Author: Tom Sullivan

Nihilists on a mission

Yes, their plans are a bizarre geek wet dream. And yes, these gullible “geniuses” are high on their own supply. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an overarching plan flying below the chaos. Or perhaps competing plans.

That jerk-off dance Donald Trump does regularly is actually a fair representation of the forces behind the scenes yanking his strings. Amidst the chaos he’s created in just his first month back in office, it’s now clear just which faction of reactionaries has the figurative upper hand.

FDR’s populism built the middle class that competed with the rich for class and economic domination. Yes, the New Deal helped make the U.S. the predominant world power in the 20th century, and yes, the rich got richer. (Much richer after the Reagan revolution.) But God, man, those uppity poors in the 1960s actually wanted to share power!

Remnants of the conservative old guard, the Koch-style plutocrats behind the Powell memo and the think tanks they built in the 1970s, have longed for decades to tear down New Deal programs. (Even better, privatize them.) Movement conservatism meant to put an end to government that served people besides America’s Most Wealthy. But without killing the golden goose, naturally.

What they didn’t see coming were the techno-state monarchists who wanted to burn down all of it and opt out of society.

Liza Featherstone writes at The New Republic that the burn-it-down boys are not wreaking chaos among popular government programs simply out of hubris:

Most likely, their popularity is precisely what the Trump-Musk administration dislikes about them. For anti-government ideologues, it’s important that people not have good experiences with the government. Every clean energy investment in your community, every Social Security check, every child enrolled in Head Start, every improvement in air and water quality, is a threat to right-wing ideological dominance. They know it, and they want to stop Americans from having those positive associations.

Even Republicans who voted against the Inflation Reduction Act rushed to take credit for its investments in red-state communities. Shutting it down and laying off government employees who form the base of economies in many places over alleged “performance” is not only illegal but guaranteed to be highly unpopular. Which for the DOGEes is just the point.

The ruling class of the 1930s and ’40s would have loved to be in Elon Musk’s position. Although he and his young minions may seem merely like nihilistic psychos, they’re also conservatives doing something that makes rational sense for their political movement. By going after the most popular government programs, they are thinking long-term, planning for a world where no one defends government agencies because these agencies don’t do anything that we value. Elon Musk isn’t just trying to bypass all checks and balances, ignore popular will, plunder our public goods, and wreck the world, though he is doing all that. As we protest this vandalism, we need to remember that he aims to build a future in which we have nothing left to defend.  

That is perhaps a tad more disruption than classic conservatives can tolerate. The autocrats also jerking Trump’s strings may wish to see democracy crushed. But paired with capitalism, democracy produces consumers, and consumers produce demand, and demand generates wealth for the plutocrats. And plutocrats pay off autocrats and dictators.

In the tug-of-war among the tech barons, conservative fat cats, American-style fascists, and global autocrats vying for control of the Oval Office, Elon Musk and his delusional DOGEes seem to have the upper hand just now.

As Dave Karpf summarizes in the piece Digby cited yesterday:

The tech barons think they should be allowed to opt out society. They do not know what the administrative state does. They do not care to find out. And they figure we could save a whole lot of money if we just turn the whole thing off.

“Efficiency” is a DOGE smokescreen that plays well in focus groups not told it means they’ll lose their incomes and safety net. By the time they figure it out, the damage is done.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) of Maryland lays out the game in a recent interview with Brian Tyler Cohen that Gil Duran transcribes:

We’re dealing with a band of incorrigible, lawless plutocrats who think that they can just control the whole US government. And I keep thinking about what Steve Bannon said about Elon Musk. He said he’s a truly evil individual … But, you know, in the Silicon Valley that network of right-wing billionaire libertarian-turned-authoritarians, they are very open about the fact that they think that democracy is obsolete and we’re living in a post-Constitutional America, the Constitution no longer fits, and they are trying to get everybody ready for a techno-state monarchy.

