In the past week or so, the courts have begun to try to set some boundaries on the Musk–Miller–Trump administration’s early blitz of recklessness.
. . .
This judicial review provides at least a small reprieve, hope that some of the administration’s most destructive impulses will be stopped. Or at least pared back. But even with the courts stepping up, and even with the reality of the administration’s ineptitude sinking in, this early Musk–Miller–Trump blitz remains very—maybe irreparably—damaging. Of course, there are a lot of moles to whack: the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are being dismantled at an alarming rate, and the court system is not known for being nimble. The administration is betting, perhaps rightly, that at least some of its thoughtless, lawless efforts will slip through the cracks.
But even if the courts caught them all—and even if every court facing each lawless escapade said, “Nope, that’s not a thing”—still the entire process would be doing serious damage to our institutions. Think of it as someone spoofing your identity and going on a shopping spree with your credit cards. Even if the goon gets caught, you still have to go store by store to argue that the fraudulent purchase wasn’t legitimate and hope the debt is forgiven. And all the while, perhaps long after all the debts are dealt with, the torrent of uncertainty kills your credit score.
I’m a federal employee. You have no idea the stress my family and I have been dealing with since that motherfucker swore in.
A relative of mine is a state employee… he had two reports that’d applied for transfer to the equivalent federal departments… and those two have now withdrawn their requests.
I wish you the best of luck and I thank you for your contribution to public well being.
They wouldn’t have been hired anyway. We had people who were supposed to start on Monday, January 27th. On Thursday the 23rd, their offers were rescinded and we were told they wouldn’t be starting. I can only imagine. Of course they had already quit their previous job. Now what the fuck are they doing?
He didn’t swear in. Elon just showed up.
No, he bought his way in and probably holds dirt over Trump. This wasn’t random chance.
and probably holds dirt over Trump.
Possibly that Trump wasn’t legally elected and Elmo rigged the election for him. It would explain Trump’s servile attitude in the oval office earlier. Elmo’s fucking kid basically told Trump to STFU.
Dirt? Guy is a convicted felon, says and does monstrous things openly, and denies things he just did on video the day before. He promoted a violent attack on his own government. He is dirt, he lives dirt. Unless it’s a video of him literally beheading dozens of kittens, I can’t imagine it would give him any leverage. Not even sure if that would either sadly.
Trump’s comment about Elon who “knows those computers very well” relating to voting machines makes me think that all the other crimes he did before are small fries comparitively to what Elon has on him/what Trump owes Elon.
Trump allowing himself to be openly cucked by Elon repeatedly is not something that he would just let happen without something big going on behind the scenes. Trump is a massive narcissist, and he is not afraid to tell people to fuck off normally if they steal his spotlight or slightly disagree with him. Just look at his last administration for plenty of examples.
Everyone holds dirt on Trump. That man hasn’t had a metaphorical shower in his life.
I don’t live in the US, but I did want to just say that as an outsider I appreciate the effort you are putting in, especially given the hostile working environment.
Good luck homie
Not personally and directly, no, but broadly, yes - I do know the irreversible damage they’re doing.
And here’s the real key to it all - none of it is accidental. The damage is the point.
Their goal is actually very simple - it’s to utterly destroy every aspect of the government that benefits the common people or inconveniences the wealthiest few, in order to convert it explicitly and entirely into a mechanism for protecting and expanding the privilege of the wealthiest few at the expense of everyone else.
And they announced it and fully laid out a plan ahead of time. This should come as a surprise to no one who is literate.
It burns my ass that some folks actually bought the whole “Trump doesn’t support Project 2025” bullshit. I cannot imagine being such a gullible, credulous moron.
Not just support it, but that he never even heard of it. (Then goes on to say that he doesn’t agree with it lol)
Majority of the population supports it. Anything else is pure cope.
Let’s assume you’re correct, and you got that fact from an actual survey and statistical analysis that has undergone peer-review. It really doesn’t come as a surprise that there are masses of people cheering on policies that work against their own interests.
