Attention to the Unseen

Matt Bai writes: [W]hat’s happened at USAID over the past couple of weeks is unfathomable. A $50 billion agency — funded by taxpayers, empowered by Congress and employing something like 11,000 people around the world — is now tightly controlled by a handful of 20-something software engineers who have never worked a day in government. They disregard promises from the American secretary of state while agonized policy experts stand by helplessly. In the coming weeks, courts will have to decide…

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London Guerrilla Ad-fare: #Tesla the #Swasticar … from 0 to 1939 in just 3 seconds #Musk pic.twitter.com/y96FiQ5g1Z — Peter Speetjens (@PeterBeirut) February 24, 2025 The Guardian reports: When Mike Schwede first sat in a Tesla Roadster 15 years ago, he felt like it was a glimpse into the future. By 2016, he was the proud owner of a Tesla, revelling in the thumbs up he would get from other drivers as he whizzed along Europe’s highways in the electric vehicle….

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NBC News reports: Elon Musk’s status as the world’s wealthiest person is in no danger of changing. But since mid-December, the tech titan’s net worth has declined by more than $100 billion, or approximately 25%, as a sell-off in shares of Tesla, his electric car maker, has accelerated in recent weeks. On Tuesday, the stock closed down another 8% to $302.80 and is off 25% year to date. The latest drawdown comes as new data showed new Tesla vehicle registrations…

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electrek reports: Protests at Tesla stores are gaining momentum across the US as people are fighting back against Elon Musk’s government takeover, and the hate is spreading to owners. Last week, we reported on a new effort to organize protests at Tesla stores worldwide, but primarily in North America. There were significant turnouts to disrupt Tesla operations by picketing in front of dozens of stores. But the movement is ongoing, and there were protests against this weekend and more planned…

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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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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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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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The Hill reports on Sean Hannity’s joint interview with Musk and Trump: Trump had high praise for Musk throughout the interview, highlighting his successful tech career and his intelligence. The president noted he was impressed with Musk when he saw Musk’s team had the ability to catch a rocket booster instead of having it crash into the ocean. “Something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab…

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Charlie Warzel, Ian Bogost, and Matteo Wong write: DOGE has achieved “God mode.” That’s according to an employee in senior leadership at USAID, who told us that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency now has full, unrestricted access to the agency’s digital infrastructure—including total control over systems that Americans working in conflict zones rely on, the ability to see and manipulate financial systems that have historically awarded tens of billions of dollars, and perhaps much more. The employee’s account, along…

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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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