I wrote about Elon’s Big Data Dream a month ago, discussing the idea that AI is a data suck and these programs are running out of it. The U.S. Government is a major depository of a whole lot of it that up until now has not been accessible to anyone who is unauthorized to have it, and was kept in small discrete chunks.
The federal government knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start.
These intimate details about the personal lives of people who live in the United States are held in disconnected data systems across the federal government — some at the Treasury, some at the Social Security Administration and some at the Department of Education, among other agencies.
The Trump administration is now trying to connect the dots of that disparate information. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the “consolidation” of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.
The effort is being driven by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his lieutenants with the Department of Government Efficiency, who have sought access to dozens of databases as they have swept through agencies across the federal government. Along the way, they have elbowed past the objections of career staff, data security protocols, national security experts and legal privacy protections.
Musk doesn’t care about privacy or security. In fact, security is probably the last thing he wants since he wants to be able to access this information for his own purposes.
This is a major threat to our personal and national security and nobody’s doing anything to stop it. In fact, it’s probably too late already.
Meanwhile, Musk is convinced that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently ripping off the government by the trillions and wants to use this data to stop them. That’s going to create a monumental mess with a lot of people being illegally and unfairly targeted:
“The data is not fit for the purpose that you’re trying to use it for,” said Ms. Olson, the executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, which is also suing the government. “And you’ll get wrong results, and there’s consequences to those wrong results.”
What happens if a family claiming a tax credit for the first time is flagged for fraud — and has their Medicaid cut off, too?“What will their resolution process be? Will they act first and deal with the fallout later?” said Elizabeth Laird with the Center for Democracy and Technology. “People who maybe are like, ‘Well, I got notified my data was breached 10 years ago and I’ve been fine’ — I don’t think they’ve been subjected to what we may see this used for.”
Maybe it’s not such a great idea to give a wealthy, paranoid, internet troll unfettered access to the federal government’s inner workings. Just a thought.
The NY Times’ Jamelle Bouie discusses Trump’s need for domination in his column today. I’ve made the same point before, as have many others but I think Bouie’s insight that he cannot be satiated is very smart:
Trump’s desire to dominate others is the driving psychological force of his administration. His obsession with territorial conquest — seen in his effort to coerce the Canadian government into relinquishing its sovereignty as well as his calls for both the acquisition of Greenland and the Panama Canal — is an obvious product of his predatory approach to human interaction. His authoritarian attempts to cow and coerce key institutions of civil society into compliance with his agenda and obedience to his will are, likewise, a kind of dominance game. They are meant to demonstrate his mastery over his perceived enemies more than they are to achieve any policy aim. He even said as much during an event on Tuesday, where he bragged about the law firms “signing up with Trump” and said that “they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”
You could even say that this need to dominate — this overwhelming drive to show mastery — is constitutive of Trump’s self. There must be a loser or else there is no Trump. Or, as Hegel put it, “self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized.”
The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command; more displays of his power and authority; and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America…
Viewed in light of the president’s psychological need to dominate, it is almost certainly true that his flagrant abuse of the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and foreign-born students in the United States — snatching them off the streets to be imprisoned or, worse, sending them to an unaccountable foreign prison with no practical legal recourse — is just the beginning. In the same way that there was nothing that could stop Trump from imposing a tariff regime that, in his mind, humiliates America’s rivals, there is nothing that can dissuade him from using the coercive power of the state to dominate those he disfavors at home.
Trump is a winner, and he’ll show it by making all of us the loser.
I have to say that he’s doing a remarkable job of it.
Trump has admitted that he never really looks too far ahead. he has such faith in his “instincts” and “Common sense” that he just assumes that everything will go well for him no matter what. And since he always gets out overy jam, I suppose that’s not entirely irrational. But visionary? He can’t see past his own reflection in the mirror to anticipate what might come next:
Mr. Trump’s aides insist the speed at which they are working is a feature, not a bug, of the system. Move too slowly, Mr. Musk has insisted, and the bureaucracy would dig in, never to be dislodged. “Nobody’s going to bat a thousand,” he said at the White House in February. “We will make mistakes. But we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.” He cited the restoration of some aid to contain Ebola, and the rehiring of workers at the National Nuclear Safety Administration who oversee nuclear weapons.