The American public education system is a disaster that can barely teach basic adulting, let alone critical thinking or identifying untrustworthy reporting. Add in how most of the past century has been nonstop propaganda about how showing compassion to anyone outside your family is socialism, and socialism is communism, and communism is the antichrist. Now, throw in a heaping dose of social media and viral misinformation where the loudest person making the most emotionally reactive claims gets the most attention and positive reinforcement.
It’s really no wonder that a majority of people are metaphorically, ritualisticly throwing gasoline onto a tire fire while complaining about the toxic fumes that surround them. They literally lack the skills to know any better.
No, the majority of the voting population accepted Trump’s lies as truth. That doesn’t mean they support what’s happening, it means they were credulous enough to believe that it wouldn’t happen.
Wallowing in mistruths about your fellow voters may feel good, in a righteous anger sort of way, but it will blind you to the real opportunities for resistance that exist and can be exploited if enough people try.
They want you to be demoralized. Why are you doing their work for them?
With 96% of the vote in, Trump has, according to the Associated Press, 49.97% to Vice President Harris’ 48.36%, or 76.9 million votes to 74.4 million.
Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
Most of the country shifted to support Trump, even in safe blue states most people shifted right:
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5198616/2024-presidential-election-results-republican-shift
I’m sorry but please stop spreading copium misinfo
Google greg palast 2024 election and read his information on voter suppression.
You’re only talking about the votes that were counted. There were millions of people that voted and had their ballots rejected due to right wing shenanigans.
Look up vote challening in Georgia in partcular.
This is “voter fraud” and “stop the count” and “count them all” tier copium. Why do I need to Google some conspiracy theory of yours when I have the facts right here?
Vast majority of Americans supported Project 2025, supported trump and voted for him. Do you have any actual information to dispute these facts?
79 is a vast majority of 340?
Working as a federal employee comes with a set of golden handcuffs. You trade in a decent salary for retirement at the end. Firing people, or even asking them to leave for less than 10 months salary (maybe) is a huge Fuck You to those who have already sacrificed years of time. When you started your career- you couldn’t possibly predict something like a Trump train coming along to piss all over your life’s plans.
Who the fuck, with any level of competence, would ever want to apply for a federal position after seeing this shit show?
Who the fuck, with any level of competence, would ever want to apply for a federal position after seeing this shit show?
That’s the point. Musk et. al. are foreign assets with orders to weaken NATO and the US at all costs. They are successfully accomplishing their orders. And once the US’s economy has spiraled and collapsed, the USD will no longer be a trusted currency used for global trade. Then it’s BRIC’s time to shine. That’s their dream, at least.
Musk is his own asset. He doesn’t need to be a foreign one to fuck shit up, that’s just a side business for him
How are they going to get past the fact that there are half a dozen currencies better position to subsume the dollar than any of theirs?
Do you know about Curtis Yarvin and the so-called “network state” plan they are in the late stages of realizing? I don’t think BRICS is the endgame of the tech oligarchy.
Fools who think Daddy will be proud of them?
What’s annoying is the US cable/social media incessantly jumps right to the Trump/Musk framing of things.
The US AID shutdown has led to food aid stuck at ports as populations that rely on it starve.
A report on Monday from Paul Martin, the USAid inspector general, found that close to half a billion dollars’ worth of food was rotting because of confusion surrounding Mr Trump’s freeze last month.
How many americans have heard about the consequences of Trump’s actions? 1%? How many have heard about Elon’s vague and baseless claims that US AID is a big fraud? It seems every Republican I know has heard that.
The answer, of course, is for the remaining USAID staff to just ignore conflicting instructions and just give the food away. Federal workers need to understand that the job they have is not secure whether they obey or not.
Is anyone impressed at just how fast they destroyed the government? Almost as if Elon had been given illegal access to the various parts of the government before Trump purchased the seat of the president.
Hmmm I wonder how that could have happened.
I was downplaying Project 2025 thinking “Musk is just going to write recommendations to President Trump but they still have to go thru Congress for cuts, what can he do?” I am still in awe he just swooped in, took over systems and is brute force closing down agencies quicker than the legal or congressional system can react. At this rate at the end of the first 90 days this Goverment will be radically different for the worse
To add more context - I’m a federal employee who has received these Fork emails -
They always come out at night, usually ~ 8-9 pm Eastern. One came out on a Sunday night. So you show up for work the next morning and that’s what’s waiting for you. I’m convinced this is done on purpose, to fuck with us.
