Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

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Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team​

The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 attorneys general accusing the president of failing to faithfully execute the nation’s laws when he let DOGE comb through federal computer systems.

“… Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who was granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to these categories of officials.

The defendants — President Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department — should show cause on Feb. 14 before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.

… Before President Trump took office last month, access was granted to only a limited number of career civil servants with security clearances, the suit said. But Mr. Musk’s efforts had interrupted federal funding for health clinics, preschools, and climate initiatives, according to the filing.

The money had already been allocated by Congress. The Constitution assigns to lawmakers the job of deciding government spending.

“President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,” Ms. James said in a statement. “Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.” …”
 
nycfan said:


“… All three — Keenan Kmiec, James Burnham and Jacob Altik — have DOGE email addresses at the Executive Office of the President, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. Altik was recently an attorney at the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, but his bio page is now offline. Neither the White House nor any of the three lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment about their roles.

… “What’s striking is how contemptuous the administration seems to be of traditional administrative law limitations — in ways that might get them into trouble,” said Noah Rosenblum, a law professor at New York University. “When this stuff goes to the courts, one important question is going to be: How well-lawyered was it?”

… James Burnham, whose title at DOGE is listed internally as general counsel, is a prominent lawyer in conservative legal circles. In Trump’s first term, Burnham said he was brought to the White House counsel’s office by the office’s top lawyer, Don McGahn. He said he worked on the administration’s judicial selection process, including Gorsuch’s appointment to the high court. He went on to work in the Trump Justice Department and clerk for Gorsuch in 2020.

"He’s a smart guy, and a very conservative lawyer,” Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the first Trump White House, said of Burnham in an interview.

… Keenan Kmiec’s career veered from elite law to, more recently, crypto. After clerking for then-Judge Samuel Alito on a federal circuit court, he clerked on the Supreme Court for Roberts in the 2006-2007 term, according to his LinkedIn. He did a stint at a corporate law firm and had his own firm focused on insider-trading litigation.

… Kmiec’s father, Douglas Kmiec, a former Reagan administration lawyer and prominent conservative law professor, also made headlines for endorsing Obama. (Obama later named Douglas Kmiec ambassador to Malta.)

DOGE lawyer Jacob Altik is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. Altik was selected to clerk for Gorsuch at the Supreme Court in the term that starts this summer, according to an announcement by his law school that was confirmed by a Supreme Court spokesperson.

Altik recently worked as a corporate litigation associate at Weil and previously clerked for D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee known for critiquing the administrative state. He also interned at a nonprofit called the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which has been at the forefront of legal efforts to rein in the power of federal agencies. …”
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Ugh, the American people are screwed. Honestly, I never thought red-pilled, racist, incel techbros would be our overlords, but here we are. BigBalls, 26, Director of Destroying Humanity.

I had an IC handle for about 2 days, around 7 years ago. Ben said I was too mean, and banned me forever. I promise to only be an appropriate level of mean now, based on the societal conditions that the techbros make us suffer through. Deal?
 
Callatoroy said:
Well gosh, maybe you can list all the USAID expenditures then to rebut the propaganda.
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I'm not playing the game of creating an in depth rebuttal of Trump and company's avalanche of bullshit because 98% of what they say is always bullshit. If you're going to repeat their mess and want to be taken even remotely seriously, then the onus is on you to sort the wheat from the chaff. Otherwise, you're just a useful mouthpiece for the propagandists.
 

Treasury was warned DOGE access to payments marked an ‘insider threat’​

The assessment, done by the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, came before Treasury tapped an ally of Elon Musk to oversee the sensitive payment system.

“… The review, delivered Monday to Treasury officials by a contractor that runs a threat intelligence center for Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said that DOGE’s access to the payment network should be “immediately” suspended.

It also urged Treasury to scour the payments system for any changes approved by affiliates of DOGE, which is overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, the correspondence shows. DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency.

A Treasury employee told The Post that the threat center is run by Booz Allen Hamilton, a large federal contractor. The company confirmed it runs the threat center, which it said is embedded within Treasury.

Late Friday, after this article appeared, Booz Allen said it had “removed” a subcontractor who wrote the warning and would seek to retract or amend it. “The draft report was prepared by a subcontractor to Booz Allen and contained unauthorized personal opinions that are not factual or consistent with our standards,” company spokesperson Jessica Klenk said. Booz Allen won more than $1 billion in multiyear U.S. government contracts last year.

