officials based on the general myth of supposed widespread Social Security fraud, rather than facts.

[snip]

51. Additionally, even with only read access DOGE can, and has already, used SSA data to spread mis/disinformation about the amount of fraud in Social Security benefit programs. The agency can always do more to ensure accurate and timely benefits payments, and it continues to pursue improvements. However, fraud is rare, and the agency has numerous measures in place to detect and correct fraud.

Having nothing more than conspiracy theories, DOGE demanded — and got (partly by replacing the Commissioner with a staffer who had worked with DOGE in advance) — that Akash Bobba be granted access to virtually all of Social Security Agency’s data, immediately. Bobba appears, with description of his access at GSA, in this Wired profile. Bobba got access to that data via a telework option, meaning he was located with a bunch of other people not cleared into this data itself.

22. Throughout this time, Acting Commissioner King requested that Mr. Russo report to her, as the CIO normally would, but he consistently gave evasive answers about his work. It appeared to me that he was actually reporting to DOGE.

23. During the week of February 10, with daily pressure from Mr. Russo, the CIO’s office tried to rapidly train Mr. Bobba to get him access to SSA data systems so he could work on a special project for Mr. Russo at DOGE’s request and so that he could “audit” any of the work of SSA experts.

24. We worked to provide Mr. Bobba with the necessary information and information security training but had to do so in a truncated manner and outside normal processes.

25. Given that, I do not believe Mr. Bobba had a sufficient understanding of the sensitive nature of SSA data or the ways to ensure such data’s confidentiality. These are complicated systems with complex policies governing very large programs, and it simply is not possible to become proficient within a matter of days.

[snip]

28. [snip] I understood that Mr. Bobba was working off-site at OPM while he was analyzing the SSA data. I also understood that other, non-SSA people were with him and may have also had access to the protected information. My understanding is that Mr. Russo approved a telework agreement for Mr. Bobba (while at the same time directing CIO management to work onsite full-time) to allow him to work out of OPM. But our standard telework agreements state that employees need to work in a private location and should be careful to protect systems and data from unauthorized access. Mr. Bobba’s work didn’t seem to align with those requirements.

[snip]

36. It was never entirely clear what systems Mr. Russo wanted Mr. Bobba to have access to, but Mr. Russo reportedly stated that Mr. Bobba needed access to “everything, including source code.”

[snip]

43. But the request to give Mr. Bobba full access to these databases without justifying the “need to know” this information was contrary to SSA’s longstanding privacy protection policies and regulations, and none of these individuals could articulate why Mr. Bobba needed such expansive access. I also understood that Mr. Bobba would not view the data in a secure environment because he was living and working at the Office of Personnel Management around other DOGE, White House, and/or OPM employees.

Even if we could assume these DOGE boys — at least three of whom (Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, Branden Spikes, and Sam Corcos) have been shown to have suspect ties — have no other motive than to spin false claims of fraud, this would still be a massive security risk. But as Flick repeats over and over, these DOGE boys were always evasive about what they were really up to. And as she describes, these boys are working off site, without the kind of confidentiality protections that would apply within SSA.

By handling the data like this, they make it child’s play for adversaries to help themselves as well.

It’s not just that DOGE has found almost nothing while compromising the most sensitive datasets in government. It’s also that the way they’re doing so, driven in significant part by this haste, has made it exceedingly more likely someone else will compromise the data.

The risk is not just fraud (the harm laid out in the lawsuit). It’s spying, on an even greater scale than China achieved with the OPM hack.

And the members of Congress who’re supposed to oversee such issues have done nothing — at least nothing public.

I’ve included contact numbers for the Senate Intelligence Committee (which is the most likely to give a shit about possible compromise like this), as well as the Chair and Ranking members of other committees with jurisdiction. If one of them is your Member of Congress, call and ask why they’re abdicating their duty to protect the country from obvious compromise.

