That was one of the chants at the #TeslaTakedown event I attended in Chicago last Saturday. But selling your Tesla car is not easy. There isn’t much of a market for used Teslas in this area. There’s a similar problem in Boston. And Seattle. It seems to be a world-wide problem. Perhaps Trump will single-handedly create a market for used Teslas among his cult. That would be great, since only a few years ago they were crazy angry about libtards driving electric vehicles.
If you want to sell your Tesla stock, that’s easy. There’s a robust market in the stock. Over 110 million shares traded on March 17. But there is the problem of figuring out how much $TSLA you own, According to the 2024 Tesla Proxy Statement, after Musk, the two largest holders are Vanguard and Black Rock, both huge in investment funds and pension management. If you have a 401k, an IRA, or a pension plan, you most likely own at least a little of the stock of Tesla. It has the 9th highest market capitalization of US stocks,
This site says there are 517 ETFs that hold stock in Tesla. You probably wouldn’t expect Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF to hold Tesla stock. Its largest holding is Amazon at 23%, and it includes MacDonalds, Chipotle, Loews, Booking.com, and similar stocks. The second largest holding is Tesla, at 17%. I do not think of electric vehicles as a consumer discretionary expenditure.
I searched for ETFs with low Tesla holdings for the past year, and almost all of the results were funds with lots of Tesla. There are, of course, investment vehicles that don’t hold Tesla. You could look at industry specific funds like ETFs investing in Pharma or Health Care. But you’d be wise to check the actual holdings. I found some on this site where you can search for several sectors.
If you search for Tesla stock you’ll find plenty of people saying it’s fairly valued, or even undervalued. The Yahoo Finance site says the one year target price is $343. Here’s one that’s not so rosy. if you want to see for yourself, here’s a link to the 2024 10-K. .
Note that the people talking about dumping their Tesla cars don’t take about the car itself, in fact most of them like their Teslas. They’re selling, even at a loss, for other reasons. In the same way, the decision to sell Tesla stock doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t good reasons to hold it. That decision may nave nothing to do with the fundamentals of Tesla, or its businesses.
The Proxy Statement says that Elon Musk has pledged about 1/3 of his holdings as collateral for loans, probably including loans for the purchase of Twitter. It seems plausible that the lenders will demand additional collateral or even call the loans if the price sinks dramatically. For example, the current PE Ratio is about 116 at market close March 17. If it were selling at the same PE ratio as the information technology sector, approximately 35 at market close March 17, the price would drop from the current $240 to about $75.
Search for the term Tesla meme stock. It’s possible the chanters have a point.
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https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tesla_Logo_18MAR2025_7.16.38-PM_EWalker_v2_1500x1000.jpg10001500Ed Walkerhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngEd Walker2025-03-19 13:53:572025-03-20 13:36:52Sell Your Tesla Dump Your Stock
I want to elaborate on the shenanigans pertaining to purported DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason here. (Thanks to LOLGOP for helping me make a video to help explain it.)
For some time, I’ve been talking about the way that DOGE, because it is so bureaucratically incompetent and because it is led by someone easy to villainize, actually provides regime opponents with an auspicious tool we otherwise wouldn’t have had if Trump had implemented his Project 2025 agenda more slowly via Russ Vought’s expert work.
If done competently, existing Article II authority and SCOTUS’ enthusiasm to expand it may well have provided a way to do everything they’re currently doing with complete legal sanction. But they chose not to do it competently, which has provided some means to at least slow things down and possibly to get SCOTUS to overturn this.
To be sure, the damage Elon Musk is doing on the front end is catastrophic. Elon is destroying lives and competencies with his chainsaw.
But because of DOGE’s incompetence, it creates legal leverage that I’m fairly confident Vought could have managed to avoid.
Agent Elon Musk
It has to do with Elon’s agency.
There have been a number of stories on how Elon came to choose USDS as a vehicle for his project — whatever purpose that project has. NPR did an early story on the background of the US Digital Service. Wired did a story on what that takeover looked like from inside. Wired did a more comprehensive piece this week.
There were several important bureaucratic reasons to use USDS as a vehicle for DOGE. By repurposing an already-existing entity, Trump avoided disclosure requirements under Federal Advisory Committee Act; this served to defeat the already-written lawsuits filed the first week of the Administration. And because USDS was a White House agency, it might have protected DOGE from other kinds of transparency, notably FOIA. And keeping it in the White House hypothetically made DOGE an advisory entity firmly under Article II power, not subject to other legal challenges.
It was a brilliant bureaucratic theory.
And then Elon and Trump and Karoline Leavitt kept opening their big mouths, making boastful claims about Elon’s own agency — double entendre intended — in the destruction that undermined the entire bureaucratic logic. For example, Elon’s claim to have put USAID through the wood chipper makes virtually every court filing.
By claiming credit for destroying free-standing agencies, Elon has undermined the entire premise of using USDS as a vehicle, because it has boasted that Elon has more power than USDS is supposed to have. As a result, Trump had to attempt to retcon the reporting structure of DOGE, in an attempt to sustain the bureaucratic benefits of using USDS as a vehicle.
In recent weeks, the intersection of several different lawsuits and several different legal theories opened a significant chink in the entire bureaucratic game.
It has to do with Elon’s agency. If DOGE is an agency and Elon heads it, then many of the bureaucratic benefits arising from using USDS as a vehicle collapse. Plaintiffs will get visibility into DOGE. And they’re likely to make Appointments Clause complaints that SCOTUS is generally amenable to.
OMB accepts a FOIA
One early mistake DOGE made was to accept a FOIA from CREW and grant it expedited processing, only to try to renege on that stance weeks later.
