As soon as he took office President Trump shut down all foreign aid for 90 days. A week later, USAID, our primary aid agency, caught his eye. Allegedly, "several actions" within the agency "appear to be designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders," so Trump immediately ordered 56 people placed on leave.
What accounted for Trump's specific fury toward USAID? Most likely, he was influenced by Elon Musk, who has been raging against the agency on Twitter, calling it a "a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America"¹ and later declaring, "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die." Yesterday, Musk acolytes stormed into USAID headquarters demanding access to security systems and personnel files. They were turned back, but eventually got in after a couple of top security officials were put on leave.
Whew. But why is Musk so exercised about USAID? This is where things get murky, but it turns out Musk is a big fan of a guy named Mike Benz, a far-right provocateur, white supremacist, and all-around conspiracy crank who has recently reinvented himself as an anti-censorship activist. For unclear reasons, this has led him to become America's premier critic of USAID, which he views as a spider controlling the entire web of America's foreign policy, from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA. Benz posts endlessly about this and Musk is an avid follower.
This is how things go in the federal government these days. A crank decides to become obsessed with USAID; Elon Musk takes the bait; and Donald Trump then joins him in a mission of destruction. And all over nothing.
¹This is sort of ironic since the usual complaint about USAID is that it's just another CIA front group. Which it sometimes was during the Cold War.
This is what happens when you turn the government over to a bunch of cranks and kooks. More faces being eaten by leopards. They're a long way from being done.
So this like Comet Pizza but on a greater scale. Someone says something something, someone else believes it and then the firing begins. This, the water spigot, Canada fentanyl, Panama, on and on, we really are not been run by the best and the brightest.
Kash Patel is a big fan of QAnon, and currently a whisper from running the FBI, weird ish is definitely not only afoot, but stampeding.
Kakistocracy: government by the least suitable or competent members of a state.
A handful of Peter Thiel teenage techbros are running Elmo's takeover of federal government IT and payment infrastructure
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/
and Drum is writing about USAID
You missed the previous post and thread?
the post where he adorably wrote "DOGE has no authority here"?
"You have no power here, Gandalf Grayhame", basically.
The total $ spent on USAID is what a rounding error on the minuscule part of the budget we spend on foreign aid?
Almost as much as we spend on condoms for Gaza.
Gaza, the province in Mozambique, that is.
What's next, demanding all US farmers switch to irrigating with Brawndo because it has what plants crave? This is literally where we're fucking at at this point.
In absolute terms it is still a lot of money and it should not be wasted.
I have some direct experience with USAID.
It is a mix between God awful nonsense like the DEI garbage Musk is highlighting and useful stuff that furthers US interests.
I hope we can get rid of the garbage, keep the good stuff, and reorient it to focus on improving things for US allies while leaving countries like South Africa, which is becoming more and more a problem, high and dry.
So, hold a vote. Stop its funding with House legislation. Republicans control all branches now. This is a budget issue and the filibuster doesn't apply. That's how this is supposed to work.
Unless you're an authoritarian shithead, of course.
I think there is a much better argument due the president's authority not to spend appropriated money than for his ability to spend money not appropriated.
Democrats lost all credibility on this when they supported Biden's attempts at student loan forgiveness.
Payback is a bitch.
No there's not. Both sides of the same coin. The president has no right to do either of those things. Payback, lol.
Don’t feed the troll
It’s a waste of time and he gets off on it
The Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."
There is no corresponding requirement that the President spend all appropriated money.
So, you're posting something demonstrably false in the hopes that someone will call you on it ... just so you can say 'prove it' and that you're 'not convinced'.
What a sad, sad attention-getting tactic this is. Something tells me you learned to seek out negative attention at an early age.
Trump just announced on his Twitter clone that he's suspending aid to South Africa, which is "confiscating land and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY".
Musk finally getting revenge on the Blacks who drove his family out of its own homeland by ending apartheid.
That is basically the sentiment behind why Dylann Roof went on a shooting spree.
Next up, a small Chinese naval base near Cape Town and perhaps Durban…
https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/land/12231-china-and-south-africa-vow-expansion-of-military-cooperation
Naturally Trump's only response to this kind of behavior is to punish the offenders. He's always believed you attract more flies with blood than with honey.
different flies.
