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Judge Says Discovery Into DOGE's Labor Department Probe Likely
by Marc Elias and Paige Moskowitz
Democracy Docket
Feb 19, 2025

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. said he will likely grant federal labor unions' motion for expedited discovery into the extent and types of access the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk have had to Department of Labor records. If granted, it would be the first instance of discovery being permitted in the Trump accountability cases and could give invaluable information into DOGE's activities. Marc Elias and Paige Moskowitz explain.



Transcript

A federal district court judge in
Washington DC has just issued an order
clearing the way for the first round of
Discovery to go out in a case against
Donald Trump and Elon musk's Doge
welcome back to democracy docket I'm
Mark Elias and I'm PA mosquit let's get
started all right Paige I am still gonna
refer to it as Elon musk's Doge although
I understand that now apparently Mr musk
has nothing to do with Doge that's the
subject of another video that you and I
have done uh but but at any event we got
this very very important order just you
know shortly a few minutes ago uh in
which for the first time a federal judge
is going to allow discovery that is
going to allow the plaintiffs in a
lawsuit to issue questions uh uh get
documents maybe even allow depositions
which are sworn uh interviews under oath
um uh you know in a case that involves
Doge and and uh Donald Trump's uh
efforts to re remaster the government
right Mark this comes in a lawsuit filed
by democracy forward on behalf of
various federal employees unions they're
claiming that doge is seeking access to
sensitive Department of Labor data
including uh information about medical
and other benefits of all federal
workers information about workers
compensation claims identities of
vulnerable workers who sought the help
of the Department of Labor For
Occupational saf safety or wage
complaints they also claim that doge is
seeking access to information regarding
investigations of Mr mus corporate
interests and the sensitive trade secret
information held by the department
including those of the competitors of
those corporate interests yeah and you
know it's interesting you mention uh uh
the fact that one of the things they're
looking at is whether uh private
information was accessed because that is
something that the court singled out in
this order the judge said plaintiffs
have thus far asserted theories of
standing likelihood of success on the
merits and IR reparable harm that turn
on whether individuals not permitted
under the Privacy Act to view personal
information are viewing or will view
that information exploring that subject
through expedited targeted and limited
Discovery thus should be beneficial I
mean that is to lawyers a very big deal
for non- lawyers what it means is that
this judge wants to know and wants to
let the plainist find out whether or not
people who are not authorized to access
private information did in fact access
private information and so Paige you can
see already the wheel spinning of where
that could lead Mark and this is a
proposed order for limited Discovery
right so what does the process look like
to actually get a discovery order yeah
so what the judge did here was didn't
actually rule on the specific Discovery
the judge basically granted or indicated
uh that he supported the position the
plaintiffs had asserted in a prior
pleading that Discovery was appropriate
you see normally Discovery is not used
in administrative law cases like this
why because you what you're really
normally asking is just a pure question
of law did the thing that the government
do did it comply with the law or it
didn't and like there's not usually a
dispute about what the government did
the dispute is whether or not the thing
they did whether it was legal or not he
here as the judge points out in his
order it's a little bit different
because there's actually a set of
factual questions right there is the
question of whether or not the people
could legally access the data that would
be like a typical kind of question but
there's a subsidiary question or a
question that comes before that which is
who are the people who access the data
you know and like are they were you know
were they even allowed to were they even
in the Ambit of government employees
allowed to access the data so so this is
an unusual case so the judge said you
know the plaintiff you have to come back
uh you know later today uh by the end of
uh the day uh with your proposed limited
discovery which is reasonable because
after all the plaintiffs are presumably
ready to go they're the ones who want to
expedited Discovery and then gives you
know the government uh until uh February
24th which again is a very compressed
time frame like in most cases these
things would be much much longer but
gives them uh you know five days
essentially to oppose or respond uh and
then I expect we'll get a court order
you know we'll get a court order that
that says this is the Discovery that's
allowed these are the people you can
depose these are the kinds of questions
you can ask these are things you can't
ask these are the kind of documents
you're entitled to these are the
documents you're not entitled to
whatever it is like wherever the court
draws a line and then we will see that
Discovery I suspect take place very very
fast again this may not feel to those of
you out there like things are moving at
Rocket speed for courts this is rocket
speed Mark the next question that comes
naturally is if there's an order for
Discovery how do you ensure that the
government complies with and that the
plaintiffs get the information that they
are entitled to all right so Paige now
you've asked like the big question right
isn't this I mean isn't this the big
question sort of hanging over all these
cases and you're right in the case of
Discovery it is actually uh much Starker
right because the government has to
comply by actually turning over the
information they actually have to
produce the witness to sit at a
deposition and you know there are
several possib ities here number one the
government could simply seek to delay by
saying we're going to appeal the
discovery order right and just try to
make this like a side piece of
litigation about whether the Discover is
uh even appropriate the second we could
see something like what we have seen in
some of the other cases where they say
oh when you asked for the log of who had
accessed the computer system we thought
you meant the log for who had entered
the building we didn't realize Iz that
what you really wanted was about the
computer system right we can see this
kind of game of cat and mouse and
misdirection that we've seen from a lot
in a lot of these cases but the thing is
that won't get them very far in a
discovery case because the judge you
know is already teed up that he wants
expedited Discovery so I think that will
that would get slapped down which brings
us to the third possibility page and
this is where we start to inch closer
and closer to a true constitutional
crisis right I've said before I don't
think this is we are in a constitutional
crisis we are not in the place where um
the where the Court's orders are being
intentionally violated well one of the
easiest places to trip that wire one of
the the most common places frankly where
sanctions are imposed in litigation even
in you know normal civil litigation
between you know corporations uh one of
the most common places where contempt is
issued again in civil litigation not
having to do with the you know Donald
Trump's Administration are in these
Discovery cases where a party just says
I'm not going to produce the document or
they delete the document or a witness
goes to a deposition and says I'm not
going to answer questions that they were
ordered to answer and so what is the
chance page what is the chance that
Donald Trump either
instructs the Departments not to comply
or the Departments take it on themselves
or the Department of Justice lawyers
refuse to certify that you know what's
been produced is complete whatever it is
like what is the chance that this winds
up being a trip wire not
insignificant Mark and let's say that
the order goes through Discovery happens
the government turns over everything
that they're supposed to what kind of
information could we be looking at how
insightful or clarifying could it be to
get these sorts of Records into the
scope of what doge is doing and maybe
more importantly who is a part of
Doge right and I think that you put your
finger on it again as usual page your
you're smarter than the rest of us right
the this case though it is about Doge in
this one agency right Doge in the
Department of Labor accessing
confidential information it doesn't sit
though in a vacuum because other courts
in other forums have been told things by
Department of Justice lawyers and they
all need to Jive between courtrooms
right like I mean the Jud the the
Department of Justice can't tell one
judge oh Elon Musk has nothing to do
with Doge and then in this courtroom it
turn out like Elon Musk is running Doge
on the internal documents I'm not saying
that's what it is but like like you're
going to start to see as these cases
progress through Discovery there's gonna
have you know whether or not there is in
fact a consistent paper trail a
consistent understanding by Witnesses a
consistent set of arguments that
department of justice lawyers are making
and Discovery is you know one of those
strands that is hard for the
administration to to get around you know
it's one thing to send the Department of
Justice lawyer in to say something like
Elon Musk you know has nothing to do
with Doge right like we can all be like
huh right but it's another thing once
you start producing the internal emails
of people who say well we have to answer
to Elon Musk because he has Doge or you
know whatever it is you know they've
refused I believe Paige you tell me I
think they've refused uh in another case
to actually identify who the if it's not
Elm who it is that runs Doge um you know
like this is the kind of thing where you
might actually come across a do that
says this is who runs those so it's
going to be very interesting to see how
the administration how the Department of
Justice tries to square all these cases
up right the White House made that claim
earlier this week in a lawsuit from 14
Democratic State Attorneys generals who
claim that doge is illegally organized
and musk is a un is an
unconstitutionally appointed principal
officer of the United States they're
seeking to nullify and block all actions
that Doge and musk have taken but
earlier this week Joshua fiser the
director of the White House's office of
administration wrote in a court filing
that Elon Musk is not a part of Doge he
is not the administrator of Doge he is a
special employee of the White House and
has nothing to do with Doge right so do
you think that's going to square up in
the discovery in the Department of Labor
maybe maybe maybe maybe or maybe there a
record showing that Elon mus showed up
at the treasury Department or the
Department of Labor seeking information
right so I mean that's why like you said
Discovery is really important but I have
one more question I want to ask you so
the judge in this Department of Labor
case denied the plaintiff's motion for a
temporary restraining order to block
Doge and Musk from getting access to
this Labor Department data how does it
square away that you deny this motion
for a temporary restraining order but
then follow it up a couple weeks later
saying no I agree you you should get
access to some documents because
something doesn't sound quite right yeah
so look the the standard for a temporary
restraining order is just different it's
like different than anything else in the
law and because what you're asking a
judge to do with a temporary restraining
order is oftentimes on little more than
a single filing and a few hours you are
asking a court to block some action okay
you're literally going to the judge and
saying if you don't act immediately by
immediately like like within minutes or
hours of the filing of the argument
rather then you know there will be a
reparable harm and so you have started
to see page in a number of cases the
judges start to decline issuing or deny
issuing um uh temporary restraining
orders and part of what they're saying
is like look this isn't either as much
of an emergency as you are saying it is
or you you waited a little bit of time
like you you you know if this was going
to be such an emergency you should have
shown up a few weeks ago when this all
started or they're saying look there's
just not enough in your filings for me
to know what's going on here it's just
it's not it's not clear enough to me
what the facts are of this case so in
this instance I think that's what the
judge was saying is that last thing is
like I don't really understand enough to
know who the plaintiffs are here what
their injury is what's the defendants
Theory like who's doing what and so
that's why he denied the temporary
restraining order but that that doesn't
mean the lawsuit's dismissed that just
means that very very short period relief
is denied but the case still goes
forward and the next stage in these
cases is what's referred to as a
preliminary injunction which sounds a
lot like a temporary restraining order
but think about temporary as like I need
relief today and it only has to last 14
days which is usually the period that a
temporary trining order can last a
preliminary injunction is okay your
honor I need a decision like in the next
few weeks you know like I I I don't I
don't have months to wait but I have
days to wait like and we can by the way
your honor do a little Discovery and we
can also put on some witnesses and we
can also submit longer arguments and
briefs right like there's enough
breathing room here your honor that it's
not going to be a full trial it's not
full Discovery it's not all of the bells
and whistles but you can have a hearing
and sort of get your get get more of
your arms around this case and so that's
where we are in this case that's where
we're frankly going to be in a lot of
these cases uh uh in the next couple of
weeks they're going to shift out of this
sort of emergency relief into this sort
of temporary relief and you know
temporary restraining order is a bit of
a misnomer page you you and the do do
Team cover all these cases the
preliminary injunctions uh the
preliminary injunctions in these cases
are not that preliminary uh they tend to
they oftentimes are in place for months
or even years they are preliminary only
in the sense that they are in effect
essentially till the trial is over and
you know given the speed with which the
court uh the federal courts right now
have trials that can be a matter of
years so really the action for the for
most of these cases is going to be at
that preliminary injunction phase not at
the temporary restraining order phase
Mark big news today about the discovery
order what else should we know look I
think that what we need to know is that
this is not going to be one or two
lawsuits that get decided quickly this
is not going to be you know Donald Trump
something does something terrible in
January early February and by the time
we hit the middle of March it's all
resolved in the Supreme Court's rule
like that's just not realistic and so
everybody watching this needs to just
settle in for the Long Haul I know
you're tired okay believe me I'm tired
paig is tired but now is not the time in
history to be tired like now is the time
you know get yourself some coffee get
some caffeine do what you need to do to
wake up because we are entering into a
prolonged period in which the courts are
going to be Central to whether or not
democracy survives the courts are going
to be a a the the courts are going to be
in the news every day for a long period
to come and you cannot tune it out you
cannot look for you know for short
answers and you cannot look at any one
case and say okay this case is going to
decide everything or this case if we
lose you know means all is lost that
just isn't the way it's going to work
it's going to be a lot of hard work by a
lot of lawyers and a lot of legal
organizations doing a lot to fight um
against this and we're GNA hopefully
have judges who you know who stand up
for democracy in court which is after
all page like the central mission of
what democracy docket exists to cover
right I started democracy Docket in 2020
to be the leading source for news
information analysis on everything
happening to democracy in court it now
has I think I on one of the videos I
said it had uh it had 17 uh uh people it
now has 19 people uh and it has 3115
thou 350,000 subscribers so please if
you're not already one of those and you
want to support the work of those folks
click on the link above and become a
subscriber to democracy docket today and
we will see you next time
[Music]

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Read the resignation letter by Denise Cheung, a veteran D.C. federal prosecutor: She refused a Trump administration demand to freeze environmental grant assets.
by Washington Post staff
February 18, 2025 at 3:27 p.m. EST Today at 3:27 p.m. EST
https://archive.ph/tEXT9#selection-459.0-520.0

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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The head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. resigned Tuesday morning after declining to comply with an urgent Trump administration demand to freeze the assets of a multibillion-dollar Biden administration environmental grant initiative and launch a criminal investigation, according to two sources familiar with the matter and the official’s resignation letter.

The Washington Post has reproduced the text of veteran prosecutor Denise Cheung’s letter to interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin below.

Re: Resignation

Dear United States Attorney Martin:

As you requested, I am tendering my resignation from this Office.

I have been proud to serve at the U.S. Department of Justice and this Office for over 24 years. During my tenure, which has spanned over many different Administrations, I have always been guided by the oath that I took upon being sworn as an AUSA to support and defend the Constitution. Whether it was prosecuting homicide cases in the Superior Court Division or investigating international terrorism cases in the Criminal Division, I have always worked to enforce the rule of law, to vindicate the rights of victims, and to protect the security of the nation. I believe that the values the Department of Justice stands for, and the many people that work every day to fulfill them, are to be promoted and cherished.

As a member of the management team in the Office, including as Chief of the Criminal Division, I have always sought to offer sound and ethical counsel to my principals and to execute their directives to the best of my ability.

Earlier yesterday. I was asked to review documentation supplied by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency before the change in Administration and to issue grand jury subpoenas pursuant to this investigation. I was told that there was time sensitivity and action had to be taken that day because there was concern that contract awardees could continue to draw down on accounts handled by the bank handling the disbursements. I conferred with others in the Office, all of whom have substantial white collar criminal prosecution experience, and reviewed documentation provided by ODAG, in determining whether the predicate for opening such a grand jury investigation existed. Despite assessing that the existing documents on their face did not seem to meet this threshold, an ODAG representative stated that he believed sufficient predication existed, including in the form of a video where statements were made by a former political appointee of the executive agency in question.

[Brent Efron] Now we're just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all. It truly feels like we're on the Titanic, and we're throwing gold bars off the edge.

[Reporter] Who are the gold bars going to?

[Brent Efron] Non profits, States, tribes....

[Reporter] $50 billion dollars?

[Brent Efron] Yes. For climate things. So, to go work for one of these places, I think would be really cool.

[Reporter] What are the places that you've given them to?

[Brent Efron] It's only been a few weeks, so it's a little early. But, Green Banks. So, they're nonprofit institutions that are making it more financially feasible to build renewables, to do climate projects....

[Reporter] Who are the gold bars going to?

[Brent Efron] Nonprofits, states, tribes, cities....Well, they're all local. A lot of them are small, local nonprofits. This is a big thing...

