Musk cabinet meeting today

[Pete F.]

If you watched today, Trump is basically a ceremonial head of state while Musk is the actual head of government. There is nothing in today’s Cabinet meeting that argues against that theory.
So how much did FFOTUS get for the presidency, 10M lately from Musk.

Meanwhile in DOGE

Reporter: When exactly did Amy Gleason start her job as DOGE administrator?

WH Press Secretary: “Amy Gleason has been the DOGE administrator for quite some time, I believe several weeks, maybe a month, I’m not actually sure of the specific timeline...”

Apparently Amy Gleason has been the DOGE administrator for as long as we have been at war with Eastasia.

[spence]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Meanwhile in DOGE

Reporter: When exactly did Amy Gleason start her job as DOGE administrator?

WH Press Secretary: “Amy Gleason has been the DOGE administrator for quite some time, I believe several weeks, maybe a month, I’m not actually sure of the specific timeline...”

Apparently Amy Gleason has been the DOGE administrator for as long as we have been at war with Eastasia.

You mean the woman on vacation in Mexico who didn’t even know she got the job?

Let’s play “you can’t investigate us if you don’t know who to summon”

[Mike P]

So where is he in the line of succession? Next after the VP and ahead of the Speaker? Or ahead of Rubio?

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Mike P

So where is he in the line of succession? Next after the VP and ahead of the Speaker? Or ahead of Rubio?

When you’re already non responsive to the courts, what difference does the line of succession make? It only applies if the rule of law counts and this administration has repeatedly claimed that it is the law and is the King.
So far they’ve claimed that DOGE is, isn’t and it’s another agency with no administrator, then she’s on vacation. Meanwhile Musk is announcing the steps and results of DOGE actions on TV , saying we did…
How does an unconstitutional quasi agency cut Article I spending?
Congress has abdicated its responsibilities and duties.
We now govern almost completely by executive orders.
We will see what happens when Congress doesn’t fund the government.
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[wdmso]

EPA chief eyes 65% workforce reduction, Trump says

These clowns are actually trying to sell most Americans that firing all these people is going to create more efficiency. ? If they couldn’t do the job with the people they had (according to them) how are they gonna do the job with the people they don’t have. Because you fired all of them.. and we’re not even one month into this nonsense
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[Got Stripers]

Musk and his DOGE reported savings are BS and unless you like the way Russia, North Korea and Iran work, what is happening should be very troubling. It is the rich looking to grab all the control, which we might never regain. Trump fired all the IG’s, don’t want the public knowing what we are up to. Fired all the JAG watchdogs, we can’t have them telling the military Trump’s orders are not legal or constitutional and shouldn’t be followed. The GOP is full of cowards and if a just a couple grew a spine, it could make a big difference.

[Pete F.]

Elon Musk at his first Cabinet meeting: "I think this is the best Cabinet ever. Literally. So, uh, and I do not give false praise... I think it‘s literally the best Cabinet that the country has ever had."
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[Pete F.]

DOGE is pushing the Federal Aviation Administration to cancel a $2.4 billion Verizon contract and give it to Elon Musk's Starlink instead.
I’m sure that’s not a conflict of interest
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[Pete F.]

Elon Musk said DOGE made a mistake by cutting USAID’s Ebola prevention but it had been “restored.”

That’s not true, current and former officials told me and @johnphudson.bsky.social.

“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’” Ebola prevention, said Nidhi Bouri, who oversaw team until January.
WAPO
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[Rmarsh]

^^^^^^Sackless Crybaby Hypocrites^^^^^
Please continue crying your eyes out.
Dont forget there is a suicide hotline if venting your spleens doesnt help. Whine some more. Because theres not a damm thing you losers can or will do about it....bunch of blowhards.

[spence]

Originally Posted by Rmarsh

^^^^^^Sackless Crybaby Hypocrites^^^^^
Please continue crying your eyes out.
Dont forget there is a suicide hotline if venting your spleens doesnt help. Whine some more. Because theres not a damm thing you losers can or will do about it....bunch of blowhards.