Senate Intelligence Committee

GOP

Tom Cotton (202) 224-2353

Jim Risch (202) 224-2752

Susan Collins (202) 224-2523

John Cornyn (202) 224-2934

Jerry Moran (202) 224-6521

James Lankford (202) 224-5754

Mike Rounds (202) 224-5842

Todd Young (202) 224-5623

Ted Budd (202) 224-3154

Dems

Mark Warner (202) 224-2023

Ron Wyden (202) 224-5244

Martin Heinrich (202) 224-5521

Angus King (202) 224-5344

Michael Bennett (202) 224-5852

Kirsten Gillibrand (202) 224-4451

Jon Ossoff (202) 224-3521

Mark Kelly (202) 224-2235

Senate Homeland Security Committee

Rand Paul (202) 224-4343

Gary Peters (202) 224-6221

House Intelligence Committee

Rick Crawford (202) 225-4076

Jim Himes (202) 225-5541

House Homeland Security Committee

Mark Green (202) 225-2811

Bennie Thompson (202) 225-5876

Yesterday, arguably for (at least) the second time, Trump declared fealty to Vladimir Putin.

As I contemplated the awful but in no way surprising developments (here’s a good podcast, featuring Marc Polymeropoulos, Doug Lute, and Rosa Brooks), I thought about the various ways Trump is sabotaging the United States, based on apparently different motivations.

But we only assume those motivations are different because we (or much of the legacy press, anyway) accept the claimed motivation Trump offers. When you look at all of them together, you simply can’t rule out they’re all part of the same effort to capitulate to Putin.

Project 2025

There’s a consensus that Trump is following the plan mapped out in Project 2025. This Politico report, from early February, laid out how Executive Orders Trump had signed implemented plans to attack diversity and LGBTQ protections, attack migrants, and protect disinformation. It focuses on fossil fuel plans that have mostly defunded renewable energy without raising fossil fuel exploitation (in part because it was already so high under Biden).

Even if that were the only thing going on or if that were really what was going on, it would raise real questions about foreign influence. Last year, Casey Michel mapped out how Viktor Orbán used the Heritage Foundation as a beachhead for his influence peddling in the US (which I discussed in this post on Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025).

While much attention has understandably focused on Heritage’s so-called “Project 2025,” which provides a roadmap for Trump to seize as much power as he can, such a shift has extended to foreign policy. This has been seen most especially in Heritage leading the effort to gut funding for Ukraine. But it’s also evident in the way Heritage has endeavored to anchor its relations with Orbán, making Budapest once more America’s preferred partner in Europe—regardless of the cost.

Much of that shift is downstream from Heritage’s leadership, overseen by Kevin Roberts. Appointed as Heritage’s president in 2021, Roberts immediately began remaking Heritage’s priorities with a distinctly pro-Orbán bent—and began opening up Heritage as a vehicle for Hungarian influence in the U.S.

Part of that involved things like last week’s confab, one of many meetings between Roberts and Orbán. (After one 2022 sit-down, Roberts—who, among other things, has said he doesn’t think Joe Biden won the 2020 election—posted that it was an “honor” to meet with Orbán, praising his “movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families.”) But the relationship is structural as well: Heritage finalized what they refer to as a ‘landmark’ cooperation agreement with the Danube Institute, a Hungarian think tank that appears to exist only to praise Orbán’s government.*

The Budapest-based Danube Institute is largely unknown in the U.S., but it has transformed in recent years into one of the premier mouthpieces for propagating Orbánist policies. While it is technically independent, it is, as Jacob Heilbrunn notes in his new book on the American right’s infatuation with dictators, located “next to the prime minister’s building and funded by Orbán’s Fidesz party.” Indeed, the Hungarian think tank is overseen by a foundation directly bankrolled by the Hungarian state—meaning that the Danube Institute is, for all intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation told The New Republic that their arrangements with the Danube Institute is “restricted to carrying out educational research and analysis, as well as related events—none of which involved any financial commitment from either party” and that “at no point did Heritage receive funds from or pass funds to the Danube Institute, the Hungarian government, or the prime minister’s office.”

The Danube Institute claims it is dedicated to “advocat[ing] conservative and national values and thinking,” which almost always ends up with the institute praising Orbán’s pronouncements. It has become, according to Hungarian journalists at Atlatszo, “one of the main tools of the Orbán government’s ideological expansion abroad”—and one of the “main vehicles” to “building a political network in the United States.

Christopher Rufo, the propagandist behind the demonization of trans people, has ties to the Danube Institute.

So even if this was just about implementing Project 2025, that would best be described as replacing American democracy with Orbanist authoritarianism — adopting the model from a key Putin puppet.

