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Category: Politics

Department of Government Inefficiency: DOGE’s only public ledger is riddled with accounting errors

Department of Government Inefficiency: DOGE’s only public ledger is riddled with accounting errors

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency say they have saved the federal government $55 billion through staff reductions, lease cancellations and a long list of terminated contracts published online this week as a “wall of receipts.” President Trump has been celebrating the published savings, even musing about a proposal to mail checks to all Americans to reimburse them with a “DOGE dividend.” But the math that could back up those checks is marred…

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New acting Social Security commissioner was under investigation when Musk team tapped him

New acting Social Security commissioner was under investigation when Musk team tapped him

Marisa Kabas reports: Acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Michelle King resigned over the holiday weekend after she reportedly refused to aid Elon Musk’s pseudo-agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with accessing sensitive beneficiary data. King left a vacancy that was immediately filled by Leland Dudek, a guy who most people at the agency had never heard of before. By Wednesday night, Musk was publicly praising him as a hero. What happened? In a now-deleted LinkedIn post on Friday from…

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Anxiety mounts among Social Security recipients as DOGE wreckers move in

Anxiety mounts among Social Security recipients as DOGE wreckers move in

By Eli Hager This story was originally published by ProPublica President Donald Trump was asked at a press conference this month if there were any federal agencies or programs that Elon Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency wouldn’t be allowed to mess with. “Social Security will not be touched,” Trump answered, echoing a promise he has been making for years. Despite his eagerness to explode treaties, shutter entire government agencies and abandon decades-old ways of doing things, the president…

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When the Murdoch empire collapses, will Elon Musk buy Fox News?

When the Murdoch empire collapses, will Elon Musk buy Fox News?

The Observer reports: When some of the mind games and manoeuvres that turned a Murdoch family “retreat” into an ordeal appeared in Succession, the TV drama about squabbling family members of a right-wing media company, members of the real-life family started to suspect each other of leaking details to the writers. The truth was more straightforward. Succession’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, said that his team hadn’t needed inside sources – they had simply read press reports. Future screenwriters have been gifted…

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Frozen in the face of fascism

Frozen in the face of fascism

The Guardian reports: The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Friday morning cancelled a scheduled speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed an apparent fascist-style salute there hours before. Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016 and is now a popular rightwing podcast show host, finished his CPAC speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed and palm down – a sign that echoed both…

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Trump once championed hiring of military spouses. Now they are getting fired

Trump once championed hiring of military spouses. Now they are getting fired

CNN reports: The Trump administration’s swift, sweeping cuts to the federal workforce is set to derail the livelihoods of potentially thousands of military families. The turmoil within the military community caused by the recent firings of probationary employees, looming terminations and a rolling series of deadlines for federal employees to return to work should not be surprising. For decades now, the federal government has marketed itself as the employer of choice for military spouses, who are unemployed at five times…

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DOGE’s millions: As Musk and Trump gut government, their ax-cutting agency gets cash infusion

DOGE’s millions: As Musk and Trump gut government, their ax-cutting agency gets cash infusion

By Avi Asher-Schapiro, Andy Kroll and Christopher Bing This story was originally published by ProPublica While Elon Musk and his underlings demand budget cuts and layoffs across the federal government, funding for their agency — the Department of Government Efficiency — has soared to nearly $40 million, ProPublica found in a review of Office of Management and Budget records. Billionaire investor Musk has called DOGE “maximally transparent.” President Donald Trump has said that some 100 people work for the group,…

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The DOGE sysadmins alone know what they are doing

The DOGE sysadmins alone know what they are doing

Zeynep Tufekci writes: [Thomas Jefferson] feared that an elected authoritarian would not just pulverize the institutions meant to limit his power, but take them over to wield as weapons, thus further entrenching himself. Even Jefferson couldn’t have imagined a future in which the arsenal being deployed included centralized databases with comprehensive records on every citizen’s employment, finances, taxes and for some, even health status. After a judge blocked a Trump executive order, Elon Musk shared a post with his more…

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Firings weaken FAA measures for ensuring flight safety

Firings weaken FAA measures for ensuring flight safety

Rolling Stone reports: While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but…

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Ukraine: The past, present, and future of Russian disinformation

Ukraine: The past, present, and future of Russian disinformation

Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren write: On the morning of Nov. 7, 2024, the pro-Russian X account @OCanonist posted a video of men in Ukrainian military uniforms shooting and setting ablaze a mannequin wearing a Trump 2024 T-shirt and red hat. With it, @OCanonist shared the message, “It’s time to defund this degenerate country.” Over the course of the following day, the post was shared more than 26,000 times and viewed by 12.4 million users. From X, the video exploded…

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How aspiring strongmen consolidate power: Fire civil servants; dismantle government departments

How aspiring strongmen consolidate power: Fire civil servants; dismantle government departments

A leader bent on expanding his own power would see the government’s bureaucracy as a key target. Andry Djumantara – iStock/Getty Images Plus By Erica Frantz, Michigan State University; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Yale University, and Joe Wright, Penn State With the recent confirmations of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – two of the most controversial of President Donald Trump’s high-level administration nominees – the president’s attempt to remake government as a home for political loyalists continues. Soon after coming…

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Trump’s confidential plan to place Ukraine in a legal stranglehold

Trump’s confidential plan to place Ukraine in a legal stranglehold

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports: Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country. The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document…

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Former NATO commander: Without strong defense, Europe will be at war with Russia within five years

Former NATO commander: Without strong defense, Europe will be at war with Russia within five years

  “The way to prevent that is strong defense to spend money on defence to be prepared for the worst case, because that is the only way we are going to deter Russia.” US withdrawal from NATO and failure to challenge Putin in ceasefire talks would cause a war in Europe in five years warns Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Richard Shirreff on Frontline.

WSJ: Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout

WSJ: Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says: Trump on Tuesday mimicked Russian propaganda by claiming Ukraine had started the war with Russia and that Kyiv is little better than the Kremlin because it hasn’t held a wartime election. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky replied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space,” which may have been imprudent but was accurate. Mr. Trump escalated on Wednesday, as he usually does, calling Mr. Zelensky a “dictator,” and suggesting Ukraine’s…

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Bill Browder: It’s time to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets

Bill Browder: It’s time to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets

  James O’Brien is joined by Sir Bill Browder, an anti-corruption campaigner who is the head of the Magnitsky Global Justice Campaign, and chief executive of the finance company Hermitage Capital. Sir Bill Browder offers hope on Ukraine’s bleak situation following Donald Trump’s comments about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The US president took aim at Zelenskyy after he accused Trump of “helping Putin to come out of isolation” by working with him. On Wednesday evening, Number Ten released a statement expressing…

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DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug

DOGE’s incompetence is a feature, not a bug

Brian Barrett writes: Within just the last week or so, Elon Musk’s DOGE hit team of mostly young, almost exclusively male engineers and executives have done the following: Pushed a website live to track “savings” that showed no savings for several days, and made it trivially easy for random people on the internet to make changes to it. Published classified information on that same website. Got called out for accidentally inflating that savings amount by $7,992,000,000, and doubled down on their inaccuracy before they fixed it. Fired hundreds of people…

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