Oh lookie, it’s the vapid one trick pony

I seem to remember this guy thumping his chest a few months ago about how the “working man” had spoken. Now the politicians who represent them are getting shouted down and the working man is in disbelief.

What does concern me is the nexus between 2A folks and Red States that will be impacted most by these illegal, reckless and thoughtless cuts. For my entire life I’ve been hearing that Americans need guns to resist any future authoritarian government.

Well boys, your time may have finally arrived.

[Rmarsh]

Originally Posted by spence

Oh lookie, it’s the vapid one trick pony

I seem to remember this guy thumping his chest a few months ago about how the “working man” had spoken. Now the politicians who represent them are getting shouted down and the working man is in disbelief.

What does concern me is the nexus between 2A folks and Red States that will be impacted most by these illegal, reckless and thoughtless cuts. For my entire life I’ve been hearing that Americans need guns to resist any future authoritarian government.

Well boys, your time may have finally arrived.

So my opinion is "Thumping" my chest. And yours is pablum.

I am the working man......"one trick" and put the rest of you to shame when it comes to skill, production and problem solving.

I am amazed at all the progress....surpassed my expectations. Your wailing and bull#^&#^&#^&#^& confirm that. Sackless hypocrites.

[RIROCKHOUND]

Originally Posted by Rmarsh

So my opinion is "Thumping" my chest. And yours is pablum.

I am the working man......"one trick" and put the rest of you to shame when it comes to skill, production and problem solving.

I am amazed at all the progress....surpassed my expectations. Your wailing and bull#^&#^&#^&#^& confirm that. Sackless hypocrites.

OK. Progress.Sure. Lets just make huge cute to Medicaid, with a budget that will increase the deficit by trillions, but be sure to give those tax breaks to the billionaires.

More progress.
Your a sportsman. How does gutting the EPA help our environment and fisheries? Lets just take all the brakes off and let them do whatever they want, say around the Chesapeake. That will help the bass population. Or maybe lets just pave over Bristol Bay, AK to get some gold. Who gives a #^&#^&#^&#^& about the salmon and fisherman there.

[Got Stripers]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

OK. Progress.Sure. Lets just make huge cute to Medicaid, with a budget that will increase the deficit by trillions, but be sure to give those tax breaks to the billionaires.

More progress.
Your a sportsman. How does gutting the EPA help our environment and fisheries? Lets just take all the brakes off and let them do whatever they want, say around the Chesapeake. That will help the bass population. Or maybe lets just pave over Bristol Bay, AK to get some gold. Who gives a #^&#^&#^&#^& about the salmon and fisherman there.

Marsh is a full on cult member, he will never admit this administration isn't what they were elected to do and if this is what you want; remember the defense "we were just following orders" was thrown out at the Nuremberg Trials.

[Pete F.]

Among the relevant questions in the litigation alleging that Musk unconstitutionally wields the power of a “principal officer”:

1. Does Musk have the power to hire and fire people?

2. Is Musk supervised by someone other than the president and is that person a Senate-confirmed officer?

Manu Raju reports:

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, answered questions about a number of topics at a closed-door lunch meeting with GOP senators — including about Elon Musk and his role in the administration, an issue that has caused GOP angst on Capitol Hill.
According to Sen. Josh Hawley, Wiles laid out the
"nuts and bolts" of Musk's job and said that he reports directly to Trump - not Cabinet secretaries.
"Musk is working directly with the president, and the president then works with the Cabinet secretaries," Hawley said, recounting how Wiles described the workflow.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Wiles explained Musk's
"procedure, what they do and how they do it...how Elon runs it, how he's hired people, put them together, where they go, what they're doing next."

This is just one of many examples of the lawlessness of the Musk/Trump administration.
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[wdmso]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

OK. Progress.Sure. Lets just make huge cute to Medicaid, with a budget that will increase the deficit by trillions, but be sure to give those tax breaks to the billionaires.

