CATO engaged in an interesting project: faced with all the uncertainty about what DOGE is up to, it attempted to lay out six possible models to explain what DOGE is doing.
Social science models simplify reality, spotlighting key variables that may shape DOGE’s actions in a way that can be tested. The models discussed above clearly simplify the complex endeavor of reforming the largest human organization ever by expenditures—the U.S. federal government. They help explain past decisions and anticipate future moves. The models above try to make sense of DOGE’s actions so far. They are not mutually exclusive, yet several can be informative together or alone, while some may only make sense temporarily. Other models not set out here might offer fresh insights, but scholars should try to develop them. Without doing so, one of the biggest policy initiatives of President Trump’s second term risks being under-analyzed or misunderstood.
It offered these six possible models:
DOGE is seeking to purge progressive influence within the federal government.
DOGE is a scaled-up public version of Musk’s style of corporate restructuring applied to the federal government.
DOGE is the first step of a public relations campaign to build popular support for spending cuts.
DOGE is an essential component of a Trump administration legal challenge to expand the president’s power of impoundment.
DOGE provides political cover for Congress to be even more fiscally irresponsible.
DOGE is about self-interest and cronyism.
Some of these — like the attempt to purge progressivism and cronyism — are partially convincing. Others, such as the claim that DOGE helps either the PR campaign or the legal one, are soundly rebutted by public facts. DOGE’s epic failures have increased pushback and provided legal bases to challenge cutbacks that wouldn’t exist if done more competently.
Even when it considers the possibility that Elon is self-dealing, CATO’s exercise is wildly credulous about DOGE’s own — Elon’s own — deceit. This piece, which they link, is far less so:
Elon Musk has many great strengths, but he is not a reliable narrator.
[snip]
As has been well covered in mainstream outlets, DOGE has been extremelysloppy about cutting contracts and reporting the numbers. Most of the biggest ticket savings have been the result of DOGE misreading federal contracting data, or killing contracts that were already dead. From the New York Times:
What’s more concerning than the sloppiness itself is that it does not appear to be getting resolved over time. The same kinds of data parsing errors and confusion about how federal contracts are awarded and then paid out have persisted over two months. Some of this comes back to the information environment: DOGE has instituted few if any ground-up mechanisms within the federal government to surface real savings opportunities.
Both pieces seem to treat the evolving explanation about what DOGE is (which CATO lays out in more depth and I’ve laid out here) as an evolving goal; neither considers whether it is an evolving cover story, necessitated, in part, by the inaptness of the USDS mission to what DOGE wants to do, exposed via various lawsuits.
Importantly, both ignore the most troubling aspect of DOGE: Its repeated rush to access the live data from these agencies. That has happened over and over — at OPM, at the Social Security Agency, at HHS. As Tiffany Flick wrote in a widely reported declaration, these boys are being granted access for which they have no obvious need to know, and they’re accessing that data in insecure ways, to use in rooms remotely with other DOGE boys.
You don’t need to access the Personally Identifiable Information of all Americans to cut costs. You don’t need to access the PII of all Americans to harmonize benefit programs across agencies, in the process making it easier to identify fraud. You don’t need to access the PII of all Americans to cash in (unless using it for extortion). Doing so doesn’t help your PR case or your impoundment case.
It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.
And that application might explain one of several troubling new details from recent weeks: the court filing that revealed that, before he left Treasury, Marko Elez emailed two unnamed people at GSA the name or names of people with transaction details.
12. The forensic analysis also revealed that Elez sent an email with a spreadsheet containing PII to two United States General Services Administration officials. The PII detailed a name (a person or an entity), a transaction type, and an amount of money. The names in the spreadsheet are considered low risk PII because the names are not accompanied by more specific identifiers, such as social security numbers or birth dates. Elez’s distribution of this spreadsheet was contrary to BFS policies, in that it was not sent encrypted, and he did not obtain prior approval of the transmission via a “Form 7005,” describing what will be sent and what safeguards the sender will implement to protect the information.
Over a month after the investigation into what Elez was up to, Treasury reveals that he was alerting others to specific details about entities, with no explanation of why. That has nothing to do with the optimization he was supposed to be doing!
So sure, that could arise from an effort to target specific adversaries of Elon or Trump.
But that doesn’t explain another alarming revelation about DOGE: That Elon set up Starlink for the White House and GSA (not coincidentally, where most of his DOGE boys are working with the PII of Americans).
Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is now accessible across the White House campus. It is the latest installation of the Wi-Fi network across the government since Mr. Musk joined the Trump administration as an unpaid adviser.
[snip]
White House officials said the installation was an effort to increase internet availability at the complex. They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.
[snip]
In recent weeks, Starlink was also set up at the General Services Administration, which has served as a hub for Mr. Musk’s government-shrinking efforts, according to documents and people familiar with the service.
[snip]
It was also unclear if Starlink communications were encrypted. At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.
“It’s super rare” to install Starlink or another internet provider as a replacement for existing government infrastructure that has been vetted and secured, said Jake Williams, a vice president for research and development at Hunter Strategy, a cybersecurity consultancy. “I can’t think of a time that I have heard of that.”
“It introduces another attack point,” Mr. Williams said. “But why introduce that risk?”
It’s certainly true that these two details could just be consistent with Elon’s plan to adopt totalitarianism himself, using his own personal satellite network.
But taken in tandem with other priorities of DOGE, such as dismantling almost the entirety of USAID, starting with the programs that Russia and Hungary most loathe, but also including those Republicans cherish, you need to at least consider whether this is an intelligence operation. Elon, his sidekick installed at the White House, David Sacks, and the VP they foisted on Trump, JD Vance, all parrot Russian propaganda. Dangles for Elon — cooperation on Mars! — have been included in Russia’s efforts to cultivate Trump.
And Musk was cemented as part of the this team at the same time as two other people whose inclusion in the Administration only helps America’s adversaries, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.
DOGE has not been cost-cutting, though that has confused the good government types and libertarians for months. Rather, DOGE has been capacity-cutting, even while it conducts the most intrusive data dive into Americans this side of consumer profiling.
I’m not saying a Russian intelligence operation is the only explanation for DOGE’s actions (again, I think a totalitarian plan is another missed possibility, though question why an aspiring totalitarian would want to destroy so much capability in advance of solidifying power).
I’m saying that experts like those from CATO look at it and cannot tell what it is doing, even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false. But no one has ruled out something far more sinister is hiding behind a cognitive (if evolving) model designed to look familiar.
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Peterr says:
Eliminating US soft power under DOGE has been something else. Dismantling USAID was the start, along with declaring our intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Suddenly throwing up new tariffs, especially among our alllies, followed. Now we have DOGE shutting down the Voice of America. For much of the world under authoritarian regimes, especially in smaller states in Africa, Asia, and South America, American has gone silent. The news they get from their authoritarian leaders now goes unchallenged.
Ask any general or admiral, and they will tell you how much soft power matters. Soft power creates and sustains relationships with other nations, far more cheaply than invading and setting up bases and garrisons. In less than three months, DOGE has gutted damn near every institution of soft power employed by the US government.
I’m not saying this is the work of a foreign intelligence service to undermine the United States, but this certainly looks like what a foreign intelligence service would want do if they tried to undermine the United States.
It certainly fits with DOGE, though. From their POV, broadcasting is done better and more cheaply by the private sector. When you add in the disdain for journalists who adhere to facts, it’s a no-brainer.
When Trump named Kari “the Big Lie Lives” Lake to head them up, I knew their days were numbered. Which brings us back to Russia.
And also, it’s not just gutting of soft power. It’s doing so in a way that is bound to elicit real backlash from the affected communities. Like just dropping Agent Orange mitigation in Vietnam, where we’re supposed to be competing with China for power.
I agree with you, and I wouldn’t rule out yet another RF troll farm operation either, because many of the trails followed by DOGE commissars seem to have their genesis in the alt-right internet cesspool. The demands for unrelated information back this up IMHO since those details can be turned into blackmail opportunities.
“…even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false.”
This is similar to Musk’s Mars obsession: He doesn’t really want to go to Mars. He just says things that sound like he wants to go to Mars.
What he really wants is for everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to go to Mars, and for the rest of us to throw VC and Federal money at him in the effort to send everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to Mars. And “He”, I guess which is the “Royal He” that he and Trump are so enamored of, personally is not responsible for any of what is going on, in or around our government, including the regulation of exploding rockets and crashing/burning cars. He just works there, you see.
