Wired magazine published an article identifying the young men who are members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team. They are called “experts,” even though they range in age from 19 to 24. Some of these “experts” are college dropouts. All of them worked for either Musk or billionaire Peter Thiel before their current assignment.
Archives for category: Democracy
It’s time to rehabilitate Richard Nixon’s reputation. True, he had a bunch of inept burglars break into the Denocratic National Committee’s headquarters. True, he had an enemies’ list. True, he appointed an ally to lead the Justice Department.
Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. Republicans in Congress were as angry as Democrats.
Nixon had a sense of shame. He resigned rather than be impeached. Trump has no sense of shame.
But all that pales compared to what is happening now. Trump has nominated a long list of completely unqualified people to run major Departments of the federal government. He has started a purge of the FBI, intending to oust anyone who participated in investigating him or the January 6 insurrection.
He has given free access to Elon Musk to enter every Department, copy its files, and fire any career employee who stands in his way.
Bill Kristol, once a conservative stalwart and editor of The Weekly Standard, now writes for The Bulwark, which sees Trump as the sociopath he is.
by William Kristol
In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . in violation of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Article II, section 5, of the Articles of Impeachment Adopted by the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, July 27, 1974
Half a century ago Congress, the courts, other key institutions within and outside of the government, and the American public, faced an assault launched by President Richard Nixon and his henchmen to the constitutional order and the rule of law.
They defeated it.
Today, we face a crisis greater than Watergate.
Are we up to dealing with it?
We’re going to find out.
The crisis is multi-faceted and fast-moving. President Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk—nominated for no federal office, employed by no federal agency, accountable to no one—are racing on several fronts to undermine laws, procedures, and norms that would constrain their arbitrary exercise of power. But the assault on the rule of law seems centered on the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It began with the nomination of Trump apparatchik and defender of the January 6th rioters Kash Patel to be FBI director. Patel tried to reassure Senators during his confirmation hearing last Thursday that “all FBI employees will be protected from political retribution.”
But the next day, Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense lawyer, who is now acting deputy attorney general and in charge of the Justice Department, ordered the removal of at least six top FBI career executives. Bove also requested the names of all FBI agents who worked on January 6th cases.
All seemed on track for Trump’s efforts to purge the agency and remake it in his own image.
But FBI officials may not permit their agency to go gentle into the dictatorial night.
Over the weekend, in a blizzard of activity (helpful reporting can be found here, and here, and here), FBI officials moved to resist the attempted coup.
Though he had carried out the order to decapitate the bureau’s top executives the day before, on Friday acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll reportedly refused to agree to fire certain agents involved with January 6th cases, and was trying to block a mass purge of such agents. In a message to staff Saturday, Driscoll reminded FBI agents of their rights to “due process and review in accordance with existing policy and law,” and emphasized “That process and our intent to follow it have not changed.”
The FBI Agents Association sent a memo to employees over the weekend to remind them of their civil service protections. The memo urged them not to resign or to offer to resign, and recommended that agents respond to one question in the survey they’ve been instructed to answer: “I have been told I am ‘required to respond’ to this survey, without being afforded appropriate time to research my answers, speak with others, speak with counsel or other representation.”
And in a remarkable letter, obtained by The Bulwark, the president of the Society of Former FBI Agents—a group that seeks to stay out of politics—said the following:
The obvious disruption to FBI operations cannot be overstated with the forced retirement of the Director, Deputy Director, and now all five Executive Assistant Directors. Add in the immediate removal of a number of SACs [Special Agents in Charge] and the requests for lists of investigative personnel assigned to specific investigations and you know from your experience that extreme disruption is occurring to the FBI—at a time when the terrorist threat around the world has never been greater.
Then on Sunday the top agent at the FBI’s New York field office, James Dennehy, wrote in an email to his staff: “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy. . . . Time for me to dig in.”
It’s surely time for many others to dig in. Especially the United States Congress, which authorizes FBI activities, appropriates its funds, and before whom Kash Patel’s nomination is pending.
It’s pointless to ask President Trump to recall the oath he took two weeks ago, to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
But members of Congress also take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As it was fifty years ago, so it is today: The fact that the Constitution’s enemies now include the president of the United States does not relieve members of Congress of their responsibility to that oath.
Nobody puts things in perspective as well as Heather Cox Richardson. What is happening in Washington, D.C., right now is dangerous and subversive. Trump has given Elon Musk to destroy our government and trash the Constitution. There is a coup underway.
She writes:
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.
Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans’ personal information as well as information about Musk’s competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers.
Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure.
From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices. According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X.
Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs.
By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within.
On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”
Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.”
“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”
Senator Murphy said: “[L]et’s not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.”
Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.”
While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending.
Meanwhile, the elected president, Donald Trump, sparked a crisis last Friday when his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he fully intended to go through with the trade war he had hyped on the campaign trail. Trump announced he would levy tariffs of 25% on most products from Mexico and Canada and of 10% on products from China, beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, in violation of the trade agreement his own team had negotiated during his first term.
