Stone Cold Liar: Trump Incited Riot after Threatening to Cancel Funding for CA

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Gavin Newsom is doing a fair amount of press as he monitors the response to the protests and conflict in Los Angeles. In a number of those interviews, including this MSNBC one, Newsom accused Trump of lying when he claimed the two discussed deploying the National Guard on Friday.

Gavin Newsom: We talked for almost twenty minutes. And he barely — this issue never came up. I kept trying to talk about LA, he wanted to talk about all these other issues. We had a very decent conversation.

Jacob Soboroff: When was this?

Newsom: This was late Friday night. About 1:30 plus, his time.

Soboroff: After the protests had started?

Newsom: After the protests. And he never once brought up the National Guard. He’s a Stone Cold Liar. He said he did. Stone Cold Liar. Never did. It was a very civil conversation. I’ve always wanted to approach engagement with the President of the United States in a respectful and responsible way. But there’s no working with the President. There’s only working for him. And I will never work for Donald Trump.

Soboroff: Did you mention to him in that phone call on Friday night the types of raids that were happening in your state on Friday. There were reports that and video of enforcement operations in ways that they haven’t traditionally. ICE officers [went] to Home Depots around Los Angeles and picking off day laborers. Did you bring that up with him?

Newsom: The conversation started with the frame of what’s happening in LA, he immediately pivoted to other things and other interests.

He went on to correct Soboroff’s comment that this was about immigration. After putting it in context with all of Trump’s other attacks on the Constitution, Newsom described, “It is a serious moment under the guise of immigration. but it’s much deeper than that.”

Newsom is giving these interviews in advance of suing Trump to end the National Guard deployment (by the time he sues, some Marines that Pete Hegseth is readying may already be deployed). We may learn more specifics about the time and content of the conversation the two men had on Friday night via that lawsuit.

But as he describes it, Newsom spoke to Trump — in an attempt to talk about LA — in the wake of reports, relying on White House sources, that Trump was threatening to cut funding from CA.

The Trump administration is preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding for California, an effort that could begin as soon as Friday, according to multiple sources.

Agencies are being told to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from California. Sources said the administration is specifically considering a full termination of federal grant funding for the University of California and California State University systems.

“No taxpayer should be forced to fund the demise of our country,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement Friday afternoon, criticizing California for its energy, immigration and other policies. “No final decisions, however, on any potential future action by the Administration have been made, and any discussion suggesting otherwise should be considered pure speculation.”

Newsom spoke to Trump late on Friday, wanting to talk about LA. Trump kept pivoting to “other things and other interests.”

And out of that, Newsom stated, “there’s no working with the President. There’s only working for him. And I will never work for Donald Trump.”

Obviously, Newsom is right: As I noted the other day, Stephen Miller loves the racism, but immigration is also one tool of his authoritarianism. The defunding makes clear that the pretext of antisemitism is another.

But this assault on California is an expansion of a pattern.

Trump asked law firms to work for him. Some capitulated, and they’re increasingly paying a price. Others refused and, thus far at least, have survived.

Trump asked Ivy League universities to work for him. Columbia capitulated, and they’re paying a price. Harvard refused and, thus far at least, has survived.

Trump is now seeking to bring California to heel using some of the same tools used with law firms and universities.

California’s governor refused.

And then Trump sent in the Armed Forces.

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The Big Ugly: Stephen Miller Uses His War on Home Depot to Invade California

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Yesterday, Trump used the opportunity of a protest against brutal ICE action staged out of Paramount, CA (close to a Home Depot location) to federalize 2,000 California National Guard for force protection — a step towards, but still short of, invoking the Insurrection Act (see Steve Vladeck for a description of what Trump, legally, did; update: and an even more detailed description from Lawfare). Pete Hegseth has also floated sending the Marines to an American city, a suggestion Gavin Newsom called, “deranged.”

It’s all a transparent confrontation used to invade a blue city.

All this comes comes as the hours longshormen at LA ports work have dropped in half due to Trump’s trade war, and some of the workplaces ICE targeted were in the garment district, where actual manufacturing still occurs. In addition, Trump has promised to start cutting Federal grants to California, which led Gavin Newsom to point out that CA is a net donor to Federal taxes.

This was a natural escalation stemming directly from Stephen Miller’s shrill tantrums demanding that ICE focus more on law-abiding undocumented people rather than the criminal aliens he lied about during the election. The escalation comes in the wake of Elon Musk’s meltdown, which might otherwise make passage of Trump’s reconciliation bill funding a massive expansion of Miller’s gulag. It comes as a few libertarians — Tom Massie called for “Realistic border funding” and “No bloat for military industrial complex” in his pitch for a new “skinny” bill — focus on the huge funding for the gulag.

This inital use of federal troops in a blue city should be understood as an effort to build pressure to help pass the bill. It should also be used as an example of the danger of passing the bill — the kind of authoritarianism that Miller intends to wield if the bill does pass.

As Washington Examiner was the first to report (a testament to the kind of people who were pissed about this tantrum), two weeks ago Miller called senior ICE officials to a meeting in DC to berate them that they’re not meeting his impossible quotas for arrests, 3,000 people a day. During the meltdown he had at the meeting, Miller specifically ordered ICE to start staging arrests at Home Depot and 7-Eleven. Miller specifically berated ICE officials because they were focusing on the criminal aliens around which Miller built Trump’s re-election campaign.