By the same token “cost cutting” is cutting HIS (and his rich pals) taxes, through illegal means by which he insinuates himself and his businesses upon the American taxpayer to direct what already is a massive revenue stream into an even bigger revenue stream. Yes, this is the sophisticated thinking of our Masters of the Universe, including the Cato Institute. You would think those guys would know what “impoundment” is.
The possibility that DOGE is systematically collecting intel to feed into structures of domination is a dangerous possibility I hadn’t considered. But more broadly, I don’t understand why critics are struggling to provide a framing for what the Trump regime is doing, when it is clearly an autocratic soft coup aka administrative coup. Silicon valley tech bros developed and advertised a plan to overthrow democracy and replace it with a technocracy featuring a symbolic president and a CEO-dictator, which is what we are getting now. The plan: (1) install a CEO-dictator, (2) purge the bureaucracy, (3) build a loyalist army, (4) dismantle democratic institutions, (5) Seize control of academia, journalism, social media and (6) consolidate law enforcement and blur the distinction with military
In general, autocratic or totalitarian movements seize the reigns of power, and then they change the rules of the game to prevent anyone else from exercising power. The regime needs to control any institution that it cannot dismantle. This is why they are blackmailing and bullying the press, law firms, and academia.
I read about this last year as well. Also watched a couple interviews with these people. It sounded so crazy that I didn’t put much thought into people believing in the concepts, but now…now, I think there might some people in power that actually think this is the way forward.
Russia, alone in all the world of developed nations, is not capitalist. It does not have a banking and credit market per say. Where the market and banks, allocate credit. No credit in Russia is allocated in back rooms. Russians alone among people seem averse to credit.
China has built thousands of cities, modern transportation systems and vast productive capacity by means of incredible credit expansion. Russia without that credit, capitalist expansion, is a backwater.
The upshot is Trump + Musk equals ending market capitalism. Russia actually won. After 250 years Russia won. Who would have believed it? Well seemingly on the road to winning. There are other ways to describe the end of market Capitalism but no room here. Crony capitalism is a pretty good approximation of the result. The banks evidently have no clue they are going to be replaced.
The overlapping nature of these various malfeasances makes me want to say ‘Why not both?’, but this is clearly not a dichotomous situation. Think of the logical organization of a Venn diagram. There are multiple discrete sets that may partially overlap with other sets. The more sets that overlap, the more numerous the intersections and the greater the theoretical potential for mutual reinforcement. The difficult to enumerate EOs and actions taken by DOGE do not exist in a vacuum and should not be considered individually. There is enough flexibility within these schemes to adapt and take advantage of multiple situations as time passes and more or less promising approaches to further multiple actions against America’s interests.
“It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.”
This is surely one of the things they will do with the data, because they can. My records with the federal government go back decades, including my SS#, which has been consistent across both a name change and a gender change. As a trans woman, I fully expect my entire legal existence to be challenged and denied. Any day now. They can compile a list of suspected individuals based on collating the data they already have. I expect them to issue orders declaring all such individuals frauds, and use that as the basis to cancel passports, deny health insurance under the ACA, deny Social Security benefits, and to require all trans people to register as sex offenders, with all the social and legal restrictions that come with that. I will be looking into transferring all assets I currently share with my spouse to her exclusively, before all of this comes down.
Trans people are likely to be economically coerced to legally detransition. Then they will introduce new “drag” laws as a way of eliminating all perceived cross-gender expression. Presumably cis, presumably straight people will be caught in the net. Then they’ll go after “the gays,” who through their same sex attractions and actions are, to MAGAts and christian nationalists, every bit as “gender nonconforming” as actual trans people (who of course don’t actually exist.) Gender nonconformity — which will be rebranded as sexual conformity, because the term “gender” will be disappeared — does not require being trans, just as something being an expression of “DEI” does not require that it be a formal program for inclusion: Anything that in any way advocates for or is intended to advance the circumstances of women and non-white racial categories is easily painted as DEI, e.g., VAWA, all remaining civil rights legislation, all of it — gender and racial discrimination are nothing but “radical left” propaganda.
I know this sounds like catastrophizing. I’m ok with that. I have no illusions about where we are. I’m happy to be proven wrong, assuming I’m around that long.
I don’t think they’re going to do all of that, and what they can do is going to differ depending on state (though Gavin Newsom sure doesn’t engender a lot of confidence in the reliability of state officials), but there’s nothing on your list that looks impossible.
