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The Sound of Teeth on Bone: Leopard Eating Leopards [UPDATE]

[NB: check the byline, thanks. Update at bottom of this post. /~Rayne]

You knew eventually there would be intraparty autophagy given the conflict that emerged between Trump and his DOGE leader.

The leopard that bought a social media platform to ensure Trump and his party were elected is ready to gnaw on their faces. They were uncritical of Musk’s use of his Nazi bar X to aid their party, wholly accepting the wretchedness published alongside right-wing propaganda bolstering their position.

Now they’re going to have to face the fact the richest man in the world — the one person who could buy the lot of them with the change he can earn in a single day — is utterly enraged with them all.

I can’t blame him for feeling this way, either. I can’t stand Musk but I can understand his point of view.

Imagine burning up hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, of personal capital by personally taking on Trump’s Project 2025 government elimination measures as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Tesla Takedown movement was in no small part a response to Musk slashing away at government without restraint.

Then the party he supported with his $44 billion dollar acquisition of Twitter completely trashed that sacrifice by increasing the budget deficit while trying to hide the $3.3 trillion increase from the public, extending the debt ceiling to pay for their bullshit including the massive expansion of ICE.

Gnaw away, Musk. You bought it, you broke it, you own it. Bon appetit!

The last time Musk threatened to launch a new political party in opposition to the GOP, Trump got pissy and made a counterthreat.

This time I would watch for more than an exchange of words. Tells about Musk’s seriousness would include:

• Establishment of one or more national PACs to fund the new party;
• Establishment of one or more state and/or national PACs to run campaigns against incumbent GOP congress members;
• Co-option of existing libertarian/GOP/conservative PACs for the same (think Russia’s dark money co-option of the National Rifle Association from 2012-2016);
• Creation of an umbrella organization and subset entities across all 50 states and the territories launching the new party presence;
• Recruitment of candidates who are willing to run under the new party banner.

Meanwhile, Musk could continue to use the dead bird app to support his efforts, this time against the GOP. It worked to get them elected, it could work against them as well. Not a lot of additional investment required, especially since Trump’s big fugly bill is so damned unpopular making weaponization of the bill against the GOP a piece of cake.

Musk was worth $363 billion dollars today, even after losing $4.38 billion since Friday. That’s $100 billion more than the next richest man, Jeff Bezos. This is the kind of money which can buy small nations — it’s already bought an American general election. A single good day’s gain in the stock market could easily yield more cash for campaign contributions than the contributions made in 2024:

Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around $8.6 billion for the 2024 House, Senate, and presidential elections. Over 65% of that money, about $5.6 billion, came from political action committees (PACs).

(source: USA Facts)

The danger to the left should Musk make good his threat: a new political party aiming at taking out the GOP in thrall to their mob boss Trump may peel away some part of the Democratic Party.

Could be centrists (including the not-well-closeted racists, misogynists, and bigots) who feel threatened by the inclusiveness of those left of them.

Could be the gerontocracy within the Democratic Party who feel their death grip on power and relevance weakening.

Could be the horseshoe left which shares fewer ideals with progressives and centrists than the far right.

Whatever the case, the Democratic Party needs to stay clear of the leopards as they claw at each other; they need to offer a strong, clear vision of the future while working on the vulnerable states and districts.

North Carolina, for example, is now in play given Sen. Thom Tillis’s principled stance on the big fugly bill, choosing not to run for re-election instead of kowtowing to the GOP’s mob boss.

Let the leopards gnaw on each other. Stay clear, get busy.

~ ~ ~

Action Items:

• Check out Indivisible’s Stop The Cuts page, especially the Take Action Now section near the bottom of the page.

• Weak on federal budget terminology? See the federal budget glossary at National Priorities Project.

• Or simply keep up the pressure and contact your senators to tell them to vote NO on H.R. 1 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, recruit others to do the same. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.

~ ~ ~

UPDATE — 8:30 AM ET —

Far more predictable than the weather. Somebody’s Depends are twisted about Musk’s threat.

Trump threatens to re-examine government support for Elon Musk’s companies as mogul trashes megabill
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-threatens-re-examine-government-support-elon-musks-companies-tra-rcna216156

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump threatened to sic the Department of Government Efficiency on Elon Musk’s businesses, saying in a Truth Social post shortly after midnight that there was “big money to be saved.”

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump said in the post. “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”

“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” the president added.

A spokesperson for the Musk-backed America PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the hours after Trump’s post, Musk reposted several graphics on X depicting a climbing national debt, which currently sits at more than $36 trillion, according to government data.

Emphasis mine. I am thinking of the aphorism, “I never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” antique in the digital age.

Musk can spill a lot more bits and pixels using X than Trump can with his personal social media platform.

Still amazing even after all of Trump’s previous tantrums that he believes it’s acceptable to weaponize government against an individual exercising their First Amendment rights, to benefit his personal and partisan agenda. Is this an official act? Debatable.

Whatever the case I’m buying popcorn futures this morning ahead of Round 3.

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The Golden Teapot Dome: Mark Kelly Warns “This Is a Very Hard Physics Problem”

Elon Musk’s SpaceX had an even more spectacular failure than his last spectacular failure last night.

Whoa!! Not only did his latest Starship blow up, but fuel tanks nearby caught fire as well.