As soon as Leavitt announced the upcoming tariffs, the stock market began to fall, and by last night, stock market futures had fallen 450 points on the expectation of tariffs hitting at midnight tonight. Today, the stock market continued to fall. Even reliable Trump allies began to complain that the tariffs would raise prices. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”
Today, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she and Trump had “reached a series of agreements” that would pause the threatened tariffs for a month. Mexico agreed to “reinforce the northern border with 10,000 elements of the National Guard immediately, to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States,” while the U.S. “commits to work to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.”
When Trump announced their conversation shortly afterward, he omitted the part of the agreement that committed the U.S. to try to stop the flow of guns to Mexico. He also did not mention that, in fact, Mexico committed to putting 10,000 troops at the border in 2021. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post commented above a record of Mexican troop deployments: “Any news outlet reporting Mexico conceded anything to Trump to get him to delay tariffs has not done its homework. Trump boasts he got Mexico to commit to stationing 10K troops at our border. Apparently he didn’t realize Mexico already has 15K troops deployed there[.]”
The crisis at the northern border worked out in a similar fashion. After conferring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump announced a 30-day pause in the implementation of tariffs. Trudeau agreed to appoint a border czar and to implement a $1.3 billion border plan that Canada had announced in December.
In other words, while Musk was causing a constitutional crisis, Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory.
The tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect as planned. China has promised to levy tariffs of up to 15% on certain U.S. products beginning a week from today. It also said it will investigate Google to see if it has violated antitrust laws.
The FBI is supposed to be a nonpolitical agency, although every FBI director chosen by every president was a Republican.
Over the past four years, the FBI was assigned the job of identifying and arresting those who planned and participated in the January 6, 2021, invasion of the U.S. Capitol. The mob was incited by Trump; its goal was to stop the certification of the 2020 election. The insurrection was an attempt to overthrow the Constitution and give Trump a position he lost in the 2020 elections.
The investigation of the January 6 insurrection was the largest in the history of the FBI.
Now Trump’s minions are asking FBI agents whether they were part on the investigation of January 6 or part of the investigation of Trump’s theft of classified documents.
Those who were will be fired because they can’t be trusted to faithfully execute Trump’s agenda.
Understand that the FBI agents who worked in these investigations were carrying out their duties. Understand that in no sane world is it right to send an angry mob to ransack the U.S. Capitol and to disrupt Congress in performing its prescribed duties.
Trump wants to rewrite history. He wants to make it official that the prosecution of the January 6 mob should never have happened. It was, he says, “a day of love.” The mob that beat up and bludgeoned police officers defending the Capitol and members of Congress were “patriots.”
Historians will ignore his lies. The criminal actions of Trump’s mob are well documented.
How can the FBI save itself from a mass purge?
Simple. Every single member of the FBI should sign a statement saying that they were part of the January 6 investigation. Every. Single. Member.
This is a true statement because who investigated the largest single attack in the Capitol were chosen at random. They were not there as volunteers or Trump-haters. They were there because FBI agents take their assignments seriously and execute them with fidelity.
To defend the FBI, sign your name. They can’t fire everyone. That might even offend the sombolent Republicans in Congress. Most were there on January 6. No matter what they say now, they know that their lives were in danger then. Will they sit by silently and let Trump eliminate the entire FBI? Not likely.
Their Trump obeisance must have limits.
Stand together. Sign your name.
Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale and author of On Tyranny, among many other books, summarizes the perilous moment we are now in.
What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.
The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate.
For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.
The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.
All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves.
Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.
Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.
The gap between the oligarchs’ wealth and everyone else’s will grow. Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump’s deliberately destructive tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. But that is just tomorrow and the day after.
In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark. The self-chosen few will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside, they will be alone to dominate.
Trump’s tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump’s attacks on America’s closest friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible.
Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power.
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.
In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.
After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.
For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth.
They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted.
The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. The people in charge, though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. I describe it not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions. I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. Here are a few ideas.
If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you otherwise disagree.
Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work.
Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong.
Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever.
Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover. There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens.
Trump should obviously be impeached. Either he has lost control, or he is using his power to do obviously illegal things. If Republicans have a sense of where this is going, there could be the votes for an impeachment and prosecution.
Those considering impeachment should also include Vance. He is closer to the relevant oligarchs than Trump, and more likely to be aware of the logic of destruction than he. The oligarchs have likely factored in, or perhaps even want, the impeachment and prosecution of Trump. Unlike Vance, Trump has charisma and followers, and could theoretically resist them. He won’t; but he poses a hypothetical risk to the oligarchs that Vance does not.
Democrats who serve in state office as governors have a chance to profile themselves, or more importantly to profile an America that still works. Attorneys general in states have a chance to enforce state laws, which will no doubt have been broken.
The Democratic Party has a talented new chair. Democrats will need instruments of active opposition, such as a People’s Cabinet, in which prominent Democrats take responsibility for following government departments. It would be really helpful to have someone who can report to the press and the people what is happening inside Justice, Defense, Transportation, and the Treasury, and all the others, starting this week.
