Musk now controls all US payments 🚨 | USDA freezes payments to farmers
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Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social)
The people who are engaged in a series of illegal abuses of government power - some might even call it a coup! - are labeling even the slightest judicial pushback to be a coup. I don't know where this ends, but its clear where they want it to end.
bsky.app
thebruinbleedstarheelblue
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" should not be"
evrheel
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'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order
'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order
Elon Musk appears poised to defy a judicial order, according to observers. Musk, the richest man in the world and an appointee of Donald Trump, was dealt a blow over the weekend when a judge reportedly blocked Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personal financial...
www.rawstory.com
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No worries'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order
'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order
Elon Musk appears poised to defy a judicial order, according to observers. Musk, the richest man in the world and an appointee of Donald Trump, was dealt a blow over the weekend when a judge reportedly blocked Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personal financial...
Pam Bondi will arrest him-well maybe not
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It is so patently obvious that nobody in Trump's orbit will need any judicial finding that doesn't agree with their own take on issues.
HandsonFire
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Oh no I am so surprised this is so shocking, I just can’t believe this. But Pubs are the party of law and order right? Right ?'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order
'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order
Elon Musk appears poised to defy a judicial order, according to observers. Musk, the richest man in the world and an appointee of Donald Trump, was dealt a blow over the weekend when a judge reportedly blocked Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing personal financial...
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Five Former Treasury Secretaries:
Our Democracy Is Under Siege
By Robert E. Rubin, Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner, Jacob J. Lew and Janet L. Yellen
The writers are former Treasury secretaries.
“… The nation’s payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants. In recent days, that norm has been upended, and the roles of these nonpartisan officials have been compromised by political actors from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
One has been appointed fiscal assistant secretary — a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds.
These political actors have not been subject to the same rigorous ethics rules as civil servants, and one has explicitly retained his role in a private company, creating at best the appearance of financial conflicts of interest.
They lack training and experience to handle private, personal data — like Social Security numbers and bank account information.
Their power subjects America’s payments system and the highly sensitive data within it to the risk of exposure, potentially to our adversaries.
And our critical infrastructure is at risk of failure if the code that underwrites it is not handled with due care. That is why a federal judge this past weekend blocked, at least temporarily, these individuals from the Treasury’s payments system, noting the risk of “irreparable harm.” …”
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Continued
“… We take the extraordinary step of writing this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.
A key component of the rule of law is the executive branch’s commitment to respect Congress’s power of the purse: The legislative branch has the sole authority to pass laws that determine where and how federal dollars should be spent.
The role of the Treasury Department — and of the executive branch more broadly — is not to make determinations about which promises of federal funding made by Congress it will keep, and which it will not.
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court previously wrote, “Even the president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend the funds.”
Chief Justice John Roberts agrees: He wrote that “no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse.”
During our collective 18 years at the helm of the Treasury, we never were asked to stop congressionally appropriated funds from being paid out in full. Not since the Nixon administration has this type of executive action been contemplated. At that time, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president did not have the power to withhold federal funds that Congress had authorized.
…
No Treasury secretary in his or her first weeks in office should be put in the position where it is necessary to reassure the nation and the world of the integrity of our payments system or our commitment to make good on our financial obligations.
Secretary Scott Bessent has had to do just that, and we were comforted to see the agency commit to Congress that any recent access to Treasury’s payment systems “is not resulting in the suspension or rejection of any payment instructions submitted” to the federal government. When he has been asked — repeatedly — if Treasury has tried to block any federal payments, he has stated unequivocally that “we have not.”
… But even more than the importance of making good on particular commitments is the importance of making good on the principles that this country stands for. We have during our service in the Treasury Department faced moments of crisis, when the specter of an American default loomed.
Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default.
And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain.”
——
That’s one thing that a lot of the laissez faire observers of what the Trump Administration is doing don’t seem to get — once the reputational and foundational damage is done, it doesn’t just come back if we change course in response to a court order or just by someone talking Trump out of it.
It takes years and decades to build good will and trust. It only takes a single moment to destroy them. It is easy for an arsonist to toss a match and watch it burn. It can take communities years, if ever, to recover, and often the original community is displaced by a very different community in the aftermath.
“… We take the extraordinary step of writing this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.
A key component of the rule of law is the executive branch’s commitment to respect Congress’s power of the purse: The legislative branch has the sole authority to pass laws that determine where and how federal dollars should be spent.
The role of the Treasury Department — and of the executive branch more broadly — is not to make determinations about which promises of federal funding made by Congress it will keep, and which it will not.
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court previously wrote, “Even the president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend the funds.”
Chief Justice John Roberts agrees: He wrote that “no area seems more clearly the province of Congress than the power of the purse.”
During our collective 18 years at the helm of the Treasury, we never were asked to stop congressionally appropriated funds from being paid out in full. Not since the Nixon administration has this type of executive action been contemplated. At that time, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president did not have the power to withhold federal funds that Congress had authorized.
…
No Treasury secretary in his or her first weeks in office should be put in the position where it is necessary to reassure the nation and the world of the integrity of our payments system or our commitment to make good on our financial obligations.