[Reporter] Will the [Trump administration] come in and stop?

[Brent Efron] Yeah. I think they will. I think they will come in, and they will issue an order that like all grants have to stop, that EPA can't give any money out. So we reevaluate anything, and then they'll say we're reevaluating it. And then Congress will say, we're stopping this entirely. And they'll pass a law that says all this money doesn't exist anymore that you wanted to give out....These are basically nonprofit institutions that will cover the entire country....

[Reporter] You guys are like saving saving the world, literally.

[Brent Efron] I don't know if we are, but we're throwing gold bars off the Titanic, yeah.

[Reporter] You're doing what?

[Brent Efron] We're throwing gold bars off the Titanic. That's all we can save for today. I don't know if we're saving it, but we're getting the money out.

At one point, it was conveyed that the ODAG representative would work directly with a line AUSA from the Office in handling the matter and bypass any USAO-DC supervisory chain. Upon further conversations with the Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney (PAUSA), and in a subsequent conversation with the ODAG representative, I received clarification that a type of “freeze letter” requesting that the bank freeze assets would be adequate at this point, as opposed to other legal process. I took point on this process.

Upon further discussion with the PAUSA [Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney], and upon an understanding that ODAG agreed that such a reach-out was appropriate in light of the lack of any known investigative agency working on the matter, I contacted a supervisor at the Washington Field Office (WFO) of the FBI and provided him with the materials received from ODAG and also referenced the possible existence of the video and statements made by the head of the executive agency. I further conveyed ODAG’s desire to send out the freeze letter to the bank as soon as possible as to avoid subsequent payouts. The FBI-WFO supervisor forwarded links of these statements and the video, which I also reviewed. Despite the federal holiday yesterday, the FBI-WFO supervisor, as well as other FBI-WFO managers, spoke frequently throughout the day yesterday with me to discuss the matter, including what, if any, possible criminal charges might be applicable, as well as the sufficiency of the evidence of any criminal offense or the connection of any alleged crime to the accounts at issue.

During this period, I sent a draft freeze letter provided by the FBI-WFO supervisor to the PAUSA [Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney] at 4:31 p.m. In an email sent at 4:46 p.m., the PAUSA conveyed suggested language “in case it [was] helpful” from the ODAG representative, which included language represented to be from the Second Circuit, including the phrase “the government has probable cause to believe that the funds on deposit in the above-referenced account(s) at [named bank] are subject to seizure and forfeiture to the United States based upon violations...” I subsequently informed the PAUSA that the suggested language was not appropriate to the matter at hand.

Despite expressing some concern about the current lack of evidence of any apparent crime and the need to send out any such freeze letter, FBI-WFO personnel were able to consult with necessary individuals, including legal counsel, at their office. I was told that if FBI-WFO was unwilling to send out such a freeze letter, that you would direct someone from USAO-DC to send out such a correspondence to the bank. However, that contingency did not come to pass, as FBI-WFO determined that they were willing to send out the freeze letter, but asked that I first send them an email stating that, based on the evidence, there was possible evidence of certain criminal violations. I emailed them the following statement: "Based upon the information we received from ODAG and public-source materials, including a video of statements by a former [executive agency] official, USAO-DC believes that there may be conduct that constitutes potential violations of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 (conspiracy to defraud the United States) and 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1343 (wire fraud) that merits additional investigation."

After they received this email, FBI-WFO subsequently issued a letter to the bank recommending a thirty-day administrative freeze on certain assets. After this letter was issued at approximately 7:28 p.m. yesterday night, I received a call from the PAUSA [Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney] and you shortly thereafter. You expressed your dissatisfaction about the adequacy of the FBI-WFO letter and criticized that the language merely "recommended" that a freeze of the accounts take place, notwithstanding that the same language was used in the draft I sent to the PAUSA earlier in the day. You also directed that a second letter be immediately issued to the bank under your and my name ordering the bank not to release any funds in the subject accounts pursuant to a criminal investigation being run out of USAO-DC. When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence. You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day "doing nothing" except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted. As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified. Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation.

I remain committed to the oath that I took, and it has been an honor of a lifetime to be an AUSA in this Office. I know that all of the AUSAs in the Office will continue to uphold that pledge they have taken, following the facts and the law and complying with their moral, ethical, and legal obligations.

Sincerely,

Denise Cheung

********************

Veteran federal prosecutor resigns over bank freeze order from Trump appointee: Denise Cheung wrote in a resignation letter that Ed Martin, nominated by Trump to be Washington's top federal prosecutor, ordered her to take actions unsupported by evidence.
by Ryan J. Reilly
NBC
Feb. 18, 2025, 2:23 PM MST
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justic ... rcna192619


Ed Martin, interim U.S attorney for the District of Columbia, has been picked by President Trump to take over the post permanently. Michael A. McCoy / Getty Images file

WASHINGTON — A longtime federal prosecutor resigned Tuesday rather than carry out what she described as orders from Trump-appointed officials to take actions unsupported by evidence, according to a copy of her resignation letter obtained by NBC News.

Denise Cheung, who had been at the Justice Department for over 24 years and was the head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, wrote in her resignation letter to interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin that she had "always sought to offer sound and ethical counsel" to her bosses throughout multiple administrations, and that she had been asked to take investigative and law enforcement actions despite what she called the lack of "sufficient evidence."

Cheung wrote that she was asked on Monday to review documentation provided by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) — currently headed by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove — “to open a criminal investigation into whether a contract had been unlawfully awarded by an executive agency” during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

Her letter did not specify the grants at issue, but three sources told NBC News it had to do with environmental grants issued during the Biden administration.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said that "refusing a basic request to pause an investigation [??] so officials can examine the potential waste of government funds is not an act of heroism — just a failure to follow chain of command."

The new resignation comes amid a period of turmoil within the Justice Department. Most recently, seven prosecutors chose to resign rather than follow orders to drop the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a decision that several described in letters as improper and politically motivated. In the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, Martin — who pushed unfounded election conspiracy theories after the 2020 vote and later was an advocate for Jan. 6 defendants — disbanded the unit investigating and prosecuting Capitol rioters and launched a review of their work.

Cheung wrote that she was told the issue "was time sensitive and action had to be taken that day because there was concern that contract awardees could continue to draw down on accounts handled by the bank handling the disbursements."

Cheung wrote that she conferred with others in the office on Monday, a federal holiday, about whether there was a basis for opening a grand jury investigation. She assessed that "the existing documents on their face did not seem to meet this threshold," she wrote in her letter. But "an ODAG representative stated that he believed sufficient predication existed" for the investigation, she continued.

Cheung wrote that she was then told that the ODAG representative would work directly with a federal prosecutor and "bypass" the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, before being informed that a "freeze letter" requesting that a bank freeze certain assets "would be adequate at this point, as opposed to other legal process."

Cheung wrote that she contacted a supervisor in the FBI Washington Field Office, and they and others discussed "what, if any, possible criminal charges might be applicable, as well as the sufficiency of the evidence."

Cheung wrote that she sent a draft freeze letter provided by the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) and that ODAG had provided some language suggesting that there was probable cause to seize the assets, but Cheung said that language "was not appropriate" for the matter at hand.

"Despite expressing some concern about the current lack of evidence of any apparent crime and the need to send any such freeze letter, FBI-WFO personnel were able to consult with necessary individuals, including legal counsel, at their office," Cheung wrote. "I was told that if FBI-WFO was unwilling to send out such a freeze letter, that you would direct someone from the USAO-DC to send out such a correspondence to the bank."

While the FBI's Washington Field Office [FBI-WFO] "determined they were willing to send out the freeze letter," Cheung wrote, the office asked Cheung to send an email stating that there was possible evidence of potential criminal violations. Cheung wrote in an email to the FBI that the most she'd be willing to say was that there "may be conduct that constitutes potential violations" of two laws, conspiracy to defraud the United States and wire fraud, that "merits additional investigation."

After the FBI field office sent its letter to the bank recommending a 30-day freeze, Cheung wrote that she received a call from Martin and one of his top aides.

“You expressed dissatisfaction about the adequacy of the FBI-WFO letter and criticized that the language merely ‘recommended’ that a freeze of the accounts take place," Cheung wrote in her letter. "You also directed that a second letter be immediately issued to the bank under your and my name ordering the bank not to release any funds in the subject accounts pursuant to the criminal investigation being run out of USAO-DC. When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed there was sufficient evidence.

"You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day ‘doing nothing’ except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted," Cheung continued. "As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified. Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation."

“I remain committed to the oath that I took, and it has been the honor of a lifetime to be an AUSA in this Office," Cheung wrote, using an acronym for assistant U.S. attorney. "I know that all of the AUSAs in the Office will continue to uphold that pledge that they have taken, following the facts and the law and complying with their moral, ethical, and legal obligations."

Trump announced on Monday that he would seek to install Martin as the permanent U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin, who was still listed as a defense attorney for Jan. 6 defendants until earlier this month, has been acting U.S. attorney for Washington since Inauguration Day, when Trump pardoned convicted rioters, including some of Martin's clients.

Trump's announcement came less than 72 hours after Martin announced on X — the platform known as Twitter before it was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk — that he would be investigating former special counsel Jack Smith over pro bono legal help he received from a private law firm.

Martin, in a speech outside the Capitol on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack, called on “die-hard true Americans” to work until their "last breath" to "stop the steal."

Neither Martin nor the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia immediately responded to a request for comment from NBC News.

Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.
Michael Kosnar contributed.

****************************

'GOLD BARS': EPA Advisor Admits ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump Funnels Billions to Climate Groups
by Project Veritas
Dec 3, 2024

Brent Efron, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) special advisor implementing Biden’s climate agenda, told Project Veritas the agency is frantically shoveling billions in grants to nonprofits, making sure that the Biden administration’s climate projects stay afloat — no matter who’s in charge.



Transcript

[Brent Efron] Now we're just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all. It truly feels like we're on the Titanic, and we're throwing gold bars off the edge.

[Reporter] Who are the gold bars going to?

[Brent Efron] Non profits, States, tribes. We gave them the money, because it was harder if it wasn't a government run program. They couldn't take the money away if Trump won. Because it was, it was an insurance policy against Trump winning. It's until the Trump people come in and tell us we can no longer give out money. I do environmental, climate policy things.

[Reporter] Really?

[Brent Efron] Yeah.

[Reporter] That's amazing. That stuff is here?

[Brent Efron] I mean, because I do federal government climate things. Well, I have been doing that, but that might change.

[Reporter] Why?

[Brent Efron] Because of Trump. So I work at the EPA.

[Reporter] Amazing.

[Brent Efron] So I do -- do you know the inflation reduction act?

[Reporter] Yes. Okay, Biden's climate law?

[Brent Efron] Yeah. So, I do entire implementation. I work with Biden appointees. The money that we've given out, we've given out tens of billions of dollars.

[Reporter] The EPA has?

[Brent Efron] Over the last year, we've given out $50 billion dollars.

[Reporter] $50 million dollars?

[Brent Efron] Billions ... Billion, with a "B."

[Reporter] $50 billion dollars?

[Brent Efron] Yes. For climate things. So, to go work for one of these places, I think would be really cool.

[Reporter] What are the places that you've given them to?

[Brent Efron] It's only been a few weeks, so it's a little early. But, Green Banks. So, they're nonprofit institutions that are making it more financially feasible to build renewables, to do climate projects. I do implementation now. So I do, "How do you spend $100 billion? How do you make sure the proper processes are in place to prevent fraud and prevent abuse, and ensure that we are funding good-paying jobs, and that sort of stuff. Now -- it's just how to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all.

[Reporter] Really?

[Brent Efron] Yeah.

[Reporter] You can do that?

[Brent Efron] To an extent. Just within reason. Yeah.

[Reporter] Really?

[Brent Efron] Why not? Because if it's not going to -- basically, that's what it all is now. I mean, now it all is -- It truly feels we're on the Titanic, and we're throwing gold bars off the edge.

[Reporter] Does it really?

[Brent Efron] Yup.

[Reporter] It's got to feel weird.

[Brent Efron] It's weird. It's not good vibes. It's not good. I mean, everyone's very sad.

[Reporter] Who are the gold bars going to?

[Brent Efron] Nonprofits, states, tribes, cities.

[Reporter] Anything in the news that I would know of?

[Brent Efron] Not yet.

[Reporter] Organizations?

[Brent Efron] Well, they're all local. A lot of them are small, local nonprofits. This is a big thing that we -- Most of the stuff we've funded. But the thing that we haven't funded yet are the local nonprofit programs. That was going to be like an inter-Kamala Harris Administration program. So now, we're just getting it out as quick as possible.

[Reporter] Right, to the tune of $2 billion dollars.

[Brent Efron] No, it's $2 billion at this point. But yeah, we've got most of it. 90% is out.

[Reporter] Wow. And what happens if they try to stop it? They can?

[Brent Efron] When they come in, if we haven't gotten it out the door, then they can stop it.

[Reporter] You have two months.

[Brent Efron] Yeah.

[Reporter] If they don't get it out by a certain date, what's that date?

[Brent Efron] It's the inauguration. The 20th. It's noon on the 20th of January.

[Reporter] So you can work right down to the minute.

[Brent Efron] It's probably a little after noon. But yeah, it's basically noon. Throw a couple billion here and there. It's until the Trump people come in and tell us we can no longer give out money.

[Reporter] Wow.

[Brent Efron] So that's at the very earliest noon on the 20th. It's probably a little after because they have to get in the building and tell people what to do.

[Reporter] Will they come in and stop?

[Brent Efron] Yeah. I think they will. I think they will come in, and they will issue an order that like all grants have to stop, that EPA can't give any money out. So we reevaluate anything, and then they'll say we're reevaluating it. And then Congress will say, we're stopping this entirely. And they'll pass a law that says all this money doesn't exist anymore that you wanted to give out.

No, I think we gave them [the nonprofits] the money because it was harder. If it was a government run program, they could take the money away if Trump won. Because it was an insurance policy against Trump winning. So these are basically nonprofit institutions that will cover the entire country. They could have been a government agency, but because they aren't, they're safer from Republicans taking money away.

[Reporter] You guys are like saving saving the world, literally.

[Brent Efron] I don't know if we are, but we're throwing gold bars off the Titanic, yeah.

[Reporter] You're doing what?

[Brent Efron] We're throwing gold bars off the Titanic. That's all we can save for today. I don't know if we're saving it, but we're getting the money out.

[admin]

ICYMI: Administrator Zeldin’s “Powering the Great American Comeback” Unveiled at the EPA
by epa.gov
February 4, 2025
Contact Information: EPA Press Office ([email protected])
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/icymi- ... veiled-epa

WASHINGTON – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin exclusively previewed his “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative with Breitbart today. The initiative will guide EPA’s work to protect public health and the environment while restoring the greatness of the American economy for the first 100 days and beyond.

“The EPA is going to aggressively pursue an agenda powering the Great American Comeback… that’s our purpose, and it’s what will keep us up at night. EPA wants to help power that Great American Comeback. President Trump, as the leader of our country and the great American people, has earned that mandate. It’s up to the EPA to ensure we’re doing our part to make sure we deliver on that,” said Administrator Zeldin.

