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The Worst People In The World

Turning the White House into a chop shop

Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink this morning announces:

Musk’s hostile takeover

It’s hard to know just how destructive this will be in the long run, but for now, this is arguably the most troubling development in a day of extremely troubling developments. Elon Musk appears to be trying to do to the federal government what he did at Twitter/X: massively disrupt its functioning and drive out experienced employees not on board with his transformations and his personality cult. [Tusk]

Musk bought his way into the White House complex and now means to, as they say, “have his way” with the federal government.

If you haven’t heard, Musk locked Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) civil servants “out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees” (Reuters):

The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department’s data systems.

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”

A nongovernmental employee and his team are taking over federal government systems.When things start breaking, you know why.

Bradley P. Moss (@bradmossesq.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T20:23:44.322Z

As Digby noted, some of Musk’s aides are barely out of high school. Here’s where we are:

OPM has sent out memos that eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a “dream destination.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove has ordered a massive purge of FBI agents beginning with “at least eight senior FBI executives” and extending it seemingly to anyone and everyone associated with investigations into Trump’s “very special” Jan. 6 insurrectionists and with Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s election plot and stolen classified documents:

“I do not believe the current leadership of the Justice Department can trust these FBI employees to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully,” Bove wrote.

Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll wrote in an email that his orders include reviewing “thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts.”

As news of possible firings spread Friday, bureau employees traded information and some sought legal advice.

One person who works at the FBI’s Washington Field Office relayed to a colleague that supervisors had told agents to prepare for the White House to publicly release the names of the agents who worked on the two Trump criminal cases on Monday, and that those agents would to be terminated that same day.

NYT: A photograph provided to The New York Times shows a glimpse of some of the changes underway at the F.B.I., specifically the F.B.I. Academy at Quantico on Wednesday.

Rachel Maddow noted that the public release of the names of FBI employees who would no longer be agents as of Monday was a signal to MAGA minions and just-released Jan. 6 criminals to “have at ’em.” And since the Jan. 6 investigation was the largest in bureau history, virtually all agents touched it in some way. They too have targets on their backs (NBC News):

In a separate memo to the FBI workforce sent out Friday night, the bureau’s acting director, Brian J. Driscoll, Jr., informed employees that acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, had asked for a list of all FBI employees who worked on January 6 cases for “a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

“We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” Driscoll wrote. “I am one of those employees.”

It was not immediately clear why the FBI and DOJ officials had been ousted. The FBI and DOJ declined to comment.

Trump is not only taking retribution against anyone who particpated in investigating his past crimes, but defenestrating federal law enforcement so that no investigations of his current and future criminal activities are even possible. The Roberts court has already preemptively shielded him from that.

Trump now gets to do the one thing many Americans know him for more than anything else: say “You’re fired!” “It’s our dream to have everybody almost working in the private sector,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

That’s been the Midas cult dream for decades. Any product or service provided by We the People on a not-for-profit basis is a crime against capitalism that has to be stopped. Middle men must take their percentage. Or else.

Here he is complaining about people in government working remotely not doing their jobs:

“You don’t know what they’re doing. And then at some point, we may ask them to certify that they didn’t have two jobs. Meaning, were they really getting a check from us, the government, and then were they also working a second job and a third job on government time?”

So says a government employee actively lining his pockets with money from “individuals, companies and foreign governments that want to curry favor with the president.”

Trump and the techbro oligarchy are here, active, and bent on turning the White House into a chop shop.

Friends have asked what people this rich want with the government.

Answer: They want it all.

Cartoonist First Dog on the Moon asks if China’s hyped Deepseek AI might save us “from the smug tech broligarchy.”

Answer: “Only a mass global insurrection against the dictatorship of capital will do that – in fact DeepSeek make it cheaper and easier to put AI in everything, but at least we got to laugh at some of the worst people in the world briefly.”

Donny Trump, Boy Genius

Solved another problem quickly and easily

Donald Trump is the smartest little boy in the room anywhere he goes. He knows everything about everything. He has a very big brain and great genes, the best genes. He’ll gladly tell you.