DOGE infiltration and destruction of US government

There have been a slew of stories about how DOGE provided cover for Russ Vought and Stephen Miller to implement Project 2025. Wired, for example, described how Stephen and his wife Katie, who is formally on the DOGE team, serve as gatekeepers to Elon and use Elon to carry out their dirty work.

Meanwhile, Stephen Miller has, along with Project 2025 coauthor and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, became one of Musk’s closest allies in the administration, The New York Times reported earlier this month. WIRED has learned that the relationship is far closer, and more complicated, than has been previously known publicly.

In many ways, Musk’s targeting of federal agencies is perfectly in sync with the aims of Miller, who has championed DOGE’s work internally and even helped in making a lot of it possible. (In public, Miller has equated federal workers with “radical left Communists” and “criminal cartels.”) Still, sources tell WIRED that Trumpworld is more comfortable with Musk taking the heat for the recent federal cuts rather than the less famous—and, in their view, far less telegenic—Miller.

Yet through their actions so far, the Millers and Musk have developed a MAGA version of the Pet Shop Boys adage from the song “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”: You’ve got the brawn / I’ve got the brains. Stephen Miller’s knowledge of the federal apparatus, Katie Miller’s contacts on Capitol Hill, and the couple’s good standing among Trump loyalists, coupled with Musk’s relentless ambition and effectively infinite resources, made the scale of the DOGE government takeover possible. Musk is not the independent actor he’s often portrayed as and taken to be, in other words, but is rather carrying out actions essentially in concert with the man to whom the president has delegated much of the day-to-day work of governance.

“Stephen is kind of the prime minister,” one of three Republicans close to Trump and familiar with the situation tells WIRED. Another Republican familiar with the dynamic also used the term “PM” to describe Miller, short for prime minister. The implication is that Miller is carrying out the daily work of governance while Trump serves as head of state, focusing on the fun parts of being president.

But DOGE is going beyond the scope of Project 2025, and in ways that directly harm the United States.

Take the Project 2025 recommendations on USAID, the first target of DOGE. DOGE adopted the general theme of the Project 2025 chapter — that USAID had been used to implement a lot of radical plans. But the virtual elimination of USAID implemented last week goes well beyond Project 2025’s recommended reversal to 2019’s budget of $39.3 billion.

Project 2025 hailed Trump’s use of USAID to push for religious protection for Christians which — as I showed —  got shut down early along with everything else.

It promoted international religious freedom as a pillar of the agency’s work and built up an unprecedented genocide-response infrastructure.

It specifically called for greater reliance on local NGOs — and pointed to PEPFAR as a model.

Streamlining Procurement and Localizing the Partner Base. USAID is a grantmaking and contracting agency that disburses billions of dollars of federal funding in developing countries through implementing partners, such as U.N. agencies, international NGOs, for-profit companies, and local nongovernmental entities. In rare instances, such as in Jordan and Ukraine, the agency provides direct budget support to finance the operations of host-country governments. USAID far more often counts on expensive and ine!ective large contracts and grants to carry out its programs. It justifies these practices based on speed and a lower administrative burden on its institutional capacity.

[snip]

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has shown that localization at scale is possible within a short time span. Over the four years of the Trump Administration, the multibillion-dollar program increased the amount of funding disbursed to local entities from about 25 percent to nearly 70 percent with positive overall results. This model should be replicated across all of USAID.

But as declarations in various lawsuits repeat over and over, these local partners are not getting paid, and it’s destroying the credibility of the US (and rule of law).

11. Currently my mission has more than $30 million in unpaid invoices for 2 months of implementing partners’ work, with half of those past Prompt Payment Act due date (30 days) and incurring interest every day. If one were to extrapolate the numbers across all of the missions and USAID/Washington, given that annual USAID appropriation is $40 billion, the total dollar amount of unpaid invoices would certainly surpass $1billion at the most conservative estimate.

[snip]

13. Arbitrary withholding of due payments to U.S. and non-U.S. based partners does grave damage to the reputation and reliability of the U.S. government both domestically and internationally. USAID is a USG Agency which signed the contracts and grants in line with the Code of Federal Regulations and other statutes; USG refusal to pay for the past performed work and non-compliance with the TRO can shatter Americans’ certainty in the rule of law.

Rather than empowering local partners and capabilities, the quick decimation has devastated them — and left Americans still located overseas exposed to backlash.