“Zeldin and his team are exclusively announcing this new initiative — titled ‘Powering the Great American Comeback’ — here on Breitbart News. The initiative has five major pillars. The first is pushing for ‘Clean Air, Land, and Water for Every American.’ The second is to ‘Restore American Energy Dominance,’ and the third is for ‘Permitting Reform, Cooperative Federalism, and Cross-Agency Partnership.’ The fourth pillar is to ‘Make the United States the Artificial Intelligence Capital of the World,’ and the fifth is ‘Protecting and Bringing Back American Auto Jobs.’ Zeldin said it is time for the EPA to return to its core mission of conservation — which he argued is a core conservative principle,” wrote Breitbart.

“‘President Trump has been very outspoken about his desire for Americans to be able to access clean air and clean water. We want air, land, water to be cleaner, safer, healthier,’ Zeldin said,” added Breitbart.

Read the full article here or below.

***

Exclusive — ‘Powering the Great American Comeback’: The Legend of Zeldin Comes to the EPA
by Matthew Boyle
Breitbart.com
Washington, DC
4 Feb 2025
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025 ... eldin-epa/

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is rolling out a massive five-pillar initiative for his first 100 days in the role, he told Breitbart News exclusively in a lengthy interview at EPA headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, late last week.

“President Trump earned a mandate last November when the American people all across this country elected him to have a term that I believe will be the greatest four years in American history,” Zeldin told Breitbart News in his cavernous office inside the William Jefferson Clinton Building just blocks from the White House.

“A lot of longtime Democratic voters decided to vote Republican for the first time and to vote for President Trump because their party had abandoned them and they felt disenfranchised,” he said. “President Trump has pledged to do everything in his power to unleash American prosperity throughout this country and we have an important role to play to make sure the EPA is accomplishing its mission in a manner that doesn’t lose sight over the strong desire by the American public to unleash American prosperity. In order to do so, we need to become energy dominant. We need to bring back American auto jobs. We have to make the United States the AI capital of the world. We need to pursue permitting reform that can allow more investment into the American economy. The EPA has to do its part here. Our mission here at the EPA is to protect human health and the environment. That mission absolutely can be accomplished while tapping into American innovation, creating jobs, and being accountable to the public and to Congress. We want to hit the ground running.”

Zeldin continued… “The EPA is going to aggressively pursue an agenda powering the Great American Comeback… that’s our purpose, and it’s what will keep us up at night. EPA wants to help power that Great American Comeback. President Trump, as the leader of our country and the great American people, has earned that mandate. It’s up to the EPA to ensure we’re doing our part to make sure we deliver on that.”

Zeldin is affectionately known in America First activist circles as “the Legend of Zeldin,” a play on the name of the classic video game the Legend of Zelda. He earned the nickname when he was a rank-and-file GOP U.S. House member from New York, when he was serving on the House Intelligence Committee and tearing up its then-chairman Democrat Adam Schiff’s plot to impeach President Donald Trump in his first term. While Schiff survived that madness and is now in the U.S. Senate from California, Zeldin is thriving even more. After a run for governor in New York in 2022 where he nearly toppled Democrat Kathy Hochul, he served as one of the top campaign surrogates for Trump’s 2024 comeback bid. Now, Zeldin is back at Trump’s side as now the administrator for the nation’s premiere environmental agency, the EPA, helping the president take on one of the most entrenched bureaucracies in a capital city full of them.

Zeldin and his team are exclusively announcing this new initiative — titled “Powering the Great American Comeback” — here on Breitbart News. The initiative has five major pillars. The first is pushing for “Clean Air, Land, and Water for Every American.” The second is to “Restore American Energy Dominance,” and the third is for “Permitting Reform, Cooperative Federalism, and Cross-Agency Partnership.” The fourth pillar is to “Make the United States the Artificial Intelligence Capital of the World,” and the fifth is “Protecting and Bringing Back American Auto Jobs.”

Zeldin said it is time for the EPA to return to its core mission of conservation — which he argued is a core conservative principle — and ditch the leftist environmentalist radicalism that has dominated in the past.

“President Trump has been very outspoken about his desire for Americans to be able to access clean air and clean water. We want air, land, water to be cleaner, safer, healthier,” Zeldin said. “That is our goal. That is our first pillar. Conservation has long been an important principle that conservatives and Republicans have been very proud of. When I was in the House, I was part of an effort to pass out of the House and Senate the Great American Outdoors Act. Conservation is going to continue to be a highest priority of conservatives and that includes advocacy from hunters, from fisherman, and so many more who care about our environment. In the name of climate change, Democrats during the Biden administration wasted tax dollars in a way that was inexcusable, unjustifiable, and illegitimate. We don’t want to waste a penny. It is important that we are pursuing this agenda of having cleaner air, land, and water without wasting any tax dollars at all. There has been talk through the years about how the world was imminently about to end because of climate change, and in the name of that threat there was a push to do some crazy things.”

The timelines of those predictions of “climate change” ending the world have “come and gone,” Zeldin said, and the world is still here.

“That’s what President Trump had spoken about so often,” Zeldin said. “When I heard the president talk about a climate change hoax, he would also talk about how important it is to him that Americans have clean air and clean water. What he expressed as a concern was, in the name of climate change, that politicians in Washington, DC, were willing to bankrupt our economy and that people who were struggling to make ends meet would lose the ability to heat their homes, and that Americans who want to be able to go out and purchase a gas-powered vehicle would have that option denied to them by the government. President Trump has proven that he’s not somebody willing to sit on the sidelines. When he sees Americans in need and not being properly represented and not being properly led, he will step away from an easy lifestyle and take on all of the risk and all the bullets and all the arrows and he will eagerly lead that charge to restore the Great American Comeback. We just want to do our part at the EPA here.”

Zeldin argues that that first pillar — cleaner air, water, and land — is not at odds with the second, which is to boost energy production in the U.S.

“Emissions went down during the [first] Trump presidency,” Zeldin said. “Energy that gets produced here in America taps into innovation and is far cleaner than energy produced overseas. Restoring energy dominance is not just an economic goal and not just a national security goal, but I also believe it’s best for the environment because here in America we tap into our domestic energy supply in ways that are much better for the environment than other nations across the world do it. We do it better here.”

Permitting reform, the third pillar in the plan, is key too, he said.

“The president has made a focus of ensuring the there is more reliability, consistency, and timeliness in order to secure a permit to make a massive investment in the United States,” Zeldin said. “EPA wants to help do our part to bring down that timeline, to increase consistency and reliability, and to make sure it doesn’t take as long to get a permit or to be able to make that investment.”

The fourth pillar, making the U.S. the world’s AI capital, is something Zeldin said is important to position the U.S. better on the world stage, particularly when it comes to confronting China.

“As far as AI, the United States of America should be the AI capital of the world,” Zeldin said. “There are some people in America who are scared of AI and they want us to go slower. That is absolutely not an option. The slower America goes in this race to become the AI capital of the world the more certainty and risk exists that nations like China are going to eat our lunch. President Trump has made it clear going back to his first term and even in video clips from many, many years before he ever ran for office that he has zero tolerance whatsoever to have a nation like China ever eat our lunch. We have to become the AI capital of the world, and we have to do it better, smarter, and quicker than nations like China.”

When it comes to the fifth pillar, bringing back American auto jobs, Zeldin said the obsession the radical left had with electric vehicles over gas-powered vehicles is over. He said, under his leadership, the EPA will focus on allowing consumers a choice: If they want an electric vehicle, they can get one, but if they want a gas-powered vehicle, they can get one of those too.

“Couple things — one is there is a big research mission in Ann Arbor that is part of EPA. It is important that the science, data, research, coming from that important work doesn’t yield results that are skewed by ideology and being a zealot. We don’t want any left-wing bias to be inserted into science and research, and we want to work closely with American auto companies to ensure that they have the tools to be successful, keep costs down, and create jobs — bring back jobs,” Zeldin said when asked about the fifth pillar of his plan.

“As far as rule making goes, it is important that I as administrator follow my obligations under the law and respect the rule of law,” he continued. “Understanding the Administrative Procedures Act, I don’t prejudge outcomes before we get to that part of the process of changing a rule. I will say that there were rules that were enacted over the course of the last administration that I’ve heard a lot of feedback on that have greatly impacted the American auto industry in a very negative way and greatly impacted the American consumer in a very negative way. And I believe in choice. I believe in an energy strategy that allows an American to choose a gas-powered vehicle if they want one. If they want to go out and get an electric vehicle, they can do that too. But in the spirit of allowing one American to be able to access an electric vehicle they want, we shouldn’t be denying every other American on that street the ability to pull a gas-powered vehicle into their driveway if that’s what they prefer. We respect choice and optionality in the American auto industry has a robust history they should be proud of and EPA has an important role to play to make them stronger.”

Asked if he will be out front and center pushing these principles in a highly visible way he has long been known for, Zeldin told Breitbart News: “Absolutely.”

“Every way we want to work harder than the last,” Zeldin said. “I’m hoping that [this] week I also have the opportunity to get on the ground in LA, and possibly even western North Carolina if that can work out. We want the American public to be able to count on the EPA so that when disaster strikes and the EPA is called upon, that we bring a level of reliability and exceptionalism that the American public is exceptionally proud of.”

Zeldin accompanied Vice President JD Vance on Monday to East Palestine, Ohio, to tour the town devastated by a chemical-laden train derailment two years ago. Zeldin had nothing but platitudes for Vance’s leadership, first in the U.S. Senate and now in the White House, on this front.

“Then-Sen. Vance was at the tip of the spear the moment the train derailment happened he led the way,” Zeldin said. “He proved quickly he was the right choice when he became the junior senator from Ohio and his continued leadership on this issue proves he was the right choice to become our nation’s now-vice president. His leadership showed that, when disaster strikes, it’s important for an elected official to be present and at that site instantly. People who might live in a community who voted against you in the last election start realizing that they missed an opportunity, but it’s not too late to correct wrongs when you identify that talent and that leadership as what happened in the East Palestine community. JD Vance was first on the scene, consistently on the scene, and even though he is now Vice President of the United States, he has not forgotten where he came from. That’s why now immediately after he’s sworn into office, he’s going right back now to East Palestine because he hasn’t forgotten.”

And later this week, Zeldin is set to visit Los Angeles, California, where wildfires have completely upended the local community burning thousands of homes and leaving wide-scale devastation in their wake. The EPA, he said, is engaged in the largest cleanup operation in the agency’s history there, and officials at the EPA told Breitbart News that well over a thousand employees are on the ground leading the cleanup operations. They have already removed at least 80 electric vehicles and built energy storage systems and conducted reconnaissance at more than 6,000 properties so far.

“EPA is undertaking the largest cleanup of hazardous materials in the history of the agency,” Zeldin said. “We’re not going to wait days or weeks or months to ramp up. We’ve done it already. We’ll have a thousand people on the ground this weekend. This morning, we started off the day — it was 7:15 a.m. on the West Coast — and there was a massive team from California on a video call with us here in the conference room to make sure we are collaborating as closely as possible and to make sure they have all the resources they need and to make sure we are assisting them in any way that we can. We are very proud of the thousands of properties they have already worked through inspecting to help residents. Our role there is one that we’re proud of — any residents who want to return to their property, we are encouraging them that if they come across a lithium-ion battery for example that they call the EPA hotline and bring us in to help. We’re working with the local government and we’re working with local residents, and we won’t slow down until the job gets done.”

“President Trump said he wanted our work to be done there with phase one within 30 days and we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we are able to hit that goal,” Zeldin said. “Phase one is the EPA assisting with the cleanup of hazardous material, and phase two is the work that will get done by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Trump administration is tackling this head on in a way that the EPA couldn’t possibly be any prouder to be a part of and I would have to give a special shoutout to Ric Grenell who is on the ground there and has been providing excellent support and feedback of what he’s hearing. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the men and women who are working extraordinarily long days right now to make sure that President Trump’s timeline is met.”

…

“The EPA has to be as productive as possible. We have to collaborate and deliver. We can’t do that with everybody working from home,” Zeldin said. “Many of the highest profile issues across the country right now have communities looking to the EPA for help. The removal of hazardous material in L.A. after the fires. There is a heavy reliance on local government to get safe drinking water back into residential properties, and EPA is on the ground offering to assist. I’m traveling as you know with our great vice president to East Palestine for the anniversary. EPA has played an important role on the ground to assist. In western North Carolina, same thing. You can’t respond from home. The needs on the ground in these communities that have been impacted require EPA to be present, to show up. There is a lot of work for us to do here at headquarters — there is a lot of feedback coming in from members of Congress and the public, of advocacy, saying that the Biden administration set back a particular community or industry in a way that harmed the American economy. We have heard all of this feedback and we want to do whatever we can to reverse any damage that was done.”

Zeldin also told Breitbart News he intends to get to the bottom of a Biden appointee during [their] transition post-election getting caught on camera saying the Biden administration was throwing money away. The employee, caught in a Project Veritas video, said they were throwing gold bars off the edge of the Titanic.

Project Veritas @Project_Veritas
BREAKING: @EPA Advisor Admits ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump is Funneling Billions to Climate Organizations, “We’re Throwing Gold Bars off the Titanic”

“It was an insurance policy against Trump winning.”

“Get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump Administration] come in ... it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.”

“I would add that tens of billions of dollars went out the door during the Biden administration that we want accountability for,” Zeldin said. “Between the time President Trump was elected and sworn in, a Biden political appointee was on video talking about how here at the EPA they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic. He says it four or five times in this Project Veritas video, even saying that there was a desire among the Biden political appointees to give out the final billions of dollars with an eye toward getting jobs at the recipient NGOs. Gold bars are tax dollars, and off the Titanic means they know they are wasting those tax dollars. I want to have an ability to be able to appear before Congress and answer all these outstanding questions about all these dollars that went out during the Biden administration that the Biden administration themselves referred to as tossing gold bars off the Titanic. You can’t do everything that the American public is demanding of the EPA by remote working and teleworking. We have to be in the office, productive, collaborative, and delivering.”

Last updated on February 4, 2025

*****************************

ICYMI: Administrator Lee Zeldin Announces EPA Found Billions of Dollars Parked at an Outside Financial Institution by Biden Administration: Administrator Zeldin Demands Termination of Biden-Harris Financial Agent Agreement and Return of Entire Fund Balance
by epa.gov
February 15, 2025
Contact Information: EPA Press Office ([email protected])
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/icymi- ... ed-outside

WASHINGTON – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency found $20 billion dollars parked at a financial institution by the Biden-Harris Administration to fund partisan pet projects.

[Brent Efron] Now we're just trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all. It truly feels like we're on the Titanic, and we're throwing gold bars off the edge.

[Reporter] Who are the gold bars going to?

[Brent Efron] Non profits, States, tribes....

[Reporter] $50 billion dollars?

[Brent Efron] Yes. For climate things. So, to go work for one of these places, I think would be really cool.

[Reporter] What are the places that you've given them to?

[Brent Efron] It's only been a few weeks, so it's a little early. But, Green Banks. So, they're nonprofit institutions that are making it more financially feasible to build renewables, to do climate projects....

[Reporter] Who are the gold bars going to?

[Brent Efron] Nonprofits, states, tribes, cities....Well, they're all local. A lot of them are small, local nonprofits. This is a big thing...

[Reporter] Will the [Trump administration] come in and stop?

[Brent Efron] Yeah. I think they will. I think they will come in, and they will issue an order that like all grants have to stop, that EPA can't give any money out. So we reevaluate anything, and then they'll say we're reevaluating it. And then Congress will say, we're stopping this entirely. And they'll pass a law that says all this money doesn't exist anymore that you wanted to give out....These are basically nonprofit institutions that will cover the entire country....

[Reporter] You guys are like saving saving the world, literally.