ICE’s top 50 field officials were given roughly a week’s notice of an emergency meeting in Washington.

ICE’s 25 Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO, field office directors and 25 Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, special agents in charge flew into Washington and descended on the agency’s Washington headquarters last Tuesday, May 20. There, they were met by Miller, ICE confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,’” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official.

The protests started in response to two things: Raids on work places and also the detention of a growing number of people without food in the basement of a federal building — the latter of which Representative Jimmy Gomez was protesting most of the day. At an early tiny peaceful protest, ICE assaulted and then arrested SEIU California President, David Huerta, injuring him badly enough to require hospital treatment, during their assault. He remains in custody. The assault-and-arrest bears similarities to the staged confrontation at Delaney Hall and ICE’s invasion of Jerry Nadler’s office in recent weeks.

Huerta’s treatment drew condemnation from Democratic leaders across the country, including LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Multiple Trump authoritarians, including Miller, responded to Bass’ condemnation of the violence ICE was wielding by insisting that “Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”

From there, the protests against ICE grew, many of them mocking ICE. But ICE and LA Sheriffs (the LAPD deployed, but said it saw no violence) escalated. Nevertheless, protests remain localized (around the ICE facility and at the Federal building).

Numerous Administration keyboard warriors, including Miller, are tying the protest in Los Angeles to his Big Ugly bill, using the very same eliminationist language Trump’s used to kick off an assault on the Capitol.

The through-line here is crystal clear.

Ratchet up raids on peaceful people to hit impossible quotas (ICE came close, but did not meet, Miller’s 3,000 arrest quota on two days last week).

Use protests against that draconian invasion to arrest Democratic leaders and invade a blue city.

Point to the chaos created by Miller’s draconian ICE raids to demand passage of the Big Ugly bill, which will codify and expand precisely that kind of draconian ICE raid.

Create chaos, and then use that chaos to try to codify authoritarian power.

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The Kilmar Abrego Garcia Indictment

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As you’ve heard, the government has done what they claimed they could not do: bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia (KAG) back to the US. They did so to prosecute him on trafficking charges.

I’m going to deal with the indictment against KAG in two separate posts.

In this post, I’ll take the indictment — and only the indictment — on its face to describe how DOJ charged KAG with trafficking charges that span far further than anything for which they have direct evidence.

In a second post, I’ll show how the government has at least three sets of incompatible documents. Not even the indictment and the detention memo are consistent. That’s going to cause problems — potentially very major ones — down the road.

The indictment charges KAG with two crimes, both violations of transporting aliens (18 USC 1324). Count One charges KAG with conspiring with six other people to transport aliens into the United States. Count Two charges KAG, individually, with transporting aliens within the United States. Both charges build out a set of allegations around the November 30, 2022 traffic stop outside of Cookville, Tennessee (which is why this was charged in Nashville) where KAG was driving a van of nine Hispanic men, none of whom had ID, on an expired license.

Effectively the entire indictment tells a story to wrap around that traffic stop, claiming the traffic stop is proof he’s an MS-13 member who was running guns, sometimes drugs, endangering children, and abusing women.

As alleged, there are five Salvadorans involved in the trafficking conspiracy, just three of whom (CC1, CC2, and CC3) allegedly interacted directly with KAG. There’s also a Guatemalan (CC6), who allegedly got migrants into the US that KAG and CC1 and CC2 would allegedly transport within the US for cash payments.

As background to this indictment, let me reup the eight things you need to know about conspiracy law that Elizabeth de la Vega wrote that I always rely on.

CONSPIRACY LAW – EIGHT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW.

One: Co-conspirators don’t have to explicitly agree to conspire & there doesn’t need to be a written agreement; in fact, they almost never explicitly agree to conspire & it would be nuts to have a written agreement!

Two: Conspiracies can have more than one object- i.e. conspiracy to defraud U.S. and to obstruct justice. The object is the goal. Members could have completely different reasons (motives) for wanting to achieve that goal.

Three: All co-conspirators have to agree on at least one object of the conspiracy.

Four: Co-conspirators can use multiple means to carry out the conspiracy, i.e., releasing stolen emails, collaborating on fraudulent social media ops, laundering campaign contributions.

Five: Co-conspirators don’t have to know precisely what the others are doing, and, in large conspiracies, they rarely do.

Six: Once someone is found to have knowingly joined a conspiracy, he/she is responsible for all acts of other co-conspirators.

Seven: Statements of any co-conspirator made to further the conspiracy may be introduced into evidence against any other co-conspirator.

Eight: Overt Acts taken in furtherance of a conspiracy need not be illegal. A POTUS’ public statement that “Russia is a hoax,” e.g., might not be illegal (or even make any sense), but it could be an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Conspiracy law allows prosecutors to hold one cog in a larger crime responsible for the actions taken by everyone else with whom he entered into a conspiracy — and the agreement can be implicit (see Rule One). Once prosecutors show that a person has entered into a conspiracy — here, to transport migrants first into the US and then around the US — then he is on the hook for everything else his conspirators do. Conspiracy law allows prosecutors to rely on communications from some members of a conspiracy without requiring them to take the stand to validate those communications.

