Summary
The White House confirmed that Elon Musk is working as a “special government employee” under Trump, granting him significant authority to cut federal spending.
Musk has a government email, office space, and access to sensitive Treasury systems. His team abruptly shut down USAID headquarters on Monday.
Musk is consolidating unchecked power, raising legal and ethical concerns, particularly given his federal contracts.
Musk is unpaid and may not be required to disclose financial interests.
You must log in or register to comment.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Perfection
Where’s all the “But…but…Jack Smith wasn’t legally appointed” people at?
I imagine that as a formality Musk’s recommendations go past Trump, then to Russell Vought who is head of the OBM (office of management and business), and the actual official in charge of funding allocations.
I think congress is the actual official in charge of funding allocations.
Is that the appropriation bill that fills the annual budget? Would the OBM be more like, allocation of those funds? I don’t know much about this stuff.
Would dems even have the votes to “shut down the government” that way? Is that in June/July?
No no, not a coup, a special government operation )))))l
As Jon Stewart said “it has been done within the confines of our legal system, therefore it’s not fascist”
Does that mean his communications will be subject to FOIA?
Fat chance. I read he brought in his own server and connected it to the network at the OMB to spam emails to federal employees. That seems highly illegal.
Legality is just words on a piece of paper if nobody is going to enforce it.
Gosh, I remember a quaint time in the olden times when having your OWN EMAIL SERVER was something worthy of being lined up against a wall and shot for.
Guess that only applies to Democratic candidates for President named Hillary.
Also, and it bears repeating - I guess this would have been jUsTaSbAd under Kamala, because something something neoliberal argle bargle status quo genocide…
I tend to agree, but we should at least try. Pull every lever of governance we have for as long as we have it.
I don’t disagree but it’s not as if we’re dealing with people who have any sort of integrity or honor, who’ll accept when they’ve done something wrong.
Doubt it. I bet they’ll try to classify any of his communications as presidential advice, which would make them privileged communications not subject to foia
He failed background check.
“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Any bets on how long it will be until Elon does something so unpopular that there’s blowback on Trump and it becomes “Elon acted on this alone and I had nothing to do with it.”
I insist on only calling him President Musk because I know when he takes enough attention and credit from Trump, Trump will get mad and tell Elon to fuck off.
It will be glorious if it blows back so hard that Musk ends up in prison.
We can only hope. This morning, I saw multiple news articles with “President Musk” in the title. I suspect it’s intentional for that reason. But at minimum, I hope it’s starting.
Like… Like a super special employee? An S.S.?
Trump hires immigrant on welfare.
Also “special” sometimes used as a slur for the neurodivergent, so he’s also a DEI hire.
If you want to get cancelled call him >!cishet!<
So is there no conflict of interest with the companies he runs getting federal contracts? Don’t politicians need to put their companies into some type of trust where they can’t run it and make decisions that would be in their favour? I mean I know it doesn’t work like that with stick trading (cough cough Pelosi).
I brought up the conflict of interest to a trump coworker and he deadass said, “I get the conflict of interest, but I just don’t care.” The mask is fully off.
Edit: not that I’m surprised, just depressed and somewhat bewildered
Trump did away with the trust thing. And they let him because it wasn’t a law, it was just something that was understood to be done. No talk of him doing it this time either.
Company he runs? You really think he has time to run 5 companies while jerking off on twitter and now is spending his time jerking off in the treasury. The man just does what ever he feels. None of it is remotely called “work” he’s basically a walking jerk off
Fair point, I can’t disagree.
It’s still a massive conflict of interest.
The richest man on the planet who once joked about ending world hunger is cutting federal spending of the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. Let that sink in for a moment.
And they were in an awful hurry to kill USAID.
That’s probably just a trial run. They are floating the idea of killing the Department of Education now.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Removed by mod
No no, violence is not the answer. Someone really needs to send him to Guantanamo Bay, outside of US jurisdiction, and introduce him to all the immigrants he’s illegally detained. They can each take a piece of him.
Removed by mod
I feel like you speed read my comment and it whooshed over your head. That was not seriously suggesting that we avoid violence. I was recommending that we impose extreme suffering upon the racist billionaire shit bag currently infesting our government by allowing his victims to serve justice.
It’s amazing how many guns we have, how pro 2A we are, how much pride we carry over things like the American Revolution, and we say dumb shit like violence is never the answer.
I’ve been telling people to prepare to resist for a bit now. The amount of “no the other team is the gun team!” is absurd. Most of these people will be useless and will happily rat out their gay neighbor when the time comes.
Violence is the last recourse of the failure to properly manage a situation.
Violence has never been the only answer. Human civilization works only because of this fact, if violence was the only answer we would never have risen beyond a baboon troop size.
Literally billions of low level conflicts are solved daily without violence.
In saying the above, “violence is never the answer” is categorically wrong. It has in fact been used throughout history to great effect, but also to terrible effect. We have to be very careful where we apply violence, it tends to make things much worse before they get better (if they do at all).
You’re naive. Where do you think the authority to negotiate comes from? It’s violence. The threat of force.
When you don’t have that. You get the US. Where tens of millions protesting nation wide is flatly ignored if not actively stomped out by the government like so often happens here by police forces.
This is a cultural difference. American culture is steeped in violence, you venerate it in almost all of your stories.
Violence is like fire, properly harnessed, it is a tool for progress. Otherwise it is wildfire and destroys everything around it.
If those same millions of people who can organize to protest, had instead just decided to strike. I would predict that more would happen, but that requires a collectivist culture, America has been pushing itself along the individualistic line for so long, I’m not sure you have it in you to work together enough.
I was about to ask what kind of fantasy land you live in, but it appears to be right there in your username. Cheers, must be nice over there
We have our own issues, but the culture of violence is not one of them. Sure we have violent people, but our culture is not the same.
Not good enough.
Just because Trump declares him special doesn’t mean he is, or that he should have special privileges, anymore than his moronic cabinet picks can start moving their shit into their offices before being confirmed by the Senate.
And being special doesn’t excuse him from being a nazi.
He’s only special in the short bus sense of special.
Let’s be careful to not throw our differently abled friends under the bus by comparing them to Musk.
After all, most of them are kinder and have more sympathy than Musk.
*empathy
No, he’s special in that he’s an entitled narcissist bar any ethics or principles.
As long as we the people continue to allow it, he is indeed whatever they say he is.
What if donvict says “I HEREBY declare fElon as special” on his own stupid social media platform? Is that super duper Constitutional enough for everyone?
They’re proving that “act as if” really does work.
Oh no, this is one of those really fun powers we gave presidents a while back and forgot about. Presidents have a wide ranging authority to temporarily hire people and skip most of the ethics and oversight stuff that comes with normal federal hiring. The limitation is that it’s only good for certain positions, which DOGE, (formerly USDS) is a part of.
But he’s autistic guys! We’re all misunderstanding, there is no Nazi coup going on.
I heard the second amendment was made for special situations
The militia is busy fighting the woke mind virus
