Alright folks, I would like to make sure I'm up to date on the last [checks notes] 9 days of US history, as I am deliberately not consuming it in a constant stream.
-
Musk continues to gain access to internal gov't systems for personal gain, most recently the small business administration, where he can play god with his tiniest rivals. NPR wins understatement of the year with the observation that "it may be difficult for him to avoid running afoul of strict conflict-of-interest laws."
-
It's been another four days, and after sifting through my bookmarks, I have another TWO AND A HALF PAGES OF NOTES on US news in the most concise form I could possibly render. Buckle up.
-
We left off with DOGE having breached the Treasury, and that's still where they are focused right now. They were claimed to have read-only access, which we now know to be false. They have read-write, admin access to what amounts to a fifth of the US economy, with no oversight. They've been classified as an "insider threat." Security staff haven't prevented them from gaining access by waving around their DOGE IDs, but there have been protestors in the hundreds outside the Treasury.
They've been: halting completion of payments already approved, deleting the free online tax filing tool that was supposed to be made available to Americans for the first time this year, installing a server to aggregate personal information on ALL federal employees (including health info and emergency contacts), and who knows what else. They were ordered to stop using Slack and switch to something that wouldn't be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and other transparency measures.
One of the DOGE team was discovered to have posted racist and eugenicist stuff on X and resigned in disgrace. He was rehired though.
Musk appears to be following a playbook written in 2022 for how to become CEO-puppetmaster-dictator of the US. There's some comprehensive and well-sourced stuff out there on the topic that I'll link to rather than try to summarize.
Dictator playbook: https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/
All the laws he's breaking: https://www.vox.com/politics/398618/elon-musk-doge-illegal-lawbreaking-analysis
Executive summary of everything he's doing: https://america2.news/content/files/2025/02/Musk-NRx-Memo-February-5-2025.pdf
Why this is a coup: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/03/a-coup-is-in-progress-in-america/ and https://snyder.substack.com/p/of-course-its-a-coup?triedRedirect=true -
There are various efforts underway to archive everything that's being purged from federal databases and websites. The entire CDC databases have been backed up already, among others. Really proud of and grateful to everyone involved.
Last update on this topic involved the EO that work ready to publish couldn't be published until a bunch of gender terms were scrubbed. That's still true, but journals have started responding. BMJ published a declaration that it won't honor any requests for retractions on the basis of censorship. I appreciated that it reversed the framing of the EO and calls the censorship "anti-gender ideology." BMJ piece: https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r253
-
The NSF is expecting to lay off 1/4 to 1/2 its work force, and is facing cuts possibly as deep as 2/3rds of its current funding level. There are several pieces summing up that situation. A particularly good one is here: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-s-happening-inside-nih
The newest agency to be hit is the National Oceanic and Atmosphereic Administration (NOAA). They've been told to pause all international cooperation.
-
The final numbers on this are a reduction in staffing from 10k to under 300 people. This ends programs that had been feeding 53 million people a year, preventing easily preventable diseases, etc. Notably, even though the HIV/AIDS relief was supposed to be exempted from the cuts, it's being blocked anyway.
Before the shutdown, USAID was investigating Starlink over its contracts in Ukraine, which may be part of the reason this one went so scorched-earth. (It's also true that USAID has been one of the things Russia tried hard to thwart.)
The shutdown also affects US farmers who will not have their excess crop yields bought up and all the farmers whose crop prices will plummet when there are gluts that would otherwise have been handled by sending food aid.
-
We've learned there have already been people shipped out to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite imprisonment.
Radio news station KCBS has been covering ICE raids in progress, including identifying descriptions and locations of ICE vehicles in San José in real time. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has opened an investigation into KCBS over this.
The end of birthright citizenship, as declared in an earlier EO, has been blocked by a federal judge.
-
The CDC published in one of its weekly online reports that there is now evidence of transmission within households between cats and humans. This information was almost immediately scrubbed from the report.
-
14 state Attorneys General issued a joint statement that banning trans healthcare is unlawful and that hospitals should continue to provide this care. California's AG also issued a reminder that state nondiscrimination laws are still in effect and that California hospitals are mandated to continue providing equal care to trans patients.
All hospitals in Denver, Colorado have voluntarily shut down their pediatric trans care in advance of the relevant EO.
-
Trans people's applications for visas are now being scruitinized for "fraud". The recent EOs classify updated gender markers (or requests for them) as fraudulent. Standing advice is NOT to send in your passport for any reason.
-
The new administration has assembled a public website called the DEI Watch List where names, photos, and "dossiers" of federal employees associated with DEI work are being aggregated. They're mainly within the Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), and almost all Black. More agencies are being added continuously -- DOGE just collected lists of people from NOAA.
NASA employees were issued a "drop everything and reprioritize your day" directive to remove any mention of indiginous people or women from their websites. The (woman) head of the US coast guard was fired without explanation. The US military has selectively disbanded interest groups for POC, but left religious groups untouched. Federal workers are reporting that the contents of their email signatures are now strictly regulated.
Non-gov't, but the NFL will be removing the "End Racism" message from the endzones in preparation for the Super Bowl.
-
It is now gov't policy that all 2 million Palestinians in Gaza should be forcibly removed, and they'll build over the entire area. The US has also just sold almost $7 billion of weapons to Israel.
-
Russell Vought, one of the architects of Project 2025 and a far-right Christian nationalist, has been confirmed director of the white house budget.
Pam Bondi was appointed as US Attorney General and immediately fired the dozens of prosecutors who handled criminal charges against the president.
The anti-corruption unit was disbanded.
The CIA was compelled to send an unclassified list of all new hires over the past 2 years. Former staffers describe it as a "counterintelligence disaster."
All workers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who have been in their current roles for less than a year, regardless of length of career at the EPA overall, were sent an email reading, in part, “As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you." This is the latest attempt to get everyone to voluntarily quit. EPA researchers have also been blocked from spending funds from their active grants.
A new head was appointed to the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau. He immediately directed the agency to "stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation and other activities." This also prevents a rule from going into effect that would have banned the sale of sensitive personal information like SSNs.
-
Tariffs announced against Canada, Mexico, and China ended up being short-lived. In lieu of a detailed, serious explanation, I recommend this humorous one: https://beige.party/@Lana/113958448421398858
The USPS also briefly halted delivery of all mail and packages from China and Hong Kong, causing all manner of chaos.
Canadians have been coming up with creative fuck-yous. Among them: replacing Americanos (the coffee drink) with Canadianos, and in response to the request to "keep eyes on the border" 24/7, the posting of hockey sticks with googly eyes.