Two more points. First, it is totally normal for DOJ to refer to co-conspirators anonymously as they do here. In addition, it is not at all unusual for DOJ to throw a great deal of energy — such as (hypothetically) a cooperating agreement with CC1 and possibly even favorable treatment of CC6 to substantiate a case against a lesser member of a conspiracy if they want. That’s likely what happened here.

With that as background, here’s what the conspiracy looks like:

CC1 allegedly recruited KAG into this trafficking conspiracy way back in 2016 (the government claims, with no evidence presented, that it has continued up to present day, but that may simply mean others continued to transport migrants until a recent arrest). Sometime in the past, CC1 was arrested for trafficking, did his sentence, got deported, then returned to the US. When he was in prison, the indictment alleges, he recruited CC2 to take his place.

It seems likely that CC1 and CC2 will be the government’s star witnesses against KAG; there is an exceeding likelihood that they provided that testimony to avoid being sent to CECOT.

CC1 and CC2 generally attest to certain details about how the smuggling worked — they picked up migrants in Houston, usually in batches of 6-10, transported them in a van using varied routes, took away their cell phones, used the cover story of transporting men for construction jobs, and got paid in cash. Those details happen to match the known details of the van in which KAG was stopped in 2022. Both appear to claim they also transported weapons, but that is not charged (if they were transporting weapons but KAG was not, it would provide DOJ additional leverage to flip them).

They apparently had communication with CC6, because (the indictment alleges) that KAG was abusing women which was bad for business so CC6 told CC1 and CC2 to get him to stop (apparently DOJ believes that migrants coming to the US are repeat customers). In addition, CC1 used CC6 to transfer funds, for a fee (that doesn’t make sense either, because if CC1 was worried about customer service for CC6, why would he pay him to transfer funds?).

There are allegations that go through CC3, CC4, and CC5 that money changed hands. That doesn’t seem well fleshed out, but it provides cause to introduce a bunch of Western Union records that may not tie to the cash found in KAG’s pocket when he was stopped in 2022. The government also claims they’ve got evidence of cell phone and social media communication; in the indictment, they don’t quote a single communication involving KAG directly. That’s part of the beauty of a conspiracy charge, if you’re a prosecutor: You can rely on the communications of other co-conspirators to prove elements of the crime (indeed, if Trump had gone to trial for January 6, evidence against him would have relied heavily on communications of Rudy and others).

It’s tough to assess the case based on what they show in the indictment (and without the cooperation deals under which CC1 and CC2 presumably testified). But it’s notable that the testimony of CC1 and CC2 differs as to one key respect: about whether they got paid.

18. KILMAR ARMANDO ABREGO GARCIA and CC-1 regularly required the undocumented aliens they transported to pay KILMAR ARMANDO ABREGO GARCIA and CC-1 in cash for facilitating their transport throughout the United States. The MS-13 members and associates transported by CC-2 refused to pay for CC-2 for his transportation services, but the MS-13 members and associates KILMAR ARMANDO ABREGO GARCIA  transported generally treated KILMAR ARMANDO ABREGO GARCIA with respect and also paid him for his transportation services.

CC1 says he got paid, along with KAG. CC2 says he did not, but attests that the alleged MS-13 gang members transported by KAG showed him respect and paid him.

Central to whether they can prove this case or not, they’ll have to prove that 9 gang members paid cash in advance — the $1,400 found on KAG’s person at the 2022 traffic stop — to be transported around the country but did not do anything to steal that money back. If everything was in cash, then the government has no records of KAG getting paid, just Western Union transfers that do not allege his involvement.

Conspiracy law is a powerful tool. But much of this case depends on the credibility of CC1.

Update: Added language about this treatment of co-conspirators fitting the norm for DOJ.

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Lefty Pundits Continue to Drown Out Democratic Actions with their Complaints about Democratic Inaction

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On Tuesday, a small immigration reporting outlet, Migrant Insider, asked Hakeem Jeffries whether the masked ICE officials who had accosted LaMonica McIver and a Jerry Nadler staffer had been identified. Jeffries replied that every single one of them — no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes — would be identified, noting that the US was not the Soviet Union. Jeffries explained that “our first priorities” are making sure that the person on the front line is able to move on, but he also claimed that efforts to deal with the broader policy implications “are underway.”

Of the biggest outlets that picked up the comment, just MeidasTouch, which said “this is exactly kind of the fight that we need to be seeing from our representatives,” served to magnify Jeffries’ comment; their Instagram post got over 43,000 likes. Most of the others — Breitbart, CPAC, Sean Hannity, the Washington Examiner — tried to pitch this as a threat to ICE. Jeffries said something fiery, but while the right wing used it to claim Democrats were attacking cops, left wing pundits either didn’t notice or ignored it.

One probable reason left wing pundits didn’t mention Jeffries’ comment on Tuesday is they were still seething over a comment he made two days earlier — a comment they didn’t have to work to find. Jeffries told Dana Bash that Democrats would respond to Trump’s attacks on members of Congress — Bash mentioned both the charges against LaMonica McIver and the handcuffing of a Jerry Nadler staffer — but “we will make that decision in a time, place, and manner of our choosing.”

