News

And for people who don't like that word:

Regulatory capture of the entire United States government.

Can you guys maybe do something about this? You all have guns right, I thought that was the entire point of that part of the Constitution.

Yet, no one's doing anything about it or can do anything. These people are all powerful now. The White House, the House, the Senate, SCOTUS, Fed. Everything belongs to the Republican Party and they can do whatever, whenever. No checks and balances.

Guess you’ll have to use crypto once your dollar is worthless

Trump said he’s in charge in a private capacity

The Supreme Court is yet to say it’s not allowed

He doesn't. However, that is only according to this pesky technicality called "the law". If the President does not want to follow the law, and appoints people who also do not care for following the law, then the law stops being a thing to look for for authority; and Musk can do this because Trump says he can.

In the short term, expect this to be shut down by the courts. In the medium term, a bunch of these orders will end up in front of the Supreme Court that unironically said "if the president does it, it might be illegal, but he is absolutely immune from prosecution". Even if the SC come down on the only legally defensible position, Trump could still say "them and what army"

This is 100% a coup by Trump to centralize power in the executive. When staging a coup, "authority" is merely an inconvenience.

Everyone is not "just complying," two security directors of USAID were dismissed when they tried to stop the musky henchmen.

“DOGE” isn’t even a real Department, right?

Technically, Trump just renamed the United States Digital Service to the United States DOGE Service, then created a child agency within it called the United States DOGE Service Temporary Organization reporting directly to the President (which USDS does technically anyways) and hired Musk as a special government employee as head of that. A special government employee is essentially expected to work less than 130 days in the next year and are normally used to fill short term needs, or as expert topic consultants for specific projects, that sort of thing.

USDS is normally basically IT consultancy for other US departments, which is why he has access to a shocking number of keys to the kingdom, as it were.

And also, Musk hasn’t been elected or officially confirmed for any government position.

You don't have to be confirmed by the Senate for most government jobs (just a specific named handful of high ranking positions, like the Secretaries of various Cabinet Departments), and he was basically given the highest possible position he could without needing to be confirmed by the Senate.

Why the fuck is he giving orders and leading departments and having any power whatsoever over the U.S. Treasury and such? I don’t understand how this works.

The President has final authority and power over the executive branch and over time increasing power has been placed in the executive branch largely because Congress didn't want to fight over things every couple of years and the relative stability of a secondary agency staffed with experts was desirable for things like licensing radio bandwidth. USDS isn't one of these agencies though - it was created by Obama in 2014 to help manage US IT stuff (and basically started from the team that fixed the healthcare.gov site in 2013) and didn't need to be authorized by Congress because it doesn't have rulemaking power over anything outside the executive branch and thus doesn't require Congress to delegate power to it.

As for why he's giving orders and leading departments, legally he probably shouldn't be but he's also been assigned that power by Trump in a way that's questionably legal. There are at least 3 lawsuits that have been filed arguing that it's technically an advisory committee and in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. I could totally see a federal judge agreeing with that, but it would eventually go to SCOTUS and we know who's dick they sucked to get there.

TL;DR: DOGE exists because it's an existing department (US Digital Service) renamed DOGE, Musk was hired under that department in basically the highest spot that wouldn't require Senate confirmation and because that department is essentially cross-departmental IT consultancy it gives him access to a shocking amount of federal IT resources. He isn't being stopped because everyone involved ultimately reports to Trump and Trump has told him to do it. There are at least three lawsuits filed claiming the United States DOGE Service Temporary Organization is in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, but since it's only existed for like 10 days the courts haven't really had a chance to even hear arguments about it yet.

I pray they're dumb enough to stop payments to Lockheed it Raytheon. Problem might solve itself

Contractors run our military

I wonder at what point people are going to use force to stop this coup

Historically, it should start in about 30 days, or so, internally with rapid succession authoritarianism settling in.

Then, it takes a year or so after the first territorial grab. The first one is called "appeasement" strategy.

After that, then the rest of the world bombs us into desolation.

Oops that was a paperwork fuck up. I'm sorry IRS, I'll hand over the amount owed from my savings.

And life continues.

The IRS doesn't want to prosecute people, it wants to get paid. A massive tax strike would be very effective because the IRS is getting short staffed under a trump administration. So they might actually take a few years to get to you. This is, of course, contingent on you having that money in savings and being willing to pay them when they show up for it.

This isn't legal advice, I'm not a lawyer, just an old guy who pays attention, if you're going to do this I highly recommend not responding or voting this comment. (It's evidence)