He’s also the Seven Deadly Sins on two legs. He’s susceptible to acting on information from the last person he spoke with, and prone to hearing a factoid and building a fantastical narrative around it that he himself believes. Like his riffs about sweeping the forests to prevent wildfires. Or his bit about the big shutoff valve somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. See, fire hydrants ran dry fighting the Pacific Palisades fire because some government idiots up there were dumping perfectly good water into the ocean.

In fact, some Los Angeles hydrants went dry during the January fires because of extreme short-term demand, not because of lack of supply. The state’s “reservoirs are at or near historic levels,” Politico reports. But don’t confuse Trump with facts.

The boy genius now giving orders in the White House directed federal dams in California on Thursday to dump water stored for irrigation so he could have his photo op.

A news site covering water supplies in the San Joaquin Valley reports that “in response to President Trump’s Jan. 24 executive order mandating that federal officials exert all efforts to get more water to fight southern California wildfires,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Kaweah and Success lakes began discharging water from the dams.

“Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!” tweeted the boy genius. “I only wish they listened to me six years ago – There would have been no fire!”

Mad King Donald

One teensy little problem, Donny. The water can’t get to Los Angeles from the lakes southeast of Fresno, and local water managers in the valley are trying to capture the additional flows in recharge basins anyway (SJV Water, Jan. 31):

Tulare County water managers were perplexed and frustrated, noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.

First, it would have to be pumped at great expense across the San Joaquin Valley to get to the California Aqueduct and then travel hundreds of miles south. 

Second, this isn’t “loose” water free for the taking.

“Every drop belongs to someone,” said Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”

Not to mention that Trump’s actions sent locals scrambling to relocate equipment and warn farmers about possible flooding: , (SJV Water, Jan. 30):

Water managers said they got about an hour’s warning from the Army Corp’s Sacramento office to expect the Tule and Kaweah rivers to be at “channel capacity” by Thursday night. 

Channel capacity means the maximum amount of water a river can handle. For the Kaweah, that’s 5,500 cubic feet per second and for the Tule, it’s 3,500 cfs.

Those levels were last seen, and surpassed, during the 2023 floods, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses and caused significant damage to infrastructure.

This should be 25th amendment level conduct. The president ordered water to be released from a random dam in California nowhere near the wildfires and then claimed it would help. That’s literally Mad King behavior.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2025-02-01T01:58:17.705Z

People who actually do know something about water management in the region were not as happy as Trump boasted about his order (SJV Water, Jan. 31):

“A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent,” said Dan Vink, a longtime Tulare County water manager and principal partner at Six-33 Solutions, a water and natural resource firm in Visalia.

“This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions.”

That person is Donald Trump, boy genius.

Responding to Trump’s Oval Office comments on Friday afternoon and not to this water nuttiness, Aaron Rupar commented:

i covered the entirety of Trump's first term and things are getting much darker much quicker than they did last time around.

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-31T22:18:58.580Z

I just want to say for the record that when the history books are written centuries from now, I believe the election of Donald Trump in a free and fair election in 2024 will go down as one of the most senseless and self-destructive own goals in human history

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-01-31T22:37:01.994Z

Now. What are we going to do about it?

Friday Night Soother

This past Sunday, January 26th, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and brought three orphaned mountain lion cubs to Oakland Zoo for rehabilitation and care. These rescues mark the 30th mountain lion rescue for the Zoo, with close collaboration with CDFW. Oakland Zoo’s advanced Veterinary Hospital has enabled the Zoo to assist in numerous mountain lion rescue cases for those who were sick, injured, burned, or orphaned. The three mountain lion cubs, now named Fern (female), Thistle (male), and Spruce (male), are currently recovering at the Zoo’s Veterinary Hospital

Mountain lions in California face many threats, including car strikes and wildfires. These factors contribute to human-wildlife conflict, increasing encounters as mountain lions encroach on urban areas and developments.

As human development has significantly enhanced the wellbeing of our communities, it has simultaneously taken a toll on wildlife and their natural habitats. As we continue to thrive as a species, it is essential for coexistence that we also take action to ensure the survival of others. Now more than ever, we must continually advocate for establishing wildlife corridors, such as the recent overpass in Los Angeles, to maintain the biodiversity of our Golden State,” says Nik Dehejia, CEO of Oakland Zoo.

What happened to their mother?