I was already going to point to this exchange from yesterday, in which astronaut and Senator Mark Kelly quizzed Whiskey Pete Hegeseth about plans for a Golden Dome. But Elon’s continued spectacular failures raise the stakes of it, because SpaceX and Elon’s other fascist buddies are poised to win a lot of the contract to build a Golden Dome.

Elon can’t do what he’s already being paid to do. But Republicans are poised to provide billions more, probably to him, to take on a far more complex problem.

And Mark Kelly, a guy who (even Whiskey Pete recognizes) would know, seems to suspect that Hegseth just fired the people who would tell him that this boondoggle is physically impossible to pull off.

The exchange starts with Senator Kelly trying to understand the goals of Golden Dome. He then tries to get Whiskey Pete to understand the difficulty of the physics behind it.

Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I want to talk about the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system. There’s a request to spend $25 billion in this year alone. First of all, is this system designed to intercept a full salvo attack?

Hegseth: Senator, it’s a multi-layer system, that would include different types of salvos–

Kelly: So it’s not just rogue nation. Okay.

Hegseth: Yeah, it’s not meant to be just one nation. It could be utilized —

Kelly: Against Russia, China. Full salvo. So what kind of reliability are you aiming to build into this system? Are we looking for something like four-9s on intercept success?

[Hegseth pauses.]

Kelly explains: 99.99% reliability.

[Hegseth makes hand gesture, seemingly assuring Kelly he’s not that dumb.]

Hegseth: Obviously you seek the highest possible. You begin with what you have in integrating those C-2 networks and sensors. Building up capabilities that are existing with a eye toward future capabilities that can come online as quickly as possible. Not just ground-based but space-based.

Kelly: So against future capability too. So do you believe that we can build a system that can intercept all incoming threats? Do you think we could build that system? This is a very hard physics problem.

Hegseth: You are [points emphatically] You would know as well as anybody, Sir, how difficult this problem is and that’s why we put our best people on it. We think the American people deserve it.

Kelly: So let me tell you what I think we’re facing here.

[Hegseth continues to babble.]

Kelly: You’re talking about hundreds of ICBMs running simultaneously, varying trajectories, MIRVs, so multiple re-entry vehicles. Thousands of decoys. Hypersonic glide vehicles, all at once. And considering what the future threat might be, might even be more complicated than that. And you’re proposing spending not just $25 billion, but upwards of — I think CBO estimated this at at least half a trillion. Other estimates, a trillion dollars. I am all for having a system that would work. I am not sure that the physics can get there on this. It’s incredibly complicated.

This video explains some of the difficulties. [Link fixed.]

Then Senator Kelly shifts to concerns about whether the impossibility of the Golden Dome project was behind Whiskey Pete’s recent decision to eliminate most of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, the office that validates weapons and platforms for DOD.

Kelly: So I want to get to another issue that is — that you’re facing here. How much of the staff of the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation did you cut?

Hegesth: After collaboration, Sir, with the Service — Department of Joint Staff and others, we identified that as a place where there were redundancies and multiple additional layers —

Kelly: I’ll tell you what you cut. You cut 74%

Hegseth: Most of it.

Kelly: Most of it.

Kelly: And was your decision to cut more than half of the Pentagon’s testing and evaluation oval office staff driven in part by concerns about the Office’s plan to oversee testing of Golden Dome?

Hegseth: Uh, the concerns were not specific to Golden Dome, Sir. It was years and years of delays, unnecessarily, based on redundancies in the decision-making process that the Services, COCOMs, and the Joint Staff, together with OSD, identified a logjam that was not–

So Kelly sums up the problem. Trump is demanding $25 billion to pay off the guy who got him elected, and as he’s doing that, Hegseth fired the people who can test whether the whole boondoggle would work.

Kelly: Mr. Secretary, to get the reliability we would need, you need something that’s at four-9s, 99. 99% reliability, with all these challenges. And you cut the staff of the people who are going to make sure this thing works before we make it operational, before we give it to the war fighters. You got to go back and take look at this but I also strongly encourage you to put together some — before we spend $25 billion or $175 billion or $563 billion or a trillion dollars, put together a group of people to figure out if the physics will work. You could go down a road here and spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars with the taxpayer money, get to the end and we have a system that is not functional. That very well could happen. And you’re doing this just because the President — I understand your role is the Secretary of Defense. You got to execute what the president says. But this idea, you know, might not be fully baked. And you could get in front of it now and figure out and, and find out if you put the right physicist on this and I’m not saying go to the big defense contractors. Going to scientists and I know there’s a questionable relationship with this administration and scientists but go to some scientist. Figure out what we would have to do to build a system. And then make smart decisions before we spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Hegseth: Senator, we are doing that. Leveraging existing technologies and not premising the project on aspirational technologies, what we can actually do.

Kelly: Well, $25 billion in the first year is a lot of money. That’s more than just finding out if we have the ability if we can build a system that can handle a full salvo threat,  hypersonic glide vehicles, MIRVs, thousands of decoys. Thank you.

There’s some important background here.

A constant theme between the four appropriations hearings Whiskey Pete survived in the last week is the way Trump has bifurcated DOD’s budget next year.

Much of it is in the budget itself — the budget that Whiskey Pete has not yet filled out and is weeks behind deadline on.