Federal workers should stay in office, if they can, for as long as they can. This is not political, but existential, for them and for all of us. They will have a better chance of getting jobs afterwards if they are fired. And the logic of their firing is to make the whole government fail. The more this can be slowed down, the longer the rest of us have to get traction.
And companies? As every CEO knows, the workings of markets depend upon the government creating a fair playing field. The ongoing takeover will make life impossible for all but a few companies. Can American companies responsibly pay taxes to a US Treasury controlled by their private competitors? Tesla paid no federal tax at all in 2024. Should other companies pay taxes that, for all they know, will just enrich Tesla’s owner?
Commentators should please stop using words such as “digital” and “progress” and “efficiency” and “vision” when describing this coup attempt. The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That’s it. They are offering no future beyond acting out their midlife crises on the rest of us. It is demeaning to pretend that they represent something besides a logic of destruction.
As for the rest of us: Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.
What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free together.
Alexander Vindman was a highly decorated member of the military who was invited to join the staff of the National Security Council where he was Director of European Affairs. In 2019, he testified before Congress about the Trump-Ukraine scandal. The scandal culminated in Trump’s first impeachment.
He writes a blog called “Why It Matters”about public affairs.
He wrote recently about Elon Musk’s brash intrusion into the functioning of the federal government, at Trump’s invitation. With the pretext of finding “efficiencies,” Musk has scooped up vast amounts of private infornation about almost every American and caused the ouster of effective career civil servants. He also instigated a buyout offer to 2 million career civil servants, although no money has been appropriated to pay for mass retirements. The offer was modeled on Musk’s strategy at Twitter, where he dramatically reduced the workforce by almost 80%.
He wrote:
Members of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency” under Elon Musk have engaged in an ongoing campaign designed to cripple the basic functions of government and decimate the federal civil service. Members of the Department of Government Efficiency are reportedly pushing for full access to payment systems and intend to scrape data from within the Department of Treasury. Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause has been designated liaison between the Treasury and the Department of Government Efficiency, with Musk reportedly wanting to add the Treasury to the blockchain. Agents from the Department of Government Efficiency have demanded access to classified info with USAID, with Elon later calling the agency a criminal organization and declaring “Time for [USAID] to die”. Civil servants across the federal government have been offered buy-outs to leave their positions early. Not only have no funds been appropriated for these offers (nor has the full legality been determined), but these buy-outs are being made by an administration lead by someone who has notoriously scammed contractors and avoided paying invoices whenever possible. These actions are taking place in the midst of an ongoing purge of high-ranking officials within the FBI by the Trump administration.
Make no mistake, what’s happening right now is a hostile takeover of the federal government by a private agency operating with a broad mandate and no concerns for the stability of the United States or the interests of the average American. It’s easier to break than it is to build, and Elon Musk’s agenda is focused on unraveling America’s governing institutions. When – not if – a preventable disaster is enabled by the Department of Government Efficiency’s decision to destroy a function of government in the name of “fighting wokeness”, there will be a reckoning for the damage Elon Musk has done.
Musk is sending his agents to sensitive federal agencies and taking over. He has taken control of the payments system at the U.S. Treasury, which processes trillions of dollars in Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, and other obligations and holds personally identifiable information about recipients. They gained access to the computers of the Office of Personnel Managenent, which has records of federal employees, and locked out its government overseers.
Now his team has barged into the offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, clashed with security officers who barred their entry into restricted spaces; the security officers were suspended, and Musk’s team is now downloading their computers.
The Washington Post reported:
The Trump administration has removed two top security officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development after they refused to let representatives of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” access restricted spaces at the agency, said current and former USAID officials.
The placement of the security officials — John Voorhees and his deputy — on administrative leave is the latest effort by the Trump administration and Musk to wrest control of the world’s largest provider of food assistance, which they have denigrated, without offering evidence, as left-wing and corrupt amid objections from Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Amid the turmoil at the agency, Matt Hopson, the USAID chief of staff and a political appointee, resigned, according to a current and former USAID official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. Hopson did not respond to requests for comment.
On Sunday, Musk repeatedly attacked USAID on X, calling the long-standing government agency “evil” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”
“USAID is a criminal organization,” he added. “Time for it to die.”
By Sunday afternoon, USAID’s X account had been taken down, with a message saying the account “doesn’t exist.”
Reuters reported that the Trump administration was dismantling USAID and had fired more than 100 of its career staff.
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration will probably shift the agency into the State Department. Trump currently has imposed a 80-day freeze on all foreign aid.
State Department officials did not answer inquiries seeking to clarify the purpose of the moves, which lawmakers and aid workers said could be anything from a restructuring to an effort to significantly downsize, if not eliminate, most U.S. foreign aid programs.
But Democratic lawmakers said they feared a potentially bleak endgame for the aid agency.
“All the signals of how the senior staff have been put on administrative leave, many of the field staff and headquarters staff have been put on a gag order,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, who sits on the Senate panels on foreign relations and appropriations, said Saturday afternoon in an interview.
“It seems more like the early stages of shutting down than it does of reviewing it or merely retitling it,” he added.
