Saturday, February 08, 2025
Be Prepared To Lock Them Up
A federal judge has restricted the Elon Musk-led government efficiency team from accessing a critical Treasury Department payment system.
The order, issued early Saturday, stops the access temporarily and demands the destruction of any downloaded information saying there is risk of “irreparable harm.”
Friday, February 07, 2025
Someone Complained
Feb 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday made public an order delaying tariffs on de minimis, or low-cost, packages from China until the Commerce Department can confirm that procedures and systems are in place to process packages and collect tariff revenue.I doubt it will return. There's no easy way to add in seamless tariff collection.
Seems Bad
Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of Elon Musk’s squad that’s criss-crossing US government agencies, was fired from an internship after he was accused of sharing information with a competitor.
“Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors,” said a June 2022 message from an executive of the firm, Path Network, which was seen by Bloomberg News. “This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this."
Online Chats
Two US law enforcement officials who investigate cybercrimes told Bloomberg they’ve been tracking online chat rooms that Coristine and others participated in for at least a year. The officials, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss their work, said they first became aware of him, under the usernames “Rivage” and “JoeyCrafter,” while investigating an alleged hacker who Coristine was communicating with in an online forum. The officials wouldn’t identify the hacker or the case they were investigating.
Seems Bad
Krause’s position will give him control over the Treasury Department system responsible for disbursing more than $5 trillion in annual payments, including for Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and thousands of other measures. Musk has demanded on social media that Treasury unilaterally stop sending these payments, accusing the department’s career staff of breaking the law.
Who Is This For
Is that "the only problem"? What the fuck is wrong with you, man.Trump will finance the purchase of Greenland by selling time-share condos in Gaza.
— Congressman Brad Sherman (@BradSherman) February 5, 2025
The only problem: if a displaced Palestinian woman gives birth in Greenland, her infant will be eligible for birthright citizenship.
Seems Bad
Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.One thing he reacts to is the line going down, so the plunging Dow will often be our one big hope. Doesn't save us from everything, of course.
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Who Knew There Were Lines
A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.
The 25-year-old employee, Marko Elez, resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to the account.
The deleted profile associated with Elez, who was embedded in the Treasury Department to carry out efficiency measures, advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act and backed a "eugenics immigration policy" in the weeks before President Trump was inaugurated.
"You could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity," the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. "Normalize Indian hate," the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
Probably the last one that got him fired.
Keep Them Busy With Petty Shit
On Wednesday, some employees at the General Services Administration found a creative way to express displeasure with the “Fork in the Road” offer to resign: a spoon emoji. During one video meeting in which members of the agency’s technology-focused branch were encouraged to take the offer, some rained down spoon emojis in an associated chat room. On Thursday, G.S.A. workers noticed that the spoon had been removed from the list of emojis permitted in their videoconferencing platform.
Team Pritzker
The finest representative of the big oaf community.
“Unlike Donald Trump, Illinois follows the law. The bipartisan Illinois TRUST Act, signed into law by a Republican governor, has always been compliant with federal law and still is today. Illinois will defend our laws that prioritize police resources for fighting crime while enabling state law enforcement to assist with arresting violent criminals. Instead of working with us to support law enforcement, the Trump Administration is making it more difficult to protect the public, just like they did when Trump pardoned the convicted January 6 violent criminals. We look forward to seeing them in court.”
Speaking Of Liars
The standard form of journalism is to privilege the statements of the people in power, then perhaps give voice to "critics argue" a few paragraphs later. What if you recognize you can't do that if your job is to inform readers?
News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the US over the past couple of weeks. Reports from Massachusetts to Idaho have described agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) spreading through communities and rounding people up. Quick Google searches for Ice operations, raids and arrests return a deluge of government press releases. Headlines include “ICE arrests 85 during 4-day Colorado operation”, “New Orleans focuses targeted operations on 123 criminal noncitizens”, and in Wisconsin, “ICE arrests 83 criminal aliens”.
But a closer look at these Ice reports tells a different story.
That four-day operation in Colorado? It happened in November 2010. The 123 people targeted in New Orleans? That was February of last year. Wisconsin? September 2018. There are thousands of examples of this throughout all 50 states – Ice press releases that have reached the first page of Google search results, making it seem like enforcement actions just happened, when in actuality they occurred months or years ago. Some, such as the arrest of “44 absconders” in Nebraska, go back as far as 2008.
All the archived Ice press releases soaring to the top of Google search results were marked with the same timestamp and read: “Updated: 01/24/2025”.
The distribution of Pinocchios from a glorified opinion columnist does not fix the problem.
I know we have this conversation every time Republicans are in power.