But this part of it — the Golden Dome that spends $25 billion with Elon’s company on a physics problem that Senator Kelly says is very difficult to solve — is in reconciliation, the bill that needs only Republicans to pass.

The same bill in which Republicans will raise the debt ceiling by five trillion dollars.

Donald Trump is trying to push a $25 billion slush fund to his fascist tech bro backers on a promise that Mark Kelly thinks won’t work.

And yesterday, Elon just reminded us of how those billions could go — are likely to go — up in flames.

Update: Corrected MIRVs.

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The Tax Elon Solution and Other Actual Reporting Not Included in the Frenzy

Politico’s Dasha Burns reports something that isn’t making headlines elsewhere: the fun of the Trump-Musk fight may be short-lived.

White House aides are trying to broker a peace.

White House aides, after working to persuade the president to temper his public criticism of Musk to avoid escalation, scheduled a call Friday with the billionaire CEO of Tesla to broker a peace.

“Oh it’s okay,” Trump told POLITICO in a brief telephone call when asked about the very public breakup with his onetime megabacker. “It’s going very well, never done better.” Trump went on to tout his favorability ratings saying, “The numbers are through the roof, the highest polls I’ve ever had and I have to go.”

Update, 1:30 ET: One after another access journalist has spoken to Trump and are now reporting that Trump thinks Elon has a problem. One after another access journalist has left unanswered — if Elon is nuts, why did Trump let him run unfettered through government for four months and what will Trump do to make sure Elon didn’t damage the government?

Aside from that actual news report, much of the rest of the reporting is no better — and often worse — than what we can do from the comfort of our own EU perch.

The same Politico lists seven right wingers who could get caught between the two narcissists. But only JD Vance — whose endorsement of Trump in the wake of Elon’s seeming endorsement of impeaching Trump was rather mild — is really stuck between the Silicon billionaires and Trump.

I’m really not worried, for example, about the Millers (though agree Stephen is the most likely peace broker, since he had a big role in recruiting Elon in the first place). And while David Sacks was one of Elon’s entrees into the Trump world, Trump’s increasing addiction to cryptocorruption guarantees Sacks some protection inside the White House.

Meanwhile, NYT has an inane post about eight ways Trump and Musk might damage each other. It doesn’t seem to realize that Musk could not just use Xitter as an irritant (which is what it reports), but could also rejigger Xitter to undercut the way it favors right wing discourse and disinformation generally. NYT simply doesn’t understand how important Xitter is to the far right project, not even with Charlie Kirk’s slavering tribute to it amid the worst of the blowup, not even with the way Elon destroyed Xitter’s gateway function to real journalism, in the process damaging outlets like NYT.

Worse still, NYT doesn’t seem to understand the ways Trump has used the presidency to pay off his election debt to Elon; it even calls DOGE a “pet project.”

Wield the power of the presidency against him. Mr. Trump has a tremendous array of powers at his disposal, with the ability to sign executive orders punishing political adversaries and to direct agencies like the Justice Department to initiate investigations. He could end some of Mr. Musk’s pet projects, such as the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, as well as his embrace of white South Africans, a priority of Mr. Musk’s.

As I noted, Elizabeth Warren made a list of 130 ways Elon exploited his access to Trump, many of them involving short-circuiting regulation of his businesses (this is an entirely different set of benefits to Elon than I included in this post).

34. Musk has direct business interests before over 70% of agencies and departments targeted by DOGE.

35. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was a top target. Musk called for “delet[ing]” the agency and DOGE attempted to fire up to 90% of CFPB staff, who would regulate X Money.

36. President Trump fired the CFPB Director and the new head of CFPB forbade the agency from doing work — after CFPB had received over 300 consumer complaints about Tesla.

37. X also deleted CFPB’s official account on the social media platform, limiting the public communications of an agency that regulates Musk companies.

38. X deleted the account of Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. after he posted about President Trump’s allegedly illegal firings of Democratic CPSC commissioners.

39. The Trump Administration fired Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioners after EEOC investigated Tesla for alleged racial harassment and retaliation at the company’s Fremont Facility.

40. The Trump Administration plans to cut potentially thousands of EPA employees, after the EPA found that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act, investigated Tesla’s actions at its Austin Facility, and investigated an xAI facility in Tennessee for air pollution.

41. The Trump Administration began requiring any EPA spending greater than $50,000 to obtain DOGE approval, potentially allowing Musk to slow down environmental enforcement actions, like past investigations into Tesla and SpaceX for hazardous waste dumping and other alleged activity.

42. The Trump Administration attempted to fire hundreds of FAA employees, including some who directly contribute to air safety, after the FAA required SpaceX to abide by environmental requirements.

And NYT’s treatment of DOGE as a “pet project” ignores one of the real risks exacerbated by this blowup. Elon’s DOGE boys remain burrowed into government agencies, rewarded for their lack of experience and ties to criminal hackers with GS-14 and GS-15 salaries.

Although Elon Musk has said that he is largely exiting his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), at least three of his early operatives and key lieutenants throughout his government takeover have recently become full-time government employees.

Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, and Ethan Shaotran’s employment designations at the General Services Administration (GSA) have been officially converted to full-time from the restricted special government employee classification that limited their time in government to a period of 130 days, according to documentation viewed by WIRED.

Coristine, who has gone by “Big Balls” online and previously worked for a telecommunications firm known for hiring former blackhat hackers, was converted to full time on May 31, along with Farritor. Shaotran became full time on April 10.