[Brent Efron] I don't know if we are, but we're throwing gold bars off the Titanic, yeah.

[Reporter] You're doing what?

[Brent Efron] We're throwing gold bars off the Titanic. That's all we can save for today. I don't know if we're saving it, but we're getting the money out.

Administrator Zeldin called for termination of the financial agent agreement, and for the immediate return of the entire fund balance to the United States Treasury to ensure EPA oversight. He will also be referring this matter to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Congress, and the agency will work with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The discovery comes on the heels of a video released of a Biden EPA political appointee talking about “tossing gold bars off the titanic,” intentionally rushing to get billions of tax dollars out of the agency before Inauguration Day in a reckless attempt to avoid oversight.

In the last couple of days, the Administrator also identified and cancelled a $50 million Biden-era environmental justice grant to the Climate Justice Alliance and announced that the agency would not be renewing nearly half a million dollars in media subscriptions to Politico and its subsidiaries.

Administrator Zeldin is steadfast in his commitment to review agency spending line-by-line to ensure every penny spent is to advance clean air, land and water for all Americans.

Read the coverage below:

New York Post EXCLUSIVE: EPA head Lee Zeldin reveals no real oversight of shocking $20B that Biden admin funneled through Citibank: ‘Tip of the iceberg’

“This was an arrangement the EPA sought out, working with the Biden Treasury Department to park $20 billion outside of government and that deliberately resulted in less transparency, accountability and oversight.

“And I committed to Congress and the American people during my confirmation hearing that I would do everything in my power if confirmed to ensure there wasn’t any waste and abuse and I was going to get to the bottom of all of these funds.

“This is something that is a highest concern and priority for us. We have very high confidence that this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Blaze Media: Lee Zeldin reveals how much taxpayer money the EPA is saving through cutting waste

“Lee Zeldin, the new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, explained to Americans the recent steps he has taken to cut down on wasteful spending by the federal government's environment watchdog.

On Wednesday, Zeldin said his staff is working to recover over $20 billion that was stashed outside the EPA by then-political appointees within the EPA under the Biden-Harris administration.

“‘This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight,’ Zeldin stated, noting that only eight entities would be in charge of disbursing that money to politically aligned non-governmental organizations. Zeldin said the bank the money was allocated to must return all of the funds to the EPA.”

Breitbart: Lee Zeldin Cancels $50 Million Contract for ‘Free Palestine’ Climate Group

“Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Thursday that he had canceled a Biden-era contract awarded to the Climate Justice Alliance, a group that claimed it was working toward a ‘Free Palestine’… As Breitbart News reported Wednesday, Zeldin is fighting to claw back $20 billion in grants handed out by the Biden EPA in its last weeks in office to an array of powerful left-wing non-governmental organizations and activist causes.”

Daily Caller: Radical Left-Wing Activist Org Sunsetting Grant Program Biden EPA Wanted To Fund To Tune Of $50 Million

“CJA is sunsetting the “environmental justice”-focused grant program that the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sought to fund with $50 million from one of the agency’s massive “environmental justice” grant programs, a spokesperson representing the group confirmed to the DCNF. The funds that the Biden EPA looked to route to CJA did not make it out the door before President Donald Trump and his team took power in Washington in January, and the Trump EPA is not at all keen to allow those dollars to get to CJA and other left-wing activist organizations that emerged as major beneficiaries of Biden EPA spending programs…

“CJA describes itself as ‘building a Just Transition away from extractive systems of production, consumption and political oppression’ and believes that ‘the path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.’ The organization offers several printable posters, ostensibly for use in protest demonstrations, on its website that advocate for causes like defunding the police and abolishing prisons, among other radical positions.”

Daily Mail: Video: Trump's EPA boss Lee Zeldin exposes eye-popping $20 billion wasted by Biden during final days in office

Daily Wire News: Lee Zeldin Reveals EPA Found Unprecedented Scheme Biden Admin Used To Funnel Money To Leftists

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video released on Wednesday night that his agency has discovered an unprecedented scheme that was utilized by the Biden administration to funnel money to far-Left activist groups.

“‘An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,’ Zeldin said. He continued, ‘The gold bars were tax dollars, and tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.’

“Zeldin said that he has contacted the U.S. Justice Department and the inspector general to launch investigations into the $20 billion that was transferred to an outside financial institution for the purpose of doling out funds to leftist organizations during Biden’s final days in office.”

Fox News: EPA administrator Zeldin demands return of $20B in taxpayer money wasted by Biden administration

“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin said Wednesday that his team has located $20 billion in tax dollars that the Biden administration purposely wasted… He said that ‘this scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all the money in a rush job with reduced oversight’ before Inauguration Day. Zeldin said ‘there is zero reason to suspect any wrongdoing by the bank,’ but he thinks an agreement with the institution ‘needs to be instantly terminated’ and all the money should be immediately returned. He says the EPA needs to resume responsibility for all of these funds, adding that his team will ‘review every penny that has gone out the door.’”

Newsmax: Lee Zeldin to Newsmax: Climate Hoax Blows Billions in Name of 'Environmental Justice'

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told Newsmax on Thursday that ‘it's crazy’ that the Biden administration awarded $20 billion in clean-energy grants to non-governmental organizations and said it was willing to blow billions in ‘the name of environmental justice.’

...

“‘It needs to be with the government,’ he said. ‘It needs to be with the American taxpayer. I, as the administrator of EPA, have to have the ability to go before Congress and account for these funds. So, when the video came out that you all know about, a couple months ago, Biden EPA political appointees saying that they were tossing these gold bars off the Titanic, I was going through my confirmation hearing. And part of that process, you meet individually with senators. They were all concerned about it.’

“‘They wanted my commitment, if confirmed, as soon as you get there, will you make it a top priority to get to the bottom of where these gold bars are?’ he said. ‘We found the gold bars. Now we want to bring them back into control of government. And whether it's $20 billion … or it's finding some way to save $100,000, none of this is our money in government. It is the people's money. It is our duty to have zero tolerance for any waste and abuse.’”

New York Post: Lee Zeldin demands return of $20B 'parked' at a financial institution by 'Biden EPA' to dole out to climate groups

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Wednesday that he’s found $20 billion in taxpayer money that the Biden administration ‘parked’ at a financial institution — in an apparent effort to prevent the Trump administration from cutting grants to ‘far-left activist groups.’

“Zeldin, 45, explained in a video posted on X that the Biden administration’s obfuscation was unprecedented and he demanded that the unnamed financial institution immediately return the funds to the EPA.

...

“‘Let me make one thing abundantly clear: At this point, there is zero reason to suspect any wrongdoing by the bank,’ Zeldin said, before making it known that he wants the money back.”

PJ Media: Lee Zeldin Just Discovered $20 Billion Laundered by the Biden Admin

“Zeldin underscored the urgency of accountability, declaring, ‘One of my very top priorities at EPA is to be an excellent steward of your hard-earned tax dollars. There will be zero tolerance of any waste and abuse.’ The controversy goes back two months when a video of a Biden EPA appointee referring to taxpayer funds as ‘gold bars’ being ‘tossed off the Titanic’ went viral. ‘The gold bars were tax dollars, and tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it,’ he explained…

“Zeldin specifically called out the Climate United Fund, which received nearly $7 billion from this pot. He posed vital questions about funding decisions, potential conflicts of interest, and the involvement of former Biden staffers.

...

“‘We will review every penny that has gone out the door,’ Zeldin declared, indicating that necessary measures would be taken to restore oversight and accountability. ‘I will be referring this matter to the Inspector General’s office and will work with the Justice Department as well. The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over.’”

RealClear Politics: Zeldin: Biden EPA Was Shoveling Boatloads Of Cash To Left-Wing Activist Groups In The Name Of Environmental Justice

“EPA: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency has found billions of taxpayer dollars parked at a financial institution by the Biden-Harris Administration. Administrator Zeldin is calling for termination of the financial agent agreement, and for the immediate return of the entire fund balance to the United States Treasury to ensure EPA oversight. Administrator Zeldin also announced that he will be referring this matter to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Congress, and the agency will work with the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Washington Examiner: EPA looks to claw back $20B in ‘gold bars’ given to climate groups

“The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to claw back around $20 billion in grant funding approved for climate projects under the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act. 

“EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced the move in a video shared on X on Wednesday evening, claiming the funds were “parked” at a financial institution under a ‘scheme’ to rush money to left-wing activist groups without oversight. The funding drew notice late last year when an EPA employee compared the funding to gold bars being thrown off the Titanic.  

“‘EPA needs to reassume responsibility for all of these funds. We will review every penny that has gone out the door. I will be referring this matter to the inspector general’s office, and we’ll work with the Justice Department as well,’ Zeldin said in the video. ‘The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over.’” 

Washington Post: Trump’s EPA chief vows to claw back $20 billion in climate funding

“The Environmental Protection Agency will try to claw back $20 billion that the Biden administration approved for climate projects, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a social media post Wednesday...

“In a video posted to X on Wednesday evening, Zeldin said the EPA would terminate its contract with the bank overseeing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program established by former president Joe Biden’s signature 2022 climate law.

...

“The U.S. DOGE Service, billionaire Elon Musk’s initiative to slash the size of the federal government, also commended Zeldin on X for an ‘awesome job’ on saving taxpayer money.”

Washington Times: EPA clawing back more than $20 billion in Biden's last-minute spending on climate justice

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said he’s working to retrieve billions of dollars the Biden administration frantically shoveled to green energy and climate justice projects in the months before President Trump took office.

“The money includes $20 billion that Biden officials deposited at Citibank, presumably to shield it from Trump administration officials…

“‘The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,’ Mr. Zeldin said.”

Last updated on February 15, 2025

[admin]

DOGE Is Hacking America: The U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history.
by Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Davi Ottenheimer, the vice president of trust and digital ethics at Inrupt, a data infrastructure company.
Foreign Policy
February 11, 2025, 6:49 PM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/11/do ... -treasury/

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A security guard stands at the entrance to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) headquarters on Feb. 3. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications for national security are profound.

First, it was reported that people associated with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had accessed the US Treasury computer system, giving them the ability to collect data on and potentially control the department’s roughly $5.45 trillion in annual federal payments.

Then, we learned that uncleared DOGE personnel had gained access to classified data from the US Agency for International Development, possibly copying it onto their own systems. Next, the Office of Personnel Management—which holds detailed personal data on millions of federal employees, including those with security clearances—was compromised. After that, Medicaid and Medicare records were compromised.

Meanwhile, only partially redacted names of CIA employees were sent over an unclassified email account. DOGE personnel are also reported to be feeding Education Department data into artificial intelligence software, and they have also started working at the Department of Energy.

This story is moving very fast. On Feb. 8, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing the Treasury Department systems any further. But given that DOGE workers have already copied data and possibly installed and modified software, it’s unclear how this fixes anything.

In any case, breaches of other critical government systems are likely to follow unless federal employees stand firm on the protocols protecting national security.

The systems that DOGE is accessing are not esoteric pieces of our nation’s infrastructure—they are the sinews of government.

For example, the Treasury Department systems contain the technical blueprints for how the federal government moves money, while the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) network contains information on who and what organizations the government employs and contracts with.

What makes this situation unprecedented isn’t just the scope, but also the method of attack. Foreign adversaries typically spend years attempting to penetrate government systems such as these, using stealth to avoid being seen and carefully hiding any tells or tracks. The Chinese government’s 2015 breach of OPM was a significant US security failure, and it illustrated how personnel data could be used to identify intelligence officers and compromise national security.

In this case, external operators with limited experience and minimal oversight are doing their work in plain sight and under massive public scrutiny: gaining the highest levels of administrative access and making changes to the United States’ most sensitive networks, potentially introducing new security vulnerabilities in the process.

But the most alarming aspect isn’t just the access being granted. It’s the systematic dismantling of security measures that would detect and prevent misuse—including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms—by removing the career officials in charge of those security measures and replacing them with inexperienced operators.

The Treasury’s computer systems have such an impact on national security that they were designed with the same principle that guides nuclear launch protocols: No single person should have unlimited power. Just as launching a nuclear missile requires two separate officers turning their keys simultaneously, making changes to critical financial systems traditionally requires multiple authorized personnel working in concert.

This approach, known as “separation of duties,” isn’t just bureaucratic red tape; it’s a fundamental security principle as old as banking itself. When your local bank processes a large transfer, it requires two different employees to verify the transaction. When a company issues a major financial report, separate teams must review and approve it. These aren’t just formalities—they’re essential safeguards against corruption and error. These measures have been bypassed or ignored. It’s as if someone found a way to rob Fort Knox by simply declaring that the new official policy is to fire all the guards and allow unescorted visits to the vault.

The implications for national security are staggering. Sen. Ron Wyden said his office had learned that the attackers gained privileges that allow them to modify core programs in Treasury Department computers that verify federal payments, access encrypted keys that secure financial transactions, and alter audit logs that record system changes. Over at OPM, reports indicate that individuals associated with DOGE connected an unauthorized server into the network. They are also reportedly training AI software on all of this sensitive data.

This is much more critical than the initial unauthorized access. These new servers have unknown capabilities and configurations, and there’s no evidence that this new code has gone through any rigorous security testing protocols. The AIs being trained are certainly not secure enough for this kind of data. All are ideal targets for any adversary, foreign or domestic, also seeking access to federal data.

There’s a reason why every modification—hardware or software—to these systems goes through a complex planning process and includes sophisticated access-control mechanisms. The national security crisis is that these systems are now much more vulnerable to dangerous attacks at the same time that the legitimate system administrators trained to protect them have been locked out.

By modifying core systems, the attackers have not only compromised current operations, but have also left behind vulnerabilities that could be exploited in future attacks—giving adversaries such as Russia and China an unprecedented opportunity. These countries have long targeted these systems. And they don’t just want to gather intelligence—they also want to understand how to disrupt these systems in a crisis.

Now, the technical details of how these systems operate, their security protocols, and their vulnerabilities are now potentially exposed to unknown parties without any of the usual safeguards. Instead of having to breach heavily fortified digital walls, these parties can simply walk through doors that are being propped open—and then erase evidence of their actions.

The security implications span three critical areas.

First, system manipulation: External operators can now modify operations while also altering audit trails that would track their changes. Second, data exposure: Beyond accessing personal information and transaction records, these operators can copy entire system architectures and security configurations—in one case, the technical blueprint of the country’s federal payment infrastructure. Third, and most critically, is the issue of system control: These operators can alter core systems and authentication mechanisms while disabling the very tools designed to detect such changes. This is more than modifying operations; it is modifying the infrastructure that those operations use.

To address these vulnerabilities, three immediate steps are essential. First, unauthorized access must be revoked and proper authentication protocols restored. Next, comprehensive system monitoring and change management must be reinstated—which, given the difficulty of cleaning a compromised system, will likely require a complete system reset. Finally, thorough audits must be conducted of all system changes made during this period.

This is beyond politics—this is a matter of national security. Foreign national intelligence organizations will be quick to take advantage of both the chaos and the new insecurities to steal US data and install backdoors to allow for future access.

Each day of continued unrestricted access makes the eventual recovery more difficult and increases the risk of irreversible damage to these critical systems. While the full impact may take time to assess, these steps represent the minimum necessary actions to begin restoring system integrity and security protocols.

Assuming that anyone in the government still cares.

[admin]

'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook: In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO”
by Gil Duran
05 Feb 2025
https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elo ... ator-doge/


Contrary to scurrilous rumors that this newsletter is funded by billionaires, The Nerd Reich is brought to you by 78 (heroic) paid subscribers. If you have the means, and if you want this work to continue, please become a paid subscriber.