[O]n January 24, 2025, CREW submitted an expedited FOIA request to OMB (“Second OMB Request”) “seeking records related to changes to the operations of the U.S. Digital Service, organizational charts, financial disclosures, and other information relevant to the newly-formed USDS.” Id. ¶ 90; Mot. for PI, Ex. C (copy of Second OMB Request). The second request similarly focused on the time period beginning November 6, 2024, but also requested some records dating back until January 2014. Id. On the same day, CREW contacted the OMB FOIA Requester Service Center to ask how to submit a FOIA request directly to USDS and was directed to submit that request through OMB, too. Mot. for PI, Ex. D at 1 n.1. Accordingly, CREW also submitted an expedited FOIA request directly to USDS (“USDS Request”), which, along with the just-listed information, sought “[a]ll communications between USDS personnel and personnel of any federal agency outside of the Executive Office of the President.” Compl. ¶ 90; Mot. for PI, Ex. D. On January 24, OMB acknowledged receipt of both requests. Id. ¶ 92.
[snip]
Although OMB initially agreed to process the USDS request and granted it expedited treatment, it has since done an about face. After CREW sued, the government suggested that OMB had inadvertently accepted the USDS request. See Opp’n at 8–9 n.2. It further indicated that USDS had been reorganized as a “free-standing component of EOP that reports to the White House Chief of Staff.” Id. “As a result,” the government posits, “USDS is not subject to FOIA.” Id. The government confirmed at oral argument on CREW’s motion that neither OMB nor USDS itself intend to process the USDS request on that ground. Rough Tr. 3:23–4:4.
Normally, the White House, but not OMB, is immune from FOIA. OMB is not immune because it is a separate agency. Because OMB accepted this FOIA it provided CREW a way, within the FOIA context, to argue that DOGE was an agency.
That fuckup is what led Judge Christopher Cooper to grant a limited expedited FOIA response to CREW on March 10.
The narrowed USDS request seeks, in each case from January 20, 2025, to the present: “all memoranda, directives, or policies regarding changes to the operations of USDS”; organizational charts for USDS; ethics pledges, waivers and financial disclosures of USDS personnel; “all communications with the office of the Administrator of the USDS regarding actual or potential changes to USDS operations”; and “all communications between USDS personnel and personnel of any federal agency outside of the Executive Office of the President regarding that agency’s staffing levels (including any effort to reduce staffing), treatment of probationary employees, contract and grant administration, access to agency information technology systems, or the authority of USDS in relation to that agency.”
In granting that limited response, Cooper noted that DOGE never disputed claims that Elon was exercising significant authority.
The Court recognizes that much, though by no means all, of the evidence supporting its preliminary conclusion that USDS is wielding substantial independent authority derives from media reports. Yet, the Court finds it meaningful that in its briefing and at oral argument, USDS has not contested any of the factual allegations suggesting its substantial independent authority. To be sure, USDS claims it declined to make this argument because CREW’s “motion fails for multiple independent reasons.”
That led DOGE to ask for reconsideration of the FOIA order, which CREW calls “a do-over,” attempting to make the arguments about agency that — Cooper noted explicitly — it had declined to make in its first response. Along with that motion, DOGE submitted a declaration from Amy Gleason on March 14 making claims about DOGE’s structure that directly conflict with claims, including sworn claims made by Gleason, made about DOGE elsewhere.
1. My name is Amy Gleason. The following is based on my personal knowledge or information provided to me in the course of performing my duties at the United States DOGE Service (USDS).
2. I currently serve as the Acting Administrator of USDS. I joined USDS on December 30, 2024.
3. I am a full-time, government employee at USDS.
4. In my role at USDS, I oversee all of USDS’s employees and detailees to USDS from other agencies. 5. I report to the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles.
6. Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.
Now, the government strongly implies that it wants Judge Cooper to rule quickly on its motion for summary judgment so it can appeal right away. Maybe that will all happen.
But it doesn’t put Gleason’s materially conflict declarations back in the box.
Elon’s conflicts become an issue
Meanwhile, as soon as DOGE came after the Department of Labor, a bunch of labor unions sued under what would normally be a weak privacy challenge, but to which both their initial and amended filings included the concern that DOGE generally and Elon specifically could access data of interest to Elon’s business or his companies, including data about labor complaints targeting his businesses.
9. DOGE will also have access to Department of Labor records concerning investigations of Mr. Musk’s businesses, as well as records containing the sensitive trade secrets of his business competitors, which are held by the Department of Labor and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. No other business owner on the planet has access to this kind of information on his competitors, and for good reason.
[snip]
30. Defendant U.S. DOGE Service (“USDS”) is a federal entity situated within the Executive Office of the President in Washington, D.C. Upon information and belief, its work is directed by Elon Musk, who is reportedly serving in the Trump-Vance Administration as a Special Government Employee (“SGE”). Mr. Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of over $400 billion. Concurrent with his tenure in government, Mr. Musk has numerous large business concerns, many of which have substantial ties to the federal government and U.S. politics. They include SpaceX, a space technology company and extensive federal government contractor; Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle company; Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup seeking to embed computer hardware into the human brain; the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company; and X, formerly known as Twitter, a large social media platform.
[snip]
75. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) within the Department is responsible for enforcing safety standards at American companies. OSHA has investigated Mr. Musk’s space technology company, SpaceX, over multiple safety incidents, and has fined SpaceX in connection with one worker’s death and seven other serious safety incidents.33
76. OSHA has also investigated and issued fines to Tesla for unsafe working conditions in its factories. 34
77. OSHA also has open investigations into the Boring Company, and has issued it multiple fines for serious citations, according to OSHA’s website.35
78. On information and belief, the Department of Labor also currently has open investigations into one or more competitors of Mr. Musk’s companies.
