Attention to the Unseen

Wired reports: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have repeatedly affirmed Musk’s leadership of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But according to a new court filing from the White House, the administrator of DOGE isn’t Elon Musk after all. Who is? No one knows. The White House won’t tell the public, an administration lawyer has reportedly said he had no idea, and even people who work for the US DOGE Service can’t get a straight answer. On Monday…

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Don Moynihan writes: Sam Rayburn, the Texan who served as House Speaker for 17 years was fond of saying: Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one. Rayburn was talking about policymaking, but the point extends to more broadly to governing. Trashing government agencies is easy. Making them work is hard. DOGE, and the husk of the Office of Personnel Management that has become a DOGE zombie, are a good example. Elon…

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The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that DOGE’s blind cost cutting will put communities at risk. Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were abruptly laid off late Thursday, with some losing access to email…

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Brian Merchant writes: Over the last few weeks, as Elon Musk and DOGE have infiltrated government agency after government agency, proclaiming their intent to slash budgets, cut jobs, and embrace AI, we’ve watched a brazen, extralegal effort to hollow out the state unfold in real time. Now up to 200,000 workers are being targeted in mass layoffs. Much of the collective horror has stemmed from the broader implications this campaign—orchestrated by an unelected tech billionaire who has enriched himself with…

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SF Gate reports: A sprawling web of violence across America, which has left at least six dead, has been linked to a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals known as the Zizians. Investigators across the country are piecing together connections between the double homicide of a wealthy married couple in Pennsylvania, a deadly shootout in Vermont and two brutal knife attacks on a landlord in Vallejo. Four people who are allegedly Zizian cult members are in custody facing homicide charges,…

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NPR reports: Scenes of confusion and chaos unfolded over the last two days at the civilian agency that oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, as the Trump administration’s mass firings were carried out before being “paused” on Friday. This account of firings at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is based on interviews with several current and former NNSA employees who asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the Trump administration. Officials were given hours to fire hundreds of employees,…

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Rolling Stone reports: Every regime’s enforcement mechanisms rely on threats and politicized intimidation. In the case of Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s ongoing power grab, it’s involved young staffers with Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) barging into different federal agencies, departments, and institutes, demanding that security officials and other senior staff give them access to whatever they want. When security officials, for instance, at several departments and agencies have responded that they need to check to ensure these…

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Wired reports: Elon Musk’s toxicity among many Europeans is such that even owners of Tesla news websites have ditched Muskmobiles for other EV brands. Jon Gibbs of Birmingham, England, runs what he calls the “world’s biggest Tesla inventory site.” Tesla-info, Gibbs says, stores the “largest database of new and used Tesla motors in the world.” He used to own one himself—but he now drives a BMW iX electric SUV. Likewise, Tim Kraaijvanger of the Netherlands, founder of Tesla360.nl, a Dutch…

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Kareem Shaheen and Alec D’Angelo write: Musk’s ability to reach the worldwide top 20 leaderboards in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration raised eyebrows, since he essentially would have needed to play the game [Path of Exile] nonstop for two weeks to achieve the rank. Then he began streaming the game, and it was abundantly clear that he wasn’t familiar with its interface or his own equipment — or even with the game’s basic mechanics. The kicker was that, at one…

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Electrek reports: Tesla is being targeted by protests organized at its stores around the globe. The demonstrations planned for this Saturday appear to be a grassroots movement without a clear goal or leadership. The protestors are calling it the “Tesla Takeover”. The movement appears to have started on Bluesky, a social media platform that spun off of Twitter before Elon Musk bought it and turned it into X. Several bigger accounts on Bluesky, including Anonymous, the infamous hacker group, have…

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By Christopher Bing and Annie Waldman This story was originally published by ProPublica The Trump administration is not even a month old, but billionaire Elon Musk has already brought in dozens of staffers to help him change the face of the U.S. government. ProPublica has learned the names of nine additional employees connected to Musk’s government overhaul, adding to a tracker the news organization published last week. The additional names help reveal Musk’s sudden and far-reaching influence across government, as…

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By Heather Vogell This story was originally published by ProPublica When SpaceX’s Starship exploded in January, raining debris over the Caribbean, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded the rocket program and ordered an investigation. The move was the latest in a series of actions taken by the agency against the world’s leading commercial space company. “Safety drives everything we do at the FAA,” the agency’s chief counsel said in September, after proposing $633,000 in fines for alleged violations related to…

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