More Robert Reich:
Trump is like a boil on the butt of America that’s been growing for decades. He’ll force us to lance it.
Do you really think we should be sending aid to a country that has apparently shipped weapons to Russia?
Let them ask Russia for aid.
Details on that here from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/03/donald-trump-cutting-funding-south-africa-land-confiscations-cyril-ramaphosa
There's a shout out to his racist base.
USAID's web page is gone dark, btw. Leopards on the prowl..
The Notice To Air Men (NOTAMs) site was shut down to scrub any mention of DEI.
Wait. NOTAMs was changed to "Notice to Air Missions" to eliminate the gendered language. Are we going back?! Are they that petty?
Yes. Yes, the are that petty.
As if robots and female pilots didn't exist.
It was also because some drone operations may need the information; not all aircraft have humans aboard
The information is not sent in machine readable form. The Pilot in Common or Remote Pilot in Command*, for now a person, receives and reads the information, using it as part of the flight preparation and management process.
*In airline operations dispatchers (also human persons) work with NOTAMs
I have to admit to being surprised at the speed that lunacy and conspiracy has spread since social media came to dominate people's attention, we've got a whole new ballgame on our hands, gonna have to dig deep, and this isn't even advanced or clever sophistry, we'll need the tools of social and empirical psych and economics along with sound logic and reasoning, and in many respects counters aren't really fully developed in this area (greenfield).
Probably going to need all hands on deck.
Still, I don't want to over-dramatize, as still believe the close election turned on inflation and high prices, and Republican still reliably incompetent while in power, no matter how fast they try to move (and this likely to lead to even greater incompetence and risk, including legal and reputational for GOP).
At some point economic factors may not line up favorably, so we need to develop these tools and counters to mis/disinformation with elevated urgency (and not by censorship, which is not consistent with our American and constitutional values).
The end game here is to get things so chaotic that there eventually is a complete collapse of the government/economy and Trump declares martial law, suspends habeas corpus and, voila, The Fourth Reich. Just as he and his Project 2025 goons always intended.
Our only hope is that they really are too stupid and incompetent to pull this off in the end and enough people start flipping their shit that Congress suddenly grows a pair and puts a stop to it, but I'm not optimistic. Too many people -- very, very rich people -- think they stand to gain from burning everything down.
".. Trump declares martial law, suspends habeas corpus..."
That is not how he is going to do it. He is going to intimidate any kind of opposition, apparently mainly ntends to use the FBI and DOJ. He will need to fill these with is his people first.
We are being run by crazy persons. Question is, how much damage will be done and will it be irreparable?
We know for sure now that the "legal system" is geared for the 1700s and incapable of dealing with emergencies. Marching around waving signs doesn't work like it did in the 1950s. Democrats are solidly encased in "process" and "decorum". The infotainment media is bound by chains of $$$$ and fear of being branded as "librul".
All that comes to mind (that is lawful) is a friendly takeover of the Democratic Party by persons able and willing to fight back. Appeal to the emotions and better natures of voters. Not be afraid to call names, describe Republican atrocities.
Our legal system runs slower than it did at any time in our history.
And it's resistant to change based upon actual evidence.
Is it? Perhaps, but I will point-out that Roe V Wade appears to have started in 1969 and didn't get decided by the Supreme Court until 1973.
As I understand it USAID is also loathed by Xi Jinping. So, it's possible this is really just a Trumpian-Muskian way to improve our relationship with China!
All of which absolutely THRILLS the
stupidslow-information voters, who think of politics and government -- when they pay any attention at all -- as little more than some sort of WWE spectacle."Wait ... whut? But what about mah medical bills ...??"
See Mencken on the theory of democracy.
I'm just praying that James Carville is right, sooner or later they fuck up on a scale which cannot be denied.
They will do a massive amount of damage in the meantime, but we are Americans and we get back up and keep at it. Maybe some of the changes they make are worth keeping, I don't know of anyone who thinks our government is a paragon of efficiency.
I don't think there's any question. When you put a bunch of fuck-ups into office, they inevitably fuck up. The odds of them doing anything worth keeping is roughly the same as that of my dog reciting Shakespeare.