Secretary Scott Bessent has had to do just that, and we were comforted to see the agency commit to Congress that any recent access to Treasury’s payment systems “is not resulting in the suspension or rejection of any payment instructions submitted” to the federal government. When he has been asked — repeatedly — if Treasury has tried to block any federal payments, he has stated unequivocally that “we have not.”
… But even more than the importance of making good on particular commitments is the importance of making good on the principles that this country stands for. We have during our service in the Treasury Department faced moments of crisis, when the specter of an American default loomed.
Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default.
And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain.”
——
That’s one thing that a lot of the laissez faire observers of what the Trump Administration is doing don’t seem to get — once the reputational and foundational damage is done, it doesn’t just come back if we change course in response to a court order or just by someone talking Trump out of it.
It takes years and decades to build good will and trust. It only takes a single moment to destroy them. It is easy for an arsonist to toss a match and watch it burn. It can take communities years, if ever, to recover, and often the original community is displaced by a very different community in the aftermath.
Mulberry Heel
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The public and political response to Trump this time has been so utterly different from when he first took office in 2017. At that time there were large protests, people vowing resistance, and so on. This time Democrats seem utterly leaderless and with few exceptions Congressional Democrats have been relatively quiet. And among Democrats at large the response to all of this has also been very muted. I think some are in shock that this is actually happening, some have simply given up, and others are just biding their time and praying or hoping for the best. Right now the only real resistance or pushback to any of what Trump or Musk or their minions are doing has been in the courts, and I don't think that will hold up for long. My guess is that at some point Trump or Elon or one of his goons will do something so offensive or disastrous or harmful that it will finally rouse large numbers of people to more vocally and aggressively protest and push back, but we're not there yet, it would seem.
1moretimeagain
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I wonder if Elon will venture into potential abuse of Social Security Disability program?
superrific
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FAFO is the way forward. Americans didn't listen to Democrats for all of last year, predicting exactly this. Why would they listen now? They are going to have to see it with their own eyes.
HandsonFire
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Hate to be a Debbie downer but we all know if this makes it to the SC it’s toast. They (Maga court members) have no conscience, just whores bought and paid for by Trump.
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I certainly expect it. If the black and brown shirts considered a person less-dead, I expect this admin does too. The likely gut of ssdi and CMS is going to devastate rural America, and it’s just a matter of whether their insecurity, inability to see through mis/dis, and commitment to identity politics continue to obscure their ability to see the true enemy.
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The dynamic is quite different. In 2017, Trump lost the popular vote by quite a lot and there was a sense of unfairness in the Electoral College outcome (justified or not). Also, the losing candidate had a dedicated base of supporters who had been with her for years and the MeToo movement was in swing, so people were already activated.
In 2024, Biden policies had plenty of Dem support but little independent support and either way almost no one on his own side really had any enthusiasm for Biden. then the circumstances of Harris getting the nomination was unfortunate forced by the Biden breaking his implied promise to be a one term bridge to the future and running again in the first place. The Democratic coalition fractured.
Today, Trump won the EC and the popular vote. A lot of Dems stayed home and a lot more had an initial FAFO reaction that assumed Trump 2.0 would be the same incompetent show as 1.0, mostly sound and fury signifying very little substantive change beyond normal party change in the presidency.
But whoops, the Trump 2.0 blitzkrig has been entirely different — much more what the “alarmists” were predicting based on public info like what Trump said, who he surrounded himself with and Project 2025.
It takes time for a splintered coalition to heal, if it ever does. After the 2008 election it looked like Republicans would be lost in the wilderness for decades and the GOP minority in Congress had no clue how to respond to Obama’s popularity and Dem coErrol of Congress. The Tea Party uprising was spawned in reaction to Obamacare and other issues and eventually grew into the MAGA that ate the GOP. But in the meantime, the GOP remade itself around opposition to key Obama policies and rage o we the bailout of Big Banks.
Which is all to say that the Dems look rudderless now because they have a lot of different coalitions arguing about which other coalition member is to blame for the Trump win. As enough issues arise to force those coalitions back into their always fragile armistice to oppose Trump, Musk and MAGA, eventually a coordinated response will emerge. The issue is not whether but how long will it take? Months? years? The Reagan Revolution really emerged in late 1983 through mid 1987. Let’s hope this is a much shorter turnaround period.
And yes, there is always the risk that the opposition collapses and all we have least is some sort of underground resistance to the collapse of democratic governance. I get that but also thing that great unraveling would take even more stress than the government is under now.
Duke Mu
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Projection
Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social)
The people who are engaged in a series of illegal abuses of government power - some might even call it a coup! - are labeling even the slightest judicial pushback to be a coup. I don't know where this ends, but its clear where they want it to end.
Duke Mu
Honored Member
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Musk's strategy is to control currency (another violation of the Constitution) and replace intellectual infrastructure with AI. Control money and mind.
However, Musk is a child and an idiot. Leaning on crypto instead of the dollar will lead to economic collapse (see 1920s US history).
However, Musk is a child and an idiot. Leaning on crypto instead of the dollar will lead to economic collapse (see 1920s US history).