Where the latest series of Constitutional crises has arisen is due to one tragic, central fact: the Founders designed the Constitution with checks and balances. What was out of their control was human nature. They assumed that men (in those days it was only men) of good character, good will and sound judgement would be elected to both chambers of Congress. They did not foresee the kind of rubber stamping of a dictator’s whim and performative assholery, not to mention plain cowardice, that in fact characterizes both the House and Senate in the year 2025. So, we have a bloodless coup by the world’s richest man taking place right out in the open.
And what’s to be done about it? The Democrats subpoenaed Elon Musk today and the Republicans went batshit. They’re terrified, impotent mice. Let’s look at it all, step by step.
Elon Musk’s team of coders are creating a “backdoor” into the U.S. Treasury system, according to legal and I.T. professionals.
“Pushing live production code cooked up by some young coders over a week of [sleepless] nights in place of a legacy system that is fundamental to the operation of the US government is against every programming best practice,” University of Kansas law professor Corey Rayburn Yung posted on BlueSky.
Highlighting a Talking Points Memo piece about how Musk’s team is implementing untested code into the U.S. Treasury to create new paths that “block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked,” Yung warned that the world’s richest man was creating a “backdoor into the US Treasury.”
“This is incredibly dangerous both because of its intended use (by Elon and Trump) and the risk of other actors exploiting a major security vulnerability to cause a massive disruption to the US government,” Yung continued.
“There’s clearly no QA process, live testing with mocks, technical support for bugs, etc.,” Yung said. “This is insane. It’s the coding equivalent of hammering a complex, fragile machine until it does what you want.”
Karoline Leavitt doesn’t even know if Musk has a security clearance or even a background check to work within the federal government as a “special employee.” His only qualification for the work he’s presently doing is the chunk of change he gave Trump and the GOP. And that’s supposed to be just fine. Except it’s not, so the Democrats are seeking to subpoena Musk.
Democrats are turning up the pressure on Elon Musk and Republicans in Congress. At a House Oversight Committee hearing Rep. Connolly said:
In its first two weeks, The Trump Administration has ordered a hiring freeze on all federal civilian positions; ordered all federal employees back to the office full-time; paved the way to purge more than 100,000 non-partisan career civil servants and replace them with political loyalists, and waged war on our nation’s commitment to civil rights by eviscerating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The new Administration also ordered the politicization of the Senior Executive Service, forced employees to surveil and report on colleagues, and fired the Democratic Commissioners of the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They administered loyalty tests to career civil servants at the National Security Council; granted security clearances to incoming White House officials without vetting them; reportedly violated cybersecurity, procurement, and privacy laws by recklessly handling federal systems and data; and attempted a late-night purge of 17 nonpartisan inspectors general—a brazenly illegal attack that will only provide cover for the corruption that inevitably will ensue.
The Trump Administration also ordered a freeze of federal grants, loans, and other financial assistance programs. Immediately after the funding freeze was issued, Medicaid and Head Start reported disruptions, and some of FEMA’s online portals were cut off. Although the freeze was halted by a judge and then rescinded by the Administration, we saw in only 48 hours how willing the Trump Administration is to threaten the health, safety, and security of all Americans in service of its unlawful and partisan agenda.
If these initiatives sound familiar, it’s because many of them are ripped right out of the Project 2025 playbook. Remember that deeply unpopular tome that Trump tried desperately to distance himself from during the campaign? Many of these executive orders mirror Project 2025 proposals, and at least four prominent Project 2025 authors now have top positions in the Administration. Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 was just part of the con.
President Trump and Elon Musk are using a wrecking ball to systematically dismember our government piece by piece. The American people deserve better, and we in Congress have a constitutional duty to uphold the laws that we created. We must protect the government workers, programs, and services that the future of this country depends on and stop this unconstitutional assault on our government.
The Republicans don’t even want to talk about it, such is their obvious terror of both Trump and Musk. Committee Chair James Comer first tried to shut down debate and table the motion, then it quickly degenerated into a yelling match with Comer declaring Democrats out of order. How dare they try to hold President Musk accountable?
Ultimately, Comer held a voice vote to table the motion, and ruled that Republicans voting “aye” were in higher numbers.
Then Connolly called for a formal roll call vote. It failed 19–20, with many Republican and Democratic members of the 47-person committee either not voting or not being in attendance. For some reason, among those who abstained was Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, whose district includes Silicon Valley and parts of the San Francisco Bay area. […]
Musk has brought in young and inexperienced software engineers from his own companies with questionable security clearances to not only take control of sensitive government systems but even make substantial changes that aren’t easily tracked or alterable. These actions break the law and even violate the Constitution.
On Tuesday, House Democrats attempted to extract some measure of accountability from Musk, the world’s richest man, who bought his way into the Trump administration, and the effort failed. What is the next course of action?
I guess we’re going to find out. One thing is clear: the GOP is all for Trump becoming a dictator. This is the fulfillment of writer David Frum’s 2018 prophecy. “When conservatives realize that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” That was considered an inflammatory, outrageous even, comment when it was made but now it’s merely self evident. We have come a long way since 2018, all of it straight down. We had a four-year intermission when Biden was in office. Now it’s wrecking ball time. And no checks and balances. No guardrails.