The comment from Jeffries has been used all week as an example of the feckless Dems, of their fecklessness on immigration issues, especially.

But Jeffries was right that Democrats have been responding to these issues, to the extent they can in the minority. Since Jeffries made that comment, at least the following has happened:

  • On Monday, Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan did an unannounced visit to a Wisconsin detention center of the sort that turned into the McIver altercation in New Jersey; nothing happened and so it got little notice
  • On Tuesday, Jerry Nadler and Jamie Raskin sent a sternly-worded letter to Jim Jordan demanding 1) He condemn the abuse of separation of powers presented by the ICE detention and 2) he call Kristi Noem for a hearing before the House Judiciary to answer for her “agency’s irresponsible and dangerous actions”
  • On Tuesday (as noted) Jeffries promised to identify the ICE agents involved in such heavy-handed tactics
  • On Tuesday, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sued Alina Habba for malicious prosecution and defamation
  • Jerry Nadler released a second video of the altercation with ICE agents (who were actually unmasked); it shows that one ICE agent pushed the Nadler staffer before handcuffing her, debunking DHS claims
  • As we speak, Jimmy Gomez is reporting on an atrocious detention situation in Los Angeles (he has demanded to go in)

And all that’s before other victories on detention, such as the release of Carol Hui and the return of an improperly deported man or the order to release details of the Administration’s deal with Nayib Bukele, legal cases that have attracted lefty attention, with or without involvement of members of Congress.

A number of these things — the detention center visit and the sternly-worded letter — are the kind of routine oversight that rarely attracts attention (though I’ve repeatedly been told that members of Congress are not making such detention center visits, so it’s important to mention that they are). I’ve noted that Jeffries’ promise to identify the ICE officers was largely ignored by much of the left — but not the right.

The Baraka lawsuit got a great deal of mainstream attention, but very little attention from pundits. Until this Baraka appearance on Democracy Now today, I’ve seen little focus on its significance.

That’s probably true, in part, because there’s a decent likelihood it gets dismissed based on prosecutorial immunity grounds; there are other lawsuits that are, legally, far more urgent and significant for legal commentators to cover.

But if it is not dismissed then it may turn into a political firestorm. Baraka cited a number of things that may get him beyond the normally very high bar of prosecutorial immunity: he cited Alina Habba’s comments before being confirmed as US Attorney, promising to abuse her authority, he cited Habba’s use of her private Twitter account to make knowingly false claims about his arrest, the false claims both Habba and DHS made about the circumstances of the arrest, and Magistrate Judge André Espinosa’s rebuke of DOJ for its conduct in the case gets past an attempt to dismiss it. If the lawsuit survives, it could be a very powerful political tool to fight back against Trump’s politicization of law enforcement.

But even as a messaging document, the lawsuit is important. It makes clear that Special Agent in Charge Ricky Patel — whom Baraka alleges instructed other agents to “take him down” while they were pushing and shoving the group —  had no basis to arrest Baraka and also disputes claims made in the LaMonica McIver arrest affidavit. Details from the lawsuit — such as that Habba commented publicly even before Baraka was transported from Delaney Hall, or that they fingerprinted Baraka twice, once upon his arrest and once on his initial appearance — make it clear what a political hit job this was. If, as polls show is likely, Baraka doesn’t win New Jersey’s gubernatorial primary, he’ll be able to add the affect of the arrest on his electoral chances to the injury Habba caused to him. Those are all enough to make a stink out of.

All the more so given the obvious comparison with Eric Adams. Pam Bondi’s DOJ dismissed a case against Adams so it would not affect his primary chances, also citing his need to carry out his mayoral duties. But they arrested Baraka while he was carrying out his mayoral duties, trying to ensure the safety of a facility in his city, and did so weeks before a primary. Those are fundamentally inconsistent actions.

If this survives an initial motion to dismiss, then Baraka will have the ability to get discovery (including a comparison of his case with Adams’) and demand depositions.

And all of that makes a criminal case against Congresswoman McIver (which has yet to be indicted by a grand jury) far less viable. Unless and until DOJ gets the Baraka lawsuit dismissed, they will have competing threads of discovery out there, even further weakening an already weak case against McIver.

That should have made it a central messaging vehicle. The same is true of Jerry Nadler’s release of a video that shows DHS lied about the circumstances of the handcuffing of his staffer. With attention, it could create a firestorm by itself. I’ve seen no coverage from the pundit class. No pundit class, no firestorm.

It’s not so much the Democrats are doing nothing. It’s that the people who are best situated to make a stink about what has happened — to publicize Baraka’s competing claims about what happened at Delaney Hall, to generate outrage over how the Nadler video debunks DHS, and yes, even to use that sternly-worded letter to shame Jim Jordan for abdicating the independence of Article I power — are instead spending entire days claiming that nothing is happening except a comment they watched out of context.

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ProPublica Explains How DOGE’s AI Cut Support for Veterans Care

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Even among ProPublica’s exceptional work exposing DOGE’s failures, this is notable.