79. Mr. Musk would ordinarily be unable to access non-public information regarding those investigations. See 18 U.S.C. § 1832(a) (Trade Secrets Act); 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(4) (FOIA exemption for trade secrets); 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7) (FOIA exemption for records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes).
80. In light of the blanket instruction to provide DOGE employees with “anything they want,” Mr. Musk or his associates will be able to access that information simply by asking DOL employees for it.
[snip]
156. There is no public indication that Mr. Musk or DOGE personnel on leave from Mr. Musk’s corporate interests will be recused from access to any of this data, which includes “hundreds of complaints about [Mr. Musk’s] electric car company Tesla.”91
The judge in this case, John Bates, twice rejected their bid for a Temporary Restraining Order on standing grounds. But in plaintiffs’ second bid for one, they argued that DOGE members were prohibited from accessing agency records at Department of Labor, HHS, and CFPB under terms permitted by the Privacy Act because they didn’t work for an agency.
With respect to inter-agency personnel agreements, Congress provided legal authority for exactly that purpose through the Economy Act of 1932, which regulates whether and when federal employees can be temporarily detailed to new agencies. The Economy Act provides that, under certain circumstances, “[t]he head of an agency or major organizational unit within an agency may place an order with a major organizational unit within the same agency or another agency for goods or services[.]” 31 U.S.C. § 1535(a) (emphasis added). For purposes of Title 15 of the U.S. Code, “‘agency’ means a department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government.” Id. § 101. Because DOGE is not an “agency or a major organizational unit within an agency” for purposes of the Economy Act, it cannot lawfully enter into agreements to detail its personnel to lawfully established federal agencies.
Bates still denied their TRO. But in his second order rejecting their privacy claims, he relied on defendants’ representations about whether they were an agency or not (they argued they were an instrumentality). They only successfully defeated a TRO request because, Bates opined, they were an agency.
Under those definitions, USDS—which is located with the Executive Office of the President, see First DOGE E.O. § 3(a)—appears to be an agency. In each context mentioned above, an entity within the Executive Office of the President is an agency if it “wield[s] substantial authority independently of the President.” Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr. v. Presidential Advisory Comm’n on Election Integrity, 266 F. Supp. 3d 297, 315 (D.D.C. 2017). If instead it serves solely “to advise and assist the President,” it is not an agency. Alexander v. FBI, 456 F. App’x 1, 1–2 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (quoting Kissinger v. Reporters Comm., 445 U.S. 136, 156 (1980)). As plaintiffs themselves insist, USDS appears to do much more than advise and assist the President. USDS’s mission, per the Executive Order, is to “implement” the President’s modernization agenda, not simply to help him form it. See First DOGE E.O. § 1. While the record isn’t crystal clear as to these allegations, it is apparent that USDS is coordinating teams across multiple agencies with the goal of reworking and reconfiguring agency data, technology, and spending. See supra n.3 (describing the duties of the DOGE team members at DOL, HHS, and CFPB; Exec. Order No. 14,210, 90 Fed. Reg. 9669 (Feb. 11, 2025) § 3 (“Second DOGE E.O.”) (ordering that agency heads collaborate with DOGE teams on new appointment hires and prohibiting agencies from “fill[ing] any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled”). That is not the stuff of mere advice and assistance. See, e.g., Sweetland v. Walters, 60 F.3d 852, 854 (D.C. Cir. 1995).
Curiously, defendants do not make this argument. They shy away from other, similar statutory definitions of agencies, notwithstanding USDS’s strong claim to agency status under them. This appears to come from a desire to escape the obligations that accompany agencyhood— subjection to FOIA, the Privacy Act, the APA, and the like—while reaping only its benefits. Indeed, at the renewed TRO hearing, defendants’ counsel insisted that USDS is not an agency under any of those three statutes (not to mention two Executive Orders scaffolding USDS, see First DOGE E.O. § 2(a); Second DOGE E.O. § 2(a)), but is under the Economy Act. Defendants insist that the inclusion of “instrumentalities” in the Economy Act definition renders “agency” there broader than its sibling definitions of “agency.” And so USDS becomes, on defendants’ view, a Goldilocks entity: not an agency when it is burdensome but an agency when it is convenient.
Plaintiffs leaned into this language when they requested discovery.
Plaintiffs argued that DOGE is not an “agency” for the purposes of the Economy Act, that it exists purely to advise the President and does not possess and organic statutory authority that would permit it to enter into Economy Act agreements with Defendant agencies. ECF No. 29-1 at 34-37. Defendants argue that DOGE is not an “agency,” but does constitute an “instrumentality” that may permissibly enter into Economy Act agreements. See Transcript of TRO Motion Hearing, ECF No. 41 at 32. This Court concluded that, based on the information before the Court about DOGE’s functional activities, DOGE most resembles an agency, but expressly noted the limitations of the current record and briefing to date.
[snip]
The facts about how DOGE is structured are arguably become less clear with time. On February 17, 2025, the White House stated for the first time that Elon Musk is not an employee of DOGE nor is he the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.
[snip]
Discovery about the functional structure of DOGE–including who has decision-making authority over it–is directly relevant to being able to evaluate its status as an agency or instrumentality to whom Plaintiffs’ sensitive data may be disclosed without causing injury.
That’s part of what led Judge Bates to grant discovery. Another was that defendants’ own claims conflicted with the record.