My wife and I are both trans, and the years we spent just trying to get her employer-provided healthcare to cover me were surreal and enfuriating, and only ended because Obergefell sidestepped all their arguments. The laws and structures that support trans rights are few and fragile.
I am preparing by making local friends. My wife is preparing by indulging in her prepper proclivities. Worrying times.
What I would add to Peterr’s comment: stay HERE. You have friends here. Some of us are passionately and very personally committed to defending the rights you deserve and fought so long to claim–and to snatching them back from the opportunistic bigots using human beings for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and scapegoating.
The Starlink install is truly troubling. Deadzones or overtaxed systems can be solved by expanding existing network capabilities. This is the White House, not Joe the Plumber’s house in the woods.
My bet is on this: “At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”
In other words, a private off-the-record communication system. It would not surprise me at all if there’s been a sudden drop off of communication through the existing network systems.
If there’s a different administration in the future, what is it going to have access to and use for communication?
Not only communication, a whole new secure government is going to have to be rebuilt; how long can that take?
Years ago I was involved in purchasing spray equipment that had a wireless download component, which I expected to be stand-alone and not connecting to any secure networks. On delivery, the ISS folks seriously had kittens, because NOTHING using wireless access points (particularly the private ones), can be definitively secure, even if physically disconnected. Lesson learned.
That is a lesson yet to be learned by DOGE, and it’s not going to be a pretty one when they learn it.
This is part of why I don’t have a wireless connection on my computer, I don’t often use my cell phone, and I even less often give its number to others. (And I use a shielded cable for the connection to the physical interface.)
AT,
Excellent observation. Federal Records Act legally requires all written, digital, work product, be determined to be a record or not. If it is a record then it must be maintained as a record. To amplify your point Starlink communications in the Whitehouse is a clever way to end run around NARA records laws. Similar to Trump 1.0 family using whats app and self erasing records to conduct gov’t business.
I wonder how deep the cuts will be at NARA, given Trump’s desire for vengeance. He removed the chief archivist in a personal snit, but I haven’t heard yet of any wider “cut 30% of your workforce” stuff.
But he’s got 3.75 years to go, and I’m sure he’ll get around to it.
Thank you Marcy. CATO’s blind-spot isn’t surprising, but it is indicative.
When in doubt about a Trump motive or action, I always assume gaslighting and/or projection are operative. In this case, I have to assume it’s both: the “Russia Hoax” accusation Trump used against Hillary (and which persists even to today) was just a small part of a long-game, wide-reaching, actual Russian-organized series of hoaxes that resulted in Trump’s win last year and which is the most likely explanation for DOGE’s structural dismantling of our democratic institutions, which are being replaced by a Putin-inspired functional kleptocracy/oligarchy.
Hell, the transatlantic NATO alliance is in shreds and Ukraine is about to be broken up and (hopefully only) partly absorbed into the Russian Federation, with a few EU state leaders even actually looking longingly in that direction. If all this isn’t the result of broadly-administered Russian perfidy, then it’s a run of luck for Putin — even as he was teetering back on his heels — that defies even moderate credulity.
I assumed the Starlink connection, run on separate servers, was to provide a means of “off-the-record” communications to further their grifting, but I suppose a cloak-and-dagger operation is also possible.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will be in Iqaluit today in a bid to reassert Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic.
Carney is expected to make an announcement on strengthening security…
He is also set to meet with Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok and members of the Canadian Rangers who patrol the Arctic….
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I’ve felt that one reason for DOGE was extortion. As in, “We can turn off your payments at any moment if you don’t play ball. It doesn’t matter that you have a grant from an Act of Congress, we can turn it off. Sure you can sue to get it back. How long will that take, how much will that cost? It’s better to play ball with us.”
I thought Musk’s GROK required as much data to function as can be obtained and to do so before anyone else. Musk and DOGE acquired that the first week of Trumps regime. So, the horse is out of the barn.
i actually had the thought that someone could easily bug Elon’s snotty prat that keeps running around like his daddy runs the place… put a wire on the kid and see what they pick up…
Who on the democratic side has the capacity to be our Jim Jordan and loudly say, every day, “Everything trump is doing diminishes American power in favor of China and Russia. Who is he loyal to?”
As Jordan proved, you don’t need all the facts to be politically effective.
