Summary
Elon Musk claims his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is shutting down payments to federal contractors, including a Lutheran charity, asserting it is eliminating corruption.
This suggests DOGE has access to Treasury’s payment systems, though officials have not confirmed the extent.
Senator Ron Wyden warned that DOGE may interfere with Social Security, Medicare, and government contracts.
Musk also called USAID “a criminal organization” that should “die,” amid DOGE’s growing influence over federal financial operations.
Can I ask? Why does Musk suddenly have this authority? “DOGE” isn’t even a real Department, right? And also, Musk hasn’t been elected or officially confirmed for any government position. 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. Why doesn’t the U.S. have any… I don’t know, safeguards against this sort of shit? It’s absolutely bonkers to watch this unfold from across the pond.
Musk just walked up, said “I’m in charge now” and everyone’s just complying? Please ELI5.
Not paying contractors, a plan straight out of the Trump playbook.
I pray they’re dumb enough to stop payments to Lockheed it Raytheon. Problem might solve itself
Lmfaooooo I just turned down a contractor position at NASA Ames. Applied for a full time position, went through interviews and even a facility tour, just to be offered part time temp to hire. Get fucked lmaooo
Good to know that our elected officials in the legislative branch are no longer able to create laws that are actually enacted.
This shit is outside the scope of the presidency.
This is a coup
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.
And for people who don’t like that word:
Regulatory capture of the entire United States government.
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.
I reject that defeatist attitude. It’s time for tax strike and general strike and mass protests across the country as next step
I think we can pretty much skip the first step, wouldn’t do us much good. Protests planned at every state capital on the 5th.
The US isnt good for their money. Creditors should demand their debts or threaten legal consequences in the form of international sanctions
So, time to stop paying federal students loans and income taxes, eh?
Edit: student loans would be more difficult because loan default but the W4 can be adjusted so no income is deducted for Federal taxes. One would just have to be sure to put that money aside in a savings account
to pay next year with no current impact in this tax year. Looks like there would have to be some quarterly payments or one would otherwise incur penalties. So it’d be a bit tricky to pull off cleanly. Maybe someone better at tax code could figure out a way to just do this quarterly.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)
Contractors handle Medicare.
Contractors run our military
Contractors build our nukes and keep them functioning
Contractors run Homeland Security as well. You know, the people running the deportations. And they sure as shit won’t do that crap for free.
Contractors probably have a hand in building your roads, supplying and maintaining your schools (and hospitals?), your plumbing, rail, air transit, power….Ive run out of steam. How is this a good thing? It’s terrifying.
Eh, to an extent. It’s going to be fun watching the military discover just how much of base services was contracting. But they’ll just order privates to do a half ass job and keep rolling. The big problems are the cargo and airline contracts. The Air Force and Navy are about to be very busy with stuff they didn’t want to handle.
I wonder at what point people are going to use force to stop this coup, at this point everyone is just watching laws and systems being broken and dimantled with no regard.
Is the media in the US that controlled that their people just don’t see what is happening?
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.
then the rest of the world bombs us into desolation.
Happy to, but you guys have nuclear weapons.
Remember when people were posting articles on how stupid and ridiculous DOGE is because it wouldn’t have the authority to do anything?
It’s still stupid and ridiculous and it still doesn’t have any legal authority.
Unfortunately, it is being allowed to act without legal authority.
He doesn’t need the authority if he just forces his way in.
Grabbed America by the pussy
Twitter remembers.
I see lawsuits flooding the US government for not paying for things they ordered.
Sorry the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.
They would just send back a shit emoji
jod I hope the shitty military bs has DRM that prevents it from functioning on non payment.
It’s not just suppliers. If you piss off Constellis (remember Blackwater?) and deny it legal remedies, they might be of a mind to do something to Elon as extra-legal as some of the stuff they have done for the US military as a PMC. These companies are used to getting their hands dirty and getting away with it. Not the sorts of people I’d be illegally denying their payments…
I hate to inform you, but US corporations don’t do that shit to other corporations/ governments. Just look at TVs. All your consumer grade TVs have had smart/LLM “features” shoved into them. They don’t do that on the commercial lines though. Commercial TVs are still “dumb.” Same for computers, cars, and pretty much everything that they can shove electronics in.
