Entries for February 2025
This long post by Mike Brock at Techdirt does a great job in laying out the many reasons why we should be concerned about Elon Musk’s power grab. Here’s just part of the section about all of the federal laws he is breaking:
When Congress passed 18 U.S.C. § 208, they were imagining scenarios where federal officials might have access to some information that could affect their private interests. But Musk’s situation goes far beyond anything the drafters likely contemplated—he has gained access to the actual machinery of government while simultaneously running multiple companies directly affected by that machinery.
Consider what this means in practice: Through DOGE, he has access to sensitive Treasury data while running public companies whose stock prices could be affected by that information. He can see classified materials while controlling SpaceX, which competes for national security contracts. He has visibility into federal agency operations while owning a social media platform that shapes public discourse about those agencies.
The Ethics in Government Act and STOCK Act were designed to prevent federal officials from using nonpublic information for private gain. But Musk isn’t just getting occasional access to sensitive information — he’s gained unprecedented access to core government systems while maintaining control of companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The potential for using this access to benefit his private interests isn’t incidental — it’s systematic and structural.
Members of Musk’s team have tried to gain access to servers at the NOAA. Project 2025 says the agency is “‘harmful to US prosperity’ for its role in climate science”. Their data collection and capabilities would be a massive loss.
I really appreciate Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter for providing historical context to what’s happening right now. In this morning’s letter, after summarizing the Musk/Trump attacks on our government (most of which I linked to yesterday), Richardson talks about the history of the liberal consensus, the post-WWII agreement about how government should be deployed and how that consensus is coming to an end (gradually, then suddenly).
Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.
Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—”liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.
But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.
That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.
Hey, everyone. I just wanted to update you on what’s been happening here at KDO HQ. As you might have noticed (and if my inbox is any indication, you have), I have pivoted to posting almost exclusively about the coup happening in the United States right now. My focus will be on this crisis for the foreseeable future. I don’t yet know to what extent other things will make it back into the mix. I still very much believe that we need art and beauty and laughter and distraction and all of that, but I also believe very strongly that this situation is too important and potentially dangerous to ignore. And it is largely being ignored by a mainstream press that has been softened up by years of conservative pushback, financial pressures, and hollowing out by Facebook & Google. But I have an independent website and a platform, and I’m going to use it the way that I have always used it: to inform people about the truth of the world (as best as I understand it) and what I feel is important.
I have pivoted like this a couple of times before: in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the pandemic. This situation feels as urgent now as those events did then. Witnessing the events of this past weekend, I felt very much like I did back in March 2020, before things shut down here in the US — you could see this huge tidal wave coming and everyone was still out on the beach sunbathing because the media and our elected officials weren’t meeting the moment. I believe that if this coup is allowed to continue and succeed, it will completely alter the course of American history — so I feel like I have no choice but to talk about it.
If you need to check out, I totally understand. I’ve heard from many readers over the years that some of you come to the site for a break from the horrible news of the world, and I know this pivot goes against that. I expect I will lose some readers and members over this — the membership page is right here if you’d like to change your status. For those who choose to continue to support the site, no matter what, my deep thanks and appreciation to you.
I’ll end on a personal note. I’ve talked a little about the impact that covering the pandemic for two years had on me, particularly in this post about Ed Yong’s talk at XOXO:
It was hard to hear about how his work “completely broke” him. To say that Yong’s experience mirrored my own is, according to the mild PTSD I’m experiencing as I consider everything he related in that video, an understatement. We covered the pandemic in different ways, but like Yong, I was completely consumed by it. I read hundreds(/thousands?) of stories, papers, and posts a week for more than a year, wrote hundreds of posts, and posted hundreds of links, trying to make sense of what was happening so that, hopefully, I could help others do the same. The sense of purpose and duty I felt to my readers — and to reality — was intense, to the point of overwhelm.
Like Yong, I eventually had to step back, taking a seven-month sabbatical in 2022. I didn’t talk about the pandemic at all in that post, but in retrospect, it was the catalyst for my break. Unlike Yong, I am back at it: hopefully more aware of my limits, running like it’s an ultramarathon rather than a sprint, trying to keep my empathy for others in the right frame so I can share their stories effectively without losing myself.