And in their writings about it they suggest that seizure of the control of technology and computers and financial payments is the essence to moving from one form of government to another. So we’re really talking about people who would like to abolish American constitutional institutions and representative democracy, and the rights and freedoms of the people. Their guy Yarvin, who’s, you know, their big intellectual hero, has said people have got to overcome their fear of the word dictator. He says a dictator is basically just like a corporate CEO. They’re all “dictators” in their businesses and so we need a dictator [for] the corporation that’s the United States of America and obviously they have Elon Musk in mind…

Here’s news on just one of the plans Musk-as-dictator has in mind:

Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink were fired over the weekend as part of a broader purge of the federal workforce, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

The cuts included about 20 people in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink, according to the two sources, who asked not to be identified because of fear of professional repercussions. That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices, the sources said.

Both sources said they did not believe the employees were specifically targeted because of their work on Neuralink’s applications.

Neuralink had its application for human trials denied several years ago after his company “founded in 2016, didn’t seek permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until early 2022 – and the agency rejected the application, seven current and former employees told Reuters.”

The Guardian addressed Neuralink in a story last week, headlined, Elon Musk put a chip in this paralysed man’s brain. Now he can move things with his mind. Should we be amazed – or terrified?

The looney thing is that Musk’s efforts are foreshadowed in a 1960s satire, The President’s Analyst (1967). Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn) is pursued across the country by alphabet-agency spies from across the planet eager to know what he knows of the president’s mind. Schaefer eventually is captured by the shadowy TPC. They want his help in legislating that everyone have microchips implanted in their brains prenatally. The joke in 1967 was that TPC is The Phone Company. Their goal is efficiency too, to save billions by scrapping all their costly hardware, maintenance, and workforce.

“Can you imagine the ease, the fun, with which you can place a call?” asks Arlington Hewes (Pat Harrington Jr.), the genial president of TPC.

“You’re a megalomaniac,” Schaefer tells Hewes.

We find out later that Hewes is also a Disneyesque animatron. Musk is just the former for now.

Americans are alarmed at the idea of Musk being inside their private data. He wants to be inside their heads as well.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

Using democracy to kill democracy

The only thing American about supporters of Donald Trump’s rolling coup is their birth certificates. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel (and others) excluded, of course. *

Resistance isn’t futile, The Ink reminds readers this morning. Trump 2.0’s revival last week of NIxon’s Saturday Night Massacre, and its rejection of the rule of law nowadays is “just what happens on a Thursday.”

The Ink begins:

JD Vance claimed last week that mere judges had no place restraining the president’s “legitimate power.” Bad enough. But over the weekend, his boss went further. A lot further.

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie called it “the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.” And it’s hard to think of one that outdoes it.

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) 2025-02-15T18:39:18.711Z

But the refusal of acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle R. Sassoon, last week to carry out AG Pam Bondi’s demand to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams demonstrated that the rule of law is not dead yet. Other DOJ prosecutors from the public integrity who survived Bondi’s escape room last week may yet receive their pink slips or resign unless they can find ways to defend the ramparts from the Project 2025 barbarians.

Six more U.S. attorneys would quit in turn, each refusing to carry out the order. Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, who resigned after Sassoon and attorneys Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, filed a downright heroic letter to Bove that will surely find its way into the history books (assuming such things are still legal) as a testament to the lawlessness of this age, and — hopefully — to the beginnings of real opposition to that lawlessness.

[…]

Sassoon, Scotten, and the other U.S. attorneys in the Adams case have given everyone in America an example of how to respond. They’ve decided that the Trump administration’s actions — undeniably the acts of an aspiring king looking to rule by decree rather than a government representing the will of the people — are so intolerable they cannot be endorsed. Will Congress take that to heart? It’s hard to say. But ultimately, it falls to the rest of us.