U.S.A.I.D. is the government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance. Since it was established in 1961, it has received foreign policy guidance from the State Department, but otherwise functioned as an independent entity.
Ironically, the Washington Post published an editorial today defending the value of foreign, especially humanitarian aid.
Foreign assistance is one of the more misunderstood items in the federal budget. In creates an enormous bang for a relatively small buck. American aid supports thousands of programs across 204 countries. It provides lifesaving drugs for millions of people afflicted with HIV/AIDS and malaria. It purifies drinking water, helps rid former war zones of leftover land mines, and trains local police to combat human trafficking and the illegal wildlife trade.
For many people around the world, aid is also the most visible symbol of U.S. power — soft power — and a tangible demonstration of America’s decency. Amounting to $68 billion in fiscal 2023, foreign aid is only about 1 percent of the federal budget. Yet it has long been in the crosshairs of some fiscal conservatives and other critics who deem it a waste of taxpayer dollars that could be better spent at home.
On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order suspending all foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review, saying the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed up with a cable on Jan. 24 to all U.S. diplomatic outposts stopping work on most foreign aid programs during the review period, which is supposed to be completed by the time the freeze expires. Initially, exemptions were made only for emergency food aid and military assistance to Israel and Egypt — and conspicuously not for aid to Ukraine or Taiwan. Then on Tuesday, perhaps bowing to global outrage and criticism, Rubio issued an additional waiver for lifesaving humanitarian assistance…
Consider just a few of the programs taxpayers fund, starting with PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, launched under President George W. Bush in 2003. By the end of last year, PEPFAR was providing antiretroviral treatment for nearly 21 million people in 55 countries and delivering pre-exposure prophylaxis (to prevent people from contracting HIV) to 2.5 million people. In South Africa, PEPFAR covers much of the costs for staff to administer the drugs, for HIV-prevention messaging and for supporting the country’s HIV research. It remains unclear whether Rubio’s waiver extends to PEPFAR, but it should. A months-long delay would cost lives.
The United States is also the world’s largest donor to the global fight against malaria, mostly through the President’s Malaria Initiative, known as PMI. In fiscal 2024, Congress allocated $795 million to the U.S. Agency for International Development for the effort to diagnose and treat malaria and to distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets. With even a short suspension of this aid, prevention gains could be reversed, especially in malaria-prone cities such as Lagos, Nigeria, African health officials warn….
All in all, foreign aid is an extraordinarily effective policy tool. Helping eradicate poverty and promote democracy generates goodwill that makes the United States stronger. Combating life-threatening pathogens and removing the causes of economic and social instability make the world safer. Expanding global prosperity creates new markets for American products.
Rubio’s waiver should expand to include all programs vital to health and well-being. And the secretary should see that the review is done quickly and fairly, so that the flow of aid can resume before the pause does lasting damage.
The editorial was written in response to Trump’s 90-day freeze. It did not acknowledge the all-out assault on USAID, nor the fact that Trump is dubious about all foreign aid and Musk thinks it’s “evil.”
Bear in mind that Musk does not believe in philanthropy. He is the world’s richest man, with wealth of more than $400 billion. But where is his philanthropy? Has he endowed any universities, hospitals, museums, medical research? Or anything else. He once denounced Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife McKenzie Scott because she was so generous with her gifts to struggling nonprofits; he said she was undermining Western civilization. I can’t find evidence of any philanthropy on his part. If it exists, it’s well hidden.
Elon Musk has a hard, cold heart. If he has one.
Joyce Vance is a veteran prosecutor. She was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009-2017. She asserts that what has happened since Trump returned to the White House is not normal. He is dismantling one agency after another. He is firing highly qualified career civil servants. We are watching a coup, led by the President. He is wreaking damage on our institutions of government. Will Congressional Republicans stop him? Or
She wrote on her blog:
I don’t want to be an alarmist—I try to avoid that—but as I’m writing this, it looks like we are in the middle of a five-alarm fire. It’s day 13 of Trump 2.0. From day one, it was clear that Donald Trump was not playing by normal American constitutional rules. Of course, it has long been obvious that he didn’t intend to play by the rules, but any pretense of lawfulness was stripped away when he tried to cancel birthright citizenship with an executive order that ran afoul of the clear language in the Constitution, as confirmed in short order by two federal judges. In the following days, it became more clear that we were not okay, that nothing was right.
During his second week in office, Trump illegally fired 18 inspectors general, the people who ferret out corruption, waste, and fraud in federal agencies. It sounds like, under Trump, there will be no more of that. No independent inspectors general to poke around. Trump has made it clear that personal loyalty to him is more important than principle. Government employees, including those with civil service protections, now serve at his pleasure.
That message was driven home on January 31, when something commenters referred to as a “Friday night massacre” took place. But that historical reference to Watergate lacked resonance. In 1973, the Saturday Night Massacre took place when Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon, refused to drop a subpoena for the Nixon White House tapes, whose existence he had learned of when an aide, Alex Butterfield, revealed their existence during testimony before a Senate Committee investigating the Watergate break-in. Nixon sent out the order to Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox.