[snip]

Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran, according to documentation viewed by WIRED, each maintain their “senior adviser” titles. Coristine and Farritor are drawing some of the largest salaries possible for government employees through the “General Schedule” employee rankings. They have a salary grade of GS-15, one of the highest grades, and Shaotran is one step below at GS-14. When they were special government employees, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran did not appear to be drawing salaries at all through GSA, WIRED reported in March.

These boys have access to our data! We still haven’t learned who was exfiltrating data from NLRB — as reported by whistleblower Dan Berulis — or why entities using a Russian address seemed to know the new login accounts created by DOGE boys.

18. I started tracking what appeared to be sensitive data leaving the secured location it is meant to be stored. I initially saw gigabytes exiting the NxGen case management system “nucleus,” within the NLRB system, and I later witnessed a similar large spike in outbound traffic leaving the network itself. From what I could see the data that was being exfiltrated added up to around 10 gigabytes– in the case that the data was almost all text files it would be the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias worth if someone printed these files as hard-copy documents. It is unclear which files were copied and removed, and I’ve tried multiple routes to prove this was not an exfiltration event but none have yielded fruit and some have been stopped outright. I also don’t know if the data was only 10gb in total or whether or not they were consolidated and compressed prior. This opens up the possibility that even more data was exfiltrated. Regardless, that kind of spike is extremely unusual because data almost never directly leaves NLRB’s databases.

[snip]

21. On or about March 11, 2025, NxGen metrics indicated abnormal usage at points the prior week. I saw way above baseline response times, and resource utilization showed increased network output above anywhere it had been historically – as far back as I could look. I noted that this lined up closely with the data out event. I also notice increased logins blocked by access policy due to those log-ins being out of the country. For example: In the days after DOGE accessed NLRB’s systems, we noticed a user with an IP address in Primorskiy Krai, Russia started trying to log in. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming. Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE related activities and it appeared they had the correct username and password due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy activating. There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.

Whether the fight between Elon and Trump is real and ongoing or whether it’ll be patched up, the blowup should lead people from both parties to demand that these DOGE boys be removed from government systems and agencies and a thorough audit of their work be done systemwide. Yes, Elon’s meltdown is cause to revisit his security clearances (with a consequent review of the SpaceX relationship), but the national security and privacy risk posed by Elon’s infiltration of government is actually far broader than that.

Finally, I’m not seeing any outlets point out that making one small change to the Big Ugly bill at the center of this dispute — the huge tax cuts for people like Elon — would not only limit the damage it does to the deficit (Elon’s claimed complaint with it) but also call Elon’s bluff (since he very much wants to eat his tax cut too).

Let’s tax Elon. That’ll make this blowup go someplace productive!!

The narcissistic explosions of last night really aren’t just fun and games, as they’re largely being treated by the press.

They’re a visible reminder of the problem with access, the problem with wealth inequality, the problem with campaign finance failures,  the problem with Trump’s unbound corruption.

To pay off a campaign debt, Donald Trump let an unstable man — allegedly abusing drugs — with no understanding of government bureaucracy unleash a tribe of DOGE boys throughout government for four months, countering the will of Congress based on his whims and conspiracy theories. And now that man has threatened vengeance on Trump.

This may get papered over because Trump needs to paper it over.

But it’s high time the political press caught up to Wired and ProPublica in unpacking the grave risk of all this.

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Trump Muskmageddon Open Thread

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!





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Could Elon’s Disgusting Abomination Create Opportunities for Other Migrants?

It’s fashionable to focus reporting about Elon Musk’s attacks on Trump’s Big Awful on the spat within the Republican party.

Politico has separate stories on how “hard-liners” like Tom Massie and Rand Paul are “rejoic[ing]” over Elon’s tweets and parroting White House excuses for Musk’s comments, which both repeat four claims Marc Caputo first aired (half of which are dubious or dated) and demand that journalists view Elon’s comments as exclusively about the effect on his own business.

“When businessmen criticize legislation, journalists don’t take them at their word, they look at how the legislation would impact their business interests,” said a Republican close to the White House. “They should be doing that in this case.”

I wonder if this anonymous Republican close to the White House raised similar concerns about Elon’s business interests driving his decisions as he shredded regulators overseeing his own businesses? In a brilliant summary of 130 shitty things Elon did in his 130 days in government, Elizabeth Warren cited 29 Federal contracts and 34 instances where Elon fiddled with his regulators, of which this is just a selection:

55. Musk’s cost-cutting team is laying off workers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the auto safety agency investigating Tesla for crashes stemming from its “full self-driving” and remote control features.

56. The Trump Administration first shut down NLRB altogether — which had cases against multiple Musk companies (including SpaceX, Tesla, and X).

57. Then President Trump removed independent NLRB members.

58. DOGE is gutting NOAA while Musk eyes privatization of NOAA weather satellites, which could present a business opportunity for Starlink.

59. President Trump signed an executive order halting operations of the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance, which had Tesla on its list of contractors scheduled for audits.

60. OSHA has 27 cases against Tesla for workers rights violations and investigated SpaceX for workplace injuries — and now DOGE is limiting the agency’s work.

61. President Trump tried to fire over 90% of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which put two Musk companies — Boring and Tesla — on its “dirty dozen” list of worst workplace safety offenders.