In a separate communication a week ago, a high-ranking career official at Treasury also raised the issue of risks from DOGE access in a memo to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, including the potential breach of information that could lead to exposure of U.S. spies abroad, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect government deliberations. The memo included recommendations to mitigate risks, which Bessent approved, said another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. …”
 
This topic was combined in the Public health thread but seems to need its own thread.

——

Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets​

Grants from the National Institutes of Health come with additional money for overhead. Proposed funding cuts would leave colleges with large budget gaps.

www.nytimes.com

Trump Administration Cuts Put Medical Progress at Risk, Researchers Say

Grants from the National Institutes of Health come with additional money for overhead. A planned $4 billion cut would leave colleges with large budget gaps.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

“The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap.

The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.

Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.

“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.” …”

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I don’t think you can overstate the negative impact on the budgets of major research universities from this abrupt change …
 
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Also relevant, the way science communications are being strangled:

Put this in the Bird Flu thread, but setting aside the disease in question, it is informative about attempts to circumvent muzzle at CDC:

GIFT LINK --> CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Transmission Between Cats and People

"Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.

In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.

The table was the lone mention of bird flu in a scientific report published on Wednesday that was otherwise devoted to air quality and the Los Angeles County wildfires. The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday, and is not included in the versions currently available online. The table appeared briefly at around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the error might have occurred. ..."
 


IMG_4918.jpeg

That is money straight out of the budgets of Universities which is used to support the infrastructure of the basic research they do.

This policy is taking a blowtorch to basic research budgets, the backbone of America’s scientific research power.
 
From the Washington Post link:

“… Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, said in a statement late Friday that the move could “dismantle the biomedical research system, stifle the development of new cures for disease, and rip treatments away from patients in need.”

She said the change could shut down some clinical trials at institutions in her state, such as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and University of Washington.

The N.I.H. spent about $35 billion in 2023 on about 50,000 competitive grants to about 300,000 researchers at 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions nationwide, according to the new policy. Of that, about $26 billion directly funded research and $9 billion covered indirect costs. The policy is set to take effect Monday.“
 
So Japan, with its $65bn trade surplus with the US, gets nothing but praise from Trump. The played Trump like a fiddle.
 




Again, the defense industrial complex isn’t the same level of adversary to DOGE as a lot of the domestic agencies have been — Hegseth may try to tell the Pentagon to lift its skirts for Musk’s wunderkids but I don’t think it will happen so easily. And of course the Pentagon is overdue an audit, so I’m not cheering on the DIC so much as observing this has a lot more risk for Musk and his band of merry bros.
 
nycfan said:
This topic was combined in the Public health thread but seems to need its own thread.

——

Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets​

Grants from the National Institutes of Health come with additional money for overhead. Proposed funding cuts would leave colleges with large budget gaps.

www.nytimes.com

Trump Administration Cuts Put Medical Progress at Risk, Researchers Say

Grants from the National Institutes of Health come with additional money for overhead. A planned $4 billion cut would leave colleges with large budget gaps.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

“The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap.

The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.

Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.

“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.” …”

——
I don’t think you can overstate the negative impact on the budgets of major research universities from this abrupt change …
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There are R1 public universities that get as much or more from NIH than they get from state appropriations. The indirect funds are used to maintain lab spaces (which is not cheap) and staff business and compliance offices. The permissible charges to direct and indirect funds is tightly defined so it’s not a matter of shifting some expenses around and making do. For some universities, it would effectively end most science research, not just medical. To use an easily digestible analogy, NIH is to academic science research what D1 football is to non-revenue and Olympic sports at colleges.
 


Judge needs to demand an accounting of who received the info and if its destruction.
 
I mean you can argue Indirect Costs are too high...whatever
But entire Budgets years out-including Facility construction happening now-have this rate build in. You can not just cut it all off one Monday morning
UNC gets more Research money than State appropiations-or at least it is close . I would be willing to bet even the Transit subsidy UNC gives Chapel Hill busses gets some Indirect $$ As it should. All these folkes working the labs need to get to work.
The money does not go to hookers and blow
 
mpaer said:
I mean you can argue Indirect Costs are too high...whatever
But entire Budgets years out-including Facility construction happening now-have this rate build in. You can not just cut it all off one Monday morning
UNC gets more Research money than State appropiations-or at least it is close . I would be willing to bet even the Transit subsidy UNC gives Chapel Hill busses gets some Indirect $$ As it should. All these folkes working the labs need to get to work.
The money does not go to hookers and blow
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I think this is correct. Get the right number for costs and give universities some runway to make plans. But this is kind of the way corporations do it. They do the cuts and then see where they've gone too far.

Out of curiosity, does this hit the indirect costs for already awarded grants or just the ones to be awarded?
 
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