On October 20, 1973, Richardson refused the president’s order and resigned on the spot. Nixon turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, ordering him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. It fell to Solicitor General Robert Bork to fulfill Nixon’s order, but by then, the damage to Nixon was done. Nothing of that sort happened last night.
Archibald Cox issued a statement on his way out the door that included these memorable words, “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.” Ten days later, on October 30, 1973, Nixon’s impeachment began, and a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was appointed in November. Later that month, a federal judge ruled Cox’s dismissal violated the rules covering special counsels.
By comparison, there hasn’t been much of a furor this weekend. Trump’s now-former lawyer, Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, issued the orders to remove FBI officials. Bove wrote in a memo, “The FBI — including the Bureau’s prior leadership — actively participated in what President Trump appropriately described as ‘a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated on the American people over the last four years’ with respect to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
It’s outrageous. But, there hasn’t been much in the way of public outrage.
By the end of the day on Friday, the purge extended to senior FBI officials, including about a half-dozen executive assistant directors, some of the Bureau’s top managers who oversee criminal, national security, and cyber investigations. There were also reports of firings of senior FBI leaders, including the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C., and special agents in charge of field offices across the country, including Miami and Las Vegas. The special agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI Office said, “I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock.”
This situation might seem reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration’s midterm firing of its own U.S. Attorneys, but there’s a big difference. The U.S. Attorneys were political appointees who served at the president’s pleasure. These FBI employees are career. They have civil service protections, and although they can be demoted, they cannot be fired without cause. Lawsuits might expose that, but so far, a number of the impacted FBI executives seem to be taking the option of retiring ahead of their firing date, which preserves their pensions and other retirement benefits.
DOJ’s acting leadership also instructed the FBI on Friday to turn over information about “all current and former bureau employees who ‘at any time’ worked on January 6 investigations,” according to an email acting FBI director Brian Driscoll sent out. The email included an attachment from Emil Bove suggesting those employees’ records would be reviewed to determine “whether any additional personnel actions”—i.e., more firings—“are necessary.” The FBI is one of the four law enforcement components of the Justice Department. Its director takes orders from the attorney general and the deputy attorney general.
You would have to be asleep at the switch to miss the fact that this looks like an effort to take revenge on every FBI employee involved in a Trump prosecution or a January 6-related prosecution. Prosecutors who worked on those cases were fired during the week as well. In the case of the Bush U.S. Attorneys, some, but not all of the firings allegedly involved either interfering with prosecutions of Republican politicians or failure to investigate Democratic politicians and efforts to protect the voting rights of Democratic-leaning voters. Even though these were employees who could be fired at will by the president without cause, the Justice Department Inspector General’s Reporton the matter concluded that the dismissals were “arbitrary,” “fundamentally flawed,” and “raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecution decisions.” Actions like this do more than just punish; they instill fear in the ranks of people who need to keep their jobs. And the last thing we need with Trump in charge of a Justice Department that is willing to do his bidding and let him use the power of prosecution as a political tool.
Friday night, there wasn’t much more than a whimper from the public. Americans didn’t take to the streets. Nothing like the pink pussy hats of 2016 was evident. Some people talked about how horrible it was, but for the most part Americans went about their business. It was a win for Donald Trump, or at least, it wasn’t the loss it should have been.
Presidents are supposed to follow the law and honor their oaths. Bill Clinton was investigated while in office and interviewed by Justice Department lawyers. He was impeached. But he didn’t fire the agents and the prosecutors. Not Donald Trump. He is an anti-president who does not uphold the law, and there is no telling where it will end.
Once disobedience to the law is on the table, even adherence to absolutes—like the two term limit on holding the office of the presidency—fall into question. As James Romoser, POLITICO’s legal editor wrote yesterday, “when rulers consolidate power through a cult of personality, they do not tend to surrender it willingly, even in the face of constitutional limits. And Trump, of course, already has a track record of trying to remain in office beyond his lawful tenure.” Romoser concludes, as did I earlier in the week, that the possibility Trump will seek and secure a third term shouldn’t be dismissed with a hand wave, as some commentators have. He’s the anti-president, after all.
During Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing to head the FBI this week, he testified under oath that he wasn’t aware of any plans to punish agents involved in the Trump cases. He said, “no one will be terminated for case assignments.” He also saidthat “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.” Donald Trump made a liar out of him. But it’s the American people who will end up paying for it.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
Robert Hubbell is a level-headed guy who follows the news closely and calls things by their rightful name. He writes an immensely popular blog.
In this post, he says we are currently experiencing a coup, engineered by Trump and Musk. They are seizing control of every Department and agency, ousting loyal career officials and politicizing nonpolitical agencies, like the FBI. The news media reports the events as news stories. Hubbell puts it all together. It’s a coup.