USAID is just the most substantiated example of the sheer waste DOGE is creating. We’re seeing similarly stupid decisions in the firings of critical personnel (some of whom get hired back), but also the elimination of long-term maintenance or safety programs that will cost far more when those protections are gone.

Project 2025 envisioned stripping civil service protections and politicizing the bureaucracy. But with DOGE cuts, it’s not clear the bureaucracy can be rebuilt, even assuming the Heritage hires knew what they were doing. Meanwhile, the method of those cuts is more likely to elicit a backlash from judges, potentially even from the Supreme Court justices whom right wingers were counting on to bless all this.

And all that’s before you contemplate the possibility that Elon’s DOGE boys are doing something else with the data they’re accessing, or — intentionally or not — setting up backdoors via which adversaries can do so themselves.

Assume you were a true believer in Project 2025 (and not far greater authoritarianism). DOGE puts all that at risk, because by breaking so much so early, it is eliciting backlash and collapse of the economy.

The installation of useful idiots

It’s not just Elon who is making a mess. So are the other unqualified useful idiots Trump has installed — people like Pete Hegseth (who has fired three senior women officers after assuring Joni Ernst he wouldn’t target women) and Tulsi Gabbard (who parroted the same Russian propaganda she partly disavowed to get confirmed yesterday) and RFK Jr (who reneged on his promise not to cut off vaccine programs) and Kash Patel (who reneged on his promise to appoint a career FBI Agent as his Deputy).

These people are doing precisely the affirmative damage to the US that Democrats warned they would do — most obviously in RFK’s initial dismissal of the measles outbreak spreading from Texas to other states. And they’re doing it after years of parroting Russian propaganda.

The personalization of DOJ

We expected DOJ to be politicized in a second Trump term. I was even cynical enough to imagine that he would pardon all the January 6ers. The denialism about both Russia and January 6 were baked right into Project 2025.

• The Federal Bureau of Investigation, knowing that claims of collusion with Russia were false,5 collaborated with Democratic operatives to inject the story into the 2016 election through strategic media leaks, falsified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications, and lied to Congress.6
• Personnel within the FBI engaged in a campaign to convince social media companies and the media generally that the story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was the result of a Russian misinformation campaign—while the FBI had possession of the laptop the entire time and could have clarified the authenticity of the source.

[snip]

• The FBI engaged in a domestic influence operation to pressure social media companies to report more “foreign influence” than the FBI was actually seeing and stop the dissemination of and censor true information directly related to the 2020 presidential election.11

But the personalization of DOJ, along with Pam Bondi’s orders to stop chasing foreign influence operations, does something more.

It effectively makes foreign bribery — as well as the kind of kickbacks we saw in advance of Trump’s inauguration — legal.

As I noted here, the SEC, for example, has paused its suit against Justin Sun. As Judd Legum describes, this follows the Chinese-linked businessman’s multi-million “investment” in Trump’s crypto currency.

In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and three of his companies, accusing him of marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a crypto token. The SEC accused Sun of wash trading, which involves buying and selling a token quickly to fraudulently manufacture artificial interest.

[snip]

Sun’s purchase put millions in Trump’s pocket. WLF was entitled to “$30 million of initial net protocol revenue” in a reserve “to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve was met, a company owned by Trump would receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.” Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve. As of December 1, this amounted to $18 million for Trump — 75% of the revenues of all other tokens sold at the time. Sun also joined WLF as an advisor. While the purchase benefited Trump, WLF tokens are essentially worthless for Sun, as they are non-transferable and locked indefinitely.

Nevertheless, Sun has since invested another $45 million in WLF, bringing his total investment to $75 million. This means Sun’s purchases have sent more than $50 million to Trump, Bloomberg reported. Sun has also continued to shower Trump with praise. On January 22, Sun posted on X, “if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”

Once you’ve installed lawyers who publicly represent they are Trump’s lawyers, once you’ve ensured that no one friendly to Trump will be prosecuted for bribery, then Ukraine was bound to lose any negotiation with Russia. Russia has been dangling bribes in front of Trump for years and now they’ll be free to deliver in plain sight.

And Trump has never placed his own self interest behind the interests of the United States.

The capitulation to Russia

Keep all that in mind as you consider Trump’s abject capitulation yesterday.