As Vought (perfect Bond villain name, right?) said:
“Put Them In Trauma”
They literally want to traumatize us. They hate us because for decades we’ve been the only ones to tell them no. No, Elon, you can’t fuck all kinds of shit up when you launch a spaceship. No, Elon, you can’t make the stock market go haywire because you were high and tweeted something stupid. No, Elon, you can’t make a deal with the Pentagon and then run to Putin and do something completely different.
Elon does not like to be told no, but Elon can’t go 5 minutes without acting like the entitled dipshit that he is, so here we are.
And so, ~ 2.5 million civil servants - scientists, healthcare researchers, USAID, engineers, doctors, etc etc, will feel his wrath because he can’t be told no.
I took a big pay cut for this job because I valued job security over money after growing up in a household where jobs were not guaranteed and my parents struggled. Finally I got there after trying for years, and now Elon has to throw a shit fit.
But it’s not about me - I’ll be ok, but many others won’t. And we won’t get it back without a lot of work, work that I’m not sure that we, as a country, are going to be willing to do. The brain drain and decades of knowledge capture will be lost forever. And that’s by design - now we can all go work for contractors with fewer benefits and no job security and help Elon to make even more money.
One of the Fork emails taunted us by saying that we should be happy to leave our low productivity jobs in government so that we could go work high productivity jobs in the private sector. (So funny!) I know that’s bullshit, but also I’m old enough to not let 4chan incels trigger me that easily.
I do worry about my younger/newer coworkers though, whose heads are spinning. So, I try to help them. I’m educating them about the union and hopefully giving them the tools to get through this and deal with what comes after in the best way possible, whatever that may be.
So the next time you have to go to some annoying government place with a long line and you’re tired and hungry and frustrated, please try to remember that whoever you end up coming face to face with may have just gotten another email trolling them and telling them what a piece of shit they are and they should resign from their jobs. Just give them some grace. Be kind.
It’s crazy how bad it’s going to get in the next few months. I work for a branch in the fed that’s almost all remote work, about 10 out of 150 or so are in person including myself. I know I’ll be safe, but my team? Section? Branch? All screwed. Then what’s left, for me to be swallowed by a RIF? The deal was tempting because of the threat behind your inaction likely not mattering.
Hoping it cools off soon. It’s hard to sleep lately.
deleted by creator
Far too many Americans will argue with you about how every single thing Trump and Musk do, is good. There is no way to change their mind and I am surrounded by them.
The U.S.A. is done. Such sabotage by Trump, Musk and MAGA takes decades to recover from. 40 to 50 at least; rebuilding the civil service, amending all the laws back to normal, fixing the Supreme Court, probably needing Constitutional amendments. This easily echos for a hundred years.
Even if they get rid of pedo-Don, Fox will tell them everything that went wrong is because of Clinton and the woke and they will be like “YeAh dAMn woke-dei-sjw-blm dEsTroyIng ma cUntrY”.
It’s over. That’s the consequence of decades of under-educating their citizen and raw capitalism. The only question that remain is how much of the world down they will bring down with them.
Yup.
It will take decades of scraping and clawing things through Congress to get back what we’re going to lose in a few short years. Assuming our government is even recognizable by the end of this.
If you have the means, it may actually be time to make another country home. If you don’t, you need to come to terms that you will probably spend the rest of your life living in a declining nation where your rights are threatened.
Honestly theres a good chance that the US may collapse, its tied pretty thoroughly to capitalism which is also showing signs of hitting its end point. Its possible that within the next four years even that the US will be 50 individual countries with the federal government no longer existing. The very problems that are allowing Trump and Musk to wreck shit is the same type of problems that collapse empires, and theres no American equivalent to Russia for the USSR or Serbia for Yugoslavia.
What do you think the chances of this happening? I hope it does. America is a cancer on the world. Even before drumpf and president Elon fuck
Depends how much Trump and Musk fuck with the states. If they continually piss off the bigger or blocks of states you could see one or two declare independence, that could cause a cascade of states declaring independence like with the former Soviet Republics. But its also possible that the states just start ignoring the federal government which eventually loses its authority.
