Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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“…
The Department of Energy spent this week trying to contain the fallout from its DOGE-directed firing and rehiring of a brace of nuclear safety officials by painting them as non-critical staff who “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”

But this wasn’t close to true, current and recently retired NNSA employees tell The Bulwark. In fact, one of the officials who was locked out of his work accounts was Acting Chief of Defense Nuclear Safety James Todd, a senior executive official and the top authority for all nuclear-safety matters in the agency.

… At the agency’s Los Alamos field office alone, there was the site’s emergency preparedness manager, who is responsible for maintaining plans to minimize the effects of a nuclear accident on site and in surrounding areas. There was the radiation protection manager, responsible for minimizing radiation exposure to on-site workers. There was the security manager, the fire protection engineer, and two facility representatives, who are the office’s day-to-day eyes and ears on site manufacturing facilities.

Media reports have treated the firings as a deeply unwise DOGE hatchet job that was, thankfully, quickly reversed. And it’s true that earlier this week, nearly all the affected employees were notified that they were welcome back at their jobs. But at the Los Alamos nuclear facility and across NNSA, shell-shocked employees remain unsure whether or how soon the axe might fall again. Many, sources say, are now eyeing early retirement or thinking about finding other work. …”

 
Countries with highest autism rates:

1. UK
2. Sweden
3. Japan
4. US
5. Netherlands
6. Ireland
7. Brunei
8. Canada
9. Singapore
10. Andorra

Lowest autism rates:

1. North Korea
2. Taiwan
3. Cook Islands
4. Niue
5. Tunisia
6. Syria
7. Libya
8. Turkey
9. Morocco
10. Northern Mariana Islands.

There's something each of those lists of 10 have in common, but I just can't quite figure it out.
 
gizmodo.com

Elon Musk Rants Incoherently in Sunglasses While X Shadowbans His Pleading Baby Mama

The world's richest man wants you to know he's having a lot of fun.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

Grimes—the mother of three of Musk’s children, including the one he carries around with him for photo ops—took to X to plead with him yesterday. “Plz respond about our child’s medical crisis,” she said in a post on X. “I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention.”


She went on at length in several posts. She was replying to something Musk had posted unrelated to her and said Musk had stopped replying to her texts, emails, and phone calls. Newly revealed Musk mother Ashley St. Clair went through something similar earlier this week. Both women tried, and failed, to get Musk’s attention by replying to him on the social media site he owns. The result was the apparent “shadowbanning” of Grimes on the platform.

Musk was pretty busy all day getting into fights with astronauts and constantly posting. Later in the day was his big interview at CPAC. That’s the kind of thing a billionaire needs to focus on. Besides, the medical emergencies of your biological children can be so boring. Musk just wants to have a little fun.
 
altmin said:
gizmodo.com

Elon Musk Rants Incoherently in Sunglasses While X Shadowbans His Pleading Baby Mama

The world's richest man wants you to know he's having a lot of fun.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

Grimes—the mother of three of Musk’s children, including the one he carries around with him for photo ops—took to X to plead with him yesterday. “Plz respond about our child’s medical crisis,” she said in a post on X. “I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention.”


She went on at length in several posts. She was replying to something Musk had posted unrelated to her and said Musk had stopped replying to her texts, emails, and phone calls. Newly revealed Musk mother Ashley St. Clair went through something similar earlier this week. Both women tried, and failed, to get Musk’s attention by replying to him on the social media site he owns. The result was the apparent “shadowbanning” of Grimes on the platform.

Musk was pretty busy all day getting into fights with astronauts and constantly posting. Later in the day was his big interview at CPAC. That’s the kind of thing a billionaire needs to focus on. Besides, the medical emergencies of your biological children can be so boring. Musk just wants to have a little fun.
Click to expand...
Dude has sunglasses on inside and is actively geeking on stage (in more ways than one). How can anyone take this freak seriously, let alone think he’s some kind of genius? Say it with me: wealth is not meritocratic.
 
HesNaughtHere said:
Or, ya know, a global pandemic
Click to expand...
Most people didn't get covid in the first year of the pandemic, they were personally affected more by the mandatory shutdowns and their kids going to remote learning and having to wear masks in public, all of which they conveniently blamed on everyone but Trump. If they lose their jobs or Grandma or Grandpa lose their SS and their house and can't pay their bills because of all of these cuts we'll see what happens.
 
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Requiem For The West​

Trump and Vance have put a stake in the heart of the free world.​


andrewsullivan.substack.com

Requiem For The West

Trump and Vance have put a stake in the heart of the free world.
andrewsullivan.substack.com andrewsullivan.substack.com

"...It is a fascinating moment, isn’t it, when Reagan’s vision of the West is finally swept into the dustbin of history by a Republican president.

