DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
dropsitenews.com
dropsitenews.com
This is how a democracy slowly falls into fascism. Not because it's a overnight coup d'état, but because people freely give power away instead of resisting, and just agree to actions they never would otherwise.
Having those people quit is effectively part of the current administration's plans.
I'm not sure about the assumption that there is "when Y is gone", it isn't fully clear. One of the campaign promises from the group that won was that people won't have to vote in the future. Not sure if that's actually feasible or not, but that it was brought up should at least be considered.
But yeah, I hear and agree somewhat with your point otherwise, there might be value in people resisting in small ways (delays, confusion and so on, basically the CIA playbook for corporate sabotage) rather than in big ways of just saying "No" until you get fired.
These moments test us, but they also define us.
It's sad how the "big tech" fear involves installing an administration that emulates the arbitrary nature of big tech, in spades.
People might read that and think I’m being hyperbolic, but I had someone on HN argue that their debugging skills rendered them better at medical diagnosis than doctors, and better at fixing cars than mechanics, by their own totally objective genius developer standards.
I can’t tell you how many times developers have tried to explain cooking concepts to me knowing I’m a classically trained and experienced chef. Or explain design to me knowing I have a design degree and years of experience doing it. Some developers just have unending hubris.
It's in essentially every person with power's benefit for the number to go up, so everyone ensures the number goes up. See also: Bitcoin pricing.
plus most of the market doesn't move much, and even in the S&P 500 it's only a handful of companies that see serious gains. And they happen to be tech companies whose leadership "kissed the ring".
Right now this is basically the dead body in motion.
Just like Web3 and decentralized tech got a bad rap because of Luna, FTX and other centralized grifters. First they came for the decentralized BFT developers, and I piled on, because I wasn’t decentralized…
:D
The grace which saves us all is that we do not have the power to follow every idiotic impulse and see it's horrible effects.
I found "Forbidden Planet" to be quite helpful in seeing that idea put forth in film- it's quite good and left an impact on my thinking around these kinds of things...
Unrelatedly, I am starting to feel like I am living in a timeline where we're seeing the collusion of two men who have been cursed via "may the gods give you everything you ask for." Perhaps a whole culture of that, in fact.
I don’t mean to ask that and imply that there is nothing. I mean it as an honest question. Is there a process or organization to snap into right now to help?
Keep durable notes and share them with your electeds. Particularly at the state level. These kids won’t be prosecuted immediately, possibly never federally. But their actions will need to be systematically undone at the federal level and individually prosecuted at the state and/or local levels. This is going to be a massive bureaucratic and legal undertaking, and we’ll need record preservation to do it.
The crimes are on the federal level and pretty sure they'll receive pardons.
Lots of state laws around privacy and tort that wouldn’t gain supremacy if a federal court found the DOGE bros didn’t act lawfully. Pardons prevent them from being punished for that lawlessness by the U.S. But it doesn’t stop state courts from finding adversely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_leading_to_...
Brexit would be the best case, although most objections to the federal government would be resolved with a reduced size and scope
I’m not. Short of a decapitation strike in which MAGA and Musk are taken out in a night of long knives, which would itself be more destabilising to our republic than anything they’ve done, there is little to play for a military conflict à la the Civil War in a nuclear state. If we’re going to see a civil war, it wouldn’t be states vs U.S. but some compartment of the U.S. claiming legitimate power while another denies it, e.g. the military deposing Trump or him refusing to step down after impeachment and conviction or an electoral loss.
The Russia-Ukraine war has convinced me that artificial intelligence driven drone warfare has rendered nuclear warfare obsolete. The drones act as a force multiplier which can mass target the enemy with little collateral damage.
Russia is constrained by India and China in its use of tactical nukes in Ukraine. That wouldn't apply in America.
> collateral damage from nuclear weapons makes their usage suicidal
The excess damage caused by tactical nukes when compared with conventional weapons, particularly the low-efficiency sort that tend to find their way into civil wars, is principally diplomatic. We're currently seeing a breakdown of the rules-based international order.
> in the case of the US, states breaking away from the Federal government would also inherit a nuclear arsenal
Why? The nukes are on U.S. land, legally and militarily. A state militia attempting to storm a nuclear silo is, if anything, the closest legitimate reason I can think of for why Washington might nuke its own homeland.