More progress.
Your a sportsman. How does gutting the EPA help our environment and fisheries? Lets just take all the brakes off and let them do whatever they want, say around the Chesapeake. That will help the bass population. Or maybe lets just pave over Bristol Bay, AK to get some gold. Who gives a #^&#^&#^&#^& about the salmon and fisherman there.

I had a similar thought yesterday..

Wondering when these Trump anti regulation and gutting of agencies reaches fisheries.
No inspectors no catch limits and the greedy commercial industry will empty the ocean and collapse stocks all in the name of Trumpism
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[Pete F.]

Not just fisheries

Trump wants to sell off public lands so he can build a sovereign wealth fund. What am I bid for Yosemite? Yellowstone? The Grand Canyon?
Simply increasing the leasing of natural resources will not be enough to seed an SWF. Leasing for oil and gas, timber, mining, and grazing brought in less than $17 billion in 2024. Oil and gas production is already at record levels, and the oil and gas industry has said it will not increase drilling substantially to avoid hurting its profit margins. To generate hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars, the Treasury Department will find that selling public lands to the highest bidders is the only way to raise that kind of money quickly.

Selling public lands has long been on the agenda of the antiparks caucus, and some Republicans in Congress and in states have worked to undermine federal ownership of lands. For example, Utah’s governor asked the Supreme Court to rule federal land ownership unconstitutional; the court declined to hear the case in January 2025. The Republican Party platform includes selling federal lands for housing development. The U.S. House of Representatives adopted new rules that free it from having to consider the value of public lands if they are sold. These rules would make it easier for the Trump administration to give public lands over to the Treasury and Commerce departments to see how much money they could make to grow the SWF.

Land sell-off and the privatization of public lands to this extent would deprive Americans and local economies of the access to nature and resources that sustain them. Giving money managers and financiers control over land management is more than just a land grab; it is an attack on the democratic and meritocratic ideals that make America great. The future of U.S. public lands—and the values they represent—depends on the willingness of Congress and the American public to stand up and defend public ownership and multiple uses, including for conservation, recreation, and wonder.
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[Pete F.]

Musk is obviously a genius

Elon Musk shared a post on his social network stating that Slim could have ties to criminal groups, and five minutes later, Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin
America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
An hour later, Slim announced that he would transfer his projects for the next 5 years with Starlink, an investment of 22 billion dollars, to companies in China and Europe.
More than money, Musk lost his main partner in 25 countries, in addition to giving up all that territory to companies of his competition and, most seriously, causing the USA to continue losing commercial presence and giving it to China.

6B in GDP gone to China
We’re really winning now
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[RIROCKHOUND]

Originally Posted by wdmso

I had a similar thought yesterday..

Wondering when these Trump anti regulation and gutting of agencies reaches fisheries.
No inspectors no catch limits and the greedy commercial industry will empty the ocean and collapse stocks all in the name of Trumpism
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They already f-ed up BFT for the commercials. The southern quota (because of how they froze regulations) is way over so there will be impacts and cuts to the summer and fall seasons up north.
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[Pete F.]

Not a Nazi
Words like "apartheid" and "Nazi" shouldn't be tossed around lightly. Musk has denied he's a Nazi, and that his salute was a Nazi salute. But clear-eyed commentators aren't buying it, and white nationalists like Nick Fuentes are downright jubilant: "That was a straight up, like, Sieg Heil, like loving Hitler energy." And then there's Musk's history. His maternal grandparents were, according to Musk's own father, members of the Canadian neo-Nazi party who decamped to South Africa because they were fans of racial oppression. Musk has been pretty mum about what it was like to grow up in South Africa and the influence that had on him. (Today he holds US, Canadian, and South African citizenship.) But the fact is that many white South Africans who left at that time did so because their position of privilege was coming to an end.
In any case, once in the States, Musk joined forces with fellow South Africans Peter Thiel, David Sacks, and Roelof Botha-grandson of former South African leader Pik Botha; now the head of venture capital giant Sequoia Capital-to form PayPal. And they revealed themselves to be racial reactionaries. Thiel (who, according to his biographer, once called critiques of apartheid
"overblown") and Sacks wrote "The Case Against Affirmative Action" for Stanford Magazine in 1996. They've led concerted, organized attacks on DEl.
Musk, who was under federal investigation for racial discrimination in his Tesla factories— that is, until Trump took over-is supporting extremist movements across the world, using Holocaust Remembrance Day to tell Germans they should no longer feel "guilt" over it, and echoing South Africans who claim they're victims of "white genocide."
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[Pete F.]