The Point: In 2022, one of Peter Thiel's favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO” who was not Trump and laid out a playbook for how it might work. Elon Musk is following it.

The Back Story: In 2012, Curtis Yarvin — Peter Thiel’s “house philosopher”—called for something he dubbed RAGE: Retire All Government Employees. The idea: Take over the United States government and gut the federal bureaucracy. Then, replace civil servants with political loyalists who would answer to a CEO-type leader Yarvin likened to a dictator.

“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” he said.

Yarvin, a software programmer, framed this as a “reboot” of government.

Elon Musk’s DOGE is just a rebranded version of RAGE. He demands mass resignations, locks career employees out of their offices, threatens to delete entire departments, and seizes total control of sensitive government systems and programs. DOGE = RAGE, masked in the bland language of “efficiency.”

But Musk’s reliance on Yarvin’s playbook runs deeper.

In an essay dated April 2022, Yarvin updated RAGE to something he described as a “butterfly revolution.” In an essay on his paywalled Substack, he imagined a second Trump presidency in which Trump would enable a radical government transformation. The proposal will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Musk wreak havoc on the United States Government (USG) over the past three weeks.

Wrote Yarvin:

We’ve got to risk a full power start—a full reboot of the USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization—with roughly the powers that the Allied occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of 1945. This level of centralized emergency power worked to refound a nation then, for them. So it should work now, for us.”

(The metaphor of “full power start” comes from Star Trek and entails a risky process of restarting a fictional spaceship in a way that might cause “implosion.” The World War II metaphor casts the federal government as a conquered enemy now controlled by an outside force.)

Yarvin wrote that in a second term, Trump could appoint a different person to act as the nation’s “CEO.” This CEO would be enabled to run roughshod over the federal government, with Trump in the background as “chairman of the board.” The metaphors clarify the core idea: Run the government as a rogue corporation rather than a public institution beholden to the rules of democracy.

Trump himself will not be the brain …He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.

This CEO will bring a new radical new style of leadership to the federal government:

The CEO he picks will run the executive branch without any interference from the Congress or courts, probably also taking over state and local governments. Most existing important institutions, public and private, will be shut down and replaced with new and efficient systems. Trump will be monitoring this CEO’s performance, again on TV, and can fire him if need be.

Sound familiar?

Yarvin continues: Trump should amass an army of people willing to staff his new regime. Once he wins, this “magnificent army” of “ideologically trained” and Trump-loyal “ninjas” will be unleashed on the federal bureaucracy.

[H]e will throw it directly against the administrative state—not bothering with confirmed appointments, just using temporary appointments as needed. The job of this landing force is not to govern. It is to understand the government. It is to figure out what the Trump administration can actually do—when it assumes the full Constitutional powers given to the chief executive of the executive branch…

The regime must have the capacity to govern every institution it does not dismantle. The Trump regime is not a barbaric sack of America’s institutions. Genghis Khan is not in the building! It is a systematic renewal of America’s institutions. No brand or building can survive. But the new regime must perform the real functions of the old, and ideally perform them much better.

Many institutions which are necessary organs of society will have to be destroyed. These organs will have to be replaced. If they have not already been replaced in the larval stage, or even if they have, to scale—these replacements will need staff.

Government isn't the only target for this hostile takeover, wrote Yarvin:

Finally, it is not sufficient to have an army of parachute ninjas large or smart to drop into all the agencies in the executive branch. Many institutions of power are outside the government proper. Ninjas will have to land on the roofs of these buildings too—mainly journalism, academia and social media.

The new regime must seize all points of power, without respect for paper protections. Anything can be nationalized—so long as the new regime has the staff, the prize crew as it were, to nationalize it.

Yarvin envisioned a crew of experienced and educated government workers who would be recruited to staff the new regime. Musk appears to have different ideas. As Vittoria Elliott of Wired reports, Musk's chief lieutenants at DOGE (Destruction of Government by Elon) are very young men with no experience in government.

(Read "The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk's Government Takeover," and please subscribe to Wired, which is doing excellent work.)

Yarvin is not alone in envisioning a massive purge of government. In 2021, J.D. Vance lauded Yarvin's work and called for a government purge:

I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.

Like Yarvin, Vance compared the federal government to a conquered enemy:

De-Nazification, De-Baathification ... I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left. And turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.

He added that Trump should defy any court orders designed to stop his purge.

The idea of a massive purge also appears in the writings of Balaji Srinivasan, whose ideas seem primarily derived from Yarvin's. I've written much about Srinivasan in this newsletter, so I won't quote him at length here. But his core idea, which he clearly got from Yarvin, is a corporate takeover of governments, which will afterward be run like tech companies (specifically, Twitter). Just as Musk took over Twitter and stripped "Blue Checks" of their status, he will now defrock civil servants, experts, and anyone who is loyal to democracy instead of the current regime.

Of course, the plot to destroy the federal bureaucracy also has a partner in the far-right Heritage Foundation. Project 2025, which is clearly being implemented despite mocking Republican denials during the 2024 campaign, calls for a purging and dismantling of government as well. As the Association of Federal Government Employees warned last July:

What could happen to our government and the federal workforce in 2025? A group of conservative organizations have a plan, and it’s not good for federal employees.

The plan is detailed in a blueprint called Project 2025, organized by the far-right Heritage Foundation, and backed by over 100 conservative organizations.

The plan promises a takeover of our country’s system of checks and balances in order to “dismantle the administrative state” – the operations of federal agencies and programs according to current law and regulation, including many of the laws and regulations that govern federal employment.

Longtime readers may recall that back in September, the Heritage Foundation and particular San Francisco tech interests held a conference called "Reboot 2024: The New Reality."

The New Reality

Analysis: What once seemed like a fringe theory is now being carried out by the corporate powers that have wholly captured our government. While there are some minor differences between Yarvin's approach and Musk's, here's a summary of what they have in common:

1. Install a CEO Dictator

• Yarvin’s Blueprint: Trump appoints a CEO to run the country like a private corporation, bypassing Congress and the courts.

• Musk’s Moves: Acts as federal CEO, demands unilateral control over sensitive government programs, positioning himself as an unelected decision-maker as Trump stays in the background.

2. Purge the Bureaucracy

• Yarvin’s Plan: “Retire All Government Employees” (RAGE) – fire career civil servants and replace them with loyalists.

• Musk’s Moves: DOGE is gutting teams, demanding mass resignations, locking employees out of offices, and threatening mass layoffs in federal government. Meanwhile, DOGE is recruiting inexperienced young men who owe their loyalty to Musk/Thiel.

3. Build a Loyalist Army

• Yarvin’s Blueprint: Recruit an “ideologically trained” army to replace experts and enforce the new regime.

• Musk’s Moves: Surrounding himself with young, inexperienced loyalists who enforce his will without question. Project 2025 will also provide Republican cadre to run what's left of the federal government.

4. Dismantle Democratic Institutions

• Yarvin’s Blueprint: Strip power from federal agencies, courts, and Congress, centralizing authority under the executive branch.

• Musk’s Moves: Undermining the credibility of the federal government, downplaying legal oversight, and defying regulatory authorities. Dismantling government agencies and functions with no plan for their replacement.

5. Seize Media and Information Control to Maintain Power

• Yarvin’s Blueprint: Take over government, journalism, academia, and social media to control public narratives.

• Musk’s Moves: Buying Twitter, firing journalists, boosting propaganda, and promoting fringe narratives while attacking traditional media. Leading the hostile tech takeover as Trump’s “CEO.”

Did I miss anything?

Conclusion: There is a lot more to say. What surprises me most is how the political press generally fails to inform the public that Musk is taking a systematic approach, one that has been outlined in public forums for years. (Some press outlets, like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, are owned by billionaires keenly interested in kowtowing to Musk and Trump.)

We are witnessing the methodical implementation of a long-planned strategy to transform American democracy into corporate autocracy. The playbook was written in plain sight and is now being followed step by step. Some dismiss the Yarvins of the world as unhinged nuts, but that's the point. These guys, with their bizarre and dangerous ideas, have gotten very far in 2025. Just look at the news.

Yarvin pitched his vision as a fictional or unlikely scenario. Unfortunately, it now appears to be our new reality. The press's failure to connect these dots isn't just a journalistic oversight — it's a critical missed warning about the systematic dismantling of democratic governance. By the time most Americans understand what's happening, the "reboot" – the destruction of government – may already be complete.

Note: Journalists or academic researchers interested in getting full access to Yarvin's post can contact me directly.

[admin]

DOGE’s DUMBEST Firing Yet
by Sam Stein
The Bulwark
Feb 21, 2025 Bulwark Takes

Sam Stein talks to Andrew Egger about his article Inside DOGE’s Dumbest Cut Yet.



Transcript

[Sam Stein] Hey guys me Sam Stein managing Eder at
the bulwark here with Andrew Edgar
who is live on the CPAC floor there's
like a 55 to 65% chance his internet
goes out and then there's a 30% chance
that the j6 choir starts singing right
behind him uh so if that happens uh
that's great uh if the 5% chance is that
we get this done correctly so be it in
the meantime subscribe to the feed uh
Andrew first off before we get to your
story uh which is what we're here to
talk about about uh this inexplicably
dumb
Doge cuts at uh Los Alamos uh which uh
if you're worried about nuclear safety
not the best cuts to make before we do
that uh tell us what's CPAC like yeah so
uh so you know we're we're we're a small
outfit here at the bull workk you finish
up one story uh you go hering off to the
next one uh and then you know while
you're there you try to do the video
content for the last story for the
YouTube page uh I haven't even been in
yet I've just I'm I'm I'm kind of
outside of the exhibitor hall where all
of the Mega lifestyle Brands um you know
Hawk their Wares and and raise raise
awareness I've seen a lot of you know
interesting people walk by Hans Von
spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation you
know how it is at CPAC The Heavy Hitters
um guys like that uh but uh but yeah you
know we're gonna we're GNA do a day at
CPAC and and see how it is we were
supposed to do it yesterday but then
this story happened yeah okay so let's
talk about the story
um first of all uh I think the context
here is important which is doer has been
going around cutting basically
everything um a few key agencies that
they're supposedly getting to um and
then trying to figure out if they
up uh and often times they have and
they've had to bring people back uh on
board who they cut we knew uh prior to
today that they had done the same uh at
this nuclear safety agency what's the
name of the agency yeah it's the
national nuclear Security Administration
which is a a subset of the Department of
energy and they basically handle you
know a lot of the the nuclear um Safety
Management of our current nuclear
stockpile as well as a lot of the uh
well they're they're involved with a lot
of the manufacturer of new nuclear
components um both to refurbish uh the
nukes that we already have and to build
new ones all right so we knew that they
had made these cuts and we knew that
they had frantically tried to rehire a
lot of these people and their portrayal
of this this is the Doge folks their
portrayal of This was oh you know the
people we cut were not critical but we
you know so nothing was we were never
too much danger um there primarily
administrative people um but that wasn't
the case according to your reporting
tell us what the actual story yeah so
this is I mean this is kind of a
remarkable thing because because this
whole story kind of blew up last week
right where where everyone just realized
that there were these there had been
these cuts at this at this extremely
critical uh Sub sub uh uh agency of the
Department of agency semi- autonomous
agency within the department of of
energy um and uh and it was so obvious
so quickly uh that this had been a
problem that uh uh you know the
administration quickly backtracked and
quickly at the beginning of this week
sent uh sent you know rehire notices to
a lot of these people uh to to all to
nearly all of them almost all of them
and and and nearly all of the ones who
got those notices have come back on and
so kind of the narrative has been wow
that sure was a screw up um but at least
you know says the department of energy
it was really just kind of a handful of
sort of clerical and administrative
employees uh and and you know it's just
kind of a thing that happened in the
past and we're all kind of back to
normal now but I've been talking to to
you know a number of current and for
former officials at uh in NSSA for the
last couple of days and the picture that
they give is very different first of all
um they are are they find it kind of
like a bad joke this idea that these are
kind of low functioning or not low
functioning but low-level uh kind of
clerical pencil pushing employees it's
kind of true in the sense that their
whole role at these nuclear manufacturer
sites like Los Alamos in New Mexico is
Administrative these are sites that are
um essentially all of the on the ground
stuff is done not by government
employees at all it's done by
independent contractors but they are
they are the eyes and ears of the
federal government at those sites to
direct the work and to um you know
ensure that it's it's always in
accordance with all federal you know
safety uh standards all just kind of
operational uh standards and just you
know make sure they're doing the what
the Department of Defense wants them to
be doing essentially with the energy
wants them mo doing as well um and so uh
when these Cuts came through as they
have at many agencies they essentially
hit everybody who was probationary and
in fact it was a little bit um you know
more we don't need to get into it but a
little bit more chaotic even than that
there were some people who who weren't
even like really probationary according
to the sense that it's actually legal to
fire them they were they were kind of
thought of as probationary they got on
lists for different reasons but the the
most striking of all of these people and
just to kind of give you a sense of it
is that uh the the acting chief of uh
defense nuclear safety at the entire
agency is a guy named James Todd he was
one of the people who found himself
locked out of his systems at the end of
last week when all these purges went
through now there it's a little unclear
and just let me say that again this is
the top authority at the entire National
nuclear Security Administration the top
authority for everything related to
nuclear safety at that agency so this a
kind of an important guy right it's a
little unclear because there's so much
fog of war with all this whether he was
ever like quote unquote supposed to be
one of these guys who was fired um and
and and and you get into like what does
supposed to be even mean like none of
it's really supposed to be happening
there's no no real sense of that any
it's legal it's just these guys who are
going around like slashing and burning
and he was one of the guys who got
slashed and burned right he was one of
the guys who got locked out of the
system who was then kind of very
hurridly brought back at the beginning
of this week he's not somebody who
talked to me for the story um but but I
think like that that he was um you know
one of the people involved is is really
really a striking thing hey YouTube fam
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the comments so behave what kind of
panic did it send throughout the agency
uh when they saw that James Todd and
others at Le relatively similar levels
had been locked out well what's what's
crazy is I mean I I I mentioned the word
fog like the term fog of War a minute
ago a lot of people didn't even really
know who all had been locked out because
there were no like kind of you know
agency-wide um you know announcements
about all who all had and had not gotten
the The Descent people kind of knew who
the probationary employees were right um
the ones who you know were the were the
legitimate probationary employees the
the the new people who had been there
for less than a year um but so so they
kind of had a sense going in who was
likely to get the AE but there was there
was never any kind of um you know
sitewide notice or agency wide notice
and and you know when the people would
get the AE they'd immediately be locked
out of systems and then they couldn't
communicate right it's and it became you
know it was it was hard to know who all
was who but but but uh I mean even even
even among kind of the the quote unquote
normal probationary employees there's
still like a bunch of people who are
like incredibly Mission critical staff
at these different field offices and I
zoomed in on the field office at Los
Alamos um the sit's emergency
preparedness manager was a probationary
employee guy who maintains plans to
minimize the effects of a nuclear
accident on site their radiation
protection manager was a probationary
employee the security manager the fire
prot the fire protection engineer two of
their facility Representatives who are
kind of like onsite um you know
supervisors of the contract and and kind
of eyes and ears for for the agency like
on the floor there um and and uh and
these are all people who just like kind
of were kind of like in a horror movie
just sort of snatched up by the by the
beast at the end of last week um by the
Doge yeah and with very little warning
by the way because I I should also say
this that that you know their kind of
understanding as early as the beginning
of last week uh their their assumption I
should say was that they were not going
to be affected by by these Cuts because
a lot of um a lot of it's all been very
foggy keep saying this because this is
true across the federal government but
but one keep saying yeah but but one big
one big thing in all this is that in
theory like uh immigration enforcement
law enforcement National Security
officials uh are not sub uh uh subject
to a lot of this stuff at least
according to the initial executive order
so they kind of all thought well you
know we're unbelievably important uh
nuclear safety workers we'll probably be
fine so let's talk about that for a
second because Los alos National
Laboratory it is the development site
for the first ever nuclear bomb
obviously it still conducts research
today uh they have storage of nuclear
plutonium pits as I've understand it um
so it's a serious Place obviously they
actually manufacture those plutonium
Pits on site at that laboratory and
they're the only laboratory that does it
got you so um I guess my my qu it's not
question like if you this is the type of
thing where if you sort of
knew about the subject matter a bit more
or if you knew how government operated
in this field a bit more
if you had taken some time rather than a
couple weeks to just sort of go through
the probationary employees and slash
them all away you might have been like
ooh that's not a good idea like we can't
just you know find people to like fill
in here uh because this is a highly
technical highly specialized line of
work that also happens to be in the
middle of nowhere New Mexico um
but that wasn't what happened there's no
indication that any research or homework
or Outreach was done in advance
to figure out who would be the best
people if you had to cut to cut from
this agency at least that's my R of it
is that your R of it AB absolutely
especially as this thing that happened
last week now they are there's a lot of
kind of fear and anxiety among the
workforce right now that such uh kind of
more detailed Force reduction could
still be coming down the pipe where they
they try to do go where where they do
try to go with a little bit more of a
scalpel the problem is that this we're
talking about field Offices here and
again I just zoomed in on the one at Los
Alamos um but but field offices that are
already working kind of significantly
below uh capacity I mean like this is
this is an office that that has a a 95
uh uh uh or sorry 97 is the number of of
uh employees that are authorized by
Congress and funded to be working there
the going into this year the number they
actually had working there was 85
because it like like you mentioned it's
just hard to hire like insanely
qualified post do postdoctoral you know
officials to move out to the middle of
nowhere in New Mexico and commute an
hour through the desert to get to this
like highly classified facility you
can't bring your smartphone into and you
know you know what I mean like it's it's
a tough sell to get people there in the
first place and what they've been doing
as they've been going through these
agencies is not only a hiring freeze on
all new civilian uh uh staff or staff
positions but also you know when when
they've gone through and had people take
the buyouts or or gone through with
these Doge purges they've just
eliminated all of the positions as the
person goes out the door and it's like
it's like this insane Kafkaesque thing
where like you I mean like the the the
top guy there like imagine if that if
that had stayed there what you're just
not going to have like a a head of
safety for nuclear stuff at the nuclear
safety agency
anymore yeah um so it's I mean it's you
move fast and you break things and you
have a little nuclear drip that's just
what you so that's what I mean just
let's see what happens it's really kind
of hard to to even communicate just how
sort of Crest Fallen and and unsettled
and bemused all of these all of these
employees are who you know they have now
been restored to their jobs but they
don't know that future Cuts aren't
coming they they are like kind of newly
incentivized to maybe just get out the
door themselves you know there's there
have been people who have made comments
to other outlets that okay well you know
I wasn't planning on retiring but now
maybe that is going to be the best move
for me and my career in the future and
and and I think the other thing that's
so important to emphasize and this is a
thing that that these employees talked a
lot about was just
it's not I mean like you you're talking
about some of the most kind of like
highly specialized technical work uh
like that you could picture anywhere
they don't there are no like kind of
classes uh that you can take in college
to kind of like prepare you to hit the
ground running when they hire you to
handle nuclear waste or to do nuclear
security I mean one guy one guy I said
with you go ahead hold on
speak for yourself this is my side
Pursuit I have the I have the capacity
to fill in if they need yeah you gota
watch out look we got to run you got to
run let me say one other thing was one
of these guys said if you try to if you
try to you know teach yourself about
some of this stuff you know prior to
coming to the agency that's how you get
yourself on the list you know so it's
like uh so the the the worry the worry
is brain train right the worry is that
you you're kicking these people out
they're the only person knows how to do
it you can't bring anybody in and then
you know it's just all awful forever so
that's that's exciting that's the that's
the whole thing and now I'll let you go
Sam I know you have plac to well we'll
have that we'll have that to look
forward to for sure uh all right Andrew
go back to your crappy Wi-Fi and your
CPAC experience eager to see what you
have uh for folks who want to read the
full piece it's up on the uh site but
also you should subscribe frankly to
morning shots it's called inside Do's
dumbest cut yet Andrew thanks a bunch
man really appreciate it