They do sell fleet vehicles with all the tracking stuff. They just offer the tracking information to the company as a means of surveiling their employees.
I sure hope this was worth it to hate on the trans and the browns. That’s the only thing dumb ass Americans voted for in 2024.
Looking at exit polls and post election polls it was the economy. Trump was very direct in his promise to lower prices. Harris ran over a hundred different messaging lines which clouded her economic message. Then she got caught on national TV defending Biden’s economy and saying nothing would change.
Yeah. IMO democrats refusing to acknowledge the state of the economy is what tipped the scale. You’d have to be a complete moron to believe Trump had any solutions for the economy, but he at least acknowledged that economically there’s something wrong. Harris on the other hand doubled down on Biden’s economic message of sticking your head in the sand and going “the economy is good”.
Blame the election system, not the voters. Its not a democracy
What a shitty election system. Anyway, i’ll vote for the racist diaper boy.
I hate the mango man but he won both the popular vote and electoral vote. How is that the fault of the system? The Dems put up a losing candidate that polled abysmally when she was running in the original primaries against Biden. To many in the center, the Dems had also swung too far left for their own flavor of progressive ideology. Put those two things together and they didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of winning the election.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes? I’m just stating facts. Kamala was NOT a likeable candidate for many on the left and center, so they simply didn’t vote. This led to cheeto in charge winning both the PV and EC. The rest of the world isn’t nearly as progressive as most folks on Lemmy.
The system is stupid because you only have two parties so if one of them is useless then you’re screwed. But that’s the voter’s fault if they voted for third party candidates and actually organized themselves in such a way that they all voted for the same third party candidate then they could actually achieve something.
Musk is himself a giant government contractor via Space X and Starlink. Odds are he’s just trying to clear the board to funnel the money to his businesses. Especially when it comes to defense money!
How is anyone permitting any of these people to have authority?
So I was looking at this today. It looks like a combination of serendipity and malicious behavior. The US Digital Service was effectively leaderless on Jan 20 when it was renamed DOGE. That’s the serendipity. But it was already “excepted service” under the president instead of a congressionally chartered agency. So they could (and likely would have) simply fire any leadership.
USDS’ purpose was to fix computer systems all over the government. And it was doing a great job of that. But in order to do that it does get access other agencies don’t. This is where the malicious part comes in. Trump turns them into DOGE and links them with lawyers and HR people. They use their existing access authorization to get into systems and then do HR stuff instead of systems engineering. Furthermore they aren’t currently funded, which means they shouldn’t be operating at all. Their last funding ran out in September.
Trump can just appoint people to it because he has a wide ranging authority to do temporary hires. Another malicious catch though is Musk is clearly operating DOGE but he hasn’t been put on payroll.
This is illegal, and there are lawsuits already filed. But they’re counting on people not understanding the intricacies of the different kinds of federal service to enact their plan. Which to me is pretty transparently to force all agencies to submit to DOGE as a stand in for the White House and an end run around all laws about the civil service. Basically an unconstitutional power grab by the President.
Because we’re all just people and at the end of the day some person is agreeing to not dispense the funds or not provide aid or to round up individuals … Until there is meaningful pushback by people who actually are carrying this bullshit out it won’t change.
Idk same as how the Nazis managed the Holocaust, at the end of the day thousands of individuals agreed and did their part to exterminate the Jews. Same as how Israel now is committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza with their military and all those individuals are carrying out their orders.
Authority, like many other things in our society, is an emphemeral concept we all agree to. Authority is given when we agree to abide by what that authority says. Same like our laws, sure we have laws against things but it’s not like those actually mean anything if they’re not obeyed by the majority. Nothing stopping you from doming Elon with the a large brick if you got one and can get close enough, you know what I mean?
Trump’s government is basically pay-to-play and Elon paid the most so he gets to do whatever he wants.
It started with a paid horse armor and he we are.
Because yall wanted this by voting for it
I think many didn’t want this because we voted against it
Agreed but not enough.
MOST people were perfectly happy with voting for Trump, or not voting at all.
If you didn’t vote this election then you are the problem.
Yeah, we know, pointing fingers isn’t going to help anything right now. Get out and take action.
Be more specific.