How Elon Musk planned for DOGE: Our investigation found that he raised the idea in 2023, becoming fixated on gaining insider access to federal systems. By Dec., he chose USDS as a landing place, and future DOGE members began applying for jobs there.
On the last Friday of September 2023, Elon Musk dropped in about an hour late to a dinner party at the Silicon Valley mansion of the technology investor Chamath Palihapitiya.

Mr. Musk’s visit was meant to be discreet. Still skittish about getting involved publicly in politics, he told the guests he had to be careful about supporting anyone in the Republican nomination fight. And yet here he was — joined by Claire Boucher, the singer known as Grimes and the mother of three of his children — at a $50,000-a-head dinner in honor of the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who was running as an entrepreneur who would shake up the status quo.

As the night wore on, Mr. Musk held forth on the patio on a variety of topics, according to four people with knowledge of the conversation: his visit that week to the U.S.-Mexico border; the war in Ukraine; his frustrations with government regulations hindering his rocket company, SpaceX; and Mr. Ramaswamy’s highest priority, the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy.

Mr. Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge. He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the social media company that he bought in 2022 and later renamed X, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers.
Wouldn’t it be great, Mr. Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government?

Just give him the passwords, he said jocularly, and he would make the government fit and trim.

What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy. It was driven with a frenetic focus by Mr. Musk, who channeled his libertarian impulses and resentment of regulatory oversight of his vast business holdings into a singular position of influence.

Without ceding control of his companies, the richest man in the world has embedded his engineers and aides inside the government’s critical digital infrastructure. Already, his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has inserted itself into more than 20 agencies, The New York Times has found.

Mr. Musk’s strategy has been twofold. His team grabbed control of the government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, commandeering email systems to pressure civil servants to quit so he could cull the work force. And it burrowed into computer systems across the bureaucracy, tracing how money was flowing so the administration could choke it off. So far, Musk staff members have sought access to at least seven sensitive government databases, including internal systems of the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. Musk’s transformation of DOGE from a casual notion into a powerful weapon is something possible only in the Trump era. It involves wild experimentation and an embrace of severe cost-cutting that Mr. Musk previously used to upend Twitter — as well as an appetite for political risk and impulsive decision-making that he shares with President Trump and makes others in the administration deeply uncomfortable.
In reporting how Mr. Musk and his allies executed their plan, The New York Times interviewed more than 60 people, including DOGE workers, friends of Mr. Musk’s, White House aides and administration officials who are dealing with the operation from the inside. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, many described a culture of secrecy that has made them afraid to speak publicly because of potential retaliation.
Mr. Musk’s stealth approach stunned both Democrats and civil servants. Failing to imagine an incursion from inside the bureaucracy, they were caught essentially defenseless.

The Times has learned new details about how the operation came together after the election, mapped out in a series of closely held meetings in Palm Beach, Fla., and through early intelligence-gathering efforts in Washington.
Seasoned conservative operatives like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought helped educate Mr. Musk about the workings of the bureaucracy. Soon, he stumbled on an opening. It was a little-known unit with reach across the government: the U.S. Digital Service, which President Barack Obama created in 2014 after the botched rollout of healthcare.gov.

Mr. Musk and his advisers — including Steve Davis, a cost cutter who worked with him at X and other companies — did not want to create a commission, as past budget hawks had done. They wanted direct, insider access to government systems. They realized they could use the digital office, whose staff had been focused on helping agencies fix technology problems, to quickly penetrate the federal government — and then decipher how to break it apart.
They would call it the U.S. DOGE Service, and they would not even have to change the initials.