[He didn’t actually restore the ebola aid]
But it is impossible to move through the empty corridors of the Ronald Reagan Building — where U.S.A.I.D., the Environmental Protection Agency and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars all have been subject to DOGE mandates to fire many workers — without it becoming clear that there is little plan for dealing with the work left behind. U.S.A.I.D.’s doors are locked; the E.P.A. has stopped collecting some critical data; no one knows what is happening to the Wilson Center’s Cold War archive but its scholars are largely gone. Over at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, monitoring Russian and Chinese malware has taken a back seat to avoiding coming job cuts.
When the question of whether departments are looking beyond the budget line and thinking ahead to what happens when capabilities and expertise disappear gets asked, the answer is a tinge defensive. The Department of Health and Human Services has pulled back billions of dollars for monitoring Covid-19 and improving responses to future viral outbreaks. When asked, the department said: “The Covid-19 pandemic is over, and H.H.S. will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
All this suggests a failure to look around corners — which is hardly new in the American presidency. Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in June 1930, thinking they would help create jobs, then went fishing. They instead accelerated the Great Depression.
The White House insists this time the result will be the opposite. It is a huge bet, one on which not only Mr. Trump’s presidency but the fate of the global economy rests. And no one can predict where the bottom is for the markets, or where the top is for the escalation with China.
“The speed and chaos surrounding President Trump’s policy rollout have created extraordinary global economic disruption; nobody alive has ever witnessed self-induced volatility on this scale,” Ian Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, wrote this week.
Musk thinks the federal government works pretty much the same as twitter so there’s no need for experts and the work will get done anyway. Trump doesn’t think about it at all because he doesn’t care, He just wants people to see him as a winner whether he wins or not. And he discovered that it’s not hard to convince people that he is regardless of the facts.
They are both messianic, depraved personalities and their coming together in this position is a travesty of epic proportions. They have made history and we’re all going to pay for it.
Trump gave an almost 2 hour speech to a bunch of Republicans last night. Some highlights:
Trump: "I do think that the war with the world, which is not a war at all because they're all coming here. Japan is coming here as we speak. They're in a plane flying, lots of them." pic.twitter.com/paxbNa0xry
Trump: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please, Sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir.” pic.twitter.com/gDCAXCKaPH
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 9, 2025
More classy rhetoric from our president:
Trump: "Adam Schifty Schiff. Can you believe this guy? He's got the smallest neck I've ever seen. And the biggest head. We call him watermelon head. How can that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? … how we can allow people like that to run in office is a… pic.twitter.com/OYa8KJrQri
Trump has announced his new plan for autogenocide, he will now proceed to make medication far more expensive which will lead to millions of deaths. "We're gonna tariff our pharmaceuticals … we're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals." #3Epic.twitter.com/G47LE0YnjG
Trump: "We're gonna get good elections pretty soon. There's a lot of clamor for it … the states are just an agent of the federal government." pic.twitter.com/DUEn8v6NzY
I guess the crowd loved it? It’s hard to tell. But I’d guess quite a number of them were checking the futures markets while he was talking. The crazy man does not seem the least bit chagrined by the reaction. He truly believes he’s going to dominate the world with this and that in the end he will be proved to have been right. His megalomania knows no bounds.
What exactly is the vision for America that Trump and his people are trying to create with these reckless, chaotic policies? It seems as if it’s different for everyone.
Trump BFF Elon Musk is thought by some to be a believer in a techbro vision of “The Network State” in which the tech-bros will replace the dollar with Crypto as God intended and divide up the world into mini-states which they will control like medieval fiefdoms. Unfortunately, there will have to be purge of undesirables who do not meet the genetic standards of the new Superman who will repopulate the earth with their superior genes. I wish I was kidding.
Wired reported just last month that “Several groups representing “startup cities”—tech hubs exempt from the taxes and regulations that apply to the countries where they are located—are drafting Congressional legislation to create “freedom cities” in the US that would be similarly free from certain federal laws, ” (Recall that Trump himself was promoting “Freedom Cities during the campaign.)
But Musk may actually be beyond that vision with his infiltration of the federal government. As Kyle Chayka of the New Yorker explained, he no longer has any need for these little techtopian enclaves. Musk appears to be a techno-accelerationist (a sub-category of techno-fascism)which is defined as the total destruction of the existing order “to create a technologized, hierarchical one with engineers at the top.” That sure sounds like a lot of fun.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent , on the other hand, apparently believes we are in a MAGA cultural revolution, Mao Tse Tung style. He told Tucker Carlson in an interview this week, “The president is reordering trade. We are shedding excess labor in the federal government and bringing down federal borrowings. And then on the other side that will give us the labor that we need for the new manufacturing.”
