"Over the past few days, people working for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Elon Musk’s shadowy quasi-governmental organization, have reportedly demanded access to the Department of the Treasury’s payment system. According to press reports, they have grabbed control of the Office of Personnel Management’s computer system, locking out regular employees."

#Trump #Musk #DOGE #Treasury
/2

~ Henry Farrell, Abraham L. Newman

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/elon-musk-weaponizes-the-government

"By tampering with crucial data they are depriving our institutions of the equivalent of oxygen. The US government is now on life support, gasping for constitutional air."

~ Kim Lane Scheppele

#Trump #Musk #DOGE #Treasury #Medicare #Medicaid #SocialSecurity #healthcare #CDC #NIH #USAID
/3

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/all-the-governments-data

Ruth Ben-Ghiat thinks that the game plan of Trump's fascist biopolitics is to weaken America. She notes that fascist strongmen typically engage in biopolitics, "social engineering and population management programs founded on the idea that some groups should thrive and multiply and others must be ejected from the nation, or decline or be eliminated."

#Trump #Musk #biopolitics #healthcare #CDC #NIH #vaccines #pandemic #fascism
/4

https://lucid.substack.com/p/the-trump-administrations-fascist

"As signaled by the nomination of conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer RFK, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration may restrict access to vaccines and other proven methods of disease prevention, knowing this sets the stage for the U.S. population to be more susceptible to illness and in the long run less productive and prosperous."

#Trump #Musk #RFKJr #biopolitics #healthcare #CDC #NIH #vaccines #pandemic #fascism
/5

"Stopping research into cancer and other diseases, even for children, is the opposite of investing in the future of the American people: it is cruel and uncaring by design.

Harming American influence externally and weakening Americans internally will benefit our adversaries."

#Trump #Musk #RFKJr #biopolitics #healthcare #CDC #NIH #vaccines #cancer #children #pandemic #fascism
/6

"A power-mad president possessed of radical theories of executive authority and convinced of his own royal prerogative has given de facto control of most of the federal government to one of the richest men on the planet, if not the richest, whose own interests are tangled up in those of rival governments and foreign autocracies as well as the United States."

~ Jamelle Bouie

#Trump #Musk #healthcare #Medicare #Medicaid #SocialSecurity #healthcare #CDC #NIH #USAID
/8

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/trump-musk-federal-government.html

“You have got to go on offense and explain to the American people they are being made less safe every day by the incompetence of this administration.”

~ Sarah Longwell

#Trump #Musk #healthcare #Medicare #Medicaid #SocialSecurity #healthcare #CDC #NIH #USAID
/9

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/nicolle-wallace-reacts-to-judge-blocking-trump-s-birthright-order-a-stinging-rebuke-231205445519

Timothy Burke warns us that in the "society-wide coup d’etat that is now unfolding" as we watch,

"They are going to take history. They are going to take art. They are going to take medicine and psychology. They are going to take economics. They are going to take architecture. They are going to take museums."

#Trump #Musk #DOGE #Treasury #education #science #medicine #schools #colleges #universities
/10

https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-what-they-are-about-to-take

"They’re going to take the kind of sports that are for everybody to play and watch. And they’re not going to give any of it back.

They are taking that from you, all of you. …

They are planning to take libraries and archives out of service. Zoos, parks, monuments. Rights of public access to beaches, lakes, rivers."

#Trump #Musk #DOGE #Treasury #education #science #medicine #research #schools #colleges #universities
/11

"They want to close Wikipedia and have Google censor searches. They don’t want you to be able to look at property lines and deeds, file FOIA requests, be allowed to speak up in public meetings of the zoning boards."

The proper title for the dystopian nightmare we're now living: "Descent into Barbarism." Subtitled: "Engineered by People Who Have Learned Nothing from History."

#Trump #Musk #DOGE #Treasury #education #science #medicine #research #schools #colleges #universities
/12

"The ethos of destruction can cause relatively little collateral damage if all you’re destroying is a company. But when you’re destroying the government, the effect on the lives of Americans, and even many people in other countries, will be sweeping and profound. Livelihoods will be ruined, communities will suffer, lives will literally be lost, all on a potentially huge scale."

~ Paul Waldman

#Trump #Musk #DOGE #chaos #PoliticsofChaos #PoliticsofDestruction
/13

https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/appetite-for-destruction