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I believe in nonviolence as the only reason human societies can co-exist. My ex friend, I roomed with for four years, was a radical pacifist. He is the son of a Baptist minister. I’m the son of a violent drunk, that my Baptist mom shot in self defense, after I was grown. I used to challenge him to shoot me or put the goddamn gun down. I never had to question why my mom did what she did. He beat her many times, sometimes putting her in the hospital. I got my share. My friend wrote me off after I left Carolina because I joined the military. He married his high school girlfriend, while I lived with political radicals in Chapel Hill, one of whom, hung herself while her father, a respected economics professor was in China with Nixon. After months living in a tobbaco barn, taking acid, and hanging out, I joined the Navy. He could never understand why. I used to argue that a really evil man like Hitler would never have been stopped by the attempt to shame him with the noble sacrifice of pacifist resistance. Maybe I was influenced by my five uncles who fought that war. I just thought how easy it is for the comfortable people, who’ve never faced REAL violence, to misjudge how ineffective their so called high road is. We’re here because the democratic politicians are comfortable wealthy people. They somehow misjudged the evil they, and WE NOW FACE. They never went to war. They didn’t have to run away from home to distract a drunken maniac from stabbing a middle schooler for staying home sick. They were, and still are, phucking clueless. I believe in love, but love won’t stop a bullet or a bully. Love didn’t get me through the penitentiary. Becoming a version of the dangerous father that trained me to deal with violence stopped the threats. Poke a rattler and hear and see what the snake is willing to do to deal with you is what that rattle is all about. Even dangerous men respect other dangerous men. Even now, everytime I see the goddamn democrats bend one inch to give respect or cooperation to these nazis hell bent to destroy our democracy…I think you comfortable phuckers talk the talk but aren’t willing to do what is necessary to stop THESE NAZIS. Oh, they are more than willing to send boys to their deaths even when they LIE about why. I had more courage at age five than I see in them. That won’t get it done. My old man could sense fear like all predators can. So can a feral predator like Trump. He’s never fought his own battles, but he does know the smell of fear. That’s why instilling fear is goal number one. I could have easily been killed as a child, in the joint, or by being sent to war. In fact, it is a lot easier to kill me than to make me afraid. Thanks dad for the training. Too bad we are now a nation of cowards, led by cowards. That not only won’t save anyone, it will spur these nazis on. Count on it. Hell…if they had my childhood, acting like they do, they’d never seen middle school.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. When you’re caught up in a barfight you can’t talk your way to safety. You kick and gouge and hit people with your fists and anything you can get your hands on. You might have been way off in a corner minding your own business when the whole thing started but once it’s going you have two choices. Fight to defend yourself (and get out the door) or get your ass kicked. Trying to talk to people, to get them to settle down is a waste of time and can even be worse than useless. Any of us who’ve ever been caught up in some dive in a bar fight knows the score. Most people never have so they don’t get it.
But this IS a bar fight and with far bigger stakes. The refusal over the years of my fellow liberals to treat what the GOP has been doing as the bar fight THEY created is has driven me nuts.
I just wish the Democrats had brought out their best weapon: George Soros.
Just to point out that, for all these oh-so-many years, the GOP has been using Soros as a boogeyman so just imagine if the Democrats had said something like this: How would you feel if President Kamala Harris had decided that her mandate allowed her to let George Soros do EVERYTHING that Donald Trump is allowing Elon Musk to do? Something tells me that there’s not a single one of you that would be willing to sit still for it, even if you were in the minority. You’d be on every single right-wing propaganda show and *podcast* denouncing the President’s giving so much control to someone who wasn’t elected to an office, who wasn’t confirmed to a Cabinet position, who is operating without any oversight by Congress. But–right now, in this reality–you are letting Elon Musk just run roughshod over everything this country has stood for because you’re all afraid of Donald Trump and his little tech-buddy to stand up for the job that YOU are swore an oath to do, which was to support and defend the Constitution against ALL enemies, both foreign AND domestic. And right now, Elon Musk is the Constitution’s GREATEST enemy with Donald Trump being Number Two.
Totally agree. I guess it easy to give away what you’ve never paid for, but reap the benefits of power and money. I know Liz Cheney’s voting record with Trump, but she knows January 6th crossed a dangerous line, and hasn’t backed down since. Sad to see her standing up, when so many democrats are just going along, hoping the plane won’t crash. What’s the famous quote about Hitler first came for the trade unions…and so on…until he came for me. I guess when enough horror goes on…if it isn’t too late, maybe the citizens will rebel. I’m not optimistic when you can’t get people to care enough to stop this madness at the ballot box.
One of the little gombeen men ( Irish Catholics who collected rents and evicted tenants for their British bosses),a25year old, had to resign for his association with white supremacists. He gleefully posted that he was a racist before it was cool and no amount of.money of money could persuade him to.marry out of his ethnic group.
Gee,,I wasn’t aware that bigoted misogynist moron”was,an ethnic group.