Keep in mind that even before yesterday’s ambush of Zelenskyy, Pete Hegseth ordered Cyber Command to stand down any targeting of Russia.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Hegseth gave the instruction to Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh, who then informed the organization’s outgoing director of operations, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage, of the new guidance, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The order does not apply to the National Security Agency, which Haugh also leads, or its signals intelligence work targeting Russia, the sources said.

CISA, too, has taken its focus off of Russia, something that risk grave damage to private companies as well as the government.

Liesyl Franz, deputy assistant secretary for international cybersecurity at the state department, said in a speech last week before a United Nations working group on cybersecurity that the US was concerned by threats perpetrated by some states but only named China and Iran, with no mention of Russia in her remarks. Franz also did not mention the Russia-based LockBit ransomware group, which the US has previously said is the most prolific ransomware group in the world and has been called out in UN forums in the past. The treasury last year said LockBit operates on a ransomeware-as-service model, in which the group licenses its ransomware software to criminals in exchange for a portion of the paid ransoms.

In contrast to Franz’s statement, representatives for US allies in the European Union and the UK focused their remarks on the threat posed by Moscow, with the UK pointing out that Russia was using offensive and malicious cyber-attacks against Ukraine alongside its illegal invasion.

“It’s incomprehensible to give a speech about threats in cyberspace and not mention Russia and it’s delusional to think this will turn Russia and the FSB [the Russian security agency] into our friends,” said James Lewis, a veteran cyber expert formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “They hate the US and are still mad about losing the cold war. Pretending otherwise won’t change this.”

The US policy change has also been established behind closed doors.

A recent memo at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) set out new priorities for the agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and monitors cyber threats against US critical infrastructure. The new directive set out priorities that included China and protecting local systems. It did not mention Russia.

A person familiar with the matter who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said analysts at the agency were verbally informed that they were not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though this had previously been a main focus for the agency.

The person said work that was being done on something “Russia-related” was in effect “nixed”.

And, again, this happened before the ambush yesterday.

Eight years ago, as Mueller’s prosecutors started to focus on Roger Stone’s possible implication in a hacking conspiracy with Russia, Trump declared that he was going to partner with Putin; Russia and the US would jointly guard things like elections.

Now, Trump has chosen to unilaterally disarm.

Yesterday, Roger Sollenberger unpacked the Gitub of one of Elon’s boys, Jordan Wick.

In addition to his AI start-up, AccelerateX (which Wired wrote about), Wick has been fiddling with:

• Tracking government employees by union status
• Downloading Xitter DMs
• Identifying open source data on submarine cables, ports, and mineral deposits

Sure, the utility of some of that — tracking union status — maps right onto the Project 2025 plans DOGE is purportedly implementing, even if that, plus the DM download, raise grave concerns about privacy.

But the submarine cables too?

Even as Donald Trump has made his fealty to Putin clear, even as his Director of National Intelligence parrots Russian disinformation (protected now by the FBI), Elon Musk has been vacuuming up all the data of all the government. And every claim that he’s been modernizing networks or searching for fraud have fallen apart.

At this point, we simply cannot rule out deliberate wholesale sabotage.

Update: Thought I’d repost what I wrote in December in response to Kimberly Strassel complaining about Trump’s useful idiot picks.

But I don’t doubt that the rat-fucker wing of Trump’s advisory team believes that Bobby and Tulsi do accomplish something. The question is whether some really smart politicos believe it’ll be a good thing to kill children and give dictators America’s secrets and let the richest men in the world destroy America’s banking system and the dollar exchange — whether they believe this will win lasting approval from America’s great disaffected masses. It might well! It certainly will expand the pool of disaffected Americans, and with it, increase the market for a strong man to respond to it all.

Or whether there’s some reason Trump is tempting Republican Senators to defy his plans to do great damage to the United States. Perhaps he intends to dare them to start defying him in bulk.

Or perhaps the rat-fucker wing of Trump’s entourage simply has an unknown reason they want to destroy America. Maybe Trump has other election debts — debts he’d get in more trouble for ignoring — that make him amenable to dropping policy bomb after policy bomb on America’s children.

