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Category: Politics

‘I was racist before it was cool,’ wrote Musk staffer, Marko Elez, before resigning from DOGE

‘I was racist before it was cool,’ wrote Musk staffer, Marko Elez, before resigning from DOGE

CNBC reports: A staff member on the Department of Government Efficiency advisory group led by tech billionaire Elon Musk resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to a social media account that advocated for racism and eugenics. The DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, earlier in the day had been approved by a federal judge along with another DOGE staff member to have access to the payment system at the U.S. Treasury, but the judge…

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The identities and roles of 22 members of Musk’s government demolition crew

The identities and roles of 22 members of Musk’s government demolition crew

ProPublica reports: On President Donald Trump’s authority alone, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. Employees from Musk’s companies and those of his allies, as well as young staffers he’s recruited, are wresting authority from career workers and commandeering computer systems. While some have been public about their involvement, others have attempted to keep their roles secret, scrubbing LinkedIn pages and other sources of data. With little information from the White House, ProPublica is attempting…

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‘We feel terrorized’: What EPA employees say about the decision to stay or go under Trump

‘We feel terrorized’: What EPA employees say about the decision to stay or go under Trump

By Sharon Lerner and Pratheek Rebala This story was originally published by ProPublica In the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape the Environmental Protection Agency and drive out its workers, more than 300 career employees have left their jobs since the election, according to a ProPublica analysis of personnel data. The numbers account for a relatively small share of the overall workforce at the EPA, but those who have departed include specialist civil servants crucial to its…

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Make no mistake: this is a coup

Make no mistake: this is a coup

Timothy Snyder writes: Imagine if it had gone like this. Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.” Historically, that is what coups looked…

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Trump and Musk are updating the autocratic playbook with a new kind of coup

Trump and Musk are updating the autocratic playbook with a new kind of coup

Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes: It seems like the plot of a political thriller. We are living through a new kind of coup in which Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has taken over the payment and other administration systems that allow the American government to function, and has locked out federal employees from computer systems. Many of Musk’s collaborators in this endeavor previously worked for his private companies and/or helped him take over Twitter. Musk is subject to no…

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Tesla sales are crashing in Europe and the UK even as EV sales grow

Tesla sales are crashing in Europe and the UK even as EV sales grow

Ars Technica reports: Early car sales data for January is starting to arrive from countries across the pond, and they paint an alarming picture for Tesla. Sales are crashing in France, Germany, and the UK—all affluent countries that are key markets for Tesla’s electric vehicles. Coming on the heels of a large financial miss, it’s just one more problem for the automaker. Tesla sales dropped around 13 percent across Europe in 2024, but so far this year, the scale of…

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Musk poses a threat both to democratic governance and to the foundations of our market economy

Musk poses a threat both to democratic governance and to the foundations of our market economy

Mike Brock writes: Consider what we’re being asked to believe about Elon Musk. That he is simultaneously managing Tesla, a global automotive manufacturer facing fierce competition and complex production challenges. That he is overseeing SpaceX, a company conducting human spaceflight and handling critical national security contracts. That he is running X/Twitter through a tumultuous transformation affecting global discourse. That he is developing experimental brain implants at Neuralink under federal investigation. That he is competing in the most sophisticated artificial intelligence…

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Trump’s inner circle concerned Musk ‘getting too big for his breeches’

Trump’s inner circle concerned Musk ‘getting too big for his breeches’

Wired reports: Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, publicly at least, are on good terms. Yet when it comes to the staff in and around the new administration, it’s a different story. Just two-and-a-half weeks into Trump’s second term in office, a fissure has begun to emerge following Musk’s DOGE takeover of the US government, according to a half-dozen Trump loyalist Republican aides and advisers inside and around the administration who spoke with WIRED. “I think it’s more the staff…

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DOGE staffers enter NOAA headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats

DOGE staffers enter NOAA headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats

The Guardian reports: Staffers with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Department of Commerce in Washington DC today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency. “They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa…

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The chaos being unleashed by Trump is impacting almost everyone

The chaos being unleashed by Trump is impacting almost everyone

Arwa Mahdawi writes: Almost nobody in the US has escaped the chaos that Trump and Musk have already unleashed in such an incredibly short time. My wife works in international development and has friends who have already lost their jobs because of Trump dismantling USAid and throwing all its contractors into disarray. I have friends in the education sector who have been scrambling to deal with the panic caused by Trump’s plans to freeze federal loans and grants: students have been freaking out that…

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Five Arab nations reject Trump’s plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza, urge two-state solution

Five Arab nations reject Trump’s plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza, urge two-state solution

The Times of Israel reports: Five Arab foreign ministers and a senior Palestinian official sent a joint letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday, urging the Trump administration to back a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and rejecting recent suggestions by US President Donald Trump that residents of the Gaza Strip be resettled, either temporarily or permanently, elsewhere in the Middle East. “Palestinians do not want to leave their land. We support their position unequivocally,” wrote…

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Speaking out in solidarity with FBI and other federal workers who are defending democracy

Speaking out in solidarity with FBI and other federal workers who are defending democracy

Yesterday, in response to my own sense of powerlessness while watching the ongoing assault on democracy led by Elon Musk and Donald Trump, I engaged in a quixotic gesture: I went down to my local FBI field office to offer a small token of public support. Not surprisingly, it isn’t possible to walk into an FBI office. Since the Oklahoma bombing, all such offices are well fortified. This office did have a kiosk in front of the main entrance where…

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Elon Musk’s ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ of government services that almost no one can control

Elon Musk’s ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ of government services that almost no one can control

Charlie Warzel writes: Two days before the 2024 election, I wrote that Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter was going to be the blueprint for his potential tenure at DOGE. Unfortunately, I was right—he’s running the exact same playbook. But it’s worth keeping in mind that there are two ways of measuring success for Musk’s projects: first, whether the organizations themselves benefit under his leadership, and second, whether Musk himself gets something out of the arrangement. Musk’s stewardship of X has…

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A 25-year-old Musk operative has direct access to the federal payment system posing ‘apocalyptic’ risk

A 25-year-old Musk operative has direct access to the federal payment system posing ‘apocalyptic’ risk

Wired reports: A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED. Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau…

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‘Accidental’ FBI director gains a following as agency’s defender

‘Accidental’ FBI director gains a following as agency’s defender

The New York Times reports: Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot. To start, Mr. Driscoll’s appointment was an accident. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the White House identified the wrong agent as acting director on its website and never corrected the mistake. Even if he was not meant to be leading the agency, he…

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