[admin]

“Grand Theft Government”: Federal Workers Send SOS over Musk-Led Mass Firings, Service Cuts
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 20, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/20/ ... transcript

Amid the indiscriminate dismantling of the federal government by the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, federal workers, thousands of whom could lose their jobs, are fighting back. “All of us do something not only essential, but also mandated by Congress,” says union organizer and Army Corps of Engineers employee Chris Dols. Dols is part of a growing movement of federal workers and their allies staging mass protests to Save Our Services and warning of the long-term consequences of these extreme cuts to the bureaucracy. “They’re trying to immiserate the working class, and they’re doing it through the federal workforce,” says Dols, who is also a national coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network. “It’s about gutting the services that create a safety net in this country, because the more miserable we are, the easier it is for them to exploit us.” He calls on the larger public to join the worker-led movement resisting these radical cuts. “The whole public sphere is at stake.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Federal workers and supporters rallied in cities across the United States Wednesday to call for an end to mass firings ordered by President Trump and DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Their demand? SOS — Save Our Services.

In just one example of the impact of the cuts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday it was seeking to rehire several agency employees who had been assigned to the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak before their jobs were terminated as part of the Trump administration’s mass firings. In a statement, the USDA said the workers were fired in error, since their jobs are considered, quote, “public safety positions.”

Here in New York, public workers held several rallies Wednesday. In a minute, we’ll speak with one of the organizers, but first, this is Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressing workers and their supporters who gathered in the bitter cold at an SOS rally in Foley Square Wednesday night.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Elon Musk is not going after efficiency. He is not going after making these things better for people. He’s trying to steal Medicaid so that he can enrich himself. He is trying to steal. He’s trying to steal and gut NASA for — to line his pockets with SpaceX. He is trying to gut everything that is good in America for his own private profit.

This is the culmination of what oligarchy is all about and what oligarchy seeks to do. It’s the fusion of and the capture by the billionaire class of our democracy. That’s what they’re trying to do.

But it’s very important to understand that it is not sustainable. They may seem like they have power right now, but all of this dramatic action is trying to create the sense of inevitability, the sense of power, so that we abdicate in advance.



I want everyone who is here and folks who are watching who are not here, especially our federal workers, to listen to me very carefully, because we have very specific instructions in this moment. And I don’t say this as a Democrat. I don’t say this as a person with any sort of specific political views in this moment. I say this as an American who has sworn an oath to the United States Constitution. And as someone who cares about this Constitution and who cares about this country, we have an obligation to resist kings. We have an obligation to resist oligarchs. We have a sworn duty to this nation to resist oligarchy, including any billionaire that tries to undermine our Constitution. America is not for sale.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressing the Save Our Services protest in Foley Square in Manhattan Wednesday night.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds also protested outside the federal building in New York City as part of the national day of action to support public workers being purged as part of the Trump administration’s cuts under the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the billionaire Elon Musk.

For more, we’re joined by someone who still works in the building — for now, national coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network who helped organize the day of action. Chris Dols works for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what’s happening across the country, with people getting emails at various times in the day to leave their work, that they are fired, and then, in the case of nuclear safety workers, in the case of disease detectors within the CDC, as we’re dealing with an avian flu epidemic, a number of them, the government then tries to refind them, because they’ve cut off their government email, to say, “Whoops, we made a mistake”?

CHRIS DOLS: Yeah, before I start, I need to, by government regulation, disclaim, because you mentioned my employer, that anything I say is my opinion in my personal capacity and does not reflect the views necessarily of the Army Corps of Engineers. And I am the president of my local and, like you said, a coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network.

I mean, they’re really not after efficiency. The attacks on probationary employees is making it much, much harder for all of us who remain.

AMY GOODMAN: And can I just —

CHRIS DOLS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — make a clarification on probationary? We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of workers, and they can be people who work under two years, but they can also be someone who worked for 30 years, was promoted, right?

CHRIS DOLS: That’s right. There’s this —

AMY GOODMAN: And that then becomes a probationary period, and they can be fired within that.

CHRIS DOLS: That’s right. There are two categories of probationary employees: those who have just started with the federal government in the last one or two years, depending on which agency, and, yes, those who were, for whatever reason, changed job series and moved to a different part of the federal government but are otherwise longtime federal employees. I think there’s a misconception that all probationary employees are recent college grads or something like that. But, like myself, I started with the federal government after working for seven-and-a-half years with a dredging contractor, and it was my dredging expertise that made me a good cost engineer for the Army Corps. The person who I spoke with last night was — is a lawyer who spent years in private sector and brought his legal expertise to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help protect against fraud there.

So, the probationary workforce is an extremely qualified workforce in the government. And, you know, I think the fact that they’re going after such high-quality employees, be they probationary or not, matches up with the chaos that they’re sowing, where they themselves now have to make up for the fact that they summarily fired all these people and have to go rehire them because, oh, it turns out they were doing something essential.

Well, it turns out all of us are doing something not only essential, but mandated by Congress. None of us do anything that’s not mandated by Congress, which, of course, gets at the deeper constitutional crisis element of what we’re talking about here. You know, the fact that all three branches of government are on board with this really begs the question of where the checks and balances are going to come from. And that’s where the federal workforce and the broader workforce and labor movement need to step in, because we’re the checks and we’re the balances that are going to be able to stop this before they go any further.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Chris, say: What is your message to other labor unions across the country?

CHRIS DOLS: Yeah. I mean, so, we picked the slogan “Save Our Services,” ”SOS,” on purpose, right? This is a distress signal coming from us in the federal sector. Yes, our workforce is under direct, immediate attack, and a lot of the media wants to tell the human interest story about how, you know, our family lives, our lives are being disrupted. And yes, that’s a story. But the bigger story, what they’re really after, is to gut the services that all Americans depend on. You think about, like, how many of us depend on home health aides. You think about the subsidies to schools that come through the Department of Education. You think about Medicaid, that’s now on the chopping block, or veterans’ healthcare. All the essential stuff that affects our ability to live our lives, that’s what they’re after, because from Elon Musk’s point of view, the more miserable we are, the less likely we are to fight back. They’re trying to immiserate the working class, and they’re doing it through the federal workforce. It’s not about efficiency. It’s not about the federal workforce. It’s about gutting the services that create a safety net in this country, because the more miserable we are, the easier it is for them to exploit us.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you think, in fact, that they’re going to come after private sector employees, as well.

CHRIS DOLS: I mean, they are. They’re already going after the NLRB. The —

AMY GOODMAN: Explain, the National —

CHRIS DOLS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — Labor Relations Board, how that connects the two.

CHRIS DOLS: Yeah, the National Labor Relations Board is staffed by federal workers, many of whom are active in the Federal Unionists Network, alongside folks from all the agencies, and at the NLRB, their job is to uphold the right to organize, the ability to keep an abusive boss in check. All the things that allow for workers to push back against their exploitation and the abuse of management, people like Elon Musk, you know, really big bullies in their workplaces, that is enshrined by law, and it’s carried out by the NLRB.

And they’ve already pursued unprecedented attacks on that agency, and we know it’s going to get worse. We know that Elon Musk has lawsuits that he’s hoping to get in front of the Supreme Court soon to actually declare the NLRA, which is the act that established the NLRB, unconstitutional. So —

AMY GOODMAN: And do you think there’s a relationship between the fact that there are complaints against Elon Musk —

CHRIS DOLS: Of course.

AMY GOODMAN: — at the NLRB and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, two of the first agencies he went after?

CHRIS DOLS: Totally, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You know, Tesla has a financing operation that is meant to be regulated by the Consumer Financial Bureau. And go figure, the man is going after the very agencies that regulate his businesses.

So, we’re putting out the distress signal to the broader labor movement that we all have to enter the streets, that we all have to create — they’re creating the crisis. We’re not the ones creating the crisis. But they think they can manage the crisis. Our job is to prove to them that it’s unmanageable and to make it unmanageable. You know, this is grand theft government. They are pursuing the biggest theft in world history, probably, given the scale that we’re talking about. And it’s going to be up to not just federal workers, but to the broader public, because it’s the whole public sphere that’s at stake.

So, if I can plug our — you know, the place to get involved, whether or not you’re a federal worker, or you just want to support the federal workforce because you see the attacks, it’s go.savepublicservices.com. And there, you can sign up, and we’ll make sure to plug you into all the actions that are coming ahead, because this will be weeks or months, but we can stop them if we mobilize.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Dols is a union organizer and Army Corps of Engineer employee, national coordinator with the Federal Unionists Network.

[admin]

“Crack-Up Capitalism”: Historian Quinn Slobodian on Trump, Musk & the Movement to “Shatter” the State
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 20, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/20/ ... transcript

"Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy"

"Speed Up the Breakdown"

Who are the minds behind DOGE, and what do they really believe? Historian Quinn Slobodian says three strains of conservatism have converged to form the second Trump administration’s anti-democratic coalition: finance-backed corporate interests previously friendly to the Democratic Party, Christian conservative think tanks who have long advocated for the end of the administrative state, and the online-driven movement of reactionary extremists who traffic in white supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric. Meanwhile, says Slobodian, “Trump is a person who doesn’t believe in much, but he believes in money,” leaving him willing to enact the political visions of these three pro-capitalist projects. Slobodian, an expert in German history, also discusses the connections between the Trump sphere and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, supported by Musk and Vice President JD Vance.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We look further now at the purge of the federal government underway by DOGE, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. As protests mount, the two, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, appeared on Fox News together to defend their cuts. This is Elon Musk.

ELON MUSK: I think what we’re seeing here is the sort of — the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as President Trump spoke at an investor conference in Miami Wednesday and floated the idea of sharing some of the savings he claims DOGE is making.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: There’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt, because the numbers are incredible, Elon, so many billions of dollars — billions, hundreds of billions.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University, author of Crack-Up Capitalism. His new piece is “Speed Up the Breakdown.” It’s about Musk’s push to do that.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Professor Slobodian, if you can start off by telling us what Elon Musk is doing? This whole question over the last two days: What is his role? Does he run the Department of Government Efficiency, that President Trump says, when questioned about it, because court papers came out that indicated he didn’t, he just said, “Well, what counts is he’s a patriot”?

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah, I mean, I might have something to say about the patriot question later, but I think that, first, I think it’s helpful to kind of dispel some of the fog of war and the sort of chaotic, anarchistic impressions that we’re getting out of Washington these days, with a sense of what the actual lineages are of the political projects we’re seeing unfolding here, because I think, and what I wrote about in the piece, is I think there’s basically three somewhat distinct political projects underway here that haven’t really had the chance to weave together and have the space close to power the way that they have now in the past.