So now we know that CDC scientists, NIH researchers, IRS tax experts, computer techs, program specialists and other professionals who’ve been fired by DOGE are going to be sent to work on the assembly lines. Maybe they’ll learn to be good, productive citizens instead of “villains” as Trump’s Director of Office of Management and Budget (and project 2025 author) Russell Vought refers to them.
But Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has other ideas. He says those jobs are all going to be taken by robots — but there will be some mechanic types who’ll fix the machines. And I’m sure there will always be a need for janitors to keep the place clean so there’s that. More likely, we’ll need lots of workers to pick all the food, work in the meat packing plants and fill the jobs of servants for the massively wealthy billionaires like Bessent and Lutnick so all those teachers, scientists and educated professionals will no doubt have many job opportunities even if the factories are automated. Trump just announced that he’s bringing back coal mining in a big way, so that presents some excellent possibilities as well.
Trump’s vision is very different than any of that. He wants to go back to the Gilded Age of William McKinley in the 1890s.On Monday he repeated the fatuous nonsense he’s been spewing for ages:
“Our country was the strongest believe it or not from 1870 to 1913. You know why, it was all based, we had no income tax then in 1913 some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country not foreign countries.”
Tariffs, as everyone knows except him, are paid by American businesses and consumers. They were then and they are now just another form of taxation, and a regressive one, which he simply cannot fathom.
We know he didn’t read a book about it so at some point someone told Trump that the country was very wealthy after the civil war because it ran surpluses. Yes, back in the days of William McKinley the federal government was funded almost entirely by tariffs but the government was much smaller then and did very little for the people so they did have surpluses and there was a lively debate about what should be done with them. As Chris Isidore at CNN explained:
Funding the federal government with tariffs wasn’t nearly as difficult as it would be today. Federal spending was relatively minuscule in those years. Federal spending made up less than 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product, the broad measure of the size of the nation’s economic activity. By contrast, the $6.8 trillion that the federal government spent in its most recent fiscal year comes to 23% of GDP, with most of that money going to servicing the national debt, military spending and entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.
During the Gilded Age, the country was in the midst of a rapid economic expansion (which, not incidentally, was heavily stoked by mass immigration) and to the extent it was “wealthy” almost all of the wealth accumulated at the very top among the robber barons.
I find myself in agreement with Brian Beutler who observed that none of these facts and figures are the probable genesis of Trump’s obsession with this era. It almost surely stems from his knowledge that the rich were very rich and built lavish, ornate mansions which is what defines prosperity to him.
He lives in Mar-a-Lago, which was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post in the 1920s. And while she, as heiress to the Post Cereal fortune, was not a “robber baron” in the traditional sense of the word, that’s the vibe he likes. It’s what you’d expect in a “rich country.”
Just look at what he’s done to the Oval Office. It’s become an ersatz Versailles with phony gilt tchotkes jammed in every corner and gaudy picture frames crowded together on the walls:
The average family’s annual income was around $500 (about $18,000 in today’s money), according to an 1892 report from the Senate Finance Committee, yet the top 1% of families owned over half of America’s wealth. During this era, known as the Gilded Age, the wealthiest families in America, such as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, formed a new social elite akin to European aristocracy.
On the other side of the wealth divide, workers and immigrants faced harsh living conditions…Children, who weren’t protected by law from physically challenging labor, had often started contributing to their households by age 10.
In New York City, the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880. Tenement housing, where families packed as many people as possible into apartments by using cheap materials to create walls or add floors to existing buildings, quickly dominated parts of the city. These settlements often lacked indoor plumbing or ventilation, leading to a rapid increase in the spread of illnesses. The cramped conditions also led to many fires in major cities.
That was what it was like for most people when Trump believes America was “great” — they were poor, uneducated, sick and overworked and they paid all the taxes while the rich got richer. And when you get down to it, while the billionaires in his orbit may have different visions, whether it’s a futuristic techno “Freedom City” or back to the time of the Vanderbilts and the Morgans, in the end they all want the same thing. They want it all.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt discusses deporting Americans to El Salvador.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Thinking of taking a family trip outside the U.S.? It’s not your reception as an American at a foreign resort you have to worry about. It’s close encounters of the Trump kind when you return (Detroit Free Press):
A lawyer’s spring break trip to the Dominican Republic with his family ended on a troubling note at Detroit Metro Airport on Sunday: He was detained by federal agents, questioned about his clients, and asked to give up his cellphone, he says.