He writes:
On Friday, January 31, 2025, Trump moved to complete the coup he began on January 6, 2021. Trump failed the first time, and he will fail again—because he has underestimated the American people. We must steel ourselves because things will get worse before they get better–but they will get better. It is a fool’s bet to assume that the American people will sit idly by as their freedoms are stolen by a corrupt oligarch and a convicted felon destroying the government to promote their selfish interests.
Speaking the truth about what is happening is difficult and unpleasant. Hearing the truth is also difficult and unpleasant. But the longer we fail to recognize the current situation for what it is—a slow-rolling coup attempt—the longer it will take for us to recover….
I am speaking more directly and using stronger words to describe the situation than many of the mainstream media outlets. CBS, CNN, and NYT are reporting on bits and pieces of Trump’s actions as if they are mere political stories. But those outlets are not addressing the obvious coordinated nature of the unprecedented attacks on the DOJ, FBI, Office of Personnel Management, Treasury Department, and dozens of other agencies.
Taken together, those actions amount to a hostile takeover of the US government by those who are loyal to Trump rather than to the US Constitution. The only word that accurately describes that situation is “coup.” Any other description is a sign of fear, submission, or surrender.
Usually, coups occur between political adversaries competing for control of the government. Here, the coup is an effort by Trump to overthrow the Constitution and establish himself as the unbounded dictator of the United States. The only word that accurately describes that situation is “coup.” Any other description is a sign of fear, submission, or surrender.
Fortunately, many independent political commentators are raising the alarm in ways the legacy media is not. BlueSky has become an indispensable source of resistance and information. Facebook is also emerging as a source of statements and leaks by government insiders.
To the extent you can, amplify those voices and add your own to the swelling chorus of alarm and indignation that will eventually stop Trump’s unfolding coup. We stopped Trump’s initial attempt to “freeze” grants and loans, and we can do it again.
Here is a partial list of what is happening:
Elon Musk and a team of DOGE infiltrators have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by connecting non-government computer servers to the US personnel mainframe computers. They have reportedly seized private information about millions of federal employees. They have locked the senior managers of the OPM out of their agency’s computers. They have moved “sofa beds” into the OPM offices and put the offices into a “lockdown mode.” See Reuters, Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say.
The hostile takeover of OMP allowed Musk to send an unauthorized memo inviting millions of federal employees to resign in exchange for eight months of “non working paid employment.” [Two unions representing federal workers have filed a lawsuitchallenging Trump’s plan to reclassify and terminate hundreds of thousands of federal workers.]
Elon Musk and a team of DOGE infiltrators have attempted to seize control of the US Treasury payments system—the gateway through which ALL funds from the federal government flow. When a senior manager at the Treasury asked why Musk needed access to the highly sensitive system, the manager was immediately placed on leave. He chose to quit, instead. See The New Republic, Top Official to Quit as Musk Tries to Get Hands on Key Payment System
As of Friday evening, the Acting US Attorney for Washington, D.C., fired about 30 US Attorneys who prosecuted January 6 insurrectionists. See Politico, DOJ fires dozens of prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases. Think about that for a moment: The convicted felons who attacked the Capitol have been pardoned and the loyal servants of the Constitution who prosecuted them have been fired. That fact should outrage every American.
Also on Friday evening, the FBI told eight of its most senior leaders to resign or be fired on Monday. Those senior officials head divisions of the DOJ responsible for cybersecurity, national security, and criminal investigations. Senior FBI leaders ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday | CNN Politics
The FBI has fired dozens of agents who worked on investigations of January 6 insurrectionists and has asked for a list of every agent across the US who worked on the largest criminal investigation in the history of the FBI. That list will include hundreds—possibly thousands of FBI agents. The implication of the memo ordering the compilation of the list is that those agents may be fired. See Reuters, Trump’s DOJ launches purge of Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI agents.
Also on Friday, the FBI told the senior agents in charge of field offices in Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles to resign or be fired on Monday. Reuters.
Readers alerted me to postings on Facebook and elsewhere (that I cannot authenticate) claiming to be from current government employees describing an atmosphere of chaos and fear as DOGE infiltrators ominously demand lists of employees who are apparently “next” to be fired.
Dozens of government websites were taken offline on Friday, ostensibly to be scrubbed for references to diversity, gender, or human attributes that are not white, male, and Christian. The effort was brutish, clumsy, and ignorant. The Census Bureau website was offline as DOGE infiltrators attempted to remove references to the fact that America includes people who are not white male Christians. Websites relating to LGBTQ equality, women’s health, transgender issues, and scientific knowledge in general were taken down.
The Pentagon has advised NBC, NYT, NPR, and other mainstream media outlets that they would be “rotated out of the building (i.e., the Pentagon)” to make room for NYPost, Breitbart, and OANN. See @DefenseBaron.bsky.social.
And as all of the above is happening, Republicans in the Senate will vote to confirm a Director of National Intelligence with suspiciously warm views toward Putin and an FBI Director who published an “enemies list” that included dozens of politicians, journalists, military officers, and career government officials.
Oh, and the Republican Party is facilitating the rolling coup. No, that’s not quite right. They are cheering it on.
As with the freeze on grants and loans, it will take a few days for the American public to understand the implications of what is happening. It is up to us to help spread the word.