All that drama is amusing. All the tweets from House members like Scott Perry and Marjorie Taylor Greene disavowing their votes could become more interesting once this bill returns to the House, but probably won’t

I’m more focused in the extent to which Elon’s comments will unsettle the dynamic that otherwise would permit (as Politico also reported was the plan) John Thune to ram through changes and Mike Johnson in turn to ram through the changed bill.

Elon’s comments unsettle things. Who knows what could happen as a result.

Consider the several instances where local communities have stood up against Stephen Miller’s authoritarian dragnet. There was the backlash to a heavy-handed raid in San Diego where ICE agents deployed flash bangs before bystanders chased them off, chanting, “Shame, shame.” Then there was the spontaneous protest yesterday in response to a restaurant raid in Minneapolis.

A more controversial case involves Carol Hui, whose plight mobilized a conservative Missouri town, with a number of Trump voters claiming they didn’t vote to deport their sweet neighbor.

“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, a friend of Ms. Hui from church. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”

She paused. “This is Carol.”

Whatever you think of such disavowals — Never Trumper JV Last is unimpressed; Greg Sargent did a great interview that conveys why she’s the kind of person non-liberals might rally behind — G Elliot Morris made a compelling argument that these Trump voters are precisely the kind of people you’d need to combat these policies.

The other way to say that — and the way Carol’s friends put it — is that millions of Americans voted for Trump, but they didn’t vote for this.

[snip]

If you are a Democrat, I know it is tempting to do schadenfreude and voter-bashing toward regretful Trump voters, who you see as enabling authoritarianism. But it is very important right now to make the point that people who voted for Trump did not support all of his policy agenda (the vast majority of which is unpopular) for four reasons.

First, internalizing that voting for someone is not an endorsement of their future policy agenda gives people data to fight the worst excesses of Trump’s agenda, especially on trade and immigration. Data can be a very powerful rhetorical tool in catalyzing opposition to unpopular policies.

In Trump’s first administration, for example, polling on his separation of families crossing the border was almost 50 points underwater. That data and related protests convinced the administration to change course.

The alternative to this is assuming that moderate Trump supporters actually support deporting non-criminal parents, which we know (given the data above) to be false. If you assume that, then there is a much smaller landscape of opinion on which to do battle about politics. You have to believe these people are persuadable to move them.

You will not defeat fascism with just the people who voted for Kamala Harris, or even just the people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. You need some of Carol Hui’s neighbors to stand up for what is decent.

All the better if the process of standing up leads them to rethink their support for MAGAt.

The point being, we’re beginning to see real activism against Trump’s immigration dragnet, the same kind of activism that (Morris notes) led Trump to temper his plans in the first term.

And we’re seeing it before it’s too late to, one way or another, defeat (or at least impose a cost for) the vast expansion of Stephen Miller’s dragnet in the Big Ugly.

Yesterday, Miller listed the immigration provisions first among the reasons he likes the bill — ahead of giving Elon a tax cut, ahead of taking food from poor children.

There’s a reason Miller is so excited about the bill. It would dramatically expand ICE, ICE detention centers, and ICE’s ability to deputize cops, making ICE — rather than the FBI — the biggest federal law “enforcement” agency.

The House GOP-crafted bill includes some $45 billion that would go toward detaining immigrants until 2029.

That’s roughly $9 billion per year — an amount that far surpasses a previous record-high of $3.4 billion Congress appropriated for ICE detention a little over a year ago, under the Biden administration.

ICE currently has capacity to detain roughly 41,000 people. Under the GOP bill, that number would increase to some 100,000.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, says there’s not currently enough space to detain that many people.

“ICE would be forced to use this funding to build new detention centers, new soft-sided detention camps, where tents would be thrown up by detention contractors, where immigrants would be held, potentially en masse,” he said.

The bill includes over $150 billion for various components of immigration enforcement, including detention, border wall construction and deportation transportation.

“Taken together, this funding would make ICE the best funded federal law enforcement agency in U.S. history, with more detention bed funding that the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons and potentially more agents on board than the entire Federal Bureau of Investigations,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

He says the new bill also includes additional funds for ICE to hire new agents and increase collaboration initiatives with local law enforcement agencies — like 287-g agreements. But, no funding for DHS oversight.

ICE is the leading edge of Miller’s assault on the Constitution. His goons are already struggling to find as many migrants as he demands be arrested, leading to screaming sessions and threats (first reported in the Washington Examiner!!).

“They’ve been threatened, told they’re watching their emails and texts and Signals,” the first official said. “That’s what is horrible about things right now. It’s a fearful environment. Everybody in leadership is afraid. … There’s no morale. Everybody is demoralized.”

ICE’s top 50 field officials were given roughly a week’s notice of an emergency meeting in Washington.

ICE’s 25 Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO, field office directors and 25 Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, special agents in charge flew into Washington and descended on the agency’s Washington headquarters last Tuesday, May 20. There, they were met by Miller, ICE confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,’” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official.

The (un)intended consequences of this vast expansion, with Stephen Miller screaming that ICE has to go search places for people who are definitely not the criminal aliens he lied about during the election, are pretty obvious.

Now is the time for the people shaming ICE’s invasions of their neighborhood to make a stink about this bill.