Plaintiffs seek discovery on these issues in part because defendants already put into the record some facts relevant to the issues. The declarations defendants filed with their oppositions to plaintiffs’ TRO motions—all of which were prepared well after the challenged agency actions—introduced before-unknown information—some of which conflicted—on how USDS is operating at the defendant agencies: from the number of USDS employees working at each defendant agency, to the training and agreements put in place for those employees, to the access those employees are given.
[snip]
It would be strange to permit defendants to submit evidence that addresses critical factual issues and proceed to rule on a preliminary injunction motion without permitting plaintiffs to explore those factual issues through very limited discovery.
And that’s what led DOGE to take a rash step: To make the woman they had just declared to be their DOGE Administrator an HHS employee, effective March 4, even while they disclaiming being an agency in the CREW suit, and asking Amy Gleason to submit a sworn declaration claiming to be a full time DOGE employee ten days later.
Amy Gleason is on the hook for sworn claims to be an employee of HHS and, at the same time, to be DOGE’s full-time Administrator.
Elon skipped his appointment with Congress
All that this shell game over agency status has gotten plaintiffs so far — if the government can’t reverse these decisions on appeal — is some visibility about what DOGE really is, including visibility about what it’s doing with union members’ data.
But it’s all boxing the government in on what does matter: The at-least three different challenges to DOGE that argue Elon’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause, something that could — and did yesterday, in the Does 1-26 v. Elon lawsuit — require reversing all the actions the government has taken under Elon’s watch.
It’s that lawsuit, Does 1-26 v Musk, in which Judge Theodore Chuang made big news yesterday by enjoining Elon and requiring the government to start reversing the effects of what DOGE did. But the lawsuit, and so his order, only apply to Elon and DOGE. Plus, to the extent that Elon can get permission from Marco Rubio or Pete Marocco to do the very same things they’ve already done, they have two weeks under the order to do that.
It’s an important ruling, but the most likely effect it may have, in practice, is to reveal how much DOGE broke when it was dismantling USAID, which may soon become evident to people getting their digital access restored.
In making his ruling, Chuang relied exclusively on the public record, all the instances of Trump hailing Elon for his DOGE work and Elon’s own claims about woodchippers.
In another of these cases, though, one by Democratic Attorneys General (captioned as New Mexico), Judge Tanya Chutkan granted plaintiffs expedited discovery on March 12, meaning barring a successful appeal, the AGs will get more visibility on DOGE by April 2 or thereabouts.
Still, like the Does 1-26 case, the AGs lawsuit only targets Elon (and Trump). It won’t have the ability of rolling back everything DOGE did. It might make DOGE itself illegal barring Congressional action, but it cannot reverse everything.
The third suit, which also names the agencies themselves, might do that.
Update: Judge Bates has denied the government’s motion to reconsider his discovery order and has instead extended it as plaintiffs requested. The order … shows some impatience with DOGE’s changing claims.
Presumption of irregularity
None of that is going to happen quickly.
But what is happening quickly is that the conflicting claims before different judges are making it clear that nothing this Administration says can be trusted.
This is the most advanced Appointments Clause challenge, but may be consolidated with New Mexico. It not only sues Musk, but also a long list of agencies.
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:
DOGE is seeking to purge progressive influence within the federal government.
DOGE is a scaled-up public version of Musk’s style of corporate restructuring applied to the federal government.
DOGE is the first step of a public relations campaign to build popular support for spending cuts.
DOGE is an essential component of a Trump administration legal challenge to expand the president’s power of impoundment.
DOGE provides political cover for Congress to be even more fiscally irresponsible.
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 extremelysloppy 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.
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Most people pointing to this insane interview NPR did with DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar focus on the import it has for Mahmoud Khalil’s case. When pressed repeatedly, Edgar can offer no proof to back his increasingly escalating claims that Khalil didn’t disclose something when he entered the US on a student visa; he just offers the classic troll answer that everything is clear.
Edgar: I think if he would have declared he’s a terrorist, we would have never let him in.
Martin: And what did he engage in that constitutes terrorist activity?
Edgar: I mean, Michel, have you watched it on TV? It’s pretty clear.
Michel: No, it isn’t. Well, explain it to those of us who have not or perhaps others have not. What exactly did you do?
Edgar: Well, I think it’s clear or we wouldn’t be talking about it. I mean, the reality is that if you watch and see what he’s done on the university …
Martin: Do you not know? Are you telling us that you’re not aware?
Edgar: I find it interesting that you’re not aware.
But the interview is far more interesting for the logic Edgar offers for Khalil’s detention as a Green Card holder entitled to more due process, which would suggest even Elon Musk — especially Elon Musk — must be deported under Trump’s Executive Orders, right along with Khalil.
Repeatedly Edgar suggests that the reason they can deport Khalil is because he initially came into the US on a student visa, even though he now has a Green Card. He asserts over and over that because Khalil originally entered on a student visa, it means the Secretary of the State can indefinitely review his status and deport him.
Edgar: Well, like I said, when you apply for a visa, you go through the process to be able to say that you’re here on a student visa, that doesn’t afford you all the rights of coming in and basically going through this process, agitating and supporting Hamas. So, at this point, yeah, the Secretary of State and the State Department maintains the right to revoke the visa, and that’s what they’ve done.
Martin: How did he support Hamas? Exactly what did he do?
Edgar: Well, I think you can see it on TV, right? This is somebody that we’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the Secretary of State can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.
Martin: He’s a permanent resident. He’s not a visa holder. He’s a legal permanent resident. He has the green card, at least he did, until it’s alleged that it was revoked.