Covering the pandemic broke me. I spent the weekend and most of Monday wrestling with myself and asking, “Do you really want to put yourself through that again?” I could easily just go on posting like this existential threat to the United States isn’t happening. Like I said before, I believe we need — like they are actually necessary for life — art and beauty and laughter and distraction…and continuing to cover them would be a noble and respectable undertaking. But I eventually realized, thanks in part ot an intense session with my therapist on Tuesday, that in order to be true to myself, I need to do this.
Thankfully, I am in a much better place, mental health-wise, than I was 5 years ago. I know myself better and know how to take care of myself when I am professionally stressed out. There may be times when I need to step away and I thank you for your patience in advance. I hope that you’re doing whatever it is you need to do to take yourselves. 💞
Regarding comments: I haven’t been turning them on for any of the posts about the coup. I am trying to figure out how to turn them back on and not have the discussions mirror the sorts of unhelpful patterns that social media has conditioned us into following when discussing political issues online. I have turned them on for this post, but would encourage you to reflect on kottke.org’s community guidelines if you choose to participate; the short version: “be kind, generous, & constructive, bring facts, and try to leave the place better than you found it”. Thanks.
This is a great piece by Jamelle Bouie, which lays out in plain language what Musk and Trump are doing to the federal government, why it matters, and what can be done about it.
To describe the current situation in the executive branch as merely a constitutional crisis is to understate the significance of what we’re experiencing. “Constitutional crisis” does not even begin to capture the radicalism of what is unfolding in the federal bureaucracy and of what Congress’s decision not to act may liquidate in terms of constitutional meaning.
Together, Trump and Musk are trying to rewrite the rules of the American system. They are trying to instantiate an anti-constitutional theory of executive power that would make the president supreme over all other branches of government. They are doing so in service of a plutocratic agenda of austerity and the upward redistribution of wealth. And the longer Congress stands by, the more this is fixed in place.
If Trump, Musk and their allies — like Russell Vought, the president’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget and a vocal advocate of an autocratic “radical constitutionalism” that treats the president is an elected despot — succeed, then the question of American politics won’t be if they’ll win the next election, but whether the Constitution as we know it is still in effect.
Very much worth reading the whole thing — I found his conclusion somewhat unexpected (but IMO correct).
“A self-coup, also called an autocoup…is a form of coup d’état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power illegally through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters.”
FAIR calls out some of the shoddy coverage on the 2025 Coup by the NY Times & Wash. Post. They “largely buried these stories, downplaying their earth-shattering break from democratic norms”. (Wired & Rolling Stone have been courageous in their coverage.)
I’m a Federal Worker. Elon Musk’s Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame. “Those outside the federal government might not understand the gravity of this situation.” And: “Now is the moment to act.”
Mike Masnick: Some Conservatives Admit We’re In A Constitutional Crisis. “It’s about recognizing that the politics of destruction, even when wrapped in the flag of ‘winning,’ leads inevitably to collective loss.”
Personal Discretion Over the Treasury’s Payments System Means the End of Democracy. “Don’t like “woke” research? Turn it off. Hate USAID? Cut off the money. Think payments to Lutheran Family Services are illegal? Shut them down.”
It’s a couple of days old by now, but this Bluesky thread by Abe Newman (“someone who spent a decade studying how centralized information systems are used for coercion”) does a great job in laying out some of the stakes and potential consequences of Musk’s & Trump’s illegal seizure of some key operations of the federal government.
These systems seen arcane and technical but are critical to key operations of the federal government — payment, personnel, and operations. In good times they make the trains run on time, but now they may be exploited for control.
Newman links to reporting that detail that these operations are controlled by Musk: payment, personnel, and operations. But seeing them as part of a bigger strategy is important:
The first point is to make the connection. Reporting has seen these as independent ‘lock outs’ or access to specific IT systems. This seems much more a part of a coherent strategy to identify centralized information systems and control them from the top.
Newman continues:
So what are the risks. First, the panopticon. Made popular by Foucault, the idea is that if you let people know that they are being watched from a central position they are more likely to obey. E.g. emails demanding changes or workers will be added to lists…
The second is the chokepoint. If you have access to payments and data, you can shut opponents off from key resources. Sen Wyden sees this coming.