And that is the only solid conclusion one can make after this week of astonishing incompetence and madness. We only saw Donald Trump’s foreign policy darkly in his first term — constrained, as he was, by a handful of white-knuckled Republicans in the executive branch.

Now we see it face to face. It’s a vision where international law disappears, great powers divide up the planet into spheres of influence, and the strong always control the weak. It’s Trump’s vision of domestic politics as well. And of life.

Control, plunder, gloat. This is the Trump way.

...What he is doing is not about making a tough peace deal with Russia, recalibrating NATO, or protecting Ukraine’s democracy. He is merely setting the terms of a new alliance and relationship with the criminal Russian dictatorship — directed against the European democracies.

More TDS from yours truly? But what other conclusion can one draw when the president cuts the Ukrainians and their European allies out of the dealmaking, has already conceded Ukraine’s conquered territory before any talks, insists that Ukraine started the war, that Zelensky, and not Putin, is the dictator, and is demanding reparations in advance ... from Ukraine, not Russia! The reparations amount to a US claim on 50 percent of Ukraine's mineral deposits forever. It’s the equivalent of “We’re gonna take Iraq’s oil.” It’s a form of imperial pillage. But it’s vintage Trump.

And notice that this isn’t part of full negotiations with Russia. Trump wanted Zelensky to sign away half his country’s mineral rights to the US in perpetuity before he had asked anything of Putin. And he gave Zelensky three hours to read and sign it. Trump, of course, was incensed when Zelensky refused. This is how a Trump official described the mood: “We created a monster with Zelensky. And these Trump-deranged Europeans who won’t send troops are giving him terrible advice.”

Zelensky is a monster but Putin is our friend. ...

... Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites. The goal now is to replace those elites with Moscow-friendly governments, bent on repatriation of illegal migrants. Hence the stunning endorsement of the AfD by Elon Musk — the second most powerful man in the Trump administration.

After what the president and vice president have said this week, it’s fair to say, I think, that NATO is effectively over. No one can even faintly believe that the US under Trump would abide by Article 5 to defend another member state. Trump has just told the Baltic states: you’re on your own now. If you resist Russian control, you’ll deserve what you get. ..."
 
Cont'd

"... It’s not just the end of NATO, but a new doctrine of US power. That doctrine now reflects Trump’s deepest conviction: that might is right, that weak countries should surrender to strong ones, and that this is in America’s interests, because we are the strongest. Trump’s aggression toward Canada, Panama, Gaza, and Denmark is not just trolling the libs. It’s of a piece with his view that the strong should always control and bully and plunder the weak. This is Ukraine’s real crime to Trump. They dared resist absorption by a bigger, stronger neighbor. That’s why Trump had contempt for the protestors at Tiananmen Square:

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.
Click to expand...
Or, as he said on another occasion: “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.”

The logic of this might-makes-right worldview is why Trump believes that the US should now own Gaza. By which authority? he was asked. “By US authority,” he answered — meaning, of course, not US authority (we have none in Israel) but US power. Trump is clinically incapable of understanding any system of mutuality, because he cannot tolerate being anyone’s equal.

The replacement of international law with spheres of influence based on power alone means, in turn, that the US will have no case against China’s future absorption of Taiwan, Russia’s re-occupation of all of Ukraine and the Baltic states, or Israel’s looming ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank.

...This means, it seems to me, that the idea of the West is now over. By the West, I mean the idea that the democracies that beat the Nazis and outlasted the Soviets were and are instinctively America’s friends — “We were with you then; We are with you now,” in Reagan’s words — that the world is divided between autocracy and democracy, and that although we need to deal with tyrants realistically, and accept limits on our power in this new multipolar world, we are still emphatically the leader of “the free world.”

Those three words — “the free world” — mean nothing to Trump and never have. And he has now fatefully told the entire world, including our former allies, that this is America’s position now as well. He has updated Reagan with these words: “We were with you then. We see no reason to be with you now. In fact, we’re siding with a dictator who threatens you.”

This is a Rubicon, I’m afraid, that cannot be fully uncrossed. ... This is who Trump is. But it isn’t who Americans really are. I have faith that the West, now mortally wounded, can yet survive Trump and Putin, and re-emerge at some point. But it may be a dark, dark few years before the dawn’s early light breaks out again."
 

Musk Ally Demands Admin Access to System That Lets Government Text the Public​


www.404media.co

Musk Ally Demands Admin Access to System That Lets Government Text the Public

A worker resigned in protest rather than giving Thomas Shedd access to Notify.gov, which they said would allow him to see "all personally identifiable information moving through the Notiy system, including phone numbers," 404 Media has learned.
www.404media.co www.404media.co

"...A worker at the General Services Administration told colleagues in a Slack message Tuesday that they have resigned in protest after Elon Musk ally Thomas Shedd requested “admin/root access to all components of the Notify.gov system,” which is a government system used to send mass text messages to the public that contains information the worker said is highly sensitive and would give Shedd unilateral, private access to the personal data of members of the public.