The first one is the idea that the government should be run like a corporation, right? There’s a kind of a core Clintonite notion here that we should treat citizens like consumers, we should, you know, expose bureaucracy to the same kind of competitive pressures and kind of hallmarking and benchmarking that private companies are, and then you have to go in and sort of act like an asset-stripping private equity firm and peel out all the waste and abuse and put back in sort of more efficient processes. That’s how Musk sold DOGE to the American people in late 2024, and that’s actually why even some Democrats were on board with a DOGE caucus already in December still. So, there’s something kind of normal about that, and there’s a reason why Musk has been posting pictures of Clinton and Gore and saying, “Hey, I’m just doing that sort of business here.” But, obviously, things have gone to another level.

The third strain, though, that sort of gets to some of the more extreme dynamics that people have been picking up on is what I think you can call right-wing accelerationism. So, this is a kind of very online ideology, often associated with people like Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land. And there, the idea is that you don’t just sort of trim the state or kind of streamline it, but you shatter it altogether. And so, there’s a vision of total decentralization of sovereignty, back to smaller kind of fortified private enclaves, turning the United States into a kind of a patchwork of fiefdoms, or “sovcorps,” as Yarvin calls them, where people are sort of, you know, opting in, paying to get into gated communities, and then sort of in zero-sum social Darwinist competition with the world beyond them. And that’s quite sci-fi and kind of speculative, but at times I think that the sort of sense of panic that we feel is people wondering whether you can just delete all of the kind of capacities of the state and expect to be able to plug them back in at any level afterwards, or if there is a kind of irreversible process of dismantlement happening here.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, Professor Slobodian, we’ll get to Curtis Yarvin in a minute, whom you mentioned, but if you could elaborate on some of the ideological precursors to these three strains you identify? I mean, you mentioned in the second, for example, deconstructing the administrative state. We heard that first from Steve Bannon. So, if you could, you know, elaborate on where these strains are coming from within the American political tradition, most recently, you know, the last Trump administration, but also prior to that?

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah, I mean, many of these things that we think of as kind of natural parts of the way the U.S. government operates — for example, something like income tax — are actually just over a hundred years old. So, the idea of having a federal government that oversees many parts of social life is actually — you know, it’s only a few generations in the past. And there are conservatives who see that as a kind of a project of decline.

So, famous examples would be someone like James Burnham, who wrote about what he called the managerial revolution. So, there was this fear that, you know, the kind of the essence of American enterprise was being strangled because there were just all of these civil servants producing a kind of a sclerotic layer over the economy and then pursuing their own kind of ideological projects. So, Russell Vought at OMB talks about what he calls the “woke and weaponized bureaucracy.” He talks about a almost complete Marxist takeover of the government.

So, this isn’t really that much of a sort of neoliberal economic way of thinking. It’s this belief that the state is a kind of a battlefield for opposing ideologies. And that’s been, you know, pretty consistent on the American right, and certainly was informing Steve Bannon’s more cultural and political idea of the kind of wars that need to be fought inside of bureaucracy and, indeed, outside of it.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about that battle right now between Bannon and Elon Musk, and who, in fact, is winning? He’s been talking about vowing to get Elon Musk kicked out, just said, “He’s a truly evil guy, a very bad guy,” and most recently referred to him as a “parasitic illegal immigrant.” Talk more about these two strains.

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Sure. Yeah, I mean, this really flared up, obviously, at the end of last year with the debate about immigration, with the sort of Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Silicon Valley wing defending temporary visas, so-called H-1B visas, for their sector, because they need a lot of skilled workers kind of in the back office, and then Bannon saying that that was itself unpatriotic, and there needed to be a American-jobs-for-American-native-workers policy and a much more complete kind of exclusion of, you know, new incoming workers.

What was interesting is that got extremely heated. I mean, as you say, Bannon has been not holding back at all in the way he’s been describing Silicon Valley as an “apartheid state.” He’s even using categories that are more common on the left, like calling it “technofeudalism,” and claiming that, like, the bayonets are out, and he’s advancing, and he’s coming for Musk. But what’s symptomatic and interesting there is the way that Trump has sort of kept aloof from the whole conflict, right? I think that he is probably instinctively seeing you don’t actually need to choose a side. Actually, you can accommodate — and you will, I think, and are accommodating — both sides of this apparent schism inside of the big MAGA coalition.

So, there’s no reason why the kind of hard-border nativists can’t get the kind of sadistic roundups that you were talking about at the top of the program, can’t produce terror in the lives of young people in the way that they are doing so effectively, that will fulfill the kind of libidinal, sadistic desires of a certain sector of the MAGA coalition, even as, you know, more quietly, you keep doing more pragmatic immigration policy to fill out the programmers in the back offices of Silicon Valley. I think that, more likely than not, we’re going to get a mixture of both.

And as to who gets closest to Trump’s ear, I mean, the answer, I think, is in the bank accounts. There are 500 billion reasons why Trump is going to listen to Musk more than he’s going to listen to Bannon. And Trump is a person who doesn’t believe in much, but he believes in money. And he doesn’t trust many people, but he trusts people who are richer than him. And Musk’s ability to kind of, you know, stroll through the White House as if he has been elected himself, have his 3-year-old sort of like muttering to Trump in the middle of a press conference, I think it gives us as much evidence as we need of the fact that he has been given kind of carte blanche here to act as, effectively, unelected co-president.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go back to Curtis Yarvin, who you mentioned earlier. This is Yarvin speaking on The New York Times podcast The Interview last month. In this clip, he’s asked about his belief that the Civil War and the end of chattel slavery were bad for the formerly enslaved.

DAVID MARCHESE: But are you seriously arguing that the era of slavery was somehow better than the era —

CURTIS YARVIN: The era of 1865 to 1875 was absolutely — and the war itself wasn’t good, either, but if you look at the living conditions for an African American in the South, they are absolutely at their nadir between 1865 and 1875. They are very, very bad, because, basically, this economic system has been disrupted —

DAVID MARCHESE: But abolition was a necessary step to get through that period towards —

CURTIS YARVIN: So —

DAVID MARCHESE: — to make people free.

CURTIS YARVIN: Sure.

DAVID MARCHESE: Like, I can’t believe I’m arguing this.

CURTIS YARVIN: Brazil — Brazil abolished slavery in the 1880s without a civil war.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was Curtis Yarvin, someone who Vice President JD Vance frequently invokes. And back in 2021, Vance, then Ohio candidate for U.S. Senate, he was interviewed by the conservative Jack Murphy Live podcast. Murphy just asked Vance how to root out wokeism from American institutions.

JD VANCE: There’s this guy Curtis Yarvin, who’s written about some of these things. And so, one is to basically accept that this entire thing is going to fall in on itself, right? … I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left, right? We need like a de-Ba’athification program, but like a de-woke-ification program in the United States, right?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could tell us, Professor Slobodian, who is Curtis Yarvin? You note in your recent New York Review of Books piece, “His idea” — this is quote — “His idea of RAGE — Retire All Government Employees — looks a lot like that of DOGE.” So, who is this guy? Where did he emerge from? And how did he become so influential?

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah, I mean, he was someone who moved to the Bay Area and became a computer programmer, also kind of an amateur poet, and, I guess, most importantly, a pretty widely read blogger in the 2000s, especially the late 2000s, under the name Mencius Moldbug. And he became someone who was kind of giving voice to a nascent kind of what was called neo-reactionary or Dark Enlightenment sentiment in Silicon Valley, which I think combines, as the way I’ve been describing it, a kind of belief in economistic bottom-line thinking and productivity, but then also an idea that what we need to get back to is a proper sense of hierarchy in this country and in the world.

In November-December 1908, at the age of 26, Anthony Mario Ludovici lectured at the University of London on the subject of Nietzsche's philosophy. From the man who later translated Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche's infamous biography of her brother, it comes as no surprise to find statements such as the following: 'The strong will and must discharge their strength, and in doing so, the havoc they may make of other beings in their environment is purely incidental.' In 1967, displaying a remarkable lifelong attachment to ideas that had long since become unfashionable, Ludovici claimed in his last book that 'everywhere in Europe the mob, high and low, has been indoctrinated with the Liberal heresy that heredity plays no part in human breeding, and that therefore special endowments cannot be transmitted from one generation to another'.

In this chapter I discuss the writings of Anthony Ludovici, a man who, despite his many publications (over fifty books and pamphlets, and numerous articles), has been almost totally forgotten. The interest of Ludovici's extreme ideology lies not in 'the fact that he was the only person to espouse the views he did -- at least before 1939 -- but in the fact that he continued to maintain his position until his death in 1971, entirely failing to modify his opinions. Furthermore, the peculiar melange of ideas which went into making Ludovici's ideology cannot easily be labelled with any familiar term. I argue that we should not forget the 'extremes of Englishness' just because its ideas, here represented by Ludovici, did not ultimately inform policy.

While it would be overstating the case to claim that Ludovici's writings were widely influential, he was well known as a public figure, whose ideas, particularly early on in his career, acquired some intellectual currency. But the Whiggish view of history which still dominates interpretations of British fascism -- that its failure was a result of the inherent strength of British parliamentary institutions -- means that he has long been ignored. Ludovici's idiosyncratic blend of Forster-Nietzscheanism, Lamarckianism, social Darwinism, antisemitism, anti-feminism, monarchism and aristocratic conservatism was, however, not as ridiculous to Edwardian minds as it is to ours today; it is easy to dismiss Ludovici as a crank, and therefore miss the fact that many of his ideas chimed in with those being espoused by people on the left as well as on the right certainly before 1914, and even until 1939. I argue that reminding ourselves of the existence of men such as Ludovici -- who was not as marginal as might at first appear -- can help in dispelling the complacency which still surrounds the historiography of British fascism.

-- Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain, by Dan Stone

So, one of the problems of the administrative state is that it has been pursuing equality, and it’s been working under the false assumption that all humans are somehow equal, that in fact there are kind of hierarchies of intelligence, best measured in IQ, which people like Yarvin and increasingly Vance and Trump are seemingly quite obsessed with. It can be measured in things like race — group differences in IQ are, you know, commonly assumed to be real empirical facts in the world of the sort of Silicon Valley right — and, perhaps most importantly, into hierarchies of gender. So, the masculinity component in all of this is kind of impossible to overstate. There is a reason why the sort of apparent scrambling of gender in gender queer and trans movements is so triggering and so terrifying to people in this world. Elon Musk has described the “woke mind virus” as having killed his child, even though his child is very much alive.

So, the project, I think, is really about how, through the mechanisms of the market and the dismantlement of the sort of post-New Deal state, the post-Great Society and civil rights state, we can get back to what they see as a more natural world where men are in charge, white people are in charge, and there is a kind of restoration of the natural order of things. And that sort of wishy-washy treatment of things like slavery is sort of a provocative way of reopening those questions.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Slobodian, this is about both JD Vance and Elon Musk, the question of their stance on the far-right German party AfD. On Friday, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference where he repeatedly attacked Europe on a number of issues. And he, while in Germany, held a 30-minute meeting Friday with the head of Germany’s far-right AfD party, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rebuking Vance for meeting with the AfD ahead of Germany’s election. And, of course, you have Elon Musk repeatedly using his social media platform X to support what many call the neo-Nazi party, or the Nazi-curious party, for those who are more generous.

QUINN SLOBODIAN: Yeah, I mean, the AfD in Germany is actually a really good example of one of these sort of strange bedfellow-type parties that I actually think is sort of unhelpfully described as either neo-Nazi or Nazi-curious. What it actually is is it was founded by ordoliberal economics professors who disliked the way Merkel was handling the eurozone crisis, and thought you needed more monetary discipline and more fiscal discipline. They then created an alliance with basically ethnonationalists, traditionalist members of the so-called New Right, who felt that modernity had produced a fallen world, and we needed to get back to more rooted links to the land and that certain populations belonged in some spaces and not others. And now they have created this kind of this far-right neoliberal party, that Alice Weidel sort of gives voice to when she says that, you know, “We’re actually a libertarian conservative party,” as she said in her Spaces chat with Musk.

The AfD is one of only many far-right parties that now Musk is aggressively platforming. In the last few days, he has promoted Viktor Orbán, Giorgia Meloni, the AfD, and in the past has gone as far as promoting Tommy Robinson, the sort of far-right figure from the U.K. He has adopted not just sort of a tame language of democracy, as Vance tends to be using, but a language as he used in the rally that he zoomed into of “Germany for the Germans” and saying that multiculturalism must not be allowed to dilute the German people. So these are now proper tropes of the far right as such, and indeed tropes of the “great replacement” theory, which suggests that liberals have used welfare policy and refugee policy to buy voters, which can then swamp and dilute the native population. This has now become a common talking point.

The thing that I think is interesting and important, and perhaps a sign of rare optimism these days, is that Germans actually don’t like Elon Musk interfering in their politics. Polls have showed that, of non-AfD voters, you know, well over three-quarters thinks he has no right to butt in. And even among AfD voters, only about half actually wants him to be involved. So, I think what we’re seeing already is a bit of a backlash against his attempt to kind of, you know, play kingmaker in countries, another country that is not his own. The Left Party in Germany has had a surge in recent weeks. They have more people entering the party now than they have since 2009. That’s partially on the back of like a really full-throated anti-fascist call for the defense of democratic principles by the young leaders, the young female leaders of that party. So I think there is a chance here of his belief that he can just, you know, play puppet master globally actually having a boomerang effect and backlashing on his own attempts at manipulation.

AMY GOODMAN: Quinn Slobodian, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of international history at Boston University, author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. We’ll also link to your New York Review of Books headlined “Speed Up the Breakdown.”

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“Gum Up the Works”: David Sirota’s Advice to Democrats on Reversing Trump’s Power Grab
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 21, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/21/ ... transcript

We discuss the first month of President Donald Trump’s second term in office — and the response from the Democratic Party — with journalist David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever. He notes that despite Republicans holding all three branches of the federal government, Trump has mainly used executive orders and other decrees to impose his will instead of using legislation. “They’re trying to create a precedent that presidents cannot be constrained at all,” he says of the party’s strategy. He also faults Democrats for failing to effectively oppose the administration. “What is the Democratic Party for? What does it support? What does it advocate for? There’s not really much of an answer right now.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

One month into Donald Trump’s second presidency, he’s mostly governed through executive orders and carried out his agenda with sweeping cuts by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, the billionaire, and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, all of which has generated a slew of protests, lawsuits, judicial rebukes.



This week, Trump shared an illustration of himself wearing crown, with the headline “Long Live the King” — it looked like a Time magazine cover — as he cheered his administration’s move to end congestion pricing in New York.

“LONG LIVE THE KING!”: Trump’s Claims Power of Monarch in Bid to Halt NY Congestion Pricing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Feb 20, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/20/headlines

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has sued the Trump administration over President Trump’s new order to halt New York City’s congestion pricing program just six weeks after it began. The toll program aimed to reduce traffic in Manhattan while helping to fund mass transit. On Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, ”CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” The White House’s official X account then shared an image of a fake Time magazine cover of Trump wearing a golden crown, also with the headline ”LONG LIVE THE KING.” Separately, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich shared an AI-generated image of Trump wearing a crown and royal mantle.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul responded Wednesday afternoon.

Gov. Kathy Hochul: “I’m here to say New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years, and we are not — we sure as hell are not going to start now.”

On Tuesday, Elon Musk defended his work to gut whole agencies across the federal government in a joint interview with President Trump on Fox News.

ELON MUSK: I think what we’re seeing here is the sort of — the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a court filing from the White House Office of Administration lists Elon Musk as a senior adviser to the president who’s serving as an employee of the White House office, not DOGE, which the White House previously said he was leading.