Divert to loyalists. Once you have a 360 view, you can redirect resources to insiders and cut off the opposition. Reports suggest the GSA has a whiteboard with properties being sold. Who are they going to? Watch out for sweetheart deals.
What happens though, when you try to manipulate these systems at the same time that you gut the administrative state? Bad stuff. You get miscalculations, overreactions and unanticipated consequences.
This is a key point: the way in which and the speed at which this is being done, combined with other actions (many of them illegal and unconstitutional) being taken by the administration (Trump’s Executive Orders about freezing funding, etc.) is evidence of an overall strategy:
The overarching takeaway is that the plumbing is political and politicians and the media need to focus on what Musk is doing as a strategy.
A couple things that Newman doesn’t mention specifically are how controlling these operations can be used to restrict people’s speech & actions and the massive potential for theft and grift. If there’s no longer any oversight, they can do whatever they want.
The Verge interviewed federal employees about the chaos they’re seeing. “Many workers still worry that outside the government, people don’t realize how unprecedented this situation is — or how much is at stake.”
‘Fuck That’: Federal Workers Say They’re Scared But ‘Digging In’ Amid Trump’s Chaos. “Ironically for the Trumpies, bringing us back to the office will make us stronger morale-wise.” Signs like this of resistance are good news!
In her latest installment of Letters From an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes about the ongoing coup of the US government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.
But they are not doing that.
Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.
The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.
But Republicans are allowing Musk to run amok. This could be because they know that Trump has embraced the idea that the American government is a “Deep State,” but that the extreme cuts the MAGA Republicans say they want are actually quite unpopular with Americans in general, and even with most Republican voters. By letting Musk make the cuts the MAGA base wants, they can both provide those cuts and distance themselves from them.
But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.
I am *begging* you to read Richardson’s piece (and all the other stuff I’ve been posting this week) and to take it seriously. There has been remarkably little coverage of this in the national press (compared to, say, tariffs) and IMO this is much more serious because if they have control over the IT and payment functions of the US government, they can do almost whatever they want without having to pass laws or argue in front of judges or tell people what they’re doing at all. I keep hearing people saying this is a five-alarm fire but I feel like it’s a 500-alarm fire…we need metaphorical fire trucks coming from thousands of miles away to fight this blaze. I know this sounds cuckoo bananapants but like Jamelle Bouie said the other day:
honestly think some of the hesitation here is that no one wants to sound like a crank. i was talking at an event last night and even i felt like a crank while i was speaking!
simply repeating the straight reporting of what is happening in the executive branch makes you sound like you have lost your mind.
Here is some good news: the white nationalist terrorist group Proud Boys have lost control of their trademarks. They are now controlled by a Black church in Washington DC that the group attacked in 2020.
Trump & Musk have discussed placing “spies” in gov’t offices to root out anti-MAGA sentiment so gov’t employees can’t inform Americans about the ongoing coup. (And some fed. employees are using Reddit to get news on what’s happening in their depts.)
More on Musk’s alarming unconstitutional seizure of the Treasury Department payments system: they’ve had admin access since Jan 31 and have already made changes to the system’s *live code*. (Good luck getting your tax refund if you voted for Harris?)
VERY VERY BAD: Under the direction of Elon Musk, a 25-year-old engineer has seized admin privileges to the code for “Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government”, incl. Social Security, tax payments, etc.
“Musk’s political project with DOGE is actually quite straightforward: The world’s richest man appears to be indiscriminately dismantling the government with an eye toward consolidating power and punishing his political enemies.”
It Only Tuesday. “Not only do Americans have most of Tuesday morning to contend with, but all of Tuesday afternoon and then Tuesday night.”
Donald Trump’s Executive Orders Aim to Create Jim Crow for Trans People. “The orders also, variously, deny people the ability to exercise control over their own bodies, medical care, and future, while also infringing on rights of free expression.”
Heather Cox Richardson is perhaps too dispassionate in her piece about Trump’s/Musk’s ongoing attempts destroy the US government but these are the facts and her sources list is well-worth making your way through.
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder on the 2025 coup: “The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government…are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation.”
A simple guide to using Signal for government workers (written by a US federal employee). If you need to communicate securely with others (coworkers, journalists, etc.) during this coup attempt, this is the way to do it.
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