Shedd is a former Tesla engineer who now runs Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a group of coders and software engineers within the GSA, who is closely allied with Elon Musk and DOGE. Notify.gov contains not just the phone numbers of everyday people but also information about whether they participate in government programs such as Medicaid, which is based on a person's financial situation. In recent days, Musk has become obsessed with the idea of "fraud" in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, and in identifying those he suspects are committing fraud...."
 

MAGA takes aim at the Republican hawks​


Trump loyalists are sending a message to the GOP’s foreign policy traditionalists.


"Top allies of President Donald Trump are in an escalating clash with the Republican Party’s once-powerful defense hawks, viewing them as key obstacles standing in the way of a thorough remaking of U.S. foreign policy that would realign the world order with Trump’s America First vision.

Vice President JD Vance and several administration officials who are close to Donald Trump Jr. have been central to the effort to sideline those with traditional conservative foreign policy views, which has accelerated over the past week.

Their targets have included a well-known Trump ally, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who has raised concerns about the nominee for a top Defense Department post, and the administration’s own special envoy on the Russia-Ukraine war, former Gen. Keith Kellogg, who is being undermined in Washington as he meets this week with top Ukrainian officials in Kyiv.

Given their past lives as Russia hawks, Trump’s own secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and national security adviser, Michael Waltz, are under intense internal scrutiny inside a White House where deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Sergio Gor, who oversees personnel decisions, have shown little tolerance for anyone who diverges from the MAGA mindset.

Underpinning all of it is Trump’s foreign policy mindset that elevates his personal relationships with leaders of rival superpowers, and the use of American threats to push allies and adversaries to buckle to American power, over the traditional alliances based on long-term cooperation and democratic governance. That has emboldened Vance and others to send a clear message to the world that Republican foreign policy as they have known it is dead — and they’re not sorry about it.

... Rubio “knows the knives are out for him,” one of the people close to the secretary said. “He knows that [Grenell] is gunning for his job and will go to Trump and demand he fires Marco the first time he says anything that contradicts the boss.” ..."
 
www.usatoday.com

Justice Department is dropping its immigration\u00a0case\u00a0against SpaceX

Government lawyers asked a Texas judge to end a pause in proceedings so they could file a notice of dismissal of the case.
www.usatoday.com www.usatoday.com

Justice Department is dropping its immigration case against SpaceX​


"The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said it would drop a case accusing Elon Musk's space technology company SpaceX of refusing to hire certain immigrants.

The Justice Department last month signaled it could back away from the case, brought during Democratic President Joe Biden's term.

Musk, a top adviser to Republican President Donald Trump, is leading a commission tasked with identifying waste in the federal government.

In a Thursday court filing in Brownsville, Texas, government lawyers asked a judge to end a pause in proceedings so they could file a notice of dismissal of the case. The Justice Department said it would dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be brought again.

...The Justice Department in August 2023 filed an administrative complaint alleging SpaceX from 2018 to 2022 routinely discouraged asylum recipients and refugees from applying for jobs and refused to consider them.

At the time, the department said SpaceX wrote in job postings and public statements that it could only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents because of U.S. export control laws. The department said export control laws did not impose such restrictions. ..."
 
Step one — argue Unitary Executive power to remove Administrative Law Judges:

 
nycfan said:
Step one — argue Unitary Executive power to remove Administrative Law Judges:

Click to expand...

“… Administrative law judges are members of the executive branch who preside over hearings regarding administrative disputes between federal agencies and affected parties. They serve both the judge and jury in these proceedings — having the authority to conduct hearings, issue subpoenas, review findings and administer rulings.

The judges adjudicate issues in numerous federal agencies, like complaints of unfair labor practices filedwith the National Labor Relations Board, violations of labor laws — like minimum wage requirements — brought to the Department of Labor and disputes over someone’s eligibility for retirement or disability benefits under the Social Security Administration.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris, one of the top attorneys in the Justice Department, sent a letter to the Senate saying the DOJ “has concluded that the multiple layers of removal restrictions for administrative law judges…violate the U.S. Constitution” and “will no longer defend them in court.”

A federal law states these judges can be removed “only with good cause,” and that’s determined by the U.S. Merits Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which protects federal employees from unfair personnel practices.

… Essentially, this makes it harder for the president to impact this process, which allows these judges to be independent and not be concerned with the whims of partisan politics when a new president enters office.

Harris said this violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers principles.

She referenced a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that stated “multilayer protection from removal” to executive officers violates Article II of the Constitution, which vests executive power in the president. That case involved the Public Company Oversight Board, which is under the supervision of the Securities and Exchanges Commission.

In a statement Thursday, DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle announced the Justice Department’s new stance on these protections, saying the “nelected and constitutionally unaccountable [administrative law judges] have exercised immense power for far too long.” …”
 
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