California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) believes the mother of these three cubs was the same female lion hit by a car on Portola Valley Road about 0.3 miles from where Fern, Thistle, and Spruce were found. While there were many witnesses of the mountain lion after it was hit, the carcass has since disappeared and is still being investigated. As such, CDFW can’t confirm a relationship between the kittens and female lions using DNA.

How long did the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) monitor them, and why did they bring them to Oakland Zoo?

Recently, Portola Valley residents spotted the kittens wandering in the neighborhood, and they were later found hiding under a car. CDFW monitored for any signs of the kittens’ mother over the past two weeks, using trail cameras and reports from local security cameras with the help of the Midpeninsula Open Space District. There have been no confirmed sightings of an adult female searching or calling for her cubs. Due to their disoriented behavior, lack of a mother for two weeks, and proximity to where the female was hit, CDFW decided to capture the kittens for evaluation with help from the Midpeninsula Open Space District.  

In what condition did they arrive at Oakland Zoo? How old are they?

Oakland Zoo’s Veterinary Hospital staff conducted a thorough health examination on the Fern, thistle, and Spruce, including treatments and bloodwork. The three cubs arrived at the Zoo relatively healthy but thin after being without a mother and adult care for about two weeks. After examination, Oakland Zoo veterinarians determined that they were around three months old.

Why can’t the cubs be released to the wild?

In the wild, mountain lion cubs need about two years with their mother in the wild to learn survival skills. Because Fern, Thistle, and Spruce are so young, they lack those skills and cannot return to the wild.

Will the cubs remain at Oakland Zoo?

Unfortunately, Fern, Spruce, and Thistle will not remain at the Zoo. Oakland Zoo will work with CDFW to find these cubs a new forever home at an appropriate institution.

In what condition did they arrive at Oakland Zoo? How old are they?

Oakland Zoo’s Veterinary Hospital staff conducted a thorough health examination on the Fern, thistle, and Spruce, including treatments and bloodwork. The three cubs arrived at the Zoo relatively healthy but thin after being without a mother and adult care for about two weeks. After examination, Oakland Zoo veterinarians determined that they were around three months old.

Why can’t the cubs be released to the wild?

In the wild, mountain lion cubs need about two years with their mother in the wild to learn survival skills. Because Fern, Thistle, and Spruce are so young, they lack those skills and cannot return to the wild.

Will the cubs remain at Oakland Zoo?

Unfortunately, Fern, Spruce, and Thistle will not remain at the Zoo. Oakland Zoo will work with CDFW to find these cubs a new forever home at an appropriate institution.

About The Faucet

This is probably what Trump was babbling about the other night when he said he’s sent in the military to “turn on the valve” to bring water to southern California. Good Lord:

Water managers were relieved Thursday evening after the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to back off of a sudden decision earlier in the day to dump massive amounts of water from Kaweah and Success lakes.

Water managers said they got about an hour’s warning from the Army Corp’s Sacramento office to expect the Tule and Kaweah rivers to be at “channel capacity” by Thursday night. Channel capacity means the maximum amount of water a river can handle. For the Kaweah, that’s 5,500 cubic feet per second and for the Tule, it’s 3,500 cfs.

Those levels were last seen, and surpassed, during the 2023 floods, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses and caused significant damage to infrastructure.“We were able to get them to back off that,” said Eric Limas, General Manager of the Lower Tule River and Pixley irrigation districts, of the Army Corps. “They’ll still be releasing water sometime tonight, but it will be a smaller amount, which will increase tomorrow.”

Limas and Tulare Irrigation District General Manager Aaron Fukuda were unsure how high releases would ultimately go and for how long but Kaweah has about 27,000 acre feet and Success about 5,000 acre fee that are above levels allowed by the Army Corps during winter.

Water managers will continue working with the Army Corps to limit the amount of water released from the lakes, Fukuda said. “We’re still trying to wrap our minds around the numbers that made this happen,” Fukuda said. “We haven’t received much information from the Army Corps, just very vague answers.”

Rick Brown, chief public affairs officer for the Sacramento office of the Army Corps, would only say that levels in both lakes were “currently in the flood control space.” He directed further questions to the Army Corps’ headquarters, which did not return an email Thursday asking: Who made the decision to release the water? Why? Why so suddenly? And why weren’t safety personnel notified?