ProPublica used the opportunity of the disgruntled departure of an engineer named Sahil Lavingia from DOGE as an opportunity to unpack a specific task he took on, and botched. It provides valuable insight to the source of errors as Elon unleashed a bunch of coders on federal bureaucracy without the context to understand what they were doing.

Lavingia joined DOGE — after previously attempting to get a job with DOGE’s nonpartisan predecessor, US Digital Services — with a genuine wish to improve the way government works. He was assigned to review VA contracts to decide which could be “munched” — canceled. He claims that after his AI review of the contracts, people with some actual knowledge of the VA services should have reviewed the contracts he flagged to prevent obvious errors. It appears that didn’t happen, and as happened so often elsewhere, pretty critical contracts were cut.

Lavingia’s ouster and his willingness to speak up provides a glimpse of what has led to such stupid decisions from DOGE.

Back in March, after asking Elon at the sole all-hands DOGE meeting he ever attended if he could open source his code, he published it to GitHub. Months later he did an interview with FastCompany, which led to his firing.

Since his firing, in addition to telling multiple media outlets that there really wasn’t the kind of waste he’d expected, he walked ProPublica through the specifics of a task he was assigned, reviewing VA contracts for DEI and waste, which has led to key contracts getting canceled.

VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.

We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.

[snip]

Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

But the really great thing ProPublica did was to have experts, including Waldo Jaquith, who used to do IT at Treasury, review Lavingia’s code to explain how it went wrong.

You should read both stories, but here’s where things went wrong.

First, rather than simply consulting USA Spending to learn what contracts were doing and how much they were spending, Lavingia instead used AI to review the contracts themselves, which often had outdated information.

This portion of the prompt instructs the AI to extract the contract number and other key details of a contract, such as the “total contract value.”

This was error-prone and not necessary, as accurate contract information can already be found in publicly available databases like USASpending. In some cases, this led to the AI system being given an outdated version of a contract, which led to it reporting a misleadingly large contract amount. In other cases, the model mistakenly pulled an irrelevant number from the page instead of the contract value.

When he did that, though, Lavingia only asked AI to review the first 10,000 characters of the contracts, which isn’t where some of the most important information (not to mention information on whether a contract included a DEI component) would be found.

Analyze the following contract text and extract the basic information below. If you can’t find specific information, write “Not found”.

CONTRACT TEXT:
{text[:10000]} # Using first 10000 chars to stay within token limits

The models were only shown the first 10,000 characters from each document, or approximately 2,500 words. Experts were confused by this, noting that OpenAI models support inputs over 50 times that size. Lavingia said that he had to use an older AI model that the VA had already signed a contract for.

He did that, he explained, because the VA only had dated AI that could only handle 10,000 characters.

Then the script prompted to assess whether contracts provided “direct patient care,” defined first by including “medical procedures,” then excluding “psychosocial support” of the sort that keeps Veterans alive, measuring how many layers removed from actual care a contract was, then finally running it through a list of things like audits (including “Nuclear physics and radiation safety audits for medical equipment” !!) that could not be “munched,” or canceled.

These two lines — which experts say were poorly defined — carried the most weight in the DOGE analysis. The response from the AI frequently cited these reasons as the justification for munchability. Nearly every justification included a form of the phrase “direct patient care,” and in a third of cases the model flagged contracts because it stated the services could be handled in-house.

But the exclusion of audits didn’t work.

The article provided one example of the kind of obvious (literal) patient support that got targeted for cancelation: the maintenance contracts for ceiling lifts used to reposition patients during their care.

The emphasis on “direct patient care” is reflected in how often the AI cited it in its recommendations, even when the model did not have any information about a contract. In one instance where it labeled every field “not found,” it still decided the contract was munchable. It gave this reason:

Without evidence that it involves essential medical procedures or direct clinical support, and assuming the contract is for administrative or related support services, it meets the criteria for being classified as munchable.

In reality, this contract was for the preventative maintenance of important safety devices known as ceiling lifts at VA medical centers, including three sites in Maryland. The contract itself stated:

Ceiling Lifts are used by employees to reposition patients during their care. They are critical safety devices for employees and patients, and must be maintained and inspected appropriately.

Back in February, Doug Collins bragged about the work DOGE was doing reviewing contracts.

 

This was, he said, the work DOGE was supposed to be doing.

I guess Doug Collins believed his job running the VA involved eliminating critical care based on shoddy code.

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The Tax Elon Solution and Other Actual Reporting Not Included in the Frenzy

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Politico’s Dasha Burns reports something that isn’t making headlines elsewhere: the fun of the Trump-Musk fight may be short-lived.

White House aides are trying to broker a peace.

White House aides, after working to persuade the president to temper his public criticism of Musk to avoid escalation, scheduled a call Friday with the billionaire CEO of Tesla to broker a peace.

“Oh it’s okay,” Trump told POLITICO in a brief telephone call when asked about the very public breakup with his onetime megabacker. “It’s going very well, never done better.” Trump went on to tout his favorability ratings saying, “The numbers are through the roof, the highest polls I’ve ever had and I have to go.”

Update, 1:30 ET: One after another access journalist has spoken to Trump and are now reporting that Trump thinks Elon has a problem. One after another access journalist has left unanswered — if Elon is nuts, why did Trump let him run unfettered through government for four months and what will Trump do to make sure Elon didn’t damage the government?