Democrats ARE doing that–AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and especially (with his bigger platform) Chris Murphy.
They have a tree-falling-in-the-forest problem though. When media fixates on Trump–and it does–we all blame the Democrats for doing nothing, just because we never heard them when they screamed their lungs out. The message is the media, and the media kiss Trump’s ass…now no longer just for the ratings ‘n’ clicks, but also out of craven fear of his retribution, especially in the form of lawsuits.
THIS is how democracy dies: not in darkness, but in the silence of self-imposed censorship.
Eliminating US soft power under DOGE has been something else. Dismantling USAID was the start, along with declaring our intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Suddenly throwing up new tariffs, especially among our alllies, followed. Now we have DOGE shutting down the Voice of America. For much of the world under authoritarian regimes, especially in smaller states in Africa, Asia, and South America, American has gone silent. The news they get from their authoritarian leaders now goes unchallenged.
Ask any general or admiral, and they will tell you how much soft power matters. Soft power creates and sustains relationships with other nations, far more cheaply than invading and setting up bases and garrisons. In less than three months, DOGE has gutted damn near every institution of soft power employed by the US government.
I’m not saying this is the work of a foreign intelligence service to undermine the United States, but this certainly looks like what a foreign intelligence service would want do if they tried to undermine the United States.
I’m not sure whether DOGE gets credit for VOA. It was a separate EO.
But then much else that Trump is doing helps Russia, even ignoring preparing to give Crimea.
It certainly fits with DOGE, though. From their POV, broadcasting is done better and more cheaply by the private sector. When you add in the disdain for journalists who adhere to facts, it’s a no-brainer.
When Trump named Kari “the Big Lie Lives” Lake to head them up, I knew their days were numbered. Which brings us back to Russia.
And also, it’s not just gutting of soft power. It’s doing so in a way that is bound to elicit real backlash from the affected communities. Like just dropping Agent Orange mitigation in Vietnam, where we’re supposed to be competing with China for power.
Yes. The manner in which they dismantled our soft power was designed to twist the knife, doing as much damage as possible as they shut stuff down.
I agree with you, and I wouldn’t rule out yet another RF troll farm operation either, because many of the trails followed by DOGE commissars seem to have their genesis in the alt-right internet cesspool. The demands for unrelated information back this up IMHO since those details can be turned into blackmail opportunities.
“…even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false.”
This is similar to Musk’s Mars obsession: He doesn’t really want to go to Mars. He just says things that sound like he wants to go to Mars.
What he really wants is for everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to go to Mars, and for the rest of us to throw VC and Federal money at him in the effort to send everyone not named Musk (or his spawn) to Mars. And “He”, I guess which is the “Royal He” that he and Trump are so enamored of, personally is not responsible for any of what is going on, in or around our government, including the regulation of exploding rockets and crashing/burning cars. He just works there, you see.
By the same token “cost cutting” is cutting HIS (and his rich pals) taxes, through illegal means by which he insinuates himself and his businesses upon the American taxpayer to direct what already is a massive revenue stream into an even bigger revenue stream. Yes, this is the sophisticated thinking of our Masters of the Universe, including the Cato Institute. You would think those guys would know what “impoundment” is.
The possibility that DOGE is systematically collecting intel to feed into structures of domination is a dangerous possibility I hadn’t considered. But more broadly, I don’t understand why critics are struggling to provide a framing for what the Trump regime is doing, when it is clearly an autocratic soft coup aka administrative coup. Silicon valley tech bros developed and advertised a plan to overthrow democracy and replace it with a technocracy featuring a symbolic president and a CEO-dictator, which is what we are getting now. The plan: (1) install a CEO-dictator, (2) purge the bureaucracy, (3) build a loyalist army, (4) dismantle democratic institutions, (5) Seize control of academia, journalism, social media and (6) consolidate law enforcement and blur the distinction with military
Multiple sources wrote about this in 2024 (see https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/)
In general, autocratic or totalitarian movements seize the reigns of power, and then they change the rules of the game to prevent anyone else from exercising power. The regime needs to control any institution that it cannot dismantle. This is why they are blackmailing and bullying the press, law firms, and academia.
I read about this last year as well. Also watched a couple interviews with these people. It sounded so crazy that I didn’t put much thought into people believing in the concepts, but now…now, I think there might some people in power that actually think this is the way forward.