Some people interviewed for this story speculated that the move was political on the part of the new administration, a kind of water “flex,” but declined to elaborate.

[…]

“Normally, these kinds of flood releases are done with a lot of notification and coordination,” Fukuda said. “I’ve been doing this 18 years and have never seen something like this.”

It’s just a national dumpster fire.

I need a drink.

Update —

Trump’s response:

I need another drink. Make it a double.

Who Voted For Elon Musk?

Nobody did. But he’s is our new overlord anyway

This is incredibly concerning:

The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.

A spokeswoman for DOGE declined to comment. Lebryk could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

When Scott Bessent was confirmed as treasury secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be the acting agency head.

Apparently, these payment systems are very closely held by the Bureau of Fiscal Service which controls more than $6 trillion to households and businesses in America. These are the systems that distribute Social Security and Medicare, salaries, payments and tax refunds. That system works very, very efficiently.

Why in the world Musk’s flunkies need to have access to this is the question. They don’t have any kind of security clearances. Some of his people are just out of high school!

It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts…

Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations.

“This is a mechanical job — they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It’s not one where there’s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they’re due,” Mazur said. “It’s never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda. … You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case.”

I would guess that they will say they want “modernize” the payment system and in the process will likely screw it up beyond belief. But having watched Musk’s lunacy on Twitter, I have little doubt that there is also a nefarious purpose to this. He wants to be in control of the payment system because he wants to control the payments,

Go ahead boys, fuck up the Social Security system. See how that goes.

This reminds me of something we went through early in the new century:

LAST month, the Snohomish County Public Utility District, outside Seattle, released audiotapes of Enron energy traders discussing ”stealing” from California, sticking it to ”Grandma Millie” and other ways of manipulating the energy market.

The tapes, recorded in 2000, surfaced because Enron, now in bankruptcy court, pressed a claim for $122 million against Snohomish, which the company contends improperly canceled a power contract in 2001. An Enron spokeswoman says that while the conversations are ”disturbing and offensive,” the contract fee is still valid.

Snohomish officials disagree, and its lawyers are using the tapes, originally subpoenaed by the Justice Department, to help them fight Enron’s claim. Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, estimates that if the $122 million fee stands, it will cost the average household served by Snohomish $420 in higher bills.

Excerpts from the transcripts follow.

Two Enron employees, Greg and Shari, prepare for a phone call that is part of negotiations with Snohomish about the proposed energy contract.

Greg: Um, called lies, it’s all how well you can weave these lies together, Shari. All right, so um — —

Shari: I feel like I’m being corrupted now.

Greg: No, this is marketing.

Shari: O.K.

Greg: It’s not as bad as trading.

Shari: Yeah, it’s true. Oh yeah, you’re right. O.K., cool, I’ll — I’ll do it.

In the now infamous Grandma Millie exchange, recorded on Nov. 30, 2000, two traders, identified as Kevin and Bob, discuss demands by California officials that electricity-generating companies and traders pay refunds for price-gouging. They also refer to the disputed presidential election, which was as yet undecided.

Kevin: So the rumor’s true? They’re [expletive] takin’ all the money back from you guys? All those money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?

Bob: Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she’s the one who couldn’t figure out how to [expletive] vote on the butterfly ballot.

Kevin: Yeah, now she wants her [expletive] money back for all the power you’ve charged for [expletive] $250 a megawatt hour.

Bob: You know — you know — you know, Grandma Millie, she’s the one that Al Gore’s fightin’ for, you know?

Later in the same conversation, Kevin and Bob express little sympathy for Californians.

Kevin: Oh, best thing that could happen is [expletive] an earthquake, let that thing float out to the Pacific and put ’em [expletive] candles.

There’s more of those pricks at the link, in case you’ve forgotten how gross they really were. I feel pretty confident that the Musk cyberpunks are even worse.

Update —

This might be the reasoning:

Didn't Musk do this when he bought Twitter? He ordered Twitter's accounting to stop paying bills. He just figured that if people wanted to sue him to get their money they could try, but whatevs.

Jonathan V. Last (@jvl.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T18:11:24.587Z

Update II —

The hits just keep on coming:

Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.

The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department’s data systems.

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.” 