But that’s sort of the point. You’ve got Kimberly Strassel up in arms because Trump is going to the mat for a conspiracist with a Democratic name who’ll get children killed. But it’s more likely to do with the policy bombs that RFK will help Trump drop than the specific conversations that led Bobby Jr to drop out of the race.

Yesterday, Judge Tanya Chutkan had a Presidents Day hearing on a lawsuit challenging DOGE’s actions. While she reportedly seemed inclined not to grant an emergency restraining order, she did order the government to provide her with two pieces of information: how many people had and were going to be fired, and what Elon Musk’s status is.

In a response and declaration, the government blew off the first question, but on the second, denied that Musk has the power of DOGE. He’s just a senior Trump advisor, one solidly within the White House Office, and so firewalled from the work of DOGE, yet still protected from any kind of nasty disclosure requirements.

But as the attached declaration of Joshua Fisher explains, Elon Musk “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself”—including personnel decisions at individual agencies. Decl. ¶ 5. He is an employee of the White House Office (not USDS or the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization); and he only has the ability to advise the President, or communicate the President’s directives, like other senior White House officials. Id. ¶¶ 3, 5. Moreover, Defendants are not aware of any source of legal authority granting USDS or the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization the power to order personnel actions at any of the agencies listed above. Neither of the President’s Executive Orders regarding “DOGE” contemplate—much less furnish—such authority. See “Establishing and Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency,” Exec. Order No. 14,158 (Jan. 20, 205); “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” Exec. Order 14,210 (Feb. 11, 2025).

The statement is quite obviously an attempt to retcon the structure of DOGE [sic], one that Ryan Goodman has already found several pieces of evidence to debunk.

But it is a testament that the suit in question — by a bunch of Democratic Attorneys General, led by New Mexico [docket] — might meet significant success without the retconning of Elon’s role.

Partly for more general benefit, let me talk about the various kinds of lawsuits filed so far against Trump’s attacks.

Kinds of plaintiffs:

• Imminent, individual personal injury: The cases that have had the most success, so far, are examples of individuals who describe a specific imminent injury. The most obvious such example is a number of Trans women prisoners who’ve argued, successfully so far, that they face a very high likelihood of assault and/or rape if they are moved to male prisons.
• Unions or other representatives of federal workers: These lawsuits address the imminent injury of privacy violations or firing and other mistreatment. The most successful (and eye-popping) so far has been the American Foreign Service Association lawsuit challenging the USAID shutdown [docket], in which a Doe employee yesterday provided another horrifying declaration describing another instance of a pregnant woman being deprived of promised medevac, and another from a woman in South Africa running up debt taxpayers will have to pay and about to lose access to electricity on the compound. But there are limits to the recourse that unions can seek on both these theories. For example, while Trump appointed judge Carl Nichols imposed a temporary restraining order on actions targeted at employees oversees, he has not done so for the USAID personnel stuck without the ability to fix anything in DC, because being put on paid leave is not the same kind of injury as being stuck overseas with no access to security warnings.
• States (all with Democratic Attorneys General): The states are arguing a variety of things, both contractual breaches and injuries to their citizens. Contractual challenges may have little ability to halt ongoing destruction.
• Private entities, like corporations or associations: These entities are often arguing contractual breaches, or privacy damages. The latter are likely to have more success than the former because of the way the Privacy Act works.

Kinds of challenges:

• Many of these challenges claim a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, basically arguing that the government changed the rules without going through the process they are required to use to change the rules.
• Many lawsuits also claim violations of the Privacy Act, which requires that the government follow certain rules if they’re accessing your data in new ways. Thus far, the government has argued that employees have more limited protections than private citizens.
• Underlying many of these suits are claims about the Impoundment Act and Separation of Powers because the government is not spending money the way Congress said it had to, but argued through an APA challenge. These challenges are particularly important because a key project of Project 2025 is to effectively strip Congress of the power of the purse.
• Some lawsuits have tried to get at cybersecurity violations or even hacking (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) claims, but thus far with little success. In any case, those would pivot on how DOGE [sic] got access to various computer systems, and in most cases, a senior Agency official ultimately relented to give them access.
• This lawsuit, and another similar one brought by 26 anonymous USAID employees, argue that Elon Musk’s role in all this violates the Appointments Clause. This basically argues that Elon is acting as a superior officer, which requires Senate confirmation.