> Russia-Ukraine war has convinced me that artificial intelligence driven drone warfare has rendered nuclear warfare obsolete
There have been no AI drones in that war. Drones are reigning free because nobody established air superiority.
This hasn't been true since last year, when automated targeting systems began entering the battlefield. They still are not as widely deployed as personnel controlled drones, but over time it appears to be shifting towards battlefield autonomy. Nuclear weapons are a cudgel, automated human-free weapons are a scalpel.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/missiles-...
By this measure we’ve had hypersonic AI “drones” in air-to-air combat since the 70s.
I agree, if you're not a fan of democracy, you might not want to be a dissident in the current American environment. If you are, then you most likely want to be a dissident, otherwise it'll slowly disappear before your eyes, and you'll be too late to be able to change it soon.
If you're in the latter camp, learn how to protect and hide yourself rather than becoming apathetic because you're afraid of the consequences.
Monolithic ruling classes are the political scientific equivalent of spherical cows. The richer model (still spherical, but maybe incorporating drag) is that of elite constituencies.
> being a dissident may not be in one's best interest
If we’re going imperial, dissident status is less risky than being poor. Practically every autocratic transition in history has involved a massive wealth transfer up, together with the dismantling of expensive social safety nets.
Larry is the 4th richest person, worth more than the GDP of Ukraine.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/oracle-ceo-larry-ellison-s...
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
The Federal American government looks like it's playing a dangerous game -- or at least makes the assumption that individual states within it will be unable to mount a concerted response. With inflation and unemployment rising, and hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of jobs, it's possible state governments may become radicalized.
However, considering SCOTUS has largely decided POTUS is largely immune from most anything, I don't see why he can't just ignore the courts when the time comes...
At least, my hope is that they don't push the limits with ignoring laws because they're afraid that would happen...
Gotta do what you can where you are. Even as someone in the US I've disliked how passive other free countries have been...
The good playbook consists of rebooting the D party. (Which lost the election because it did not understand what the majority wants, and how to authentically offer something that is close enough.)
Losing only by 1.5% in an election where globally nearly every _incumbent_ lost is pretty good.
In the UK, the incumbents lost 20% of their seats [1]. The democrats lost 2 seats in the senate [2] and _gained_ 2 seats in the house [3].
Making drastic changes to a party because you narrowly lost an election with a candidate that never won a primary is dumb.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_el...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_Senate_elec...
[3]: (idk how it's 2 since 215-214 = 1). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Re...
365 -> 121
That depends on who you lose to.
Like if Democrats decided to run Ron DeSantis how huge do you think Trump's lead would've been?
If you're a marathon runner, and you lose to a toddler, that's probably not.
The Dems fought an eminently beatable candidate and lost, and they continue to struggle with messaging now (stop putting Schumer up there to deliver it!). They flubbed the response to Dobbs, the consultant class nixed the Harris campaign parts that were working (weird etc.) in favor of things that don't (Cheney endorsements). etc.
You understand that in this analogy, the toddler won the NYC marathon 2 years ago and then beat somebody that lost their local 5k?
The party that keeps losing to the toddler in varied fashion needs to do some soul searching and make changes instead of spending a bunch of political capital keeping AOC out of roles.
I went over many assumptions after the elections, to understand what I had missed. But things changed when I asked a different question.
Its not a question of how Harris lost. Its a question of how Trump ran in the first place.
With that change, things clicked into place.
Unfriendly labor rulings like the time you spend in mandatory employer required security screenings doesn't count as paid time?
Do share with the class what you think is special about Trump running consider he's done it for 4 elections [1] and considered it against Obama (you may remember the whole birther movement).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidential_camp...
Lets work with what you said, what caused those issues in turn? If we get stuck at congress being deadlocked, or bad democrat leadership - please see "dems are always wrong". Where the converastion comes to whoever we blame (always the Dems), and then we sit on our hands.
You raised the question of trump running 4 times. I found that instructive, since the first time was in 2000, and it went no where. the other 3 times were the current 3 presedential races.
He was not a political force that decimated the anointed ones of the Republican inner circle. Nor was social tolerance for his behavior this high. What changed.
How did someone, an American who instigated an insurrection, A felon, A person who said he will grab women by the pussy - not only unsinkable in politics, but was able to tell everyone what Harris' campaign was?
Trump wanted to build a wall across a border. This wasn't a president in some banana republic.
This was in America. And this was tolerable, if not welcome.
