Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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BlueSmoke said:
Has Trump ever admitted that tariffs can cause higher prices for Americans? If not, then maybe someone should ask why he won't put tariffs on oil?
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I admire your optimism but when Trump says literally anything he wants and defends it with his “common sense,” I don’t think asking him questions is likely to be effective.
 


“In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.

In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced. …

“It feels like one easy decision by the U.S. president is quietly killing so many lives,” said Saw Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave a U.S.-funded hospital in the Mae La refugee camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Mr. Nah Pha, who fled Myanmar in 2007 to escape the fighting there, said the staff gave him a week’s supply of medicine and told him that was all they could provide. “Once my medicine runs out, I have nowhere else to get it,” he added. …”

——
Trump’s inability to understand soft power is maddening. He doesn’t even have to have empathy to merely cynically grasp the value of these U.S. programs.
 
“… In Cambodia, which had been on the cusp of eradicating malaria with the help of the United States, officials now worry that a halt in funding will set them back. In Nepal, a $72 million program to reduce malnutrition has been suspended. In South Africa and Haiti, officials and aid workers worry that hundreds of thousands of people could die if the Trump administration withdraws support for a signature American program to fight H.I.V. and AIDS.

Some programs that don’t fit the category of lifesaving aid remain frozen, while others are explicitly barred because they fall outside of the administration’s ideological bounds, including any help with abortions, gender or diversity issues.

The United Nations Population Fund, the U.N.’s sexual and reproductive health agency, said that because of the funding freeze, maternal and mental health services to millions of women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, Ukraine, and other places had been disrupted or eliminated. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban has banned women from working, 1,700 Afghan women who worked for the agency would no longer be employed.

At stake is not just the good will that the United States has built internationally, but also its work to promote America’s security interests. In Ivory Coast, an American-sponsored program collecting sensitive intelligence on Al Qaeda-related incidents has been interrupted.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, some of the funding to United Nations agencies supporting more than 4.5 million people displaced by a rapidly growing conflict in the country’s east has been frozen, according to a U.S. humanitarian official on the continent.

Even with Mr. Rubio’s announcements that lifesaving efforts could resume, much of the American aid system in Africa remained paralyzed by the confusion and disruptions, including in conflict-hit areas where every day counts. …”
 
“… David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, is expected to leave the agency soon, the people said. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.

… Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

… Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

… Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations. …”

——
It would be hard to overstate how much mischief could be done by someone of bad faith (or merely misguided or incompetent) getting access to this system.
 
Continued

“…
In the 2023 fiscal year, the payment systems processed nearly 1.3 billion payments, accounting for about $5.4 trillion, nearly 97 percent made electronically, according to the Treasury Department. Every payment was made on time.

Lebryk’s departure is expected to be a shock to Treasury personnel, among whom he enjoys a sterling reputation. The lifelong bureaucrat joined the department as an intern in 1989 and spent three decades at the agency under 11 different treasury secretaries, serving as acting director of the U.S. Mint and commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, among other roles.

Michael Faulkender, whom Trump nominated as deputy U.S. treasury secretary in December, praised Lebryk’s work in 2023. …”
 
Why in the world might Elon want control over the payment systems? Hmmm.

www.techdirt.com

Add Elon’s Buddy Larry Ellison To The Creditors List Of Those That Twitter Is Refusing To Pay

We already knew that Twitter had stopped paying its cloud computing bills from Google and Amazon as Elon continues his “pursuit of profitability” that he himself destroyed in Twitter (remember, Twi…
www.techdirt.com www.techdirt.com

We already knew that Twitter had stopped paying its cloud computing bills from Google and Amazon as Elon continues his “pursuit of profitability” that he himself destroyed in Twitter (remember, Twitter was profitable in 16 of the previous 20 quarters before Elon took over at a much higher run rate, before Elon drove away somewhere around half of the advertising revenue of the company while simultaneously saddling it with massive debt). I may not be a massively successful business man, but I’m having trouble with the business logic of driving away half of revenue for no clear reason, while increasing the company’s expenses through unnecessary debt financing, combined with trying to make up the difference by breaching contracts left and right.

* * *

Either way, apparently Google and Amazon aren’t the only cloud providers Elon stiffed: the latest news is that they’re not paying their Oracle cloud bill.

Representatives for Oracle have started directly calling current and former Twitter employees in an attempt to collect on past-due invoices well into the six-figure range, the people said. Oracle has for several years provided Twitter with data-storage services, one of the people added.
 
lawtig02 said:
I admire your optimism but when Trump says literally anything he wants and defends it with his “common sense,” I don’t think asking him questions is likely to be effective.
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No I'm not optimistic. Just trying to figure out the push back on him which is rather weak. Have a feeling after he does this and starts to defend it, that he will claim the American people aren't paying it. I would then like for him to be confronted with the question, "well if that's true that Americans aren't paying it, then why didn't you put the tariffs on oil".
 
nycfan said:
“… David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, is expected to leave the agency soon, the people said. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.

… Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

… Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

… Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations. …”

——
It would be hard to overstate how much mischief could be done by someone of bad faith (or merely misguided or incompetent) getting access to this system.
Click to expand...
 
nycfan said:

Marco Rubio: An Americas First Foreign Policy​

U.S. diplomats have neglected the Western Hemisphere for too long.​


GIFT LINK 🎁—> https://www.wsj.com/opinion/an-amer...b0?st=zB9e1a&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
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“… President Trump’s foreign-policy agenda begins close to home. Among his top priorities is securing our borders and reversing the disastrous invasion abetted by the last administration. Diplomacy’s role in this effort is central. We need to work with countries of origin to halt and deter further migrant flows, and to accept the return of their citizens present in the U.S. illegally.

Some countries are cooperating with us enthusiastically—others, less so. The former will be rewarded. As for the latter, Mr. Trump has already shown that he is more than willing to use America’s considerable leverage to protect our interests. Just ask Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.

Yet even when circumstances demand toughness, the president’s vision for the hemisphere remains positive. We see a prosperous region rife with opportunities. We can strengthen trade ties, create partnerships to control migration, and enhance our hemisphere’s security. …”

——
As an aside, “… rife with opportunities …” is odd phrasing, especially for our chief diplomat. The term “rife” is generally understood and used as a negative — meaning out of control, unchecked and/or overwhelming

A small matter, I concede. For some reason it jumped out at me.
 
“… Closer relationships with the U.S. lead to more jobs and higher growth in these countries. This reduces incentives for emigration from these countries while providing governments with revenue to fight crime and invest at home. As our regional partners build themselves up, they can more easily resist countries such as China that promise much but deliver little.

Mass migration has destabilized our entire region. Drug cartels—now correctly categorized, thanks to the president, as foreign terrorist organizations—are taking over our communities, sowing violence and poisoning our families with fentanyl. Illegitimate regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are intentionally amplifying the chaos. All the while, the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage—such as at the Panama Canal—to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.

I am confident that the countries I will soon visit will be ready partners. Like President Trump, their leaders are pragmatists who put their citizens first. And because they are pragmatists, they also know that there is much more to be gained from working with the U.S. than not. …”

——
Chicken/egg issue — a lot of investment fled Central America due to political instability there (a significant amount of which destabilization had US/CIA fingerprints all over it); how do you get investors to return without first establishing stability? How do you establish stability without jobs for people?

@donbosco — would be interested in your take on this policy announcement. Writ large, I agree that stabilizing the political and Economic status of Central America would go a long way to curbing our own immigration influx of people understandably desperate for a better life.
 
nycfan said:


“In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.

In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced. …

“It feels like one easy decision by the U.S. president is quietly killing so many lives,” said Saw Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave a U.S.-funded hospital in the Mae La refugee camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Mr. Nah Pha, who fled Myanmar in 2007 to escape the fighting there, said the staff gave him a week’s supply of medicine and told him that was all they could provide. “Once my medicine runs out, I have nowhere else to get it,” he added. …”

——
Trump’s inability to understand soft power is maddening. He doesn’t even have to have empathy to merely cynically grasp the value of these U.S. programs.
Click to expand...

Xi Jinping understands, and in the next 4 years he’s probably going to lockdown a few decades of access to significant resources in Africa at the cost of American businesses.
 


"A longtime immigration enforcement official has been tapped to run the agency responsible for managing unaccompanied migrant children, in a move that has alarmed experts and advocates who are concerned that information about children and their families will be shared for arrests and deportations.

For the past two decades, an office within the Department of Health and Human Services has supervised children who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian. The government handed this duty to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, not its immigration enforcement agency, underscoring that the process shouldn’t be punitive but instead is meant to help safely place children with sponsors living in the United States.

That wall eroded during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when the ORR began to share identifying information about unaccompanied children and their potential sponsors with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, presaging a wave of arrests. Congress put limits on this sharing and President Joe Biden stopped the practice — but a new hire in Trump’s second administration has advocates and experts worried the separation between the agencies is once again breaking down.

Mellissa Harper, a veteran immigration enforcement officer at ICE, has been tapped to lead the ORR, according to three current and former government officials, and oversee the care of unaccompanied migrant children. The officials requested anonymity to discuss government operations. Her position is a federal detail, according to a federal employee directory, which allows career government employees to transfer between agencies for temporary roles.

This appears to be the first time an ICE official has been hired to lead the refugee resettlement office, former administration officials told ProPublica. Harper’s experience mostly comprises immigration enforcement. A former ICE official said Harper has a good reputation inside the agency and expertise dealing with issues involving minors across the government. ..."
 
Control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service is a big, big deal. If Elon's minions control disbursements, we are going to start seeing things like the federal government withholding Milley's military pension and delays in AWS payments if there's an article they don't like in the Post.

It's what Trump and Musk do routinely in their private businesses, but it's illegal and unconstitutional for the executive branch. The injured parties can sue, but that takes time and the leverage imposed will be significant.
 
nycfan said:
“… David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, is expected to leave the agency soon, the people said. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.

… Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

… Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

… Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s “checking book” — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior treasury roles during the Obama and Biden administrations. …”

——
It would be hard to overstate how much mischief could be done by someone of bad faith (or merely misguided or incompetent) getting access to this system.
Click to expand...
WTF? I do not understand why some of these people just fold and quit. I’d be blowing the whistle to Congress and if Trump wants to be rid of me, make him fire me after that.
 
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