What can we do? Here’s what we can do: Trump’s rolling coup is (mistakenly) predicated on his belief that the American people are sheep. He believes that we will sit still while he does whatever he wants.
He is wrong.
America is based on the consent of the governed, and its economic health requires the cooperation of the participants in the economy. If Americans withhold their political consent and economic cooperation, both the political and financial systems in America will grind to a halt.
What does withholding consent and cooperation look like? That is difficult to predict given the fluid situation, but the citizens of other nations that have grappled with similar challenges have used sustained and massive street protests, national work strikes, work slowdowns, taxpayer strikes, business boycotts, and transportation boycotts. To be clear, I am simply making an observation about how aspiring dictators in other countries have been brought to heel and held to account.
Soon, very soon, Americans will be called upon to leave the comfort of their homes and the anonymity of their computer screens to engage in massive, coordinated action to remind Trump and Musk that they are servants of the people, not vice-versa.
Coda: Trump announced 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada. As one Canadian official noted on Friday, the Canadian auto industry—which is a major parts supplier to the US auto industry—cannot survive for a week with 25% tariffs. The Canadian supply chain will shut down, the American car industry will be severely damaged, and tens of thousands of US autoworkers will be laid off. We aren’t talking about inflation increasing or the cost of eggs. We are talking about tens of thousands of job losses and an economic shock likely to lead to a recession.
The point is that Trump’s anti-democratic blitz is occurring in an environment in which he is making the stupidest economic moves made by any president since Herbert Hoover. That background will provide fertile soil for massive action by Americans who are fed up with Trump and Musk acting like dictators.
I believe in the strength and resiliency of the American people. It may take longer than some of us would like, but they will awaken, like the sleeping giant that German spies warned Hitler about on the eve of WWII.
I understand those who are frustrated and angry over the seeming flat-footed response of Democratic leadership. But complaining is not a strategy. Issue spotting is not a strategy. Assigning blame is not a strategy. Taking action is a strategy. Spreading the truth is a strategy. Making the daily phone calls recommended by Jessica Craven is a strategy.
So, to the extent you can, direct all your anxious energy and anger toward action. The first time you learn of a protest march near you, show up. And the next time. And the time after that. In many nations, small protest marches gain momentum in a matter of weeks.
One of the sure signs of an authoritarian regime is a passion to censor unwanted information, research, ideas, and history. The Trump administration is busy deleting scientific research at the Centers for Disease Control. Any studies that include data about LGBT+ people, women, or others whose existence is anathema to Trump and his Merry Band of Bigots is being purged. During the first Trump term, research about climate change was given the heave-ho, and scientists rushed to archive their work. Again, climate change is being buried in the archives of the EPA. Now the new Enemy of the State is DEI.
The Washington Post wrote about the censorship at the CDC here:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed or edited references to transgender people, gender identity and equity from its website Friday, racing to meet a late-afternoon deadline imposed by the federal Office of Personnel Management.
Whole pages about HIV testing for transgender people, guidelines for use of HIV medication and information on supporting LGBTQ+ youth health were no longer available late Friday.
The material removed or edited includes extensive sets of data collected and used by researchers around the world, according to two employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The data’s removal will have implications for researchers who have relied for decades on the comprehensive material collected by the vaunted public health agency.
One example of a set of data taken down was a survey by the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, conducted every two years to assess the health behaviors of high school students. The landing page for data about the survey was dark Friday afternoon and read: “The page you’re looking for was not found…”
Agency staff members were given a list of about 20 words and phrases to be used as a “guide,” according to a screenshot shared by one employee. The words include: gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, biologically male, biologically female, he/she/they/them. All references to DEI and inclusion are also to be removed.
The new regime is moving fast to obliterate inconvenient science writes TCinLA at his Substack blog, which is called “That’s Another Fine Mess.”
There is a scene toward the end of Act Two in “Rollerball” (the first release, starring James Caan, the one worth watching) in which “Jonathan E” is allowed to go to Geneva, where the computer that runs the world is housed, to ask questions of it. He finds that the computer is systematically “losing” history and data. The Librarian tells him that “He’s already lost the entire Twelfth Century.” Jonathan E realizes that there will never be a way to rebel against the corporate overlords who run the world in which he lives, because the people will never know any other alternative.
Or as George Orwell put it in “1984″: “Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past.” In that novel – which it seems some people are adapting now as a user’s manual – the information Big Brother’s government didn’t want people to access ended up in “the memory hole.”
As bad as we thought things would be with the second coming of Cletus J. Dumbass’s Maladministration, the reality is far worse. We are only at day 12 of this maladministration, and the assault on historical knowledge and information is well underway.
The Theocrats who created Project 2025 know what Orwell knew, what the screenwriter of Rollerball knew, what those who study authoritarian movements know: if people do not have access to information, they have no way to separate lies from truth. They can then be ruled without fear of revolt.
Information at the Centers for Disease Control is disappearing as you read this. The agency has already removed all scientific data from public view.
