Musk hostile takeover of the US

2/ they already have over key computer systems, payment systems, etc. and with the press picture it’s not that things aren’t getting out. The stuff abt the Treasury payments systems and control over certain computer networks has been reported. It’s more putting together the big picture abt how …

3/ different pieces fit together. There also seems to be a significant amount of downloading government data onto private servers, etc, totally outside any cybersecurity regime. Additionally it’s unclear to the people inside whether the people doing these things actually work for the US govt…

I would guess not if they're downloading to private servers!

4/ who they are, whether they’re even American citizens. They all seem to be Thiel and Musk protégés. And I’ve had multiple references to their refusing to identify themselves by anything but first name. The rationale given is that they could be doxed.

SHOULD be doxxed.

5/ One additional point and to be clear this latter stuff isn’t from my reporting just pieced together other reports and what musk is saying himself. They’re into th ex treasury payment system and claiming they’ve already found like $4B in “savings” a day.

6/ It’s important to know what this means. This is simple his DOGE team reviewing the US federal budget, law of the land and deciding which parts aren’t necessary. It sounds like they’re saying they will unilaterally cut these funds with control over the check writing at Treasury.

7/ They’re not saying that last part explicitly but that’s certainly the logic of what they’re saying. (Go look at his tweets over thd last two days). So a group of Musk protégés seem to be overruling the US federal budget. Impoundment by the president is illegal. It’s hard to think through …

8/ the levels of illegality having a group of people who don’t even seem to be US government employees doing it.

LOL.  Desperate times, eh?

How this would be reported if it were about another country:

Musk Junta Seizes Key Governmental Offices
February 1, 2025
By William Boot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.

Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces.

  Doomsday Scenario

Continue reading.

UPDATE 07:50 am:

At least.  Alas, I have no faith in these people.

That's not unique to DC.

Just fucking nuts that we've come to this.

UPDATE 04:53 pm:

It's Sunday

As Trump supporters lambast an Episcopal bishop's sermon during an inaugural prayer service, Episcopal churches in Utah are being targeted with anger — as well as a surge of interest from prospective members.

[...]

Congregations in Salt Lake, Ogden and Park City also reported a spike in attendance this Sunday.

[...]

Staff at the Episcopal Diocese of Utah told Axios they received at least a dozen angry calls in the aftermath of Bishop Mariann Budde's sermon last week, which, with President Trump in attendance, implored him to "have mercy" for undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ+ people.

[...]

Following Budde's now-viral sermon at the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21, Trump demanded an apology, saying, "She is not very good at her job!"

Other Republicans joined the attack, with one Congressman calling for her deportation (she was born in New Jersey) and 21 others cosponsoring a resolution condemning the sermon.

Some faith leaders and conservative activists called on elected officials to revoke the National Cathedral's tax-exempt status, nullify the 1893 charter that allowed an Episcopal foundation to create it, and turn the building over to a more conservative denomination.

[...]

Meanwhile, in San Diego, vandals painted profanity and crosshair targets on the Episcopal cathedral; a Jewish synagogue there was defaced the same day.

  Axios

MAGA.

Conservative outcry against Budde's sermon follows years of warnings against "too much compassion" in religious discourse.

[...]

In a post that received more than 23 million views last week, a deacon at an Ogden church wrote of Budde: "Do not commit the sin of empathy. This snake is God's enemy and yours too. She hates God and His people. You need to properly hate in response."

Latter-day Saint leaders have instructed members that obedience to God should come ahead of loving their neighbors.

In a Fox News interview Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance argued that Christianity teaches the faithful to love people in other countries only after prioritizing their own families, communities and countrymen.

We're on our own

What the everloving fuck???

I like to think Steve Bannon is telling them.  

Maybe I'm not so unhappy that Steve Bannon didn't get sidelined.

UPDATE 05:05 pm:  

Well, good!  It's the least you can do.

UPDATE 02/02/2025:

X is apparently the official White House press

Yes, Elon Musk is running the country. Very badly.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The finding out phase begins

And shame on military personnel who carry out these orders.

UPDATE 02/03/2025:

Takin' it to the streets

Kudos to Nick Gottlieb

This is what they should all be doing.

Jesus Christ.  Have mercy

Kudos also to The Drizz.

Alarming state of the world

The following excerpts are from a speech given last year to "a group of Turkish, European, and U.S. experts and policymakers at a meeting organized by the German Marshall Fund of the United States" by Dr. Paul T Levin from the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies.

My Swedish political science colleagues at the Varieties of Democracy project in Gothenburg collect data about the state of democracy in the world. And their latest (2023) report is a chilling read. The democratic advances over the last 35 years have now been entirely wiped out. 72% of the world’s population now lives in autocracies. If you count states not people, there are now more dictatorships than liberal democracies. [...] The most precipitous decline has happened over the past 10 years and it does not appear to be stopping. Right now, there are 14 countries that are democratizing according to their estimates. But there are 42 autocratizers, and that is a record.