Aside from that actual news report, much of the rest of the reporting is no better — and often worse — than what we can do from the comfort of our own EU perch.

The same Politico lists seven right wingers who could get caught between the two narcissists. But only JD Vance — whose endorsement of Trump in the wake of Elon’s seeming endorsement of impeaching Trump was rather mild — is really stuck between the Silicon billionaires and Trump.

I’m really not worried, for example, about the Millers (though agree Stephen is the most likely peace broker, since he had a big role in recruiting Elon in the first place). And while David Sacks was one of Elon’s entrees into the Trump world, Trump’s increasing addiction to cryptocorruption guarantees Sacks some protection inside the White House.

Meanwhile, NYT has an inane post about eight ways Trump and Musk might damage each other. It doesn’t seem to realize that Musk could not just use Xitter as an irritant (which is what it reports), but could also rejigger Xitter to undercut the way it favors right wing discourse and disinformation generally. NYT simply doesn’t understand how important Xitter is to the far right project, not even with Charlie Kirk’s slavering tribute to it amid the worst of the blowup, not even with the way Elon destroyed Xitter’s gateway function to real journalism, in the process damaging outlets like NYT.

Worse still, NYT doesn’t seem to understand the ways Trump has used the presidency to pay off his election debt to Elon; it even calls DOGE a “pet project.”

Wield the power of the presidency against him. Mr. Trump has a tremendous array of powers at his disposal, with the ability to sign executive orders punishing political adversaries and to direct agencies like the Justice Department to initiate investigations. He could end some of Mr. Musk’s pet projects, such as the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, as well as his embrace of white South Africans, a priority of Mr. Musk’s.

As I noted, Elizabeth Warren made a list of 130 ways Elon exploited his access to Trump, many of them involving short-circuiting regulation of his businesses (this is an entirely different set of benefits to Elon than I included in this post).

34. Musk has direct business interests before over 70% of agencies and departments targeted by DOGE.

35. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was a top target. Musk called for “delet[ing]” the agency and DOGE attempted to fire up to 90% of CFPB staff, who would regulate X Money.

36. President Trump fired the CFPB Director and the new head of CFPB forbade the agency from doing work — after CFPB had received over 300 consumer complaints about Tesla.

37. X also deleted CFPB’s official account on the social media platform, limiting the public communications of an agency that regulates Musk companies.

38. X deleted the account of Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. after he posted about President Trump’s allegedly illegal firings of Democratic CPSC commissioners.

39. The Trump Administration fired Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioners after EEOC investigated Tesla for alleged racial harassment and retaliation at the company’s Fremont Facility.

40. The Trump Administration plans to cut potentially thousands of EPA employees, after the EPA found that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act, investigated Tesla’s actions at its Austin Facility, and investigated an xAI facility in Tennessee for air pollution.

41. The Trump Administration began requiring any EPA spending greater than $50,000 to obtain DOGE approval, potentially allowing Musk to slow down environmental enforcement actions, like past investigations into Tesla and SpaceX for hazardous waste dumping and other alleged activity.

42. The Trump Administration attempted to fire hundreds of FAA employees, including some who directly contribute to air safety, after the FAA required SpaceX to abide by environmental requirements.

And NYT’s treatment of DOGE as a “pet project” ignores one of the real risks exacerbated by this blowup. Elon’s DOGE boys remain burrowed into government agencies, rewarded for their lack of experience and ties to criminal hackers with GS-14 and GS-15 salaries.

Although Elon Musk has said that he is largely exiting his role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), at least three of his early operatives and key lieutenants throughout his government takeover have recently become full-time government employees.

Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, and Ethan Shaotran’s employment designations at the General Services Administration (GSA) have been officially converted to full-time from the restricted special government employee classification that limited their time in government to a period of 130 days, according to documentation viewed by WIRED.

Coristine, who has gone by “Big Balls” online and previously worked for a telecommunications firm known for hiring former blackhat hackers, was converted to full time on May 31, along with Farritor. Shaotran became full time on April 10.

[snip]

Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran, according to documentation viewed by WIRED, each maintain their “senior adviser” titles. Coristine and Farritor are drawing some of the largest salaries possible for government employees through the “General Schedule” employee rankings. They have a salary grade of GS-15, one of the highest grades, and Shaotran is one step below at GS-14. When they were special government employees, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran did not appear to be drawing salaries at all through GSA, WIRED reported in March.

These boys have access to our data! We still haven’t learned who was exfiltrating data from NLRB — as reported by whistleblower Dan Berulis — or why entities using a Russian address seemed to know the new login accounts created by DOGE boys.

18. I started tracking what appeared to be sensitive data leaving the secured location it is meant to be stored. I initially saw gigabytes exiting the NxGen case management system “nucleus,” within the NLRB system, and I later witnessed a similar large spike in outbound traffic leaving the network itself. From what I could see the data that was being exfiltrated added up to around 10 gigabytes– in the case that the data was almost all text files it would be the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias worth if someone printed these files as hard-copy documents. It is unclear which files were copied and removed, and I’ve tried multiple routes to prove this was not an exfiltration event but none have yielded fruit and some have been stopped outright. I also don’t know if the data was only 10gb in total or whether or not they were consolidated and compressed prior. This opens up the possibility that even more data was exfiltrated. Regardless, that kind of spike is extremely unusual because data almost never directly leaves NLRB’s databases.