But there is more afoot than some U.S.-based tech plutocrats in thrall to Curtis Yarvin’s monarchist fantasies. Darker ideologies underlie them. At the Munich security conference, J.D. Vance promoted tolerance for far-right hate groups like Alternative for Germany (AfD) under the rubric of free speech. Vance later met with AfD president, Alice Weidel, reportedly to discuss “the war in Ukraine, German domestic politics and the so-called brandmauer, or ‘firewall against the right’, that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions in Germany.” The group’s leaders, the Anti-Defamation League claims, are associated with “Nazi slogans, Holocaust trivialization and more.”

Bouie posted this regarding one of Musk’s DOGE team:

seems like it is a big deal that the unifying ideology of the doge team is neo nazism

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) 2025-02-16T12:50:00.616Z

The American Prospect adds:

Several outlets, most notably Wired, have published the identities of some of Musk’s henchmen. Many are men in their early twenties who work for Musk or Peter Thiel; one, Gavin Kriger, has an apparent social media history filled with neo-Nazi posts. Such information is of extreme public relevance: What these people are doing is not just illegal, it is an attempted coup in progress. Federal agencies are set up and funded by Congress, not the president, and Musk has not been elected to anything. Americans would easily understand the implications of an unelected billionaire sending goons in to take control of government ministries if it were happening in, say, Venezuela.

Just as in autogolpes, just as in Germany’s in 1933, they are using our democratic insitutions to undermine those very institutions.

* Not all immigrant-founders of Silicon Valley firms are freakishly pro-autocracy. But I can’t find a short list of Silicon Valley plutocrats who fit the bill.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

Keep leopards from eating your faces

He Who Would Be King on Saturday gave dubious legal advice to those who would do him harm. That’s not what he intended. He meant to declare that no law can touch him, to issue a royal corollary to his Fifth Avenue declaration. But the chaos inside his brain case instead issued a statement with a dual meaning that escaped a man once nicked by an assassin before he becoming legally bulletproof.

The statement is not original. Donald Trump picked it up online like a dime on the sidewalk. One of his believers likely found it first and dropped it there weeks ago. The quote is from a movie on Napoleon, not likely by the emperor himself. But it’s serviceable enough for a naked emperor to pick up, try on, and walk around in.

Today is Presidents Day, so presumably the would-be-king will not be celebrating. But those opposed to a return of the monarchy will be anti-celebrating “Not My President’s Day” today across the country:

These demonstrations are being organized by the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement.” The protests are a response to what organizers describe as “the anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration.” This marks the second nationwide protest by the group, following an event held on Feb. 5.

“We the people will not live under a king,” said organizer Kai Newkirk. “We will not allow Trump and Musk’s administrative coup.”

We the People will not live under a King.We will not allow Trump and Musk’s administrative coup.Join us at the AZ state capitol on Presidents Day as part of a national day of peaceful protest in solidarity with the @50501movement.bsky.social and all who believe in liberty and justice for ALL.

— Kai Newkirk (@kainewkirk.bsky.social) 2025-02-12T23:34:31.138Z

A list of protest events is on the Not My President’s Day FB page, both those organized by the #50501 Movement and those inpired by it.

Multiple events taking place across North Carolina today are organized by Common Cause. They mean to keep public focus on the interminable efforts by 2024 NC GOP state Supreme Court candidate, Judge Jefferson Griffin (R), to overturn his election loss in the very GOP-controlled state Supreme Court that he means to join by any means necessary. Democratic elections being un-necessary.

Pay close attention. If Griffin, his lawyers [Troy Shelton, Craig Schauer & Mike Dowling of the Dowling Firm, and Phil Thomas of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman], the RNC, and the NC GOP win here, Republicans will bring the same Cleta Mitchell-inspired vote-cancelling arguments to elections and courts near you. And may anyway. Losing once does not mean they stop trying. (Thomas promotes himself as the tip of the GOP spear.)

People who live a lie, teach lies, and defend lies, find it very easy to lie.

* * * * *

Have you fought the coup today?

Do Democrats even have “game”?