[...]

[T]his is how democracies are often lost today: Sometimes through coups but often through elections of populist candidates who proceed to slowly dismantle independent institutions and checks on their powers.

Next year will see a record number of elections across the globe, and there are worrying signs in Europe and elsewhere.

[...]

What are the likely geopolitical consequences of a second term Trump presidency for Europe?

NATO is ultimately a defensive military alliance, not the boy scouts. But at the heart of what is to be defended are shared democratic values.

[...]

I know that there are some here who would scoff at the very notion of a so-called liberal international order, perhaps especially today, in light of what many see as Western complicity in the Israeli bombings in Gaza. Those are fair objections, but “less than perfect” in defense of democracy is very different from “fully autocratic.”

[...]

Trump obviously couldn’t care less about “shared democratic values”. If he can make better deals with fellow autocrats like Putin than with needy and judgmental European allies, he will do that.

It is no secret that he has long wanted to pull the US out of NATO entirely.

[...]

And it seems he has learned from the bureaucratic resistance he encountered during his first term. This time, he reportedly doesn’t want any “NATO lovers” in senior positions.

We should therefore be prepared for the possibility that he may actually attempt to pull the US out of NATO.

[...]

Even if he stops short of a complete withdrawal, Trump is quite likely to seriously undermine the alliance in various ways. Already during the first term, he undermined the credibility of article 5 by asserting that the US would not risk World War three to defend smaller NATO member states. Center for Renewing America—a think tank stacked with MAGA Republicans—has proposed what they call “burden shifting” to Europe. By this they mean a unilateral decision to rapidly pull US troops out of Europe, shifting the entire burden of defense of the continent to Europe itself.

[...]

Let me end with two sober conclusions: First, when it comes to NATO and a possible Trump victory, Europe needs to be ready. We may hope for the best, but we must prepare for the worst.

Second, we have to internalize that we have now left the post-Cold War era where we confidently promoted democracy across the globe. We must take the threat to democracy worldwide and at home seriously. I include my own country here: Sweden is far from immune to threats to its democracy, whether from abroad or within. And I worry that taking the threat seriously means focusing on defending democracy rather than spreading it.

This worries me because I do want democracy to spread. I certainly don’t want us to abandon democrats in places like Turkey. But for now, I would be grateful if we even managed to stem the spread of autocracy.

  Paul Levin

Can we heal America?

Willythepeople gave it a shot:

Everything this country strugged for in the past fifty years - for civil rights and decency, for a modicum of dignity - was wiped out overnight, and the Nazis are in control of the government.  Stephen Miller and Elon Musk are running - and by running, I mean destroying - the government while Trump grifts and whines and threatens anyone who refused to kiss the ring.

The Democrats were never a good opposition party, and now they're essentially powerless in federal affairs.  Congress has lain down at the feet of the Toddler Tyrant.  

Wiser minds than mine are admonishing Democrats to do whatever they can to throw sand in the gears to at least slow down the Nazification of the country.

"Even a court that moves as fast as humanly possible cannot keep pace with an administration that changes what it’s doing every time the sun goes down and Stephen Miller emerges from his crypt."  -- Elie Mystal

Evil and stupid and probably a stock photo.

HuffPost has got a lot of heavy lifting to do.

There are no words sufficient to respond.

Democrats have mounted a sluggish opposition mostly because their party machinery was built long before the Trump era. The people who’ve thrived in it made their way in a bygone world. Chuck Schumer’s wile is a good fit for the politics of the 1990s and the aughts. His savvy as an operator was once a matter of consensus in both parties.

Today, both he and his party are lost.

But it’s more than just that. They also seem flatfooted for the same reason many critics can’t quite articulate what they’d like to see instead: We’re overwhelmed by vandalism, by the clamor as spiteful people shatter the load-bearing infrastructure of a functioning society.

It’s day 12. The pace of destruction will slow. But there’s probably no way to dislodge Trump and even if his unlikely demise comes to pass, JD Vance is a craven fanatic who’s soft-boiled his brain in the pseudo-intellectual sludge of dictator apologetics. He’s not unhappy about any of this.

[...]

They are fucking around, and we will all find out; but by the time they find out, the fucking around will be over and, for a long time to come, irreversible.

[...]

So we have years of it ahead of us.

[...]

A worthy opposition will of course prevent whatever damage it can, but a sustainable one will have to reach a stage of acceptance, where anger (often impotent anger) gives way quickly to resolve. Loved ones are mortal, but entities can be rebuilt.

To my mind, the correct formula is one Democrats ought to have applied before Wednesday’s tragedy:

Warn ominously about the kinds of catastrophes we can expect when a degenerate like Trump fires capable servants and replaces them with compromised amateurs.