Oh, I’m sure there’s no risk there. Musk’s little high school student sycophants are great patriots. We know that.

The Freeze Effect

This Bluesky thread was written by former Obama and Biden administrator, Zealan Hoover:

I ran $100 billion in Infrastructure and IRA programs at EPA. We obligated over $70 billion onto signed awards and contracts to protect public health and the environment. All that funding is currently frozen. Here are the facts…

On January 20, Trump signed Executive Order 14154 (“Unleashing American Energy”) that directed agencies to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Law (IIJA/BIL). NOTE: EOs do not give agencies special power to break the law.

Not paying grantees with signed grant agreements is illegal. While there are certain activities EPA has discretion to pause, such as designing new competitions and making new awards, once a grant award is signed with a grantee the government is legally obligated to pay them.

This obligation to pay is clearly enshrined in 2 CFR § 200.305. Law states, “The recipient…MUST be paid in advance” unless on reimbursement in which case the agency still “MUST make payment within 30 calendar days after receipt of the payment request.” www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/2/2…

On Jan. 27, OMB issued M-25-13. This memo directed agencies to “pause” all activities related to “assistance for…DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal” by 5pm on Tuesday. EPA’s CFO then issued an internal memo immediately freezing all BIL & IRA funds.

On Jan. 28, several lawsuits were filed to stop the funding freeze from taking effect. U.S. District Judge AliKhan issued such an order, which led to widespread reporting that the freeze was over. This was NOT TRUE – funds were still frozen across the government.

The judge’s order stayed implementation of the OMB memo but not the Executive Order itself. OMB withdrew the memo but EPA and other agencies continued to block all funds by pointing to the authority of the EO. The WH Press Secretary made clear that the freeze was still in effect.

In response, newyorkstateag.bsky.social led 22 states in suing Donald Trump and the federal agencies to reinstate the legal flow of funds. As of Friday afternoon, I expect the judge to issue such an order compelling EPA and others to turn funding back on.

The illegal funding freeze still in effect is an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars. Across the country, projects are pausing construction and laying off staff. This will slow work to replace lead pipes, install clean energy, recover from storms, and clean up contaminated land.

Up to $50 billion in EPA funds are currently frozen across programs including: +Brownfields +Clean School Bus +Clean Water and Drinking Water SRFs +Climate Pollution Reduction Grants +EJ Community Change +Solar4All +Superfund

There are real ramifications for what they are doing for real people. I think many of these are actual “kitchen table issues” and I think we need to see Democrats fanning out all over the country to tell this story. People aren’t paying attention because they are depressed about the election or they just think politics is a bunch of white noise. And they will probably continue to for some time. But taking a page from Trump’s Attention Book, you just keep repeating it over and over again over time and people will finally absorb what you’re saying.

And in this case it has the benefit of being true.

Straight Up Bribery

Truly Trump is an innovator. Bribery is legal when you turn it into a mutually agreed upon contract that is the result of a settlement of a civil lawsuit. And the NDA keeping people from talking is legal too!

Jonathan V. Last (@jvl.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T02:50:33.732Z

They’re not even trying to hide it:

When Donald J. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet.

Now Mr. Trump is back in the White House, and many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.

I will not be surprised to hear of corporate executives down at Mar-a-Lago whispering that if Trump were to sue them over… whatever … they would have to talk to their board about “settling it”, if you know what I mean.

They Aren’t Competent

But they can still do a lot of damage

The Trump “Rolling Thunder” operation, as former presidential adviser Steve Bannon calls it, hasbeen in full effect in the week and a half since Donald Trump was restored to the presidency. Day after day, one atrocity after another has been perpetrated on the American people as Trump and his henchmen take a wrecking ball to the federal government. Do they know what they’re doing or are they just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks?

Over the course of these 10 tumultuous days Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of all the January 6th rioters and his Justice Department has closed any pending cases. Various agencies have fired and demoted personnel, some of which can only be seen as acts of retribution such as the firing of career prosecutors who worked on the Jack Smith Special Counsel cases and the dismissal of almost all the Inspectors General.

Much of what he’s done so far has focused on rescinding civil rights policies and imposing new discriminatory ones even rescinding an executive order that goes back to the mid-60s signed by Lyndon Johnson mandating non-discrimination by government contractors. His big donors no doubt applauded his chutzpah is just outright declaring that there is no longer any need to ever hire another woman or racial or ethnic minority. Money well spent.