Over an over again, we use normal measures (other candidate should message better), as if Trump is NORMAL.
That if someone else did a better job he would lose.
Its the other way round - America had a problem when he got to the ballot box, and did that twice.
https://theshovel.com.au/2020/06/04/nra-accidentally-forgets...
it is an illusion of being surrounded by brigades of conservatives censoring you, if anything - the opposite is true
when I tried submitting a positive take on recent happenings in DC - my own post was flagged withing 5 minutes, and I was chastised for posting a link to nazi platform (it was a link to X longpost)
I get not wanting to read it, but that's not what flagging is for IMO...
You'll see every single article criticizing DOGE has been flagged by users, in order to try to bury it.
I've now switched my primary HN link from the home page to /active, where, thankfully, flagged posts still show up.
I believe that the USA is now in the grips of a fascist government. Resistance is minimal and focused on fixing what the administration has broken last week or last month, and may take years to have any impact through courts, legislation, and direct action. The Federal government as we knew it, is gone. Power has been consolidated into the executive branch and a blue wave in 2026 will be too late. Congress is being stripped of its power and the judicial branch has been an enabler of unchecked executive power for a decade or more.
I recognize that this is a fringe belief.
All we can do now is help each other and resist as much as possible.
Great tip, thanks!
Ironically also the reason that many checks and balances in the US government seem to be failing.
I'll also add that there are absolutely people in Europe who aspire to see this kind of thing happen there, and that in some cases, it already has. See: Orban, Brexit, Le Pen, AfD, etc... and that of course doesn't touch on what happens in less-Western European countries.
Yeah, that's exactly what I fear. Seeing this is a working example or a role model on how to do it here, too. And yes, you pointed out the most obvious of the bad guys.
Well, considering this is like the N-th time this happen, with the last times being extensively recorded and philosophized about, I'd say we will look back at this and say "How could that have happened? Why didn't anyone do anything?", just like we did the previous times.
No later that yesterday the EU Commission released this (no relation whatsoever, of course):
"we will radically lighten the regulatory load for people, businesses and administrations in the EU. To boost prosperity and resilience, the Commission will propose unprecedented simplification to unleash opportunities, innovation and growth." [1]
Hopefully this means that the EU bureaucracy is waking up.
[1] https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-making-process/planning...
Like I said the EU falls slower.
Yes, I can. Do you remember what happened when it came out that the USA was tapping Merkel's cell phone?
Maybe she sat on the table but shots were still called by the US.
Where exactly are we seeing this? AFAIK, most people in Europe still has access to healthcare, and still be able to have a job + free-time, with parental leave and more. Has that disappeared from any countries where it used to exist?
I think the constant worry and focus on GDP is a great example of the differences of mindset between Americans and Europeans. As long as "number goes up!" is true, Americans seem to think that most things are fine and working alright, while a European might be more focused on things on the ground and around them in their daily life, rather than judging their quality of life based on how the economy is doing for the rich people.
Just compare US debt rising to US GDP rising.
What are you referring to here, specifically? Something that is a net-positive for society, and that would be legal in the US but is illegal in Europe or EU?
And OpenAI just burns money, maybe we should wait if it will survive.
AFAIK, things like specific the text and data mining (TDM) exceptions would allow you to even train on copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, in the example of LLMs.
Mistral also seems to be making progress, and I'm not aware of any African, South American or Australian efforts that are further ahead, so while it might not be number 1, Europe is at least not last.
Siemens, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, etc. etc. were innovative startups once that defined their industries and they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now. Where are the similar European innovations of today?
Well, your argument was that it wasn't possible, so at least we both agree now that you were wrong there.
> they put the foundations of the high standard of living that you enjoy now.
Again, the crux of the argument is that I believe our institutions and governments are the reason we have high standard of living, not because there was three German companies who were innovative ~100-200 years ago.
I don't even understand how the innovations of those companies are related to the quality of life in Sweden, for example, but I think we've lost the thread in this discussion a while ago so maybe better to not continue at all.
We all have different values that matter. Europeans (for better or worse) tend to prefer stability, probably because of past experiences, over oligarchy and free capitalism, while the US is almost the exact opposite.
So both parties look at the other and see "freefall decline for decades", both being smug about the other being worse, while we in reality care about different things.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the history of the continent, but this is probably the most stable and peaceful time-period of the continent since humans started populating it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Europe is a great introduction to the subject.