Mount a rapid public response when those consequences come to pass.

Promise, in open and defiant terms, to rebuild quickly once voters run these vandals out of office.

To coin a great man: If you strike us down, we shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. To coin a terrible and insincere one our revenge will be succeeding where you’ve failed.

[...]

[S]ustainable resistance can’t just challenge Trump or Republicans in Congress. It should also challenge anyone who goes out of their way to gain favor with Trump or prop him up. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos should be reminded daily that they’ve lashed themselves to someone almost certain to leave rubble in his wake. They should fear our long memories.

[...]

Public-facing influencers like Joe Rogan can’t be exempt just because they’re less methodical in their politics. They’ll owe their audiences atonement when the worst comes to pass. And they should never be allowed to outrun their poor judgment.

[...]

The threat is idle if Republicans can see, as is clear today, that Democrats lack the resolve to do anything ambitious or politically risky.

For this reason, I’d feel better with newer, younger, more voluble Democratic leadership. But I’d content myself if Schumer listened to these impatient governors and figured out how to operate as an effective opposition figure in the Trump era.

[...]

If democracy survives this president (as we should always insist it will) and Democrats reap the benefits of a backlash (which seems very likely) they must enter office in 2029 committed to dismantling the kleptocracy quickly.

[...]

Enacting procedural reforms and institution building must become non-negotiable party commitments, like abortion and health-care rights.

[...]

Yes, future Democrats will probably have to vote to give bureaucrats in Washington a significant raise. It will probably mean filibuster abolition and court reform. It will mean lightning-strike rebuilding on the scale of Trump’s lightning-strike destruction. These Democrats will be expected to support the whole endeavor, even if they fear it’ll cost them their jobs.

And it means those Democrats have to start demonstrating a commitment to saving the country today. There is a formula that can sustain the Trump opposition for four years, but it doesn’t work if the Democratic Party organizes itself around a commitment to swaddle its most gun-shy members.

  Off Message

I have no faith in the ones we have now. Primaries need to be fulsome and many next year. If we're lucky enough to get an election in 2026.

My fellow citizens, the rise of this blusterous man bewilders the educated among us, conjoins opposing politicians, agonizes our international allies, threatens minorities, spits on the disabled, and touches the hearts of those who just don't know any better.

Let us stop propounding how mad this all is, but instead, do something.  

Liselotte Hübner in 1929 about Adolf Hitler

There may be precious few uplifting or encouraging posts on YWA during this fall into the abyss, but when I find anything, I'll post it.

Link to sign up

WRITE AND CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES OFTEN.

And contribute whatever you can to people who are fighting.

And this is still (so far) Black History Month.

UPDATE 09:42 am:

Nor does this one.

UPDATE 10:30 am:

People inside and outside of government are confused about who is staffing—or even leading—agencies. Federal employees have been thrust into a state of paranoia about the status of their jobs. Even lawmakers say they are utterly in the dark, unable to reach contacts at federal agencies to get key information about which parts of the government are functioning and which aren’t.

“There’s no clarity about which federal funds are frozen and which are left untouched,” Rep. Ritchie Torres told The Bulwark in an interview. “I’m not aware of any member of Congress who has been—any Democratic member of Congress—who’s been kept in the loop about the scope of the executive order.”

  The Bulwark

And I'm not aware of any Democratic member of Congress who's been organizing any attempt to find out.

And it has thrown much of Washington, D.C. into chaos, as lawmakers, civil servants, state and local governments, nonprofits, companies, and even foreign governments scramble to figure out just how dramatically our governing institutions are being altered or altogether undone.

[...]

The first indication of [the coup] came in the opening days, when groups that rely on government grants suddenly discovered they could not access portals or contact officials who served as points of contact. Days later, the Office of Management and Budget issued a two-page memo saying that all federal grant funding would be frozen. That memo was subsequently rescinded. But the original executive order putting a pause on various areas of federal spending remains in place. So too has the freeze on external communications.

One official with the group Meals on Wheels, which works to alleviate hunger among seniors, said they were “not hearing anything from our typical contacts within” the Department of Health and Human Services. Asked where they were turning to for guidance, the official replied: “Just the news and the leaked memos.” Another official, who works with the Social Security Administration in an office outside the capital, said their field official “has no idea what is going on” and has received no direct guidance about return-to-work policies despite the White House insistence that every employee head back to the office. A top congressional aide said offices on Capitol Hill were trying to decipher tweets from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as if they were Indus script.

[...]

“You don’t trust anyone at work right now. I don’t trust any coworkers and coworkers don’t trust each other. People are deleting files,” said one federal employee. “They are very secretive. It literally feels like they’re finding their allies internally with the career folks and using them to make this new police internally. It’s scary. It’s psychologically torture.”

No worries. Jesus didn't have electricity either.