And then there is his draconian immigration agenda, which is off to a fast start. He started by declaring that the government would no longer recognize birthright citizenship despite its being in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. That one has been stayed by a federal court and will wind up in the Supreme Court where Trump says he expects to win.

But that was just for starters. He declared a National Emergency at the border, re-assigned all federal law enforcement as Immigration officers and Wednesday announced that they will build his first migrant concentration camp at Guantanamo. It will be big enough to hold at least 30,000 prisoners indefinitely.

He’s reversing every climate change policy of the past decade and is turning America’s health system into a giant dumpster fire. And yes, in a paroxysm of pettiness he renamed Mt. Denali, Mt McKinley and the Gulf Of Mexico the Gulf of America and had the official Pentagon pictures of generals and others he hates removed. (Don’t be surprised to see Biden, Clinton and Obama’s removed too.)

Then there is the impending trade war with Mexico and Canada which he plans to announce on Feb. 1st and his declaration that Gaza should be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians. (He’s said in the past, licking his chops, that it has some very nice beachfront real estate.) Yesterday, he blamed “DEI” for the tragic plane crash in DC on Wednesday night and when asked for evidence calling his depraved racism “common sense.” 

When you see just a few of the items laid out like that it truly does seem like an unstoppable juggernaut. But a couple of things happened this week that changed the zeitgeist.

Until the last couple of days, the opposition has seemed to be paralyzed, trying to get its bearings under the onslaught. (There’s not really any excuse for that since all of this was telegraphed for months by Project 2025 and Trump’s own rhetoric but it is what it is.) When the Office of Management and Budget put out a memo on Monday night ordering a “temporary pause” on all federal-government grants and loans, people woke up.

The memo was an embarrassment, going on about Marxism and transgenderism and the non-existent Green New Deal but that’s to be expected — all the memos and orders from the new administration sound like they were written by right wing social media troll-bots. What was shocking about it was that it actually caused a firestorm that Republicans couldn’t ignore.

The next day websites went down and people all over the country were calling their Reps demanding to know what was up. Senators reportedly “hit the ceiling.” And rather than just telling everyone to shut their traps and deal with it as they’ve been saying for months to anyone who questions their odious policies, the White House backed off.

According to the Atlantic’s Ashley Parker, they claim the memo wasn’t vetted by Trump’s deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller as it should have been and went out without his ok. (If that isn’t a CYA, I don’t know what is. )

The order ended up in court with a judge issuing a stay prompting them to “rescind” it. Press Secretary Karolyn Leavitt then went out and made it clear they really didn’t mean it:

That understandably did not impress the judge who issued a restraining order saying that Leavitt’s comments about the memo vs the order were “a distinction without a difference.”

It was a blunder and a big one considering how important this “impoundment” gambit is to the Project 2025 architects that are running the program to destroy the federal workforce. These were said to be the meticulous planners who knew what they were doing and it ended up waking up the press and the opposition and even alarming some Republicans. And if Stephen Miller is running away from it you can bet that there’s friction between them and the White House already.

The other big blunder came from co-president Elon Musk who apparently unilaterally copied and pasted the “buyout” memo he sent to Twitter employees and sent it to the entire 2.3 million federal workforce offering them a bogus “inducement to resign” that was so vague it could mean almost anything, causing yet another wake-up call/firestorm.

According to the Washington Post, Musk has taken over the Office of Personnel Management, the independent agency that runs the human resources department for the federal government and staffed it with a bunch of Silicon Valley cronies with a mandate to start gutting the federal government immediately. If that process goes as well as it did when he bought Twitter and purged the company of most of its employees, the American people are not going to be amused. It wasn’t good. Seeing as many of the people he promised severance pay never got it and are suing him, Democrats like Virginia Senator Tim Kaine are right to be urging their federal employee constituents not to accept his “offer.”

It’s one thing if Musk is actually running the government while Trump is just holding press conferences and ceremonially signing orders but it’s another if he’s screwing up as he clearly did with this buyout email. It’s possible that he got a Trump thumbs up on his way out to play another round of golf one afternoon but according to the Post none of the senior officials in the White House or the career staff at the OPM knew about it.