To discuss this and much more, as Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw at the CPAC summit that just took place, we’re joined by David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, former senior communications adviser and speechwriter for Bernie Sanders. His recent pieces for The Lever are headlined “Trump Just Limited Your Payout for Airline Mishaps,” “Elon Doesn’t Want You to Know His DEI Past,” and “Musk Just Scored More Government Cash While Pushing Education Cuts.”

Well, you’re here for a big podcast convention. You were talking about climate. But talk about what’s happening right now and the level of resistance.

DAVID SIROTA: I think what we have to understand is that — and the question that we have to ask is: Why is Donald Trump behaving the way he’s behaving when his party already controls Congress and the courts? What is the point of trying to do what he’s doing without going through the normal process of legislating? Right? If you want to close down the Department of Education, if you want to close down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the way to try to do that is through legislation, through passing it through Congress, having the law upheld in court. His party controls those institutions. So why hasn’t the White House tried to do that through the normal process?

And I think if you step back, what you see is what they’re trying to do is create the precedent that a president can do whatever a president wants, that it’s not a coequal branch of government, that essentially it is a king, an elected king. And I think they’re relying on the idea that people, or at least their base, doesn’t necessarily know or care about what the difference between a president in a coequal branch of government is versus an elected monarch. They’re trying to create a precedent that presidents cannot be constrained at all.

AMY GOODMAN: And your response to Elon Musk saying, “We’re talking about the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy”? I mean, you watch Fox, and all they’re talking about is laughing about people getting “DOGEd.” They’re cutting the fat out. You’re not hearing about what the services are that are being slashed, sliced and diced across this country.

DAVID SIROTA: This is an old tactic. This reminds me of the Gingrich era. Newt Gingrich, when he rose to power in Congress, would come out and pick out one or two science projects that sounds, on its face, ridiculous. “Oh, the government’s spending $2 million to study cow flatulence. Oh, this means that the entire government is wasteful.” Meanwhile, there’s a reliance that there’s not an understanding of what scientific research ends up developing. And I think they’re applying that across the board.

And we have to ask the question: Well, why? The richest man in the world is also one of the largest government contractors. So there’s an inherent conflict of interest — or, in the case of the Trump administration, I guess, an alignment of interest. The more you cut public services, the more it creates, essentially, the impetus to hire private contractors. And the guy who’s doing the overseeing of the cutting happens to be one of the largest private contractors.

AMY GOODMAN: You recently said on social media, quote, “It’s not really a political party at this point. It’s better understood as a country club, with status perks for its emeritus leaders,” and referring to the Democratic Party, in response to news that former VP, presidential candidate Kamala Harris had signed with CAA to represent her on her post-White House initiatives, including speaking engagements and possible book deals.

DAVID SIROTA: Look, the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to be interested in changing, at least not yet. They reelected their same leaders who oversaw the policy and party positioning that led to Trump’s reelection. That’s the same leadership that led to Trump’s first election in 2016. The party doesn’t seem interested in changing how it approaches its own voters or its own effort to win elections. There’s some lip service to the middle — to the working class, but there’s not really a change in policy.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you make of Senator Sanders now going around the country and speaking in red districts that are most vulnerable? He says, “If we can turn around three,” he says, they’ve ended their extremely narrow lead in the House.

DAVID SIROTA: Yeah, look, I think Bernie Sanders is doing the right thing. It’s an example of what the Democrats at large should be doing, which is actually going into and trying to speak to the disaffected working class, that used to be the base of the Democratic Party.

The problem is that the Democratic Party, its leaders, are caught between the demands of their donors and the demands of voters, which is why so often the Democratic leadership sounds incoherent. If you’re trying to address what voters want, but also trying to enrich or appease your donors, you often sound like you stand for nothing. I mean, can we actually explain or answer the question: What do the Democrats stand for right now, other than, in theory, rhetorically being against Trump, even though they’re giving votes to confirm some of his nominees? Like, I think the average person has trouble even articulating: What is the Democratic Party for? What does it support? What does it advocate for? There’s not really much of an answer right now.

AMY GOODMAN: You had a recent piece on Elon Musk’s previous support for DEI policies at Tesla.

DAVID SIROTA: Yeah. Well, look, only a few years ago, Tesla was touting itself as weaving DEI into its DNA. That’s a quote out of a large report that came out from Tesla. Obviously, the politics have shifted. Donald Trump is trying to demonize DEI as a way to appeal to the working class, and the Democrats haven’t made an effective argument on economics to also try to appeal to the working class. And right now if both parties aren’t really making an economic appeal, then Trump is relying on making an identity appeal.

AMY GOODMAN: In this last 20 seconds, what do you think is most important right now?

DAVID SIROTA: The most important thing is for the Democrats to try to gum up the works, to stop what’s going on. They don’t have a lot of power. And it’s also important to understand that if Donald Trump is going outside of the institutions of government, then the Democrats are going to have to rely on different kinds of tactics that don’t just rely on just press conferences in the U.S. Senate.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s possible Republicans in the House and Senate will turn on Trump?

DAVID SIROTA: I don’t believe it’s going to happen. I just — there’s no historical precedent for the Republicans to bail out on their own president.

AMY GOODMAN: David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, we want to thank you so much for being with us, and we will link to your articles at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

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“Will Universities Surrender or Resist?” Scholar Slams Trump’s Threat to Defund Universities over DEI
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 21, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/21/ ... transcript

-- "U.S. Department of Education's 14-Day Ultimatum on Equal Opportunity: Will Universities Surrender or Resist?"

The Trump administration has issued a two-week ultimatum for schools and universities across the United States to end all programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — or risk losing federal funding. The Department of Education has already canceled some $600 million in grants for teacher training on race, social justice and other topics as part of its crusade against “woke” policies. This comes as President Donald Trump has said he wants to abolish the agency and tapped major Trump donor and former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon to carry out that goal; she is expected to be confirmed by the Senate with little or no Republican opposition. Education scholar Julian Vasquez Heilig, who teaches at Western Michigan University, says Trump’s moves are part of “an attempt to privatize education” in the United States, with DEI used as a wedge to accomplish a larger restructuring of social structures. “Higher education hasn’t faced a crisis like this since potentially McCarthyism.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration has given K-through-12 schools and universities a two-week ultimatum to end DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — initiatives or risk losing federal funding. In a letter sent on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, one week ago, to school administrators, the Education Department barred schools and colleges from, quote, “using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life,” unquote. The Education Department has already canceled some $600 million in grants focused on training teachers on critical race theory, social justice and other related topics. Meanwhile, the department’s Office for Civil Rights has also declared race-based scholarships, cultural centers and even graduation ceremonies illegal.

The president of the American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,600 colleges and universities, said in a statement, quote, “There’s nothing specific enough for us to be able to act on in 14 days unless we just wipe the slate clean.” He added, “Overcompliance, anticipatory compliance, preemptive compliance is not a strategy. The strategy needs to be much more considered, much more nuanced,” unquote.

This comes as Trump’s pick to head the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, cleared a committee vote Thursday, and her nomination now heads to the full Senate, where it’s expected to be approved. Trump has told reporters he wants McMahon to dismantle the Department of Education.

REPORTER: Why nominate Linda McMahon to be the Education Department secretary if you’re going to get rid of the Education Department?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Because I told Linda, “Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.” I want her to put herself out of a job, Education Department.

AMY GOODMAN: Linda McMahon is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and a major Trump donor. During her confirmation hearing earlier this month, she was questioned by Democrat Chris Murphy on Trump’s order banning diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: My son is in a public school. He takes a class called African American history. If you’re running an African American history class, could you perhaps be in violation of this court order — of this executive order?

LINDA McMAHON: I’m not quite certain, and I’d like to look into it further and get back to you on that.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by education scholar Julian Vasquez Heilig, professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan University. His new piece is headlined “U.S. Department of Education’s 14-Day Ultimatum on Equal Opportunity: Will Universities Surrender or Resist?” He also helped organize the coalition Defending the Freedom to Learn and served leader — with the NAACP on education and other issues.

Thanks so much for being with us. It’s great to have you here. Professor, can you start off by talking about the response a week ago, on Valentine’s Day, when university and college presidents across the United States got a letter that said, “End DEI” — and I want to ask you exactly what that means — “in two weeks” —

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — “or lose all of your federal funding”? We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars across the United States.

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Right. Well, first of all, Amy, thank you so much for having me on your show. Just glad, glad to join you.

First, you know, I want to say that I think that the higher education community, also the K-12 community, understands that this letter from the U.S. Department of Education doesn’t carry the force of law. We do know, of course, that what’s happening in Washington, D.C., is that there is uses — they’re using resources, finances, as a lever. So, we’ve seen, for example, funding from the NSF, from the NIH, IES — at Western Michigan University, for example, we’ve lost $20 million in grants in the College of Education and Human Development. And so, they’re really using the power of the purse to try — to attempt to enforce these different — you know, abolishing the Department of Education with this letter.

But I think it’s been really bewildering to K-12 and higher education, which, my understanding, is the goal. I mean, the Office of Management and Budget, the director there has said that that’s really the goal of this blitzkrieg, is for all of these requests to be bewildering. And I know in higher education, it’s been very difficult. And so you have cabinets, presidents, provosts trying to understand what are going to be the impacts of this. You could see six-figure, seven-figure, eight-figure reductions in research funding. Our attempts to find the cure for cancer, to solve the teacher shortage, to create more efficient energy, all those things are under threat, because over the last hundred years or so, higher education has seen large investments from the federal government, and historically, those investments, that search to solve the teacher shortage and create more efficient energy, etc., they didn’t come with strings attached. And now institutions, higher education institutions and K-12 districts are facing millions of dollars in reductions if they don’t pause DEI.

Now, you mentioned in your lead-up, “Well, what is DEI?” And I think it’s important to talk about what DEI is, actually. DEI is not reverse discrimination. What DEI does is, as educators — and I taught fourth grade. I taught ESL. I’ve taught college students, doctoral students. What DEI does is it helps us to create more success for historically marginalized communities. So, we want to ensure that African American students, that when we bring them to our campus, that we graduate them — Latino students, students with disabilities, veterans. It’s a wide spectrum. And so, I think it’s important to understand that DEI is not reverse discrimination. It’s our attempts to ensure success for all students on our campus, close those gaps, those equity gaps, in graduation rates, in retention rates. That’s what DEI work does. That’s why we have Black graduation ceremonies or Mexican American graduation ceremonies. We want to create the climate. We want to create the opportunity for students when they come to us in higher education, when they come to us in our K-12 schools. We want them to be successful. We want all students to be successful, whether they’re Jewish or have disabilities, etc. That’s what DEI is, and so it’s not about reverse discrimination. It’s about student success, faculty success, staff success.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a 2023 video on Donald Trump’s campaign platform website in which he proposes taking, quote, “billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, finding and suing excessively large private university endowments” to create what he calls the American Academy.

DONALD TRUMP: Whether you want lectures on ancient histories or an introduction to financial accounting or training in a skilled trade, the goal will be to deliver it and get it done properly, using study groups, mentors, industry partnerships and the latest breakthrough in computing. This will be a truly top-tier education option for the people. It will be strictly nonpolitical, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed. None of that’s going to be allowed.

Most importantly, the American Academy will compete directly with the existing and very costly four-year university system by granting students degree credentials that the U.S. government and all federal contractors will henceforth recognize. The Academy will award the full and complete equivalent of a bachelor’s degree.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is very significant. Julian Vasquez Heilig, that Trump is proposing an alternative American education system. We already know what happened with his Trump University. He was successfully sued for this for-profit college. But talk about what he is proposing, the American Academy.

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: So, first, I want to say — and then I’ll directly address the question. First, I want to say that universities are not ideological. So, do we have folks on our campus who are on the right or on the left? Do we have students who are on the right or on the left? Do we have students who are apolitical? Absolutely. But universities are not ideological. They’re places of learning. They’re the places where the difficult conversations happen. So, I think that’s the first thing to say.

All of the politicians that you see making pronouncements about universities, they all attended universities, some of them the elite Ivy Leagues — the president and vice president, for example. So, I think that’s important to say.

I think the second important to say is that this is expected. I want to take you back in history, OK, be a scholar for a moment here. If you think about the dictator Pinochet and what he did after he took over the country of Chile, he understood that as a part of the autocratic playbook, that you have to privately control and privatize education. And so you see a push for this in K-12 education right now with school vouchers, which is that we want education to be privatized. It’s not a public good. And so what you see here, I believe, is an attempt to privatize education. And I’m sure it will be for profit. And, you know, he didn’t speak to that. And so, this is a part of that sort of classic playbook, because when something is in the public realm, it’s a public good. And so, what you see here is really an attempt to privatize education, by all indications.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, who was architect of Project 2025, the radical playbook to seize executive power, radically reshape federal agencies. Last year, undercover reporters with the Center for Climate Reporting recorded Vought discussing his plan.

RUSSELL VOUGHT: I am opposed to the Department of Education because I think it’s a department of critical race theory.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Vought speaking on television.

I want to go now, in response to the threats to DEI programs and LGBTQ outreach from the Trump administration, to the president of Mount Holyoke, Danielle Holley, who recently said, “To basically comply with things that are not within our values simply because we feel a threat of investigation is something that we should not be doing as the higher education community. Instead, we need to just say 'No! Here's what we stand for. We will continue to stand for this. And if you believe that you can legally challenge our mission or our values, that’s up to you to try to do,’” the president of Mount Holyoke said, who herself is African American.

Julian Vasquez Heilig, if you can tell us what is happening right now across the country?

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: This whole idea of obeying in advance, and, you know, because of the very real threat —

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — of losing so much money and funding, that will hurt the very people that these university presidents are trying to protect.

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Yeah, yes. First, let me just address Vought. So, you know, he also said, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them not to want to go to work, because, increasingly, we want them viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down. We want them to be put in trauma.” So I think that helps us understand the blitzkrieg from political actors right now, is that they really want to put higher education in trauma. That’s almost a direct quote from from Vought. So, I think that helps sort of contextualize.

Now, we have some difficult decisions to make as higher education leaders, as K-12 leaders, some very difficult decisions, because, as I mentioned, over the last hundred years, universities have become very dependent on solving the world’s issues through research, and so that means there’s millions of dollars that the federal government has been providing without strings attached. Well, now there’s going to be strings attached.

But who’s to say that diversity is where these conversations stop? So, what if, after diversity, the question is, “Well, we don’t want you to have unions,” or “We don’t want you to have a College of Fine Arts, because we don’t think that that’s appropriate”?

And so, when there’s strings attached — so, universities have to make two decisions. One, there will have to be courage, like the president of Mount Holyoke or the president at Wesleyan in Connecticut, or, two, patronage. So, in talking with some folks, some scholars at the University of Michigan, yesterday, there’s really those two choices for higher education institutions. And so, there’s a side where we’re going to have to innovate and rethink how higher education is funded, or we’re going to have to succumb to a system of patronage where the federal government — you know, in four years, a Democrat might come in as president and say, “You won’t receive federal funding unless you have DEI programs.” So, that’s really the road we’re headed down.

And then, I think one — just one final thought, which is that when we hire leaders in higher education, we typically look at their pedigree. Did they go to Harvard or Berkeley or Stanford? Were they department chairs or deans? But now we have to have additional criteria when we’re selecting our leaders, our deans, our department chairs. It involves courage. It involves morality. It involves empathy. So, we need special kinds of leaders in this very difficult time. I would argue that higher education hasn’t faced a crisis like this since potentially McCarthyism. And so, we need a different kind of leader to address these modern challenges