A few “Democrats concede they are losing an asymmetrical battle with the president and his MAGA allies,” Politico reports. But there is no agreement on how to mount an effective, attention-getting rapid-response:

“Republicans are running circles around Democrats for how to connect to the culture today,” said John Della Volpe, director of Harvard University’s youth poll and an expert on Gen Z. “People are still asking me in these post-election meetings, ‘Who is Theo Von?’ Even if they had the best message, you can’t connect if you’re not part of modern American culture, if you’re not injecting yourself into these spaces where people already are.”

It’s not just the leadership’s overdependence on traditional media, although that’s part of it. A majority of “swing voters” identified by Navigator Research got their political news “primarily from social media and alternative sources, like podcasts,” while Kamala Harris voters relied on broadcast TV.

The GOP is winning the fight for attention.

There are some exceptions among Democrats who are piercing through, including Ocasio-Cortez, who regularly goes viral with her Instagram live videos and posts on X. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, frequently spars with Republicans online, as do Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

[…]

“They should be creating bait of their own. Be more aggressive, be more outlandish,” said Tim Miller, a former GOP strategist who now hosts a podcast on The Bulwark, a site founded by anti-Trump Republicans. “I think they should be doing 700X of what they’re doing, in terms of output, volume, platforms, speed.”

Some Democrats have gotten the message and are doing more podcasts, Politico observes, but as I’ve said, it’s clear many are bringing 20th-century knives to a 21st-century gunfight. Getting booked and appearing on podcasts is not the same as having the right skill-sets for the medium.

A 20-something friend asked yesterday about Democrats’ new DNC chair.

“Functional,” I said (or something close).

He thought that non-ringing endorsement pithy. He would have preferred Wisconsin Dems’ state party chair, Ben Wikler. Why? Because the younger Wikler has more presence, more social media savvy, and brings more energy and passion to his appearances than the merely “functional” leader the DNC elected. Or many prominent elected Dems now trying their hands at appealing to the “kids,” and whoe efforts are “too slow and too tepid and not meeting the moment.”

Update: Rick Wikson’s on the same page.

Yes. They are.Maybe a rapid response team under the age of 75 would be a start.www.politico.com/news/2025/02…

— Rick Wilson (@therickwilson.bsky.social) 2025-02-16T13:46:14.108Z

Use it now. Before you lose it.

“Repetition is really important. And so is repetition” is a message to take to heart. You will be seeing more of it here in coming months. Like this example from Friday:

A commentator the other day said that there are only two guardrails left against Musk-Trump’s predations, meaning Congress and the courts. He was wrong. There is a third: Americans in the streets.

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance offers some analysis on the status of the many of court cases filed to slow Musk-Trump’s rolling coup. It’s just that right now what we have are a series of temporary restraining orders (TROs) Musk-Trump will resist, ignore, and surely appeal, as is Trump’s wont.

“There are limits to how much the courts can or will do, even at the TRO stage,” Vance cautions before confirming what I wrote on Friday:

That’s not to say I don’t have confidence in the courts, because I do, and I think some progress will be made there, although as we know far too well, it may be very slow. But the courts aren’t the calvary. We are. We have to be in this fight for ourselves. We can’t get complacent. These early victories are important, but they are not ballgame. Just because it doesn’t feel like we’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis—Trump isn’t dramatically crossing out broad swaths of the Constitution with his sharpie marker in a made-for-television moment—doesn’t mean we aren’t there.

“Ultimately, we’re the check on power run amuck,” she writes and offers some direction a lot of us need right now:

If you need some ideas for getting started, the good folks at Choose Democracy have some advice. They suggest getting started with a local group and figuring out where there are weak links in MAGA support you can pressure. They suggest devoting yourself to a longterm project you can support. Other groups are organizing a variety of public protests and blackouts. Different ways of speaking up will work for different people. Pick yours. Make sure your voice counts. Start exercising your democracy muscles!