[snip]

21. On or about March 11, 2025, NxGen metrics indicated abnormal usage at points the prior week. I saw way above baseline response times, and resource utilization showed increased network output above anywhere it had been historically – as far back as I could look. I noted that this lined up closely with the data out event. I also notice increased logins blocked by access policy due to those log-ins being out of the country. For example: In the days after DOGE accessed NLRB’s systems, we noticed a user with an IP address in Primorskiy Krai, Russia started trying to log in. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming. Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE related activities and it appeared they had the correct username and password due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy activating. There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.

Whether the fight between Elon and Trump is real and ongoing or whether it’ll be patched up, the blowup should lead people from both parties to demand that these DOGE boys be removed from government systems and agencies and a thorough audit of their work be done systemwide. Yes, Elon’s meltdown is cause to revisit his security clearances (with a consequent review of the SpaceX relationship), but the national security and privacy risk posed by Elon’s infiltration of government is actually far broader than that.

Finally, I’m not seeing any outlets point out that making one small change to the Big Ugly bill at the center of this dispute — the huge tax cuts for people like Elon — would not only limit the damage it does to the deficit (Elon’s claimed complaint with it) but also call Elon’s bluff (since he very much wants to eat his tax cut too).

Let’s tax Elon. That’ll make this blowup go someplace productive!!

The narcissistic explosions of last night really aren’t just fun and games, as they’re largely being treated by the press.

They’re a visible reminder of the problem with access, the problem with wealth inequality, the problem with campaign finance failures,  the problem with Trump’s unbound corruption.

To pay off a campaign debt, Donald Trump let an unstable man — allegedly abusing drugs — with no understanding of government bureaucracy unleash a tribe of DOGE boys throughout government for four months, countering the will of Congress based on his whims and conspiracy theories. And now that man has threatened vengeance on Trump.

This may get papered over because Trump needs to paper it over.

But it’s high time the political press caught up to Wired and ProPublica in unpacking the grave risk of all this.

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Trump Muskmageddon Open Thread

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The year of our lord 2025 started with a rabid Musk-Trump supporter self-immolating himself in a Cybertruck parked in front of a Trump casino, trying to send us all a message.

The most interesting development in the burgeoning Civil War between two historical narcissists is that Elon unfollowed both Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk (the latter whom drooled a bit about how wonderful it was Elon decided to platform Nazis after he bought Twitter).

But that’s just one girl’s opinion. Feel free to share yours below!

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Perhaps Stephen Miller (Also) Believes in the Efficacy of a Deportation Gulag as a Tool to Usher in Fascism

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Like me, Greg Sargent continues to focus on the messaging opportunities presented by recent developments in Stephen Miller’s deportation gulag. (In the wake of NYT’s coverage and Sargent’s interview with Carol Hui the other day, Hui has been released from detention.)

This post reacts to this NBC story which, in turn, follows up on the Washington Examiner (!!!) story reporting on Miller’s recent meltdown about the number of deportations. NBC added to the story about Miller’s meltdown by pointing to how Trump has shifted law enforcement’s focus from their day jobs — hunting child sex traffickers, hackers, spies, and terrorists — to instead hunt peaceful undocumented migrants.

It is the latest example of how President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations is reshaping federal law enforcement as officials shift resources toward immigration-related cases — including nonviolent administrative offenses — leaving less time and attention for other types of criminal investigations.

The plan calls for using 3,000 ICE agents, including 1,800 from Homeland Security Investigations, which generally investigates transnational crimes and is not typically involved in arresting noncriminal immigrants; 2,000 Justice Department employees from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration; and 500 employees from Customs and Border Protection. It also includes 250 IRS agents, some of whom may be used to provide information on the whereabouts of immigrants using tax information, while others would have the authority to make arrests, according to the operation plan.

Sargent argues that if Democrats (I would argue, Trump opponents generally) can explain how Trump is making the country less safe to hunt down people like Carol Hui, they’ll grow even more opposed to Miller’s deportation gulag.

It’s a good point — similar to the one I made about the extent to which Miller’s jihad is depriving Americans of cancer cures. There are a bunch of opportunity costs that come with Miller’s deportation gulag, including hunting child sex traffickers and curing cancer. All of them are bad. We need to tell that story.

Along the way to making that point, though, Sargent makes this claim about Miller’s beliefs. Miller believes, Sargent argues, that migrants poison the nation’s blood. He believes hunting down people like Carol Hui is an emergency.

Unlike Miller, that is, majorities are not ideologically hostile to the mere presence of peaceful unauthorized immigrants in this country; they just want the system to work. Yet Miller and Trump see that presence as itself posing a dire public emergency, or even a civilizational one. In this worldview, there can be no desirable pathway to lawful status here for these people, because they inherently represent a public threat—they are “poisoning” the nation’s “blood.” Making them legal wouldn’t change that. It would only make the threat they pose more insidious.

That’s why Miller is capable of tweeting that the House GOP budget bill is the “most essential piece of legislation” in “the entire Western World,” largely because it ramps up deportation resources. To him, saving the “Western World” rides on deporting all those unauthorized people, including all those “moms.”