Can someone do a journalism on this and get 1-2 other independent sources?
I feel like journalism, as an occupation, has had a hard time communicating why it exists over the last 20 years or so while trying to keep up with all the changes.
edit: A free primer on standards, re: confirmation.
One source can, with caution, be the basis of an article, as long as it's presented as unconfirmed. This can induce other sources to reach out to their media contacts, so it's useful.
Two sources is considered confirmed as long as they're independent. Journalists have gotten in trouble with double confirmation when it came out one cited the other.
Three independent sources is considered golden.
There's variation here if the source is the source, with actual authority on the subject, but other sources can add context they might not be willing or able to talk about.
edit: I don't know why this is so vexing to sections of the YCombinatorati.
bonus edit after a reply since I'm rate limited for a while: IME people here are happy to share articles when people ask if there's more info. Hackers, at least a broad subset who loosely identify with the principles, love to share knowledge. Some even to the point of exfiltrating it! It's almost a defining characteristic.
That's why this is so vexing!
I'm not doing battle here. We're not at war. I'm asking for a free exchange of knowledge among people trying to be civil toward each other.
I'm operating on the assumption that a passing journalist with a source and an interest is already doing their job and, like most journalists, tries to keep it all free and public in recognizing that's best for the good of the public even if it's hard to fund that way.
Well NYC isn't happy about some actions:
* https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/statement-from-nyc-comp...
* https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/20...
Not sure if this is the same things as the what's in the OP's article.
I think it’s important to recognize that HN is most likely supportive of the Trump/Musk regime. Remember that Gary Tan wanted to run the same playbook in the city of San Francisco.
Please keep this in mind when posting here.
Finally, depending on where we end up, I wonder how history will remember HN.
As for HN, I've seen time based voting patterns that affect the upvote score. Still shouldn't be flagged. No matter how tired people are of politics, this is still critical.
Government workers have been relentlessly antagonized by Trump and his party. How can we be sure these situations are handled correctly and fairly, especially when the people doing the "auditing" don't know what they are doing due to missing qualifications?
These actions suggest that today the United States seems to have a de facto King with far greater powers than even those held by George III at the time the founders decided that America did not need a King.
They might not be called that, but they have the ability to exert behaviours akin to an English monarch not seen much since Henry VIII. Arguably, we're heading into Magna Carta territory.
The checks and balances are about to get a big test. I hope they work, and I'm proven wrong.
Trump's cult-like pull and the associated threat of the world's richest man (who still talks about the dangers of the global elites with no sense of irony) bankrolling a primary against anyone who steps out of line have effectively erased the congress as an independent branch entirely.
There are Republicans in the house and senate and even Trump's own administration that I believe aren't aligned with what he is doing but they lack the spine to say so beyond the most superficial talk about their "concerns" (and then still voting for everything he demands).
As with "DEI mayor", "urban youth", "rootless cosmopolitans", etc., it's a euphemism.
Firstly, its not because of reasons that people win in America, not anymore. People didnt know that the ACA was Obamacare, or that Biden dropped out.
Fox and the GOP created an orwellian political power that has parasitized democratic processess.
Classic example would be climate change, in the 90s, when FOX was created.
Fox platformed cranks, and made them look legitimate. Republican lawmakers pointed to Fox news reports, and stalled if not killed climate change legislation.
The governing principle at that time, was to not provide credibility to cranks. However, shocked by the effectiveness of Fox, scientists decided to talk directly to viewers on Fox.
This resulted in them being fed to the media lions, because the goal of Fox was to discredit them, along with the ivory tower education systems.
Through this process, FOX and the GOP own the overton window for climate discussions. THEY decide what positions Dems must take.
Repeat this proces year after year, and eventually there is no place you can hold a position to win at a national level.
For state level elections this is different, apparently local knowledge overcomes this distorition field.
However, thats not the only trick.
Republicans are beholden to never grant Democrats any credibility. See Romneycare and Obamacare. It shocked me even then, that Repubs actually credited Obama for getting Osama.
This election, people remember Harris as being the Trans supporter. The Campaign itself never focused on this topic.
The Repubs sets the stage on which everyone dances.
Yes - the other candidate should earn peoples votes. They should create the right message.
Yes - as a voter, you should know when its not a fair fight.
Simply so that you can apply the right handicap when viewing candiates.