Russia, alone in all the world of developed nations, is not capitalist. It does not have a banking and credit market per say. Where the market and banks, allocate credit. No credit in Russia is allocated in back rooms. Russians alone among people seem averse to credit.
China has built thousands of cities, modern transportation systems and vast productive capacity by means of incredible credit expansion. Russia without that credit, capitalist expansion, is a backwater.
The upshot is Trump + Musk equals ending market capitalism. Russia actually won. After 250 years Russia won. Who would have believed it? Well seemingly on the road to winning. There are other ways to describe the end of market Capitalism but no room here. Crony capitalism is a pretty good approximation of the result. The banks evidently have no clue they are going to be replaced.
The overlapping nature of these various malfeasances makes me want to say ‘Why not both?’, but this is clearly not a dichotomous situation. Think of the logical organization of a Venn diagram. There are multiple discrete sets that may partially overlap with other sets. The more sets that overlap, the more numerous the intersections and the greater the theoretical potential for mutual reinforcement. The difficult to enumerate EOs and actions taken by DOGE do not exist in a vacuum and should not be considered individually. There is enough flexibility within these schemes to adapt and take advantage of multiple situations as time passes and more or less promising approaches to further multiple actions against America’s interests.
“It certainly could be part of a totalitarian bid for power, a way to identify undocumented immigrants who were advised to pay their taxes, same sex married couples, or trans people who have changed their gender on official documents.”
This is surely one of the things they will do with the data, because they can. My records with the federal government go back decades, including my SS#, which has been consistent across both a name change and a gender change. As a trans woman, I fully expect my entire legal existence to be challenged and denied. Any day now. They can compile a list of suspected individuals based on collating the data they already have. I expect them to issue orders declaring all such individuals frauds, and use that as the basis to cancel passports, deny health insurance under the ACA, deny Social Security benefits, and to require all trans people to register as sex offenders, with all the social and legal restrictions that come with that. I will be looking into transferring all assets I currently share with my spouse to her exclusively, before all of this comes down.
Trans people are likely to be economically coerced to legally detransition. Then they will introduce new “drag” laws as a way of eliminating all perceived cross-gender expression. Presumably cis, presumably straight people will be caught in the net. Then they’ll go after “the gays,” who through their same sex attractions and actions are, to MAGAts and christian nationalists, every bit as “gender nonconforming” as actual trans people (who of course don’t actually exist.) Gender nonconformity — which will be rebranded as sexual conformity, because the term “gender” will be disappeared — does not require being trans, just as something being an expression of “DEI” does not require that it be a formal program for inclusion: Anything that in any way advocates for or is intended to advance the circumstances of women and non-white racial categories is easily painted as DEI, e.g., VAWA, all remaining civil rights legislation, all of it — gender and racial discrimination are nothing but “radical left” propaganda.
I know this sounds like catastrophizing. I’m ok with that. I have no illusions about where we are. I’m happy to be proven wrong, assuming I’m around that long.
I don’t think they’re going to do all of that, and what they can do is going to differ depending on state (though Gavin Newsom sure doesn’t engender a lot of confidence in the reliability of state officials), but there’s nothing on your list that looks impossible.
My wife and I are both trans, and the years we spent just trying to get her employer-provided healthcare to cover me were surreal and enfuriating, and only ended because Obergefell sidestepped all their arguments. The laws and structures that support trans rights are few and fragile.
I am preparing by making local friends. My wife is preparing by indulging in her prepper proclivities. Worrying times.
To borrow an old phrase, “It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.”
Stay safe, and keep friends close. You are not in this alone.
It’s not paranoia at all.
What I would add to Peterr’s comment: stay HERE. You have friends here. Some of us are passionately and very personally committed to defending the rights you deserve and fought so long to claim–and to snatching them back from the opportunistic bigots using human beings for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and scapegoating.
The Starlink install is truly troubling. Deadzones or overtaxed systems can be solved by expanding existing network capabilities. This is the White House, not Joe the Plumber’s house in the woods.
My bet is on this: “At a minimum, the system allows for a network separate from existing White House servers that people on the grounds are able to use, keeping that data separate.”
In other words, a private off-the-record communication system. It would not surprise me at all if there’s been a sudden drop off of communication through the existing network systems.
If there’s a different administration in the future, what is it going to have access to and use for communication?
