Music: the bird and the bee — ‘The Races’
How Trump is emulating Hungary’s ‘would-be dictator’ Orbán
David Smith writes: A pitiless crackdown on on illegal immigration. A hardline approach to law and order. A purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness” from the nation’s schools. Erosions of academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press. An alliance with Christian nationalism. An assault on democratic institutions. The “electoral autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has been long revered by Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. Now admiration is turning into emulation. In the early…
Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service says DOGE staff pose ‘single greatest insider threat risk’ ever
Wired reports: Members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team have had access to the US Treasury Department’s payment systems for over a week. On Thursday, the threat intelligence team at one of the department’s agencies recommended that DOGE members be monitored as an “insider threat.” Sources say members of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s IT division and others received an email detailing these concerns. “There is ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests relating to DOGE’s…
IT professionals lay out just how destructive Musk’s incursion into the U.S. government could be
Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost write: Elon Musk’s unceasing attempts to access the data and information systems of the federal government range so widely, and are so unprecedented and unpredictable, that government computing experts believe the effort has spun out of control. This week, we spoke with four federal-government IT professionals—all experienced contractors and civil servants who have built, modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure that Musk’s inexperienced employees at his newly created Department of Government Efficiency are…
Musk to rehire Treasury DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, behind racist posts after Trump endorses idea
CNBC reports: Elon Musk said Friday he will rehire a DOGE staffer who resigned from a Treasury Department post after the exposure of his tweets advocating for racism and eugenics. Musk’s announcement on his social media platform X came after Vice President JD Vance urged Musk to hire the staffer back and President Donald Trump endorsed the view. “He will be brought back,” Musk, the head of DOGE, wrote on X in response to Vance’s recommendation. “To err is human,…
Staffer with Elon Musk’s DOGE, Gavin Kliger, amplified white supremacists online
Reuters reports: One of the people working with billionaire Elon Musk in his efforts to overhaul the U.S. government is a Berkeley-educated computer scientist who has boosted white supremacists and misogynists online. Gavin Kliger lists his job on LinkedIn as “Special Advisor to the Director” at the Office of Personnel Management, which has been spearheading Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce. His USAID email address was copied on a message reviewed by Reuters that was sent to staffers at…
Musk’s DOGE teen, Edward Coristine, was fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets
Bloomberg reports: Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of Elon Musk’s squad that’s criss-crossing US government agencies, was fired from an internship after he was accused of sharing information with a competitor. “Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors,” said a June 2022 message from an executive of the firm, Path Network, which was seen by Bloomberg News. “This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this.” A spokesperson for the Arizona-based hosting and data-security firm…
Trump describes his Gaza plan as ‘a real estate transaction’
The Times of Israel reports: US President Donald Trump said Friday that he was not in a hurry to implement his plan to take over and redevelop Gaza while relocating Palestinians to other countries. “We’re in no rush on it,” Trump told reporters at the White House. After repeatedly floating the idea that Egypt and Jordan take in some Gazan refugees while the Strip was being rebuilt — a notion rejected by Cairo and Amman — Trump earlier this week…
Music: Hvalfugl — ‘De Lever Videre I Billederne’
Musk’s Treasury incursion puts the entire financial system at risk, former officials warn
Graham Steele and Emily DiVito write: Elon Musk’s unprecedented access to the US Treasury’s payment system deserves the public outcry that it has received. As former Treasury officials, we fear the situation is even more dire than it might appear. Musk’s recent actions, days after the Office of Management and Budget’s government funding pause that a federal judge quickly blocked, suggest a big and broad vision for a dramatically consolidated and politicized Treasury. This could have widespread effects on our…
U.S. Treasury claimed DOGE’s Marko Elez didn’t have ‘write access’ when he actually did
Wired reports: US Treasury Department and White House officials have repeatedly denied that technologists associated with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had the ability to rewrite the code of the payment system through which the vast majority of federal spending flows. WIRED reporting shows, however, that at the time these statements were made, a DOGE operative did in fact have write access. Not only that, but sources tell WIRED that at least one note was added to…
‘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…
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…
‘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…
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…
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…