My decision to not vote for Harris boiled down to my opinion that she failed in her one duty as VP, which was to effectively step in and govern in the event that Biden was unable to function as president. That much was painfully obvious during his debate, which exposed her dereliction of duty.
Or it can mean “I am not ok with either”. That is the reason I didn’t vote for Trump or Harris. Why should I participate when neither viable political party actually respects my vote enough to run a candidate that is worthy of a vote?
I don’t need to vote for the lesser of two evils or to feel like I voted for a winner.
One of them is promising that you won't be able to vote again. And are you doing anything to fight foor the changes needed to dismantle the two party system?
Also, I am not a Trump voter and have never been, but can y’all please stop taking snippets and quotes of his out of context? It’s so fucking tiring and intellectually dishonest and is one of the reasons he won this election. If you don’t know that your “won’t have to vote again” quote is out of context it would be intellectually honest of you to go watch the whole speech and understand the context and audience in which that was said. That way people like me who don’t like the man but happen to think truth is valuable and important in discourse don’t have to defend him.
In the US elections are not a crime and “not voting” is not a crime.
I got the following small margins of victory smaller than the 1.5% in 2024, five of which are positive and five of which are negative.
-7.8% in 1824, 1.4% in 1844, -3% in 1876, 0% in 1880, 0.6% in 1884, -0.8% in 1888, 0.1% in 1960, 0.7% in 1968, -0.5% in 2000, -2.1% in 2016.
Nixon attempted something similar but Congress didn't let him get away with it (and passed the Impoundment Control Act, which Trump is now flouting).
They're afraid of their voters, as they should be, as Trump is more popular with their voters than any of them are. All Trump/Musk need to do is endorse an opponent in their primaries.
Behind this, is the desire to win elections at all costs/.
He's doing the exact opposite, shutting down and shrinking departments to reduce the power of the executive branch.
electing a bunch of pathetic apparatchiks to the legislature and letting the Heritage Foundation choose a bunch of lunatics for the courts is why there's no counterbalancing force. the Founders assumed the other branches of government would have some self-respect.
I am so very happy we have a monarchy. I used to be against it, but the fact that no one person can wreak this kind of havoc is fantastic. And of course the king has really very little power.
I've turned into a monarchist (thanks to Trump)!
He doesn't have another election to lose. He gets 4 years (less a few weeks now) and then gets to retire from being POTUS. There are few consequences for him this term. For the Republicans, on the other hand, if DOGE and their trade wars and other things fail, they could be fucked for a decade or more trying to rebrand themselves.
Given his revocation of security clearances for Biden, depending on what happens, the stakes may be higher.
I expect that you intended to say "textbook definition of democracy", but the Freudian slip is quite something.
I merely suggested that what was happening seemed at odds with the intent of the founders of the United States, in that even in 18th century England it would have been perceived as vast over-reach of a monarch to behave in a similar manner.
If you're all happy with it, fine. It just seems remarkable, hence my original comment.
I never voted for Trump, but I did vote for my state to defy federal cannabis laws. Guess what, my vote to shit on federal laws was legal.
Different thing if they uphold the checks and bakances.
Some of the items on there may be things he doesn't like personally, but things like $1.4M to contract out the operation of the Department of Education's mailroom are everyday operating expenses.
Doge Much Transparency
(Don't get me wrong, I think the existence of DOGE is a farce, but this website is literally just a blog... It's not hosting secrets, and getting caught up in conspiracy theories of it being 'hosted offshore' is missing the forest for the trees)
Edit: After reading https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-... (which lol, what competence!) it sounds like the 'not on american soil' is bowdlerized from the fact that they're running on Cloudflare pages so there isn't a 'server'.
This makes me increasingly concerned for a similar turn of events in the UK (ie., given the many actions of the UK state to enable state propaganda, censorship of the UK internet, and tracking of all citizens -- how these will be used if a far-right party comes into power.
Does make for good movies though.
It's just an institutional consensus about Trump's style of populism which gave profound motivation to a large number of groups, to organise against his perceived threat. The issue is how the US government was involved -- not the activity itself -- , eg., leaning on mass media organisations to censor americans -- unconstitutional, and widely documented. You may think it's "for the good", but either way, its unconstitutional for the US gov. to do that. The US gov cannot demand social media censor americans, it's a prominent part of the bill of rights.