To be clear: it won’t kill the bill. The only way the bill will die is if the conflict between hardliners and those who want to preserve health care reaches an impasse which, so far, it has not.

But it would be useful if the localized mobilization raised the cost of this bill going forward, especially if the bill happens to die via other means.

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One Explanation for Elon Musk’s Claimed DOGE Departure that Gossip-Mongers Missed

The NYT wrote an 1800-word, 5-byline post claiming Elon Musk’s departure from DOGE reflected tensions over Trump’s Big Ugly Tax Bill without mentioning one additional — possibly far more important — factor that may have influenced his announced departure.

This may be an attempt to preserve the damage Elon did to government, up to and including the data consolidation that DOGE carried out.

Even NYT’s claimed basis for Elon’s departure is unpersuasive.

On Tuesday, CBS posted a clip from an interview that will air Sunday, in which Musk complains that the Big Ugly Tax Bill raises the deficit.

Elon Musk says he is “disappointed” by the price tag of the domestic policy bill passed by Republicans in the House last week and heavily backed by President Trump. The billionaire who recently stepped back from running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, made the remark during an exclusive broadcast interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said.

NYT claims that this tweet was a response to Elon. (These screencaps are ET+6.)

That led, NYT claims, to Elon’s announced departure from DOGE.

As it is, there are problems with this narrative. The non-inclusion of DOGE was not Elon’s prior complaint about the Big Ugly; the exacerbation of the budget deficit was. There were plenty of people, in Congress and outside, who were complaining that the Big Ugly didn’t codify DOGE cuts or did fund USAID, complaints more directly relevant to Stephen Miller’s comment. And Miller has been lying about the bill already.

Maybe the NYT’s portrayed drama is correct.

Or maybe this is yet more theater about Elon’s relationship with the Trump Administration.

There was an important DOGE-related development in recent days that may be impacted by Elon’s claimed imminent departure, one not mentioned in NYT’s long story.

After John Roberts, on Sunday, stayed a Christopher Cooper order regarding a FOIA that CREW served on DOGE, on Tuesday, Tanya Chutkan denied DOJ’s effort to dismiss an Appointments Clause lawsuit by blue states — led by New Mexico — against DOGE. [docket]

The DC Circuit (Henderson, Millett, and Walker) had earlier stayed a discovery order from Chutkan pending her decision on the motion to dismiss, holding that she should only grant discovery if the lawsuit will continue. If Chutkan’s decision stands, the government may have to provide the discovery on DOGE that John Roberts halted (in a different, FOIA, context).

Chutkan summarized a list of things the states allege Musk did that would require Senate confirmation.

States claim that DOGE, with Musk at the helm, “has inserted itself into at least 17 federal agencies” and exercises “significant authority” across the Executive Branch. Id. ¶¶ 70, 200. They identify the following categories of allegedly unauthorized actions by DOGE and Musk:

  • Controlling Expenditures and Disbursements of Public Funds: States allege that DOGE obtained “full access” to payment systems at multiple agencies and used that access to halt payments. Id. ¶¶ 78–79, 85, 127–30. For instance, after the acting-Secretary at U.S. Department of Treasury refused to “halt” payments, DOGE personnel threatened the acting Secretary with “legal risk [] if he did not comply with DOGE.” Id. ¶ 84. Then, on February 2, DOGE obtained “full access” to Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Services payment systems, which disburses funds for social security benefits, veteran’s benefits, childcare tax credits, Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements, federal employee wages, federal tax refunds, and facilitates state recovery of delinquent state income taxes. Id. ¶¶ 78–79, 85. That day, Musk posted on X that “[t]he @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments,” in response to a post by a non-profit organization receiving funds pursuant to government contracts. Id. ¶ 86.
  • Terminating Federal Contracts and Exercising Control over Federal Property: States allege that Musk and DOGE asserted responsibility for terminating federal contracts across the Executive Branch. Id. ¶ 203–04. DOGE reported the cancellation of “104 contracts related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) at more than a dozen federal agencies” on January 31, id. ¶ 205; of “thirty-six contracts across six agencies” on February 3, id. ¶ 206; of “twelve contracts in the GSA and the Department of Education” on February 4, id. ¶ 207; and “cuts of $250 million through the termination of 199 contracts” on February 7, id. ¶ 208. States also allege that DOGE and Musk exercise control over federal property by demanding access to secure facilities and threatening intervention by U.S. Marshals when agency officials refuse, id. ¶¶ 94–95; by “push[ing]” high-ranking officials out of their offices at agency headquarters, id. ¶¶ 164–66, by terminating leases for federal property, id. ¶ 206, and by announcing plans to “liquidate as much as half of the federal government’s nonmilitary real estate holdings,” id. ¶ 160.
  • Binding the Government to Future Financial Commitments without Congressional Authorization: States point to the Fork in the Road Email, which offered federal employees pay and benefits through September 2025 if they resigned by February 6, as entering into binding financial commitments. Id. ¶¶ 116–20, 212.
  • Eliminating Agency Regulations and Entire Agencies and Departments: States allege that DOGE personnel took steps to dismantle USAID and CFPB. On February 3, DOGE personnel allegedly “handed” USAID’s acting leadership “a list of 58 people, almost all senior career officials, to put on administrative leave.” Id. ¶ 102. The next day, USAID placed “nearly its entire workforce on administrative leave.” Id. ¶ 103. When “USAID contract officers emailed agency higher-ups” for authorization to cancel programs, DOGE personnel responded directly. Id. ¶ 101. Musk posted on X “CFBP RIP” on the same day that Musk’s aides “set up shop . . . at CFPB’s headquarters” and CFPB’s website was taken down. Id. ¶¶ 146–47. Three days later, CFPB’s acting Director Russell Vought told all employees to “[s]tand down from performing any work task” and “not come into the office.” Id. ¶ 148.
  • Directing Action by Agencies: States allege that Musk and DOGE obtain compliance from agency officials and employees by threatening action by U.S. Marshals, legal risks, or termination. Id. ¶ 84 (threatening acting-Treasury Secretary with “legal risk”); id. ¶ 95 (threatening USAID personnel blocking access to facility with action by U.S. Marshals); id. ¶¶ 176–178 (DOL employees told to comply or “face termination”). States claim that if agency officials object or raise concerns, Musk and DOGE ignore or override the agency and place on administrative leave or otherwise remove non-compliant individuals. Id. ¶¶ 84– 85 (acting-Treasury Secretary “placed on administrative leave” after refusing to halt payments); id. ¶ 110 (DOGE “gained full and unfettered access to OPM systems over the existing CIO’s objection”); id. ¶¶ 137–38 (DOGE representative was “installed” as the Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) “chief information officer” after DOE’s general counsel’s office and chief information office opposed DOGE’s access to DOE’s IT system); id. ¶ 166 (DOGE personnel “pushed” the “highest-ranking officials” at the Department of Education (“ED”) “out of their own offices”).
  • Acting as a Principal Officer Unsupervised by Heads of Departments: States allege that Musk acts and directs DOGE’s conduct without supervision by agency heads. For instance, States allege that Musk and his team sent the Fork in the Road Email “via a custom-built email system . . . without consultation with other advisers to the President or OMB officials,” id. ¶ 120; that DOGE personnel at agencies do not “interact at all with anyone who is not part of their team,” id. ¶ 165; and that Musk “reports only to President Trump,” id. ¶ 71.
  • Obtaining Unauthorized Access to Secure Databases and Sensitive Information: States allege that Musk and DOGE personnel obtained access to secure databases and systems at Treasury, id. ¶ 85, USAID, id. ¶ 95, OPM, id. ¶ 110, the Department of Health and Human Services, id. ¶ 127, DOE, id. ¶ 137, ED, id. ¶¶ 164, 167, DOL, id. ¶¶ 177–78, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, id. ¶ 190, Federal Emergency Management Agency, id. ¶ 194, and Small Business Association, id. ¶ 198.

These are all the DOGE actions that might be imperiled if this lawsuit succeeds.

Chutkan’s opinion sustaining the lawsuit focused closely on Elon’s role in DOGE.

Elon Musk’s role, authority, and conduct within the federal government is a central issue in this case. Defendants formally classify Musk as a “special Government employee.” Compl. ¶ 25 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 202(a)); see also Decl. of Joshua Fisher ¶¶ 3–4, ECF No. 24-1. Plaintiff States allege that Musk leads DOGE and directs the actions of DOGE personnel. Compl. ¶¶ 51, 59. Specifically, they claim that the “statements and actions of President Trump, other White House officials, and Mr. Musk himself indicate that Mr. Musk has been directing the work of DOGE personnel since at least January 21, 2025.” Id. They allege that, in this role, Musk “exercise[es] virtually unchecked power across the entire Executive Branch, making decisions about expenditures, contracts, government property, regulations, and the very existence of federal agencies.” Id. ¶ 67.

And given the precedents, it necessarily focused on whether Musk’s position at the head of DOGE is “continuing.”

That does not end the court’s inquiry. Having concluded that special government employees are not automatically exempt from the Appointments Clause, the court must assess whether Musk’s particular position is “sufficiently ‘continuing’ to constitute an office.” United States v. Donziger, 38 F. 4th 290, 296 (2d Cir. 2022), cert denied, 142 S.Ct. 868 (2023). In doing so, the court takes a holistic approach, focusing on a position’s “tenure, duration, emolument, and duties,” and whether the duties are “continuing and permanent, not occasional or temporary.” United States v. Germaine, 99 U.S. 508, 511–12 (1878); The Test for Determining “Officer” Status Under the Appointments Clause, 49 Op. O.L.C. __, slip op. at 3 (Jan. 16, 2025) (“[T]he Supreme Court’s approach to assessing the ‘continuing’ nature of a position has been a holistic one that considers both how long a position lasts as well as other attributes of the position that bear on continuity.” (citations omitted)). Positions that do not qualify are “transient or fleeting,” “personal to a particular individual,” and assigned merely “incidental” duties. Donziger, 38 F.4th at 296–97 (citation omitted).

[snip]

States allege that Musk is DOGE’s leader. Compl. ¶¶ 59–60, 224. The court finds that States have sufficiently pleaded that this position qualifies as “continuing and permanent, not occasional or temporary,” Germaine, 99 U.S. at 511–12. The subsidiary DOGE Service Temporary Organization has a termination date of July 4, 2026, but there is no termination date for the overarching DOGE entity or its leader, suggesting permanence.

So on Tuesday, Judge Chutkan ruled that Elon’s continuing role in DOGE made this lawsuit viable. On Wednesday, Elon announced he would not be continuing at DOGE.

The government has already filed with the DC Circuit asking to offer additional briefing on its challenge to Judge Chutkan’s orders.

Way back in February I pointed out the viability of an Appointments Clause challenge before SCOTUS explained the obvious efforts to retcon Elon’s role.

In a response and declaration, the government blew off the first question [ordering details about DOGE firing plans], 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.

[snip]

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.

And here we are again, two months later, and the apparent retconning has not stopped.

This ploy has already worked once. After Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that a USAID-focused Appointments Clause lawsuit was likely to succeed, the Fourth Circuit overruled him. Then DOJ installed DOGE staffer Jeremy Lewin as USAID Administrator, and actions which, back in February, were done by DOGE, now appear to be agency actions. On Tuesday, Chuang denied plaintiffs in that suit discovery.

These lawsuits are different. DOGE did a number of things at other agencies — most notably the data consolidation — that weren’t a central feature of shutting down USAID. Elon’s role at some other agencies was even more clearcut than Judge Chuang found at USAID.

But even if the states can show that Elon exercised the authority to override agency heads, as he reportedly did in several instances, the government is likely to point to Elon’s departure as proof that his appointment was always temporary, and therefore did not require Senate confirmation.

DOJ has been retconning what happened with DOGE for four months now. There’s no reason to believe the drama at this point.

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As Trump Seeks New Ways to Defund Harvard, Elon Musk Continues to Blow Shit Up

Yesterday, Trump moved to cut all remaining contracts with Harvard University via a letter from GSA instructing agencies to cancel or reassign $100 million in contracts the government has with the university.

The letter instructs agencies to respond by June 6 with a list of contract cancellations. Any contracts for services deemed critical would not be immediately canceled but would be transitioned to other vendors, according to the letter, signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the G.S.A.’s federal acquisition service, which is responsible for procuring government goods and services.

Contracts with about nine agencies would be affected, according to the administration official.

Examples of contracts that would be affected, according to a federal database, include a $49,858 National Institutes of Health contract to investigate the effects of coffee drinking and a $25,800 Homeland Security Department contract for senior executive training. Some of the Harvard contracts under review may have already been subject to “stop work” orders.

“Going forward, we also encourage your agency to seek alternative vendors for future services where you had previously considered Harvard,” the letter said.

Meanwhile, SpaceX — among several Elon Musk companies that expect to get increased federal funding under Trump — experienced another failure. While his Starship didn’t blow to smithereens over the Caribbean in its latest launch, like it had on its previous two attempts, it lost control and hurtled to Earth.

The latest flight of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, got all the way up to space, but not all the way back down to Earth.

The upper-stage vehicle coasted through space on Tuesday, surpassing flights in January and March that ended in explosions and showers of debris over the Atlantic Ocean. But halfway through its journey, the spacecraft sprang a propellant leak. That caused it to start spinning out of control. The Starship vehicle used in the test flight was not able to survive the intense heat, breaking up as it fell back into the atmosphere.

By design, the debris fell into the Indian Ocean, far from areas inhabited by people.

I’m writing a longer post on the blasé way reporters are covering Trump’s all-out assault on Harvard, as if such a relentless and largely illegal attack on one of the longest standing bastions of civil society in the US would have no effect on democracy or American well-being.

I’ve been struggling to figure out a way to tell that story better.

The answer may be sitting right there: a comparison of Harvard with Elon Musk.

Which entity engages in more egregious antisemitic behavior, the pretext behind many of Trump’s attacks on Harvard?

The guy who made a Nazi symbol at Trump’s inauguration and welcomed Nazis back onto the platform that the government increasingly uses as an official messaging platform (and as such should be covered by Trump’s Executive Orders prohibiting spending federal dollars on antisemitism).

Which entity commands the more disproportionate profits, a complaint made about Harvard’s endowment in support of attacks on its non-profit tax status?

The guy being paid $46 billion by the failing Tesla, which rivals the size of Harvard’s entire $53 billion endowment.

Which entity engages in more obviously unethical behavior which, along with alleged antisemitism, was the basis GSA cited for canceling contracts with Harvard?

In light of this deeply troubling pattern each agency should consider its contracts with Harvard University and determine whether Harvard and its services efficiently promote the priorities of the agency Agencies should also of course consider various provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR including without limitation provisions such as FAR 52.203-13(b ( (ii which requires contractors to otherwise promote an organizational culture that encourages ethical conduct and commitment to compliance with the law.

The guy firing regulators who had started investigations into $2.7 billion of alleged wrong-doing implicating Musk companies, the guy who bought a President for a quarter-billion dollars.

By Laura Loomer’s standards, Elon Musk has as many challenges with immigration as Harvard does, starting with the undocumented workers who helped build his plant in Texas, continuing to his alleged illegal discrimination against refugees,  including his expanded reliance on H1B visas in recent years. And all that’s before you consider the evidence that Musk himself violated immigration law while on a student visa.

Viewed as a university, Harvard might be an easy target for Trump — the Wharton grad — to attack as elitist.

But compared as a partner of the Federal government, Harvard has provided far more benefit to the public than Elon Musk.

Harvard was on the path to curing cancer. Meanwhile, like Icarus, Elon spins out of control on his quest to Mars.

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