Vance suggests something obvious that made me rethink what I’m doing .She wrote Alabama Senator Katie Britt (R, of the infamous SOTU response) to ask that she not vote for RFK Jr. Britt did anyway, of course, but sent back a form letter.

I’ve been contacting my North Carolina senators Thom Tillis and Tedd Budd regularly. Tillis by e-fax and Budd by web form (he doesn’t have a fax no.). But on Budd’s web form there are check boxes.

I’ve been checking No, because I know I’ll get a stupid form letter like Vance did. But you know what? I’m checking Yes from now on. Make his staff deal with sending that form letter. Add to their workload. It’s a little thing, but it’s measurable.

Make calls instead, if that works for you and your schedule (and if you can get through). This from Feb. 7:

Senators’ phone systems have been overloaded, lawmakers said, with some voters unable to get through to leave a message. The outpouring of complaints and confusion has put pressure on lawmakers to find out more about Musk’s project, heightening tensions between the billionaire tech mogul and the government.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said the Senate’s phones were receiving 1,600 calls each minute, compared with the usual 40 calls per minute. Many of the calls she’s been receiving are from people concerned about U.S. DOGE Service employees having broad access to government systems and sensitive information. The callers are asking whether their information is compromised and about why there isn’t more transparency about what is happening, she said.

In March 2017, Republicans pulled a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act under their own American Health Care Act. The phones lit up then too. Grassroots groups got their act together before congressional Democrats could, The Washington Post reported. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told the Post:

“I thought this repeal bill would sail through,” he said. “It was the president’s number one priority. And what was incredible about this process was the phone calls — we had 1,959 phone calls in opposition to the American Health Care Act. We had 30 for it.”

[…]

Democrats watched as a roiling, well-organized “resistance” bombarded Republicans with calls and filled their town hall meetings with skeptics. The Indivisible coalition, founded after the 2016 election by former congressional aides who knew how to lobby their old bosses, was the newest and flashiest. But it was joined by MoveOn, which reported 40,000 calls to congressional offices from its members; by Planned Parenthood, directly under the AHCA’s gun; by the Democratic National Committee, fresh off a divisive leadership race; and by the AARP, which branded the bill as an “age tax” before Democrats had come up with a counterattack.

Few MOCs have physical fax machines today. So the days when you could slam an office with paper are largely over, but here’s how I got sold on “fax jamming“:

On March 21, 2010, the House was preparing to vote on the Affordable Care Act passed by the Senate. The vote would be close. A 2008 Obama campaign veteran I know was planning to blast his large email list and encourage people to phone Heath Shuler’s office in support of passage. But it was Sunday. No one would answer and his voicemail in Washington was already full. It would be pointless to ask people to waste their time on a call without even a chance to leave a message.

[…]

We drafted a sample letter in support of the ACA and emailed it to my friend’s list. We suggested if people replied giving their assent, plus adding their name, address, phone number, and perhaps a customized message of their own, we would gladly fax it to the congressman on their behalf.

Minutes later, Paul shouted, “Oh my God, I just got 15 emails!” And they kept coming, some with notes, others without, for hours. Paul bundled them into sets of five, one letter per page, and created a PDF I sent electronically through my fax machine to Shuler’s Washington, D.C. office. If that line was busy, we sent to his district office. A veteran union organizer friend calls this tactic fax jamming.

We sent 600 individual faxes.

We broke the congressman’s fax machine, a staffer told me, and added something lame about Democrats killing trees. Shuler voted against the ACA anyway, but people who would not have gotten through had their voices heard. The staff never forgot having to physically deal with 600 pieces of paper.

Ah, the good old days. But free e-faxes work too, and 24/7/365. Keep them one page, short and to the point. (Here’s a site I use that urges you to “Fax your congressperson, senator, or governor” for free.)

You have power. Vance knows it too.