The US gov. funds many programmes under the guise of aid, or sponsorship of "democracy" or "independent media", or, eg., "healthcare".
Consider how egreious it would be for the US gov to lie about funding healthcare, but instead to use that as a guise for one of your "impossible, movie plot lines..."
Oh wait, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_fake_vaccination_campaign_...
FYI, this happened to the far-left in the 60s & 70s, leading to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee --- it's just now happening to Trump and the far-right. Kinda funny the right have discovered it, after decades of calling the left nutjob conspiracy theorists.
Sorry, what part of the CIA hatching hare-brained schemes is incredulous? (You should have linked to acoustakitty.)
I mean, even more relevant would be the leaked recording of state department officials discussing who to replace the elected president of ukraine with in 2013.
I just chose the HIV thing, since it's relevant how we interpret USAID's programmes -- in particular, ones which fund the NGOs that run censorship campaigns and kompromat collection (eg., the occrp).
None of this is very remarkable, of course. The more concerning thing is how this has become turned inward on the USA itself via the internet, mass media, and so on.
Who? How do you think soft power works?
> how this has become turned inward on the USA itself
The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE.
Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinced they’re being silenced. No, the truth is nobody cares.
...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat.
(cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting?
> because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward
What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic propaganda board during the Great Depression and WWII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Congre...
And note the FBI's concerns there at the end too. This isnt about NPR. It's about The State Department and the intelligence services which were localised under the department at the time.
Let's just be very simple about this though. We have in 2012 a repeal of a law which existed to ban the state department ("the war office" in old-speak) from propagandizing US citizens. And as the 2010s progress, gov. officials demanding social media companies censor americans. We have NGOs created with USAID and DARPA funding to enable mass censorship and profiling. And we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once.
Now, this is the indisputable, publicly obvious, everyone-can-see it layer. Now imagine one layer deeper: how does this actually play out in terms of executive action?
I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump.
Smith-Mundt was a restriction on State. It did nothing to restrict the CIA, or USAID for that matter.
It was also motivated by concerns that State harboured communist sympathies. Saying the Act was motivated by concerns around "what would happen if [American propaganda] was turned inward" is factually false, unsupported by contemporaneous accounts of the bill's backers.
> I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump
Didn't think you were (and neither am I).
Deep State comes in two flavours. One is the lizard-man crap that appeals to people who can't handle uncertainty. The other is a hypothesis about power in America. The section of the latter that overlaps with the left is based on a sub-hypothesis: that money buying messaging equals power.
The problem with this linkage is it's empirically false. Jeb Bush outspent Trump. Harris outspent Trump. Cambridge Analytica was 2016's AI scare (and Democrats' turn at election denial). Money buys power, but through direct messaging, the acquisition of proximity and--sometimes--bribes.
> we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once
And? Nothing happened. People who dissented had the space in which to dissent. They did so openly, peacefully and in spaces old and new.
To put it bluntly, we don't give our adversaries abroad that room. To the extent DOGE might help America, it's in showing us what a real deep state looks like. I'm hoping it doesn't come to it. But someone's e.g. Social Security or government-contract payments failing after an offensive tweet, not due to civic action or private citizens' actions, but due to a Kafkaesque arm of the state--that is the power of the deep state.
Tulsi Gabbard's hearing may be a tiny bit illuminating. The DOGE wrecking ball might lead to a new Church-committe-style hearing, there's already hearings in the house on the "censorship-industrial complex" but they're too naive at the moment. DOGE still think the "DEI" funding of USAID has something to do with being leftwing (rather than, say, the funding counter-government movements).
Meh. In many ways, it's all too late now. "How should the intelligence services conduct themselves?" has never been a question open to democratic debate, nor one any mass media outlet would dream of posing. Today, esp. it isnt one we citizens should raise -- leave it to whomever is able to roll the dice "at the top".
Yes, against our allies. Literally how soft power works. (As well as funding insurgencies against our adversaries’ proxies.)
Zero evidence it’s been used domestically. Which makes sense, because that would be dumb. Use those resources to attack directly.
> "How should the intelligence services conduct themselves?" has never been a question open to democratic debate
This is just excusing laziness. I’ve worked on privacy and intelligence bills, including giving comment and adding revisions at the federal level. The problem is it’s boring work and like two constituents call about it. The IC has been weak since the Iraq War and never put up a fight directly; they relied on their neocon warhawks to be their surrogates. Which mostly worked because the overlap between people who care about this and people who are nihilistic about civics to the point of being electorally irrelevant is huge.
