MAGArthyism
It’s hard to imagine that the market whiplashing, on again-off again tariff threats against America’s staunchest allies isn’t the biggest news you should be paying attention to. But it tops this newsletter when a unelected private citizen gets access to the Dept of Treasury systems, threatens to shut down entire agencies, and is part of an employee purge designed to remove non-loyalists and cripple the federal government. Heather Cox Richardson has an overview of a busy weekend of democracy damaging. “Billionaire Elon Musk’s team yesterday took control of the Treasury’s payment system, thus essentially gaining access to the checkbook with which the United States handles about $6 trillion annually and to all the financial information of Americans and American businesses with it. Apparently, it did not stop there … Yesterday two top security officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) tried to stop people associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing classified information they did not have security clearance to see. The Trump administration put the officials on leave, and the DOGE team gained access to the information. Vittoria Elliott of Wired has identified those associated with Musk’s takeover as six ‘engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college.'”
+ Just look at some of these headlines and see if you can see a common theme emerge. Musk Threatens to Fire Federal Employees Who Leak Information During DOGE Purge. Musk Says DOGE Halting Treasury Payments to US Contractors. Trump moves to wrest control of USAID as Musk says, ‘We’re shutting it down.’ USAID headquarters in Washington are blocked after Musk says Trump agrees to close the aid agency. (There’s a new sheriff in town. But it’s not the new sheriff anyone elected…)
+ USAID to be merged into State Department, 3 U.S. officials say. “Mr. Trump said Sunday the agency was ‘run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out.'” (Some of the stuff these radical lunatics work on: “The range of activities it undertakes is vast. For example, not only does USAID provide food in countries where people are starving, it also operates the world’s gold standard famine detection system, which uses data analysis to try to predict where shortages are emerging. Much of USAID’s budget is spent on health programs, such as offering polio vaccinations in countries where the disease still circulates and helping to stop the spread of viruses which have the potential to cause a pandemic.”)
+ Over the past week, we’ve seen government officials fired, made too uncomfortable to stick around, and urged to report on their colleagues who aren’t sufficiently loyal or anti-DEI. MAGArthyism is the new McCarthyism. And it’s moving at internet speed. E.P.A. Tells More Than 1,000 They Could Be Fired ‘Immediately‘. FBI in ‘battle’ with Trump amid purge of officials, top agent warns staff. And the purge isn’t just for people. It applies to information. Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday.
+ Franklin Foer in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Trump’s Campaign to Dismantle the Government. “Some of these moves are transparent provocations—trolling by executive order—that press the limits of the law and will be slapped away by the courts. But it may not matter. This psychological gamesmanship might obviate the need for an actual purge because its tactics have been conceived to prod a huge chunk of the civil service to exit on its own accord.” And some more good analysis of the strategy being deployed: Trump’s DEI purge targets federal workers who did not work in DEI.
+ Denise Cana in Slate (Gift Article): I’m a Federal Worker. Elon Musk’s Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame.
+ “The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.” Yale professor Timothy Snyder on The Logic of Destruction.