They began their move on the digital service unit earlier than has previously been reported, The Times found, while President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was still in office — giving them the ability to operate on Mr. Trump’s first day.

Around the time that Mr. Musk identified the office as a key part of his strategy late last year, the Trump transition team gained a key ally on the inside. A U.S.D.S. veteran named Amy Gleason rejoined its staff as a senior adviser at the end of the Biden administration, described to other employees as someone who would aid the Trump transition. Ms. Gleason, who would later be named the acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, recommended that the unit bring aboard several young engineers who would later become part of Mr. Musk’s team.

Allies of Mr. Musk, meanwhile, fanned out across the government as part of the transition, extracting intelligence about computer systems, contracts and personnel.
The team is now moving faster than many of the legal efforts to stop it, making drastic changes that could be hard to unwind even if they are ultimately constrained by the courts. Mr. Musk’s associates have pushed out workers, ignored civil service protections, torn up contracts and effectively shuttered an entire agency established by Congress: the U.S. Agency for International Development.
A month into Mr. Trump’s second term, Mr. Musk and his crew of more than 40 now have about all the passwords they could ever need.

His swift success has been fueled by the president, who handed him the hazy assignment of remaking the federal government shortly after the billionaire endorsed him last summer. Flattered that Mr. Musk wanted to work with him, Mr. Trump gave him broad leeway to design a strategy and execute it, showing little interest in the details.

“President Trump’s brilliant idea to create a Department of Government Efficiency remains overwhelmingly popular with the American people, and there is no one better on the planet to oversee this effort than Elon Musk,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.

She declined to answer specific questions about The Times’s reporting, but added that Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk and the cabinet “are working together to identify waste, fraud and abuse, and have already saved taxpayers billions of dollars.”
At three pro-Trump dinners organized by Mr. Musk and the billionaire investor Nelson Peltz over the course of 2024, Mr. Musk touted the need for a smaller government but struggled to offer specific ideas.

At the time, he was infuriated by Mr. Biden and what he saw as deliberate efforts by the administration to harm his businesses Tesla and SpaceX.
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[spence]

Not to mention a key motivation is to simply just remove the regulatory impediments to his businesses.

[Pete F.]

If you are the kind of person who is reflexively angered at the sight of someone looting a $2,000 TV during a riot, well this plundering of the FAA amid fires across the federal government is Elon Musk walking out of the Best Buy with a $2.4 billion TV.
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[Pete F.]

The Trump/Musk crime syndicate

On Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation.
The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally - which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though "someone does not want a paper trail."
No one wants a paper trail because spending funds Congress has not appropriated is colloquially known as “stealing from the US Treasury.”
In other words spending funds Congress has not appropriated literally violates the Constitution and to do so knowingly and willfully is a crime punishable by two years in prison. See 31 USC 1341(a) and 1350.
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[Pete F.]

Does the current administration govern within the rule of law?
https://www.gao.gov/legal/appropriations-law/resources
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[Pete F.]

If Trump's pardons are not exceptionally comprehensive many folks in his administration are going to jail after this explosion of corruption and illegality is done.
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[Pete F.]

Musk’s status as a “special government employee” limits him to 130 days in the executive branch. However, despite working daily—documented by his own X posts—they claim he only works one day a week, effectively stretching his limit to 130 weeks. This needs to be brought to Congress.
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[Got Stripers]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Musk’s status as a “special government employee” limits him to 130 days in the executive branch. However, despite working daily—documented by his own X posts—they claim he only works one day a week, effectively stretching his limit to 130 weeks. This needs to be brought to Congress.
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You mean the congress ruled by GOP cowards, who have sold their souls to the devil, they are bought and paid for now. Our only hope is to make it somehow to the mid-terms, assuming we will still be able to hold elections then. The other option to regain control is a lot more scary.