Absent trump's election, the whole apparatus deployed to against media companies (targeting their ad networks to defund, strong-arming censorship, strong-arming participation etc.) would have went completely institutionally unaddressed.
> that would be dumb
Sure, given that your opponent can be elected your boss -- which happened, and now he's taking a wrecking ball to every agency which concerned itself with these tactics.
However, at the time it did not seem dumb. It seemed that trump was an existential threat to democracy. That may have even been to a degree true, but the dirty tricks approach has radicalized the far-right against the state in ways which used to be confined to the (previously targeted) far-left.
The mechanism of anti-trump coordination has yet really to be briefed out, and wikiepedia will be dragged kicking and screaming before there's an article on it. Give it a decade, perhaps.
For now, if you want examples here's the atlantic council (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council) -- training journalists to treat emerging rightwing politics as disinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSAz0agYEeI
Not to say that other politicians don't lie or distort the truth, but Trump has taken this to a whole other level.
The issue here is the top-down astroturfing from state-sponsored orgs whose boards are the last x heads of the CIA/etc.
At the moment there is no strong firewall between private polticial organisation, and state power, within the USA. You may think that's fine if its being used against trump, but it isnt.
Not least, since the example the AC gave in that video was trump tweeting "witch hunt" about the russia investigation -- calling this disinformation. Now, who was right? Trump. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, it was a witch hunt.
The only thing the muller report found was trump obstructed the investigation, it completely exonerated any supposed connections to russia. Then you might ask: where did all these intelligence dossiers come from?
And why is the atlantic council training journalists to label trumps poltical speech about this investigation as disinformation? (HINT: to enable its censorship etc.)
It did not exonerate him, quite explicitly. [1] The report found a lot of evidence of trump team making contact with Russians. You say yourself that the investigation was obstructed.
There was also this indictment on co-ordinated Russian funded interference in NA pundit/social media space. [2] Not to mention similar groups (I'm not sure about the status of the investigation in [2] at this point) have already been dismissed [3].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49100778
[2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/two-rt-employees-ind...
[3] https://www.npr.org/2025/02/11/nx-s1-5293521/foreign-influen...
We know today that the 2016 Trump Campaign:
- Had over 100 meetings with Russian officials, lied and said they had 0
- Amplified information hacked by Russia, implored for more publicly
- Met with Russian spy at Trump's home to discuss relaxed relations in return for dirt on Clinton, later lied about the existence of that meeting
- Shared internal campaign polling data with a Russian intel officer.
These facts are not in dispute by anyone, and are presented in the Mueller Report, and the Senate Intel Committee Report on Russian Active Measures. From Wikipedia:
The Senate Intelligence Committee assessed that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's "high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services" was a "grave counterintelligence threat".[50] The foremost individual was Manafort's employee Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian.[50] The committee identified Kilimnik as a "Russian intelligence officer"; describing that Manafort and Kilimnik had a "close and lasting relationship" even through the 2016 election.[53] Manafort repeatedly tried to "secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik", including "sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy".[53]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele...
The US system, while far from perfect, does have enshrined checks and balances. A formal constitution that limits the powers of branches. And an armed populace with a history of protest and unrest when things don't go their way.
The current administration is having a good think about fixing that:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/trump-v...
Musk is a fever dream incorporated by its own paranoia. There was never a deep state as potent and destructive (to say nothing of incompetent) as DOGE.
The problem with its illegality is twofold. On one hand, this will be a multibillion-dollar process to undo. If it persists, it means the next D President can just order the Treasury to e.g. shred student loan records and wire money to whomever they want and ignore anything the Congress or courts do. (If there is no next D President, we shift to an imperial playbook and it will be good living for anyone already rich and really bad for anyone who isn’t.)
And does it really matter? The authority for doing many of the things Trump's current admin is doing don't actually fall to the executive branch; they're doing them anyway.
Consider that Wikipedia lists the Biden connection to ukraine as a "conspiracy theory" but the trump connection to Russia as "Links between Trump associates and Russian officials" (there is no Trump connection to Russia, this was an invention of the security services; and there are as many "Links" between Biden associates and Ukraine -- but, as with trump, there is no Joe Biden-Ukraine link).