Trump has empowered people like Musk and Vought (even though he’s still working on the outside not having been confirmed yet) and they are running their own shows. I don’t think he cares much what they do but he’s got to remember that it all blows back on him when they screw up. And they are screwing up bigly.

Whether that means he’s ready to cut anyone loose remains to be seen. But it’s certainly proved one thing. We were told that this was a different caliber of people than the first term and they would come in knowing exactly how to efficiently work all the levers of power to enact the MAGA agenda. Well, it turns out that they are just as incompetent as the man they work for. They can still do a ton of damage just by throwing all this stuff against the wall. But a well-oiled, systematic, authoritarian machine they aren’t. I’m not sure that’s any better but it’s good to know what we’re dealing with.

Salon

Fight, Fight, Fight

Two can play at that

Ironic that they came in red and blue?

As Digby reported yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of several Beltway Democrats past their expiration dates, is catching shit from a half dozen Democratic governors. They are mad as hell at Donald Trump’s newest reality show, the Project 2025 Demolition Derby, and they’re not going to take it anymore. They insist somnolent Democrats on Capitol Hill — how did Trump put it? — fight, fight, fight.

Paul Krugman concurs in his newsletter, offering similar political advice he normally eschews:

Today, however, I’m going to make an exception, and offer three words of advice to Democratic politicians and MAGA opponents in general: oppose, oppose, oppose. And make noise. A lot of noise. Don’t make conciliatory gestures in the belief that Trump has a mandate to do what he’s doing; don’t stay quiet on the outrages being committed every day while waiting for grocery prices to rise. I can’t promise that taking a tough line will succeed, but going easy on Trump is guaranteed to fail.

Trump and his MAGA minions deserve no quarter and certainly no deference. Republicans gave Obama and Biden none and Democrats should respond in kind.

Democrats’ first mistake is assuming that he won because his “issues” held salience for voters who somehow missed his being morally and intellectually bankrupt while being sanewashed by the press. Other pundits Krugman’s read, as I have, seem to be drinking their own Kool-aid. If only Democrats had paid more attention to this (pundit’s pet) issue and less to that one, etc. Oh, the price of eggs!

But Democrats can’t just sit around waiting for Trump’s promises to fail. They need to constantly challenge him on the issue, keep reminding voters that he lied about it all through the campaign, and hang rising prices around his neck every step of the way.

Nor, as I see it, should they narrowly focus on kitchen-table issues. One reason low-information voters may have believed Trump’s nonsense claims about being able to reduce prices is that some of them really thought he was the brilliant manager he played on TV. The reality, however, is that the Trump administration has made a complete shambles of its first 10 days, especially with their it’s on, no it isn’t, yes it is spending freeze that is both destructive and clearly illegal, and has itself been frozen by the courts. It would be political malpractice for Democrats not to make an issue of Trump’s raging incompetence.

The Attention Age

What’s it going to take, Democrats? A high school cheerleading squad to chant it in front of the U.S. Capitol? Actually, the spectacle will get them more press than another caucus presser. Sure, they’ll be condemned by the right. But as Chris Hayes points out in “The Sirens’ Call,” Donald Trump dominates the messaging battlespace because in his mind any kind of attention is good attention, even the worst kind. This is something Democrats don’t get.

Hayes told Anand Giridharadas, “Democrats have been conflict-averse and conflict draws attention, and have also not understood how important it is to get attention, even if you run the downside risk.”

That’s not exactly Krugman’s message, but it rhymes:

So Democrats and MAGA opponents shouldn’t hold their tongues and try to make nice with Trump in the belief that he represents the will of the people. Americans are just starting to find out that they guy they elected and his policies aren’t at all what they thought they were voting for. And we should do everything we can to accelerate their awful journey of discovery.

One Democrat who gets it is AOC, as Digby pointed out. Hayes does as well:

And the one person who gets it is someone who figures prominently in your last book, who you profile, is AOC, who is the best at this of Democrats. Whatever you think about her, whether you agree or disagree with her politics, as an attention age politician, she is by far the most gifted.

The Schumers are living in the past and past their primes. Their seniority is a liability in the attention age.

UPDATE: Go on narrative offense.