The injury suffered by each set of plaintiffs and legal theory largely limits the ability of judges to weigh in. So, for example, if a suit is arguing only Privacy Act violations, a judge can do no more than limit the dissemination outside of authorized channels of the data of the plaintiffs, something that has been ineffective once agencies started giving DOGE formal authorization to access computer servers. If a suit worries about firings, but the government instead puts tons of people on paid leave (as happened with USAID), then the plaintiffs are not yet suffering an irrevocable injury.

Here’s how the Appointments Clause theory, arguing that Elon is exercising powers that need to be created by Congress and confirmed by them, looks in the complaint.

64. Although he occupies a role President Trump—not Congress—created and even though the Senate has never voted to confirm him, Mr. Mr. Musk has and continues to assert the powers of an “Officer[] of the United States” under the Appointments Clause. Indeed, in many cases, he has exceeded the lawful authority of even a principal officer, or of the President himself.

65. As explained below, Mr. Musk: (1) has unprecedented and seemingly limitless access across the federal government and reports solely to President Trump, (2) has asserted significant and sweeping authority across a broad swath of federal agencies, and (3) has engaged in a constellation of powers and activities that have been historically associated with an officer of the United States, including powers over spending and disbursements, contracts, government property, regulations, and agency viability.

66. In sum, Mr. Musk purports to exercise and in fact asserts the significant authority of a principal officer on behalf of the United States. Yet, he does not occupy an office created by Congress and has not been nominated by the President or confirmed by the Senate. As a result, all of Mr. Musk’s actions are ultra vires and contrary to law.

You can see why the White House has decided that Elon is boxed away inside the White House with no direct control over the dismantling of government bureaucracy. The retconning of his role is all the more obvious when you understand that the right wing judges on SCOTUS feel very strongly about the Appointments Clause. And Trump is on the record relying on it, most spectacularly in convincing Aileen Cannon that Jack Smith had to be confirmed by the Senate before he could indict Trump.

In practice, Trump is saying Elon can dismantle entire agencies without Senate confirmation, but Jack Smith couldn’t prosecute him as a private citizen without it.

Or he was. Now he’s arguing that all this is happening without Elon’s personal direction.

There is plenty in the complaint already that debunks this, not least the narrative of how Elon started disappearing USAID even before, by his own description, Trump approved.

93. With a budget of over $40 billion, USAID accounts for more than half of all U.S. foreign assistance. USAID has missions in over 100 countries. As of January 2025, USAID had a workforce of over 10,000, with approximately two-thirds serving overseas.

94. On Saturday, February 1, 2025, a group of about eight DOGE personnel entered the USAID building and demanded access to every door and floor, despite only a few of them having the requisite security clearance.34 The areas to which they sought access included a sensitive compartmented information facility—commonly known as a SCIF—an ultra-secure room where officials and government contractors take extraordinary precautions to review highly classified information. DOGE personnel, aided by phone calls from Mr. Musk, had pressured USAID officials for days to access the secure facility and its contents.35

95. When USAID personnel attempted to block access to some areas, DOGE personnel, including Mr. Musk, threatened to call federal marshals. Under threat, the agency personnel acquiesced, and DOGE personnel were eventually given access to the secure spaces.

96. Later that day, top officials from USAID and the bulk of the staff in USAID’s Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs were put on leave. Some of them were not notified but had their access to agency terminals suspended. USAID’s security official was also put on leave.36 97. Within hours, USAID’s website vanished. It remains inoperative.37

98. On Sunday, February 2, 2025, Mr. Musk tweeted, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

38 Later, he tweeted, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper.”39

99. Mr. Musk provided no support for his claim that USAID is a criminal organization. 100. On Monday, February 3, 2025, Mr. Musk stated that he was in the process of closing the agency, with President Trump’s blessing. Mr. Musk stated: “I went over it with him [President Trump] in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down. And I actually checked with him a few times [and] said ‘are you sure?’ The answer was yes. And so we’re shutting it down.”40

Now, before DOJ gave this answer and blew off Judge Chutkan’s order to provide details of the ongoing firing spree, she seemed inclined not to grant a restraining order to stop all this.

It’s unclear whether this defiance will change that. Or, at the very least, whether it will lead to more questions about whether White House wrote any of this down.

What is clear is that the White House recognizes a real risk if Elon is held accountable for all the things Elon has done.