But, but, but …these dudes are ‘experts’, that’s their job title: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/
When files were, well, actual files, it took forever to dig up data. And fires were a concern. Digitization would really help improve efficiency, and off site storage, where possible, and back ups mean catastrophes wouldn't be as catastrophic. But now you have to worry about malware and ransomware. Oh, and barbarians inside the gate.
" But now you have to worry about malware and ransomware."
I think there's more to worry about than malware and ransomware.
Trump seems to be silencing agencies that can TRUTHFULLY, and factually go against his policies.
Trump is in effect controlling the narrative AND the fact data bases so that fact checkers cannot get to the truth itself.
If the economy goes bad - lets say unemployment skyrockets. How long before trump silences those who publish those numbers?
How long before Trump controls the inflation numbers?
He wants to be remembered as the greatest president - so he changes the terms - and no matter what is viewed as the greatest president regardless of how bad he really was. This "controlling the data" also plays into the republicans hands.
Not as easy as that. You can claim that prices are stable, but people buy stuff. You won't believe that the economy is healthy when you know a bunch of people out of work. Sure the true believers will swallow whatever swill Trump peddles, but everybody else is going to notice.
Can't mask high prices on everyday and/or regular purchases either (or other items like cars and housing less often in play for any individual person).
Dunno about that. Voters JUST KNEW that inflation was still raging long after it had settled back down.
Prices were still high, and they'd already associated the pain of the previous high with Biden.
Different stores were still gouging where they could.
They knew prices were higher than they were a few years earlier. That's it. Nobody gave a shit about the inflation *rate* in any given month or that it had dropped dramatically since 2023.
If prices for staples and consumer goods continue to rise, sure, MAGA devotees will just live with the mind-bending amounts of cognitive dissonance it requires to explain it away. They always have. Regular voters, particularly the working-class independents that pulled the lever for Trump this time around because eggs were expensive? They're going to be mighty pissed. The question is, will future elections actually allow us to correct course and get rid of the Trumpists or will we all be living under martial law and a suspended Constitution by then?
Even if snark, I would not dare intimate nor joke about the normalization of these things. If this is how you're going to cope, you're making things worse for the country.
Couldn't disagree more.
The idea that the best approach is to avoid accurately describing what is going on has become a truism for most of the media and self styled centrists. But this approach hasn't worked out at all.
Referring to an accurate description as a 'coping' mechanism is an odd way to go. Might want to rethink this.
That's not at all what I'm saying.
You're reading KD's statement -- "This is how things go in the federal government these days" -- literally and plainly. I'm reading it as a snark commentary on the insanity of what's going on.
But there's a reading of that statement as someone throwing up their hands and cynically saying that this is how things are going to be.
Looks like the trade war is expanding to Europe:
Trump: "The UK is way out of line and we'll see. The UK, but European Union is really out of line. UK is out of line but I'm sure that one, I think that one can be worked out. But the European Union, it's an atrocity what they've done."
He's way out of his depth on that one.
The EU is the only economic entity on Earth that is economically bigger than the US. If Trump goes after the EU, he's way past bullying the smaller and weaker.
Because what he wants is to antagonize democracies, so they are "the enemies", and are less able to influence what happens in the US, and therefore make it easier for him to become a dictator.
You know that movie meme about slipping in a thumb drive and planting a virus that shuts down the government? That's a possibility.
And none of these clowns, from Musk on down, has had the security vetting given to a gate guard at a military base.
How long before the grocery store shelves are emptied, and the gas pumps dry?
FWIW, this language and public communication by a man working directly for the United States of America is way out of bounds and simply unacceptable:
"a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America"
"USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die."
Of course I realize the president in question is Donald Trump, but not sure he's ever got this caustic while in office (of course I could be wrong about that too), but Musk's comments make Trump calling USAID "radical lunatics" look tame in comparison.
I feel as though Musk is going to be dragged out of there in a straitjacket. He’s not a sane person. Jesus even I thought people were being a bit alarmist but this is bonkers.
But who is going to do the dragging?
Notice how Musk's henches are all on the, um, young side? At the very least, very visibly younger than he is. My guess is he's still trying to relive his dorm-room glory days, despite being an overweight, out-of-shape fifty-something.