All this gets at the deeper reason Miller and Trump are shifting extensive law enforcement resources away from serious crimes into deporting noncriminal immigrants: They simply do see the presence of these people as an extraordinarily urgent national emergency, perhaps more urgent than all those other serious crimes.

I want to suggest that Miller’s unrelenting obsession with his deportation gulag may be more than just uncontrolled racism (though I have no doubt it is that, at least).

When you shift law enforcement from the FBI to DHS, you do more than simply shift law enforcement from focusing on child sex traffickers, hackers, spies, and terrorists to focusing on nice ladies like Carol Hui.

You also shift from a law enforcement that must meet increasing evidentiary standards — first probable cause and then beyond a reasonable doubt — to jail people, to one that has a far more lower threshold, one that affords the claims of the Executive great deference. And even in that context, Miller keeps looking for ways to lower the burden of law enforcement still lower; that’s the reason he pursued his Alien Enemies Act project: because he believes and wants Judges to get no review of such deportations. Next up, Miller wants to eliminate habeas corpus, such that the Executive could detain anyone with no judicial review.

Shifting from the FBI, which must adhere to written rules developed over decades in the wake of past abuses, to DHS, frees you from a great many strictures on how you investigate people. (This would be one effect of making ICE a bigger law enforcement agency than FBI.)

Shifting from FBI to DHS shifts you from a legalized culture to thug culture.

And Stephen Miller has never hid that he wants to apply this abusive law enforcement approach to US citizens to. He’s just not sure how he’ll get there.

Miller explicitly wants to be able to jail and deport people — and he has swept up legal aliens and even American citizens — without any review. That’s the goal. False inflammatory claims about immigration is the means.

I would suggest that Miller’s fondness for deportation gulags is about more than racism (though, again, it is definitely about racism). Miller’s false claims about immigrants are the means he plans to use to lower or eliminate the legal protections that all people in America — citizen and migrant alike — have against abusive Executive power.

Stephen Miller both believes in white supremacy but also that the United States should eliminate due process for all enemies of Donald Trump.

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Donald Trump Declares He Should Have Faced Trial

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As part of an Executive Order ordering Pam Bondi to start a witch hunt against Joe Biden’s aides, Donald Trump implied that the only reason Joe Biden was not prosecuted for harboring classified documents was “his incompetent mental state.”

The Department of Justice, for example, concluded that, despite clear evidence that Biden had broken the law, he should not stand trial owing to his incompetent mental state.

That’s a wild misstatement of the record, starting with the fact that the only documents that Robert Hur showed Biden wittingly took — his notebooks and a memo he sent to Barack Obama about withdrawing from Afghanistan — Biden believed he could take based on DOJ’s treatment of Ronald Reagan.

But let’s take the premise on its face.

Donald Trump — who was charged by a Special Counsel appointed on the same basis as Hur was — claims that Joe Biden would have been legitimately prosecuted if only he weren’t senile.

Wow, Donny, you just said that Aileen Cannon was wrong for dismissing the case against you!!!

Let’s go, baby!

This whole thing (especially the order to David Warrington to review which orders Biden signed with an autopen) is a grotesque nuisance. As with Trump’s apparent waiver of Biden’s Executive Privilege invocation on his own Special Counsel interviews, it presents a troubling breach of Executive equities of precisely the kind of that Trump never stopped wailing about when he was investigated.

But I really think this order, like so much of Trump and Eagle Ed Martin’s push to review what Biden did while serving as President in his late 70s, could backfire in spectacular ways.

For example, Trump is trying to criminalize White House aides lying to the public about the mental and physical state of the President.

Investigation. (a) The Counsel to the President, in consultation with the Attorney General and the head of any other relevant executive department or agency (agency), shall investigate, to the extent permitted by law, whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President. This investigation shall address:

(i) any activity, coordinated or otherwise, to purposefully shield the public from information regarding Biden’s mental and physical health;

(ii) any agreements between Biden’s aides to cooperatively and falsely deem recorded videos of the President’s cognitive inability as fake;

(iii) any agreements between Biden’s aides to require false, public statements elevating the President’s capabilities; and

(iv) the purpose of these activities, including to assert the authorities of the President. [my emphasis]

We don’t even have to consider what Trump has done — the incidences of mental breakdowns — in the past five months to get to things that Trump wants to treat as a crime. After all, Trump’s White House went to great lengths to lie to the public about how COVID nearly killed him. All the reports from Trump’s physicians are riddled with obvious false claims.

This order would make it a crime to lie about how fat Donny is!!

Plus there are a number of things — starting with the Alien Enemies Act declaration — that Trump claims he did not personally do. This EO would make it a crime for whoever did make that declaration (cough).

And the push to review whether Biden was cognizant for the pardons of his family members? Have at it. Particularly given some obvious errors made in the pardon for January 6ers (such as a commutation for Jeremy Bertino, who had not been sentenced), we’ll just start chipping away at the pardons for Trump’s cop assailants and adjudged terrorists.

The entire premise of this EO is that things Trump and his White Houses have done — from lying about his weight and height to his theft of classified documents — must be prosecuted.

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