Not only communication, a whole new secure government is going to have to be rebuilt; how long can that take?
Years ago I was involved in purchasing spray equipment that had a wireless download component, which I expected to be stand-alone and not connecting to any secure networks. On delivery, the ISS folks seriously had kittens, because NOTHING using wireless access points (particularly the private ones), can be definitively secure, even if physically disconnected. Lesson learned.
That is a lesson yet to be learned by DOGE, and it’s not going to be a pretty one when they learn it.
This is part of why I don’t have a wireless connection on my computer, I don’t often use my cell phone, and I even less often give its number to others. (And I use a shielded cable for the connection to the physical interface.)
AT,
Excellent observation. Federal Records Act legally requires all written, digital, work product, be determined to be a record or not. If it is a record then it must be maintained as a record. To amplify your point Starlink communications in the Whitehouse is a clever way to end run around NARA records laws. Similar to Trump 1.0 family using whats app and self erasing records to conduct gov’t business.
I wonder how deep the cuts will be at NARA, given Trump’s desire for vengeance. He removed the chief archivist in a personal snit, but I haven’t heard yet of any wider “cut 30% of your workforce” stuff.
But he’s got 3.75 years to go, and I’m sure he’ll get around to it.
Thank you Marcy. CATO’s blind-spot isn’t surprising, but it is indicative.
When in doubt about a Trump motive or action, I always assume gaslighting and/or projection are operative. In this case, I have to assume it’s both: the “Russia Hoax” accusation Trump used against Hillary (and which persists even to today) was just a small part of a long-game, wide-reaching, actual Russian-organized series of hoaxes that resulted in Trump’s win last year and which is the most likely explanation for DOGE’s structural dismantling of our democratic institutions, which are being replaced by a Putin-inspired functional kleptocracy/oligarchy.
Hell, the transatlantic NATO alliance is in shreds and Ukraine is about to be broken up and (hopefully only) partly absorbed into the Russian Federation, with a few EU state leaders even actually looking longingly in that direction. If all this isn’t the result of broadly-administered Russian perfidy, then it’s a run of luck for Putin — even as he was teetering back on his heels — that defies even moderate credulity.
I assumed the Starlink connection, run on separate servers, was to provide a means of “off-the-record” communications to further their grifting, but I suppose a cloak-and-dagger operation is also possible.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/politics/2025/03/18/carney-defence-minister-and-military-chief-in-iqaluit-for-sovereignty-announcement/
I’m on a Rivian discussion board and got reminded of Elmo’s chaotic firings inside the Tesla supercharging division. in hindsight they strike me as the dry run to how his DOGEbags are rearranging internal organs of federal government. to Marcy’s broader point of the post, they might be harvesting the organs and selling them on. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-story-elon-musks-mass-firings-tesla-supercharger-staff-2024-05-15/
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His actions when he bought Twitter were the same thing he’s doing from his DC office, including expecting people to be available 24/7/365.
I’ve felt that one reason for DOGE was extortion. As in, “We can turn off your payments at any moment if you don’t play ball. It doesn’t matter that you have a grant from an Act of Congress, we can turn it off. Sure you can sue to get it back. How long will that take, how much will that cost? It’s better to play ball with us.”
G.K. Chesterton
I thought Musk’s GROK required as much data to function as can be obtained and to do so before anyone else. Musk and DOGE acquired that the first week of Trumps regime. So, the horse is out of the barn.
i actually had the thought that someone could easily bug Elon’s snotty prat that keeps running around like his daddy runs the place… put a wire on the kid and see what they pick up…
Who on the democratic side has the capacity to be our Jim Jordan and loudly say, every day, “Everything trump is doing diminishes American power in favor of China and Russia. Who is he loyal to?”
As Jordan proved, you don’t need all the facts to be politically effective.
Democrats ARE doing that–AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and especially (with his bigger platform) Chris Murphy.
They have a tree-falling-in-the-forest problem though. When media fixates on Trump–and it does–we all blame the Democrats for doing nothing, just because we never heard them when they screamed their lungs out. The message is the media, and the media kiss Trump’s ass…now no longer just for the ratings ‘n’ clicks, but also out of craven fear of his retribution, especially in the form of lawsuits.
THIS is how democracy dies: not in darkness, but in the silence of self-imposed censorship.
Bad example, One thing the Democrats don’t need is another shirtless Gym Jordan.