We have to find ways to do this because if all MAGA hears are self-congratulatory voices proclaiming their success, it’s a lot easier for them to kowtow to Trump’s every demand. It becomes more difficult—because these folks are politicians who are dedicated to staying in power whatever the cost—if they’re getting pounded by thousands of voices of sanity about their obligations as elected representatives. Let’s make them understand that we are here, we are engaged, and we are not going away. It would have only taken a few senators getting cold feet about Kennedy to make a difference. It’s worth pulling out all the stops and contacting your senators with the vote on Kash Patel looming ahead this week.

Get to work.

Trump likes them intimidated. They eagerly comply.

Me and my sharpie are signing a ‘zecutive order changing the name of Donald Trump to Donald Toadstool. You will henceforth use my preferred designation.

His Insecure Highness has enacted several measures since reentering the Oval Office as non-joking tests of fealty. By your bending the knee to his mighty will he shall know you either as loser or foe. It’s Toadstool’s way of getting you to blurt out, “Thank you, sir! May I have another.”

Like loyalty oaths and insisting followers publicly declaring that he won the 2020 election, it’s about getting people to submit to his dominance moves. Or as I picture it, getting littler dogs to roll over on their backs and pee in the air in submission.

Toadstool’s mind is so far gone that it’s not clear if he really gives a rat’s ass if the world accepts that with a few strokes of his sharpie he’s changed the 400-year-old name of the Gulf of Mexico. What matters is whether he can compel your obedience by uttering “Gulf of America.” For that, he doesn’t need to think. It’s all instinct.

Noah Berlatsky takes up the White House banning the Associated Press from the Press Room because the private business won’t “knuckle under” on cartographic matters:

The organization’s stand provides a model for resistance to tyranny, and a model for free speech, that much of American media needs right now.

The dispute over the name of the Gulf of Mexico seems trivial, especially compared to a range of other horrors Trump is currently perpetrating. But tyrants are tyrants in part because they insist on asserting control over even trivial matters.

Toadstool knows from trivial.

Trump wants to make the AP fall in line to show his dominance, and to show other outlets he’s willing to vindictively target them over any show of independence at all. The AP, for its part, is providing a rallying point for press freedom organizations and drawing a line in the sand for its colleagues and competitors.

If Trump is denying access to outlets that refuse to lick his boots, then any media outlet that has access is compromised. Journalists who want to be worthy of the name have a moral obligation to follow the AP’s example in enraging the toddler in chief.

What’s disturbing is just how many private businesses are obeying in advance the whims of His Royal Shroomness “out of an abundance of caution“:

The works in Gwen Henderson’s Tampa bookstore are emancipated, but organizations that want to highlight the councilwoman’s shop apparently don’t enjoy the same freedom.

This week on social media, Henderson, a retired educator, said that “a pretty prominent marketing firm” decided to take down a video showcasing her Black English Bookstore after the company received pressure from a government client.

[…]

She did not name the firm that produced the video, but a separate post on Henderson’s personal page says the “Black Moves” clip was created by PPK Advertising & Production.

The government in question among PPK’s clients seems to be the state of Florida. They seem to have done a lot of work promoting the state lottery. They are wary, therefore, about sponsoring content that might be construed as DEI-related. But Garrett Garcia, the firm’s president, pointed a finger at government more distant than Tallahassee, and at the attorney general Toadstool plucked out of Florida (emphasis mine):

“This decision was made entirely out of an abundance of caution based on articles like this one published last week in Bloomberg,” Garcia added. “We felt it was in the best interest of our business and our employees to pause these initiatives until we have time to review it in greater detail and to understand the nuances of all rapidly changing policies of the DOJ and US Attorney General.”

Forbes has also reported that Trump’s new Attorney General, Tampa-woman Pam Bondi, “directed the Justice Department to ‘investigate, eliminate, and penalize’ private companies and universities that have “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”

But a video promoting Henderson’s private bookstore is not a hiring program conceivably covered under Trump 2.0’s interpretation of federal civil rights laws. But her ad agency is running scared enough that they yanked it. And that’s just the way Toadstool and his white backlash cult like it.