On Thursday night, word began to spread through the scientific community that researchers should go to the CDC website and download their data immediately, because such data was about to disappear from the website, or be altered to comply with Maladministration II’s ongoing plan to remove from federal agencies any mention of gender, DEI, or accessibility. Scientists were up throughout the night, working to download information they needed for their continued work on such crucial issues as tracking viral outbreaks. (Remember back in 2020, at the outbreak of the pandemic, when Cletus said he wished they would stop testing people and reporting the results because “It doesn’t look so good for me”?)
Already, the data from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System has disappeared. The data from the Agency for Toxic Substances and the Disease Registry’s Social Vulnerability Index and the Environmental Justice Index are gone. The landing page for HIV data has vanished. The AtlasPlus tool, which holds 20 years of CDC surveillance data on HIV, hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis, is no longer available. The new “leaders” at the CDC have directed employees to scrub any mention of “gender” from the data it shares at the website, replacing it with “sex.”
The purge’s full scope is still unclear. The Atlantic obtained a document that revealed the government – as of Thursday evening – planned to target and replace several “suggested keywords” – including “pregnant people,” “transgender,” “binary,” “non-binary,” “gender,” “assigned at birth,” “cisgender,” “queer,” “gender identity,” “gender minority,” and “anything with pronouns” These terms represent demographic variables researchers collect when tracking the ebb and flow of diseases and health conditions across populations. If they are reworded, or even removed entirely from data sets to comply with the Executive Order issued the night of Enshittification Day, researchers and health-care providers will have a much harder time figuring out how diseases affect specific communities.
The legislative “explicit purpose” of CDC data is to guide researchers to places and people who most need attention. It is hard to understand how this decision benefits health, but it does benefit an ideological decision to delete the entire topic of transgender.
When questioned about this today, an HHS spokesperson said that “all changes to the HHS website and HHS division websites are in accordance with President Trump’s January 20 Executive Orders” on gender and DEI.
The government understands these changes could have scientific implications since the document directing a review of CDC content suggests some work could be altered without “changing the meaning or scientific integrity of the content;” any such changes should be considered “routine.” Changing other content, would require review by an expert since any alterations would risk scientific integrity.
However, the document does not specify how data would be sorted into the two categories, or who would make such decisions.
The fear among researchers is that entire data sets could be taken down, reappearing with demographic variables removed or altered to conform with the DEI restrictions, losing entire sections of data. Since the Executive Order defines sex as binary, this means transgender people and nonbinary people could be erased. Such data could include facts such as gay men have higher rates of STIs, but lower rates of obesity and that transgender women have higher rates of HIV, but lower rates of prostate cancer, or how various demographic subsets of Americans are most at risk from conditions including adolescent depression, STIs, and sex-specific cancers
At this time, groups of researchers are rushing to archive the CDC website in full.
An example of what is at stake: Mpox – popularly known as “Monkey Pox” – affects people differently, with men who have sex with men being the primary group likely to be infected with the disease. Possessing that knowledge allowed medical authorities to more efficiently allocate resources, including vaccines, bringing the epidemic under control before it affected Americans more widely.
Scrubbing data such as this would change how the government allocates funds for long-standing threats to public health; this will widen health-equity gaps, or reverse progress in combating such diseases. The rates of STIs have recently started to plateau in the U.S., after decades of steady increase. Altering data that focus interventions on transgender populations, or men who have sex with men, would undo those gains. If there is no data to prove a health issue is concentrated in a particular community, that gives the government justification to cut funding.
Since much of the data on the CDC website comes from states, once it becomes known this data-scrubbing is happening, some states (blue states) may become reluctant to share information with the federal government while other states (red states) might not collect that important information at all. This would make what information the government does have unreliable, creating a skewed picture of reality.
It is shocking to realize how Project 2025 amounts to a war against modern society. Those reading this who are older than 75 can remember what life was like without the polio vaccine, without the measles and mumps vaccines. I escaped polio, but I came down with both measles and mumps before age 5, and I can still remember how difficult dealing with those was. The only thing I can compare those events to was coming down with COVID two years ago, which I survived only because I immediately obtained Paclovid for early treatment. Knowing to do that was because information about the disease and its effect on older people was made public by the CDC. Without that information, I and a lot of other older people who came down with COVID then would literally not be here now.
Maladministration II has to be seen as the all-out attack on modern society that it is. It has to be opposed by all means available. These Enemies of America are a minority. Every poll shows that significant majorities – over 66% – of Americans oppose every single action Project 2025 plans to take in this assault.
I admit that in my wildest nightmares of this coming to pass, I didn’t think of such things as an all-out attack on modern science, as is happening now. But this clearly demonstrates the nature of the threat we face. They are The Enemy. In all things, in all ways.
Winston Churchill warned his people in a speech given on June 18, 1940 that they were threatened by “a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” We actually face that situation now.
The one fortunate thing is that, so far, the enemy has proven themselves largely incompetent to carry out successfully their plans to destroy modern civilization. That doesn’t make them less dangerous, but we can resist them.
We have to.
Diane Ravitch's blog 