Putin is getting such great value from Trump. It’s clearly the best deal ever.
a century of “Red Scare” has made you believe that everything evil in the world is russian.
While such a simplistic worldview might help you retain sanity in this world, if you look closely, it is the opposite of helpful, as it prevents you from seeing things as they are, and taking effective action.
Red Scare refers to the Commies under the bed fantasies of the Cold War. Russia hasn’t been communist/socialist since Yeltsin. Russia is now a mafia kleptocracy. And mafia Russia is a hostile foreign power. Opposition to Putin and Russian criminality is not a red scare thing because communism isn’t what’s the problem or the source of opposition to Putin’s Russia. It’s Russian mobsters who all report to Putin, who also owns and controls Trump and much of the GOP
I don’t think russia controls Trump or the GOP.
Russia controls Krasnov. And Krasnov controls the GOP
are u going thru my comments for a reason? do i seem like an interesting person? i’m flustered
I just need to shout this into the void:
Fuck this fucking bullshit. What the hell is wrong with this country. I fucking hate this timeline.
blame democrats for not having a primary
No, blame the people who did this. Blame the people that voted for Trump.
The most blame goes to billionaires and allowing corporations to be people.
Most people that voted for this have been brainwashed heavily for many years by the super wealthy to think they want this.
It’s not an excuse but think about it: if our country had provided better over all education and actually kept the super wealthy and our media in check then this wouldn’t be happening.
We should have been fighting really hard to reinstate things like fairness doctrine and to have more news outlets that didn’t rely on ad revenue this whole time.
The problem with progress in the US is we are never able to focus on the most crucial issues first. There’s so many people and views etc. and everyone has different priorities. Rich people don’t have this problem because they all have the same driving goal: money.
So, there’s blame to go around but citizens pointing at each other is not going to fix anything.
yes and also democrats for not having a primary
I think she would’ve won the primary anyway.
Blame? They did what you did, vote for the better candidate. That chunk of people was bigger than the chunk who voted for the other side. Isn’t that what the US is all about since the 1780s? Blame should be given to the people who sat on their arses and did not vote. We all know there are more democrat aligned people than republican.
I’d like to cordially invite you to go fuck yourself.
I think your country’s terrible voting and political system is largely to blame… Given that it’s so easy for an unelected official to sweep in and dismantle everything.
True, but Dems made a terrible system even worse by refusing to hold a primary. When you add that in with liberals funding a genocide, promising to add fascist Republicans to their cabinet, and offering zero policies that people actually care about like free healthcare, it is painfully clear that Liberal capitalist politicians did everything they could to throw this election.
I have an idea, normal thinking Americans do
I also have an idea of how many billions of dollars in lawsuits taxpayers will be on the hook for in the coming 25 years
It should come out of Trump, Musk, and Vought’s money.
What I don’t understand is that no one is stopping this from happening. They’re all just letting it happen. Perhaps because they are afraid to lose their jobs but at what cost? I’ve lost all hope for this country and I wish to God I could move. Oh well.
you have to make leftists understand that the only answer is violence. we have to say this over and over until it finally clicks. the people are the last line of defense.
You don’t include the Dems in “the left”, right?
that’s a complicated answer.
practical answer: yes
idealistic answer: no
EDIT: i think the most important answer for right now is that it doesn’t matter. this situation will not be resolved through voting. the mid terms might help alleviate the problem, but that’s a long time from now and things could get a lot worse if people don’t pull their heads out of their asses now.
I have so many ideas about it, before it even began. Good luck to you all, may we survive this next fascist cycle
After surviving the last 4 years Americans have proven they can survive anything.
Another asswipe Ivan. The Russian infantry is accepting applications. Don’t worry, the NATO tungsten will greet you.
Another armchair general who seems more inclined to see others suffer than to advocate for peace. Perhaps they should consider directly engaging in the conflict in Ukraine if they truly believe in such an approach.
To bad there is nothing we can do. We call our reps and they say “we agree, but there is nothing we can do”. The Republicans definitely won’t do anything so until midterms we are basically stuck.
There is more far, far more we could do, but it would require courage and class solidarity.
Like what?