“This is the bullshit that’s happening in our country right now,” says Henderson. “Even a little tiny bookstore can be impacted.”

(h/t SS)

Emil Bove, Game Master

For no particular reason. Here’s an easy-to-follow piece of advice.

If you don’t want to be called a Nazi, don’t act like a Nazi. Or Jigsaw.

Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove assembled DOJ's remaining public corruption prosecutors this morning and gave them an hour to find someone to sign the Eric Adams dismissal.One of them agreed to do it, to spare the others from potentially being fired.www.reuters.com/world/us/fed…

— Brad Heath (@bradheath.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T18:00:29.614Z

Here’s the intro from Reuters:

A U.S. federal prosecutor agreed on Friday to file a motion to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams to spare other career staff from potentially being fired for refusing to do so, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s career public integrity prosecutors in a meeting on Friday that they had an hour to decide among themselves who would file the motion, the sources said.

The volunteer was Ed Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, who agreed to alleviate pressure on his colleagues in the department’s public integrity section, two sources said.

Sullivan did not capitulate, someone familiar with the meeting told Reuters. He was coerced, and to his colleagues “a hero” who spared them.

So Bove set up one of those torture rooms from the Saw franchise, minus the blood. Or else the trolley problem, except the person who throws the switch to save five elects to be the one run over on the side track.

More federal prosecutors have resigned under Trump over the Adams case than during Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre.

Fools and cowards

In addition to the stinging letter of resignation from Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, the Washington Post reports that “Kevin Driscoll, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division, and John D. Keller, acting chief of the department’s Public Integrity Section” resigned in addition to three others from the Public Integrity Section.

Hagan Scotten, the Southern District’s lead prosecutor in the Adams corruption case, resigned Friday and sent his own stinging rebuke to his bosses in D.C. (Washington Post):

“[A]ny assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” he wrote.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten wrote. “But it was never going to be me.”

What an abomination AG Pam Bondi is running.

You’ve been boarded

Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. — Anne Applebaum

More than a few of us not in federal employ feel the same. People I know have, like the refugees in Casablanca, fled the occupation. Except today it is the U.S. they are fleeing, not fleeing to.

Applebaum suggests that whether Musk-Trump’s Project 2025 saboteurs call their goal “Liberation Day,” or replacing all mid-level bureaucrats with MAGA loyalists (RAGE, in Curtis Yarvin’s coinage), or Steve Bannon’s “deconstruction of the administrative state,” regime change from within is the goal although their motivations may differ.

Hugo Chávez used a similar approach in Venezuela, as did Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Applebaum explains:

Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought, the newly appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the original regime-change blueprint—are now using IT operations, captured payments systems, secretive engineers, a blizzard of executive orders, and viral propaganda to achieve the same thing.

This appears to be DOGE’s true purpose. Although Trump and Musk insist they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims. Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest. Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation.

Ask the people of Ukraine what that’s like.

What Musk-Trump means to achieve — Musk by Bond-villain design and Trump by feral instinct — is to replace the long-established culture of public service with something other. Applebaum is not sure what, but it’s not American.

Christian nationalists want a religious state to replace our secular one. Tech authoritarians want a dictatorship of engineers, led by a monarchical CEO. Musk and Trump might prefer an oligarchy that serves their business interests.

You can bet it will reflect the corruption at Trump’s core. Per Vought’s designs (himself a Christian nationalist), civil servants “who had previously viewed themselves as patriots, working for less money than they could make in the private sector,” Applebaum explains, “must be forced to understand that they are evil, enemies of the state.”

From where federal workers now sit (state workers and university employees soon enough, then you), they can either resist the Nazis or join the Vichy government. That’s how Applebaum frames the choice in her link: “Putting them all together, the actions of Musk and DOGE have created moral dilemmas of a kind no American government employee has faced in recent history. Protest or collaborate? Speak up against lawbreaking or remain silent?”

Drink the Vichy water or waste-bin it?

The Ink this morning proposes another analogy for regime change: alien invasion.