If the allegation is that Mr. Khalil organized protests and made speeches after which other people engaged in prohibited activity, or, say, violent activity. Well, Mr. Trump gave a political speech on January 6, 2021, after which some individuals engaged in violent and illegal acts. How is this any different?
Edgar: President Trump’s a citizen and the president of the United States. This is a person that came in under a visa. And again, the secretary of state at any point can take a look and evaluate that visa and decide if they want to revoke it.
Martin: He’s a legal permanent resident. I have to keep insisting on that. He is a legal permanent resident.
So what is the standard? Is any criticism of the Israeli government a deportable offense?
Edgar: Like I said, I think that at this point when he entered into the country on a student visa, at any point we can go through and evaluate what his status is.
Martin: Is any criticism of the United States government a deportable offense?
Edgar: Like I said, if you go through the process and you’re a student and you’re here on a visa and you go through it, at any point …
Martin: Is any criticism of the government a deportable offense?
Edgar: Let me put it this way, Michel, imagine if he came in and filled out the form and said, ‘I want a student visa.’ They asked him, ‘What are you going to do here?’ And he says, ‘I’m going to go and protest.’ We would have never let him into the country. [my emphasis]
Edgar is wrong. This is not actually the basis on which the government claims to be relying to deport Khalil. A documentpublished by WaPo confirms that the government is relying on the Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act as their basis to deport Khalil.
The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
On the basis of the foregoing, it is charged that you are subject to removal from the United States pursuant to the following provision(s) of law:
Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, in that the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
That document relies on the fact that Khalil is not a citizen, as does the law itself.
It turns out Secretary of State Marco Rubio identified a second individual to be deported, and included that person alongside Khalil in a March 7 letter to the Department of Homeland Security. Both were identified in the letter as legal permanent residents, The Atlantic has learned.
Rubio’s letter notified DHS that he had revoked both targets’ visas, setting in motion plans for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest and attempt to deport them, according to a senior DHS official and another U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe how the operation against Khalil took shape.
In addition to the two names in Rubio’s initial letter, the State Department has also sent the names of “one or two” more students whose visas it has revoked, according to the DHS official, who described the first group of names as an opening move, with “more to come.”
The Atlantic also notes a key error in the form, as well as the claim that DHS claims not to know when Khalil first entered the country.
Perhaps there’s some way to reconcile Edgar’s views with all this (or perhaps Edgar, who was sworn in last week, simply missed some of this). But the claimed basis for Khalil’s deportation doesn’t rely on the fact that he first came in on a student visa. It’s that he remains a non-citizen. Though I think Rubio needs to apply two clauses: first, his finding that Khalil presents a foreign policy problem for the US.
(C) Foreign policy
(i) In general
An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.
And also a finding that the fact that he hadn’t broken any laws before he entered the country would still not matter; he’s still a problem for foreign policy.
(ii) Exceptions
The exceptions described in clauses (ii) and (iii) of section 1182(a)(3)(C) of this title shall apply to deportability under clause (i) in the same manner as they apply to inadmissibility under section 1182(a)(3)(C)(i) of this title.
(iii) Exception for other aliens
An alien, not described in clause (ii), shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States under clause (i) because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.
So I think Edgar is wrong on the law and wrong on what DOJ and State are at least claiming went down.
But to understand how problematic this premise is, take Edgar’s claim — that anyone who ever came in on a student visa could always have his status reviewed — and apply them to Elon Musk.
The underlying framework under which Khalil is facing deportation is a claim that Trump is combatting antisemitism. It’s all based on an Executive Order holding that it is the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism … using all available and appropriate legal tools.
Sec. 2. Policy. It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.
The EO is focused exclusively on universities and defines antisemitism in the context of the October 7 attack.
Sec. 3. Additional Measures to Combat Campus Anti-Semitism. (a) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the head of each executive department or agency (agency) shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions within the jurisdiction of that agency, beyond those already implemented under Executive Order 13899, that might be used to curb or combat anti-Semitism, and containing an inventory and analysis of all pending administrative complaints, as of the date of the report, against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to or arising from post-October 7, 2023, campus anti-Semitism.
Trump wants every agency to find ways to deport students, and only students, implicitly those who support Palestine. (This is, I suspect, in significant part a Stephen Miller wet dream to use the tools of the Civil Rights movement against tolerance.)
He has done nothing to pursue his policy of combatting antisemitism, such as in DOGE, right there in the White House.
But the Civil Rights Act on which Trump is relying applies to all federal funding. It applies to government advisors. It applies to government contractors. It applies to government advertising or public statements, such as the ones that are being released only on Xitter.
It might even apply to some inauguration festivities.
And key government advisor Elon Musk is not only fostering antisemitism on his social media platform, he’s using his public government platform to adopt antisemitic symbols.
The clause State is using in an attempt to deport Khalil appears right between one targeting actual terrorists (remember that right wing hate groups have been deemed terrorists around the world) and those involved in Nazi genocide.
And yet Trump has no complaint about the former student visa holder Elon Musk using his platforms and government funding to defend the actual Neo-Nazis.
To be clear: Edgar is wrong. It’s not that Khalil entered on a student visa, it’s that he’s not a citizen. Elon was allowed to become a citizen, so is safe from this particular targeted persecution.
But his use of government funding to platform antisemitism should not be.
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Over the weekend, ICE arrested one of the people involved in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian protests, Mahmoud Khalil. It appears that they first stopped him with the intent of arresting him on a claim his student visa had been canceled; but even after they confirmed he was a Green Card holder, they detained him anyway.