But Dearborn attorney Amir Makled, who is representing a pro-Palestinian demonstrator who was arrested at the University of Michigan last year, stood his ground. He didn’t give up his phone.
“I’m an American citizen. I’m not worried about being deported,” Makled said he recalled thinking to himself in the airport interrogation room. “So, I tell them, ‘I know you can take my phone. I’m not going to give you my phone, however … 90% of my work is on my phone. You’re not getting unfettered access to (it).’ “
Makled, 38, is a civil rights and criminal defense attorney who knows his rights backwards and forwards and who had his passport flagged. He was interrogated by the Tactical Terrorism Response Team (TTRT), a secretive unit of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that has detained and questioned tens of thousands of U.S. citizens at ports of entry for several years.
“These secretive teams’ activities may result in further government scrutiny and other negative consequences for targeted travelers, including placement on a government watchlist,” the ACLU warns.
Makled told his story to Chris Hayes Tuesday night.
Free Press again:
“This current administration is doing something that no administration has done — they are attacking attorneys,” Makled said, stressing lawyers from big and small firms alike are being targeted. “This is a different type of threat to the rule of law that I see. They are now challenging the judiciary, or lawyers, they’re putting pressure (on them) to dissuade attorneys from taking on issues that are against the government’s issues. We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff.”
After 90 minutes, CBP let Makled, a lawyer, go with his cell phone. How would you have fared? Because until this administration ends, the harassment won’t end with lawyers.
The Intercept reported in 2021 on documents it reviewed from an ACLU FOIA lawsuit (emphasis mine):
Between 2017 and 2019, the documents show, the units detained and interrogated more than 600,000 travelers — about a third of them U.S. citizens. Of those detained, more than 8,000 foreign visitors with legal travel documents were denied entry to the United States. A handful of U.S. citizens were also prevented from entering the country, which civil liberties advocates say violated their rights. Lower court and Supreme Court rulings affirm the constitutional right of U.S. citizens to freedom of movement and the ability to enter and leave the country.
That was then, under Trump 1.0. This is now. We’ve seen already that Trump 2.0 treats constitutional rights and court opinions as nuisances to be waved away. As far as Trump is concerned, and with the backing of over half the Supreme Court, he is the law.
From trolling to state terror
How soon before Trump protesters are designated heinous violent criminals?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the Trump administration is not sure it is legal to deport U.S. citizens to El Salvador, but that President Donald Trump has “simply floated” the idea for the sake of transparency.
[…]
Leavitt said the president had discussed the idea both privately and publicly for “heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly.”
“The president has said if it’s legal, right, if there is a legal pathway to do that, he’s not sure. We are not sure if there is, it’s an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed very publicly as in the effort of transparency,” she said.
It is no longer clear when Trump is merely trolling his adversaries for sport and when he is floating trial balloons to gauge potential pushback. Talk of deporting Americans to foreign gulags is not a case of “every accusation is a confession.” He’s telegraphing what he wants to do. It is unclear when he’ll decide to do it.
I’m reluctant to leave the country under one Trumpish policy only to return and find that it’s changed while I’m away. Trump is harassing U.S. allies. He’s targeting foreign students. He’s targeting lawyers. He’s branded the press as the enemy of the people. Invoking Martin Niemöller would seem trite if not for the deafening echoes.
Donald Trump wants to celebrate his birthday in the most extravagant way possible. He’s planning a massive military parade in Washington, D.C., which could cost up to $100 million.
This spectacle, scheduled for June 14, his birthday, which also marks the US Army’s 250th anniversary, has the potential to shake the capital to its core. It has tanks, troops, jets, and fireworks, as per a report by The Sun.
The contingents are expected to begin the procession at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and then make their way through the capital’s streets to the White House.
According to the Washington City Paper, thousands of people will watch as soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines march in their uniforms during the opulent military parade, as quoted in a report by The Sun.
He wanted one badly during his first term but was thwarted by regulations that precluded tearing up the roads of Washington DC with heavy tanks and other vehicles. Now that he doesn’t have to care about the law anymore, he can just do it anyway and have the taxpayers pay for the repairs!
I’m sure it will be very exciting. Maybe DOGE can force the remaining federal workers to attend and clap and cheer in unison like they do in North Korea. Wouldn’t that be nice?