In Cixin Liu’s massively popular sci-fi epic The Three-Body Problem, an advanced society abandons their collapsing planet and sets out to take over the Earth. But to pave the way and make sure they don’t meet effective resistance, they monkey wrench human progress by distributing viral propaganda, recruiting allies in the gaming community, cutting sweetheart deals with oligarchs, and interfering with scientific research.

Thus, Physics World reports:

Scientists across the US have been left reeling after a spate of executive orders from US President Donald Trump has led to research funding being slashed, staff being told to quit and key programmes being withdrawn. In response to the orders, government departments and external organizations have axed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, scrubbed mentions of climate change from websites, and paused research grants pending tests for compliance with the new administration’s goals.

James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, warned an audience this month at the Royal College of Art in London, “My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages.”

The Ink continues, “It’s as if the tech oligarchs who’ve journeyed from South Africa to remake America — the guys who, as therapist Daniel Shaw remarked, ‘read Orwell’s 1984 and decided the hero was Big Brother’ — read Liu’s trilogy and decided the San-Ti (the alien invaders) were the heroes.”

We cautioned yesterday, that in plain view and through sheer doggedness, the United Daughters of the Confederacy succeeded in fixing “The Lost Cause” myth in minds across the South and farther for generations. Christian nationalists want a Jesus-über-alles theocracy and damn your religious freedom. Tech billionaires want their Red Caesar. The international autocrats’ club wants a capitalism even more rapacious, NATO castrated, and popular sovereignty replaced with neo-feudalism. They are all so focused on powers they hope to accrue that they’ve blinded themselves to what they likely will lose in making a devil’s bargain. None of this is secret, but their plans are obscured by the sideshow antics of men like Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Americans busy working and paying bills will be slow to catch on to what they are losing. Perhaps until it’s too late. But our history also holds solitary heroes like Rosa Parks whose actions inspire transformational movements. Pray we have a few left.

A commentator the other day said that there are only two guardrails left against Musk-Trump’s predations, meaning Congress and the courts. He was wrong. There is a third: Americans in the streets.

Sabotaging the government came later

Donald Trump: And your point is?

It’s not unlike the plot of that Die Hard movie where thieves keep police busy hunting for a bomb in a school while the they rob a federal gold depository. The Musk-Trump cabal has simply started firing federal law enforcement and robbing banks. Both robberies take place in New York City.

Forbes:

New York City officials alleged Wednesday the Federal Emergency Management Agency revoked $80 million in grants from the city’s accounts amid a feud with the Trump administration over the city’s use of federal funds to house migrants—a move the city’s comptroller called “illegal” and “highway robbery.”

“Revoked” is a polite term for “stole.”

Associated Press:

Gone is a $59 million grant that the administration challenged earlier in the week and another award for $21.5 million, City Comptroller Brad Lander said. The money was discovered to be missing overnight, and Lander said no one in his office had been aware that the federal government had access to the city’s bank account.

Lander is a candidate for mayor.

New York Times:

The funds in question were appropriated by Congress last year under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The payment was issued through a grant from the Shelter and Services Program, administrated by FEMA and initiated by Congress in 2023 to issue grants to cities and organizations providing services to migrants who had been released from federal custody after crossing the border.

Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, tweeted, “I have clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels.”

“FEMA deep state activists unilaterally” is propaganda-speak for both houses of Congress and the former president appropriating the funds. Legally.

Experts tell the Times that unless the city’s agreement with FEMA includes a clawback agreement, accessing the city’s bank account and taking the cash “could be illegal” (read: theft). Contracts have been signed; the money has been spent; these payments are legal reimbursments.

Forbes adds:

New York officials pushed back against Musk’s misleading claims and have said hotel fee payments were not made on luxury hotels, with Lander noting in a Wednesday press conference the funds approved as part of FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program have a $12.50 per night limit for migrants.

“Musk’s misleading claims” is polite for more lies and propaganda.