On Saturday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers detained Mahmoud Khalil – a recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead the Gaza solidarity encampment – at his New York City home, an apartment building owned by the school, says advocates.
According to the advocates, at around 8:30 PM, Khalil and his wife – who is eight months pregnant – had just unlocked the door to their building when two plainclothes DHS agents pushed inside behind them. The agents allegedly did not identify themselves at first, instead asking for Khalil’s identity before detaining him.
The agents proceeded to tell Khalil’s wife that if she did not leave her husband and go to their apartment, they would arrest her too. The agents claimed that the State Department had revoked Khalil’s student visa, with one agent presenting what he claimed was a warrant on his cell phone. But Khalil, according to advocates, has a green card. Khalil’s wife went to their apartment to get the green card.
“He has a green card,” an agent apparently said on the phone, confused by the matter. But then after a moment, the agent claimed that the State Department had “revoked that too.”
Meanwhile, Khalil had been on the phone with his attorney, Amy Greer who was trying to intervene, asking why he was being detained, if they had a warrant, and explaining that Khalil was a green card holder. The attorney had circled back to demanding to see a warrant when the agents apparently instead hung up the phone.
Khalil was initially detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in downtown New York, pending an appearance before an immigration judge. Greer said they now do not know his precise whereabouts. They were initially told he was sent to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But when his wife tried to visit him, she was told he wasn’t there. They have received reports that he may be transferred as far away as Louisiana.
This feels like another bone-headed move — like the firing of FEMA workers who were dutifully helping try to claw back funds already granted to NYC and the attempted investigation of an EPA worker who didn’t do what a Project Veritas video suggested — which the Administration will engage in further corruption to try to defend, making it and the authoritarianism far worse.
People will be fired.
Explanations will be ret-coned.
And either they’ll have to let Khalil free or — more likely — the Trump Administration will attempt to find cause, possibly criminal charges, to attempt to hold him longer (he has, indeed, been located in Jena, Louisiana). Trump will rely heavily on War on Terror precedents that allow the Executive to scream “terror” and with that detain even Green Card holders.
As we wait for better answers about what happened to Khalil, right wingers have taken to Xitter to wave their dicks around.
Newly elected right wing Congressman Brandon Gill, for example, suggested that “maybe we shouldn’t tolerate foreigners seizing control of US academic buildings (while including a screen cap that said Khalil was not in the group that occupied the building).
Gill is calling for the government to take action against foreigners seizing academic buildings even as South African immigrant Elon Musk takes over Department of Education, doing far more damage than protestors did.
And Stephen Miller insisted that the US would send any foreigners sympathizing with terrorism home.
Of course, one of Miller’s chief allies, Elon Musk, routinely platforms people sympathizing with far right terrorism — indeed, he played a direct role in ginning up riots in the UK and elsewhere.
The basis of this crackdown are twoexecutive orders, admittedly focused on schools rather than government contractors, using Title VI funding as a means to dictate what otherwise First Amendment protected entities enjoy. (Note that Khalil’s arrest is inconsistent with Trump’s decision to strip $400 million in funds from Columbia, which would suggest the university, not Khalil did something wrong.)
But it nevertheless remains true that, to the extent that Xitter is protected speech (it is! just like university campuses!), Trump’s EO envisions intervening when government contractors don’t do enough to combat antisemitism.
And compared to Columbia, Elon Musk has been downright solicitous of antisemitism.
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Oh, I’m not referring to the second consecutive failure of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship this year. He can blow up all his capital and burn down his future space freight contracts.
I’m referring to this:
Why have are our FAA resources, reduced as they are after Elon Musk took a DOGE-ian chainsaw to them recently, been forced to scramble to protect civilian and commercial aircraft from yet another “rapid, unscheduled disassembly“?
Why wasn’t the FAA given enough advance notice of the possible (and likely) threat from debris so that flights could be re-routed or delayed BEFORE the launch attempt?
Photographs and videos posted on the social media site X by users saying they were along the Florida coast showed the spacecraft breaking up. The falling debris disrupted flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.
In other words, most of the eastern U.S. affected — no big deal. But that’s likely an understatement; you know the cascade of effects must have been wider given how tightly planes are scheduled.
Why are any other persons outside of SpaceX forced to change their activities without advance notice because Musk is such a selfish fuck-up of a business manager?
This is particularly galling:
In a Department of Transportation all-hands meeting late last week, Duffy responded to a question about DOGE’s role in national airspace matters, and without explicitly mentioning the new employees, suggested help was needed on reforming Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) alerts, a critical system that distributes real-time data and warnings to pilots but which has had significant outages, one as recently as this month. “If I can get ideas from really smart engineers on how we can fix it, I’m going to take those ideas,” he said, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by WIRED. “Great engineers” might also work on airspace issues, he said.
As if NOTAM wasn’t already a concern, Musk’s SpaceX blows up a rocket without ensuring adequate notice. It’s not as if the launch was scheduled in advance or anything, as if a flight path for the rocket — and its debris — wasn’t predicted well before launch.
Engineers who work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been brought on as senior advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources tell WIRED.
On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. “The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk replied. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”
Count the errors in the last two sentences of that excerpt. One party doesn’t give a shit about Musk’s manifold conflicts of interest or his unelected status as shadow president, the same party also doesn’t see the problem with giving Musk free rein to trash the regulatory agency which kept his space freight company from making even more explosive mistakes.
Imagine letting Elon’s SpaceX management habits reengineer infect the U.S. air traffic control systems, especially with his clueless if not utterly indifferent attitude about his mistakes.
“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody can bat 1,000,” he said, adding that he would act quickly to correct errors.
He acknowledged DOGE could be making errors as well.
“We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly,” Musk said.
A plane crash isn’t a mistake one can fix, quickly or otherwise. US air travel demands zero defects; it’s not a series of test launches which can inconvenience people with few repercussions to the individuals responsible for failures.
What will it take before the spineless GOP congressional caucus, in thrall to the current administration, snaps out of its sleepwalking submission to Musk’s Department of Gawdawful Errors?
Will it take the crash of a plane carrying some of its members before it realizes oversight by a separate but equal branch of government is absolutely necessary to their own fucking safety?
Somehow I don’t think it will be enough to wake them up, because they haven’t batted an eye at Musk’s other business failure, the “Deadliest Car Brand in America.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law couldn’t be rescued from her swamped Tesla in no small part because of its design, and yet this wasn’t enough to give the GOP congressional caucus pause about Musk in any way. They continue to share the road with these vehicles on a daily basis.
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There have been a few stories in the wake of last week’s effective town halls about Trump’s efforts to reach out to increasingly uncomfortable Republicans.
First, HuffPo got a number of Republicans to express concern about Trump’s latest trade war with its closest trading partners. While “Most Republicans in Congress, however, either said Trump’s tariffs were a good idea or offered only muted criticism,” Chuck Grassley and House Ag Committee Chair Glenn Thompson expressed confidence farmers would be protected somehow.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested he would be seeking an exemption for his state, which is a leading producer of corn, soybeans and pork in the United States. Farmers in Iowa and other states rely heavily on Canadian potash, a key fertilizer ingredient, for their crops.
“Potash coming from Canada would be 25% higher,” Grassley said. “I assume I’m going to hear from farmers to contact the secretary of commerce to try to get a waiver.”
[snip]
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said he believed Canada and Mexico had already stepped up border security. Canada had announced a $1 billion border security plan that included new helicopters, while Mexico said it would deploy 10,000 national guardsmen.
“I’m not sure what additional, like — the 25% tariffs of Canada — they’ve really stepped up. So has Mexico, actually, on the border. But I’m not a part of those negotiations, so I don’t know exactly what the president is trying to extract additionally,” Thompson told HuffPost.
The farm sector exports a lot of produce and is uniquely vulnerable in a trade war. When Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term, and the Chinese government retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports in kind, the Trump administration bailed out agriculture producers with nearly $30 billion worth of direct payments.
Thompson said if there’s another protracted trade war, the government would once again help out farmers.
“I’m hoping that we won’t find ourselves in a situation of sustained retaliatory tariffs on our farmers. If we are, we’ll be prepared to deal with that.” he said.
Aside from one lawsuit seeking to force the government to restore access to climate information, I know of no lawsuits representing the many farmers whom Trump’s freeze on Inflation Reduction Act spending has harmed, though many risk bankruptcy because approved spending has not been reimbursed. These comments suggest that farmers imagine they’ll be made whole via other means, political favors.
There’ve already been signs that Trump has placated Republicans whose own constituents were targeted by his rash cuts. For example, it didn’t take long for elimination of Indian Heath Services that would have disproportionately hit Alaska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota to be reversed. By offering cuts and waivers, Trump uses preferential treatment for Republicans to sustain support for actions that harm the entire country.
Yesterday, Trump took a similar approach with DOGE, sending Elon Musk to meet with Republican Senators and House members (but not Democrats) to placate them on DOGE cuts. The reports from the Senate meeting reveal how meek key, purportedly powerful, Senators were in the meeting with Musk, begging that he adopt a more considered approach.
“Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the daily bombshells from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“It would be better to allow Cabinet secretaries to carefully review their departments and then make surgical, strategic decisions on what programs and people should be cut and then come back to Congress for approval,” she said.
Collins argued a methodical approach to reforming government would be better than what she called Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”
A second GOP senator said colleagues raised concerns about Musk’s leadership of DOGE and shared stories about how funding freezes and firings have impacted constituents.
“They were presenting some of the compelling stories and some of them shared about terminations at VA hospitals and how it impacted constituents and how there was no answer” from Musk’s team, the senator said.
“Another question was, ‘Who do we bring it to when we have these issues?’” the source added.
One of the Republican senators digging for answers is Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who told The Hill he’s trying to find out whether the firing of 2,400 probationary VA employees would impact services for veterans.
“We’re asking that question,” he said. “We want to know [what] positions [are affected]. We’ve been reassured that it doesn’t affect direct care, but we’re looking for more information.
[snip]
“If I get confirmed as the head of an agency, a Cabinet-level position, [and] I’ve got somebody else that is pretending — or that is acting as my boss, that’s a real problem,” [Thom Tillis] added. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to have all those employees thinking that you’re looking out for the agencies and their best interests.”
Tillis said that if Trump’s Cabinet officials “want to be viewed as the heads of these agencies,” they need to balance Musk’s recommendations to cut staff with their missions to provide services and advance U.S. interests.
“They need to say, ‘This is all good stuff, but now it has to go into the context of everything else I’m doing to run this agency, not just efficiencies.’ Because you’ve still got to keep the lights on, you’ve still got to provide acceptable service levels for the people that you’re tasked with serving,” he said.
Other reports describe suggestions, started by Rand Paul, to codify all DOGE’s cuts in a recission package.
“I love what Elon is doing. I love the cutting of the waste. I love finding all the crazy crap that we’re spending overseas. But to make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Musk huddled behind closed doors with House Republicans on Wednesday evening and spelled out DOGE’s efforts to uncover wasteful spending, an initiative that many Republicans applauded.
But others emerged with a more skeptical view.
“When you have a very small group with a broad set of powers, able to inflict dramatic change on institutions without a lot of knowledge, that means the process of cleaning up afterwards is going to be extensive,” said Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma.
Senate Republicans said Musk, a top adviser to Trump, was “elated” by Paul’s suggestion that the White House request congressional approval to rescind spending through a legislative process that would circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster.
“He was, like, so happy,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee.
“What we’ve got to do as Republicans is capture their work product, put it in a bill and vote on it. So, the White House, I’m urging them to come up with a rescission package,” the South Carolina Republican added.
None of this is surprising: That Trump is placating Republicans with doubts about his destructive attack on the US with direct outreach. Indeed, we’ve seen hints that it has been going on this entire time.
For now, it’s simply confirmation that even the most powerful Republicans, like Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, are asking for no more than this, meekly suggesting that maybe Cabinet Members should be allowed to act like Cabinet Members. And also confirmation that more members of Congress are willing to share, under their own name.
Thus far, Trump is making a sustained attack on the United States and Republican Members of Congress are still easily bought off with tailored exemptions rather than policies that serve the common good. That may change, but thus far, Article I remains solidly and easily co-opted.
Update: I should have included this story, which focuses more in House members, including this wisdom from House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole:
“With all due respect to Mr. Musk, he doesn’t have a vote up here. … [Give] courtesy to the members. They’re the ones that have to go home and defend these decisions, not you. So why don’t you give them a heads-up,” Rep. Tom Cole (Oklahoma) said Tuesday before the meeting. “You are certainly complicating the lives of individual members, and you might be making some mistakes and hurting some innocent individuals in the process.”
[snip]
Cole, who as chair of the House Appropriations Committee is responsible for funding the government, said that while he believes DOGE has “uncovered some amazing things,” he has observed that some staffers “clearly don’t know what [they’re] talking about” based on some fiscal decisions he has seen them make.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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Trump announces the end of the transatlantic alliance
First it was Emmanuel Macron, putting his hand on Trump’s knee as he publicly corrected Trump in the Oval Office, in the presence of cameras, on the fact that Europe’s contributions to support Ukraine were (a) grants, not loans, and (b) larger than the contributions made by the US. Trump, in turn, tried to toss out his well-worn talking points, but the damage was done. Trump was called out by a foreign leader as a liar, in his very own office and seat of power.
Then it was Keir Starmer, waving a fancy invitation from King Charles to a state dinner, who did exactly the same thing. He publicly corrected Trump in the Oval Office, in the presence of cameras, on Europe’s support for Ukraine. Again, Trump hemmed and hawwed, and embraced the (Starmer: “unprecedented!”) invitation to a second state visit, but the damage was done. Trump was called out by a second foreign leader as a liar, in his very own office and seat of power.
You had to know this would not sit well.
As network after network played the clip of Macron’s hand on Trump’s knee, after all the networks showed Trump fawning over the Bright Shiny Thing that Starmer dangled in front of him, as Starmer very politely called Trump a liar, everyone knew that this would not end well.
And today, it was Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s turn . . . and as anyone with half a brain could anticipate, it *did* not end well.
Personally, I was amused by J.D. Vance’s holier-than-thou whining about Zelenskyy making a benign appearance in Pennsylvania saying “thank you” to the US for their support and calling it Election Interference. I don’t remember Vance taking up umbrage when the head of DOGE Elon Musk appeared and spoke at the national political rally of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party just days ahead of the recent German election, and who repeatedly praised the AfD via Xitter. After the AfD came in second, with a sizable caucus in the new Bundestag, Musk called the head of the AfD to offer congratulations and called her party the future of Germany, and Vance’s reaction was *crickets*.
Well, to be scrupulously fair, that’s not true. He *did* say something, but rather than condemning such interference, Vance joined it. At the Munich Security Conference, Vance praised the AfD (not by name but by lauding their political positions on immigration and other policies) and attacked mainstream German political parties for refusing to work with the AfD.
Americans might not have been listening to all of this, but the Europeans were – especially the Germans – and they knew exactly who Vance was praising. After the German elections, the victorious chancellor-elect made a stunning statement. From Deutsche Welle:
After his party’s victory in the election was confirmed Sunday night, [CDU party leader Friedrich] Merz said that he wanted to work on creating unity in Europe as quickly as possible, “so that, step by step, we can achieve independence from the US.”
Until recently, this would have been a highly unusual thing for any leader of the CDU to say. After all, it has always had a strong affinity for the US.
“Merz aligns himself with the legacy of historical CDU leaders such as [former chancellors] Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, both of whom played pivotal roles in strengthening transatlantic relations,” said Evelyn Gaiser, a policy advisor on transatlantic relationships and NATO with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank that is associated with but independent of the Christian Democrats.
[snip]
Merz spoke out after JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in February, in which the US vice president said that the biggest threat to Europe did not come from Russia or China, but “from within.”
“This is really now the change of an era,” Merz said on stage at the MSC. “If we don’t hear the wake-up call now, it might be too late for the entire European Union.”
Add this into the context of withdrawing from the World Health Organization and eliminating all the work done by USAID, and the message is crystal clear. While yes, this meeting today in the Oval Office was about Ukraine, it was really a sign of something much much larger.
In April 2021, when Joe Biden addressed a joint session of Congress in a non-State of the Union address, he said this:
I’ve often said that our greatest strength is the power of our example – not just the example of our power. And in my conversations with world leaders – many I’ve known for a long time – the comment I hear most often is: we see that America is back – but for how long?
We now know the answer: four years and five weeks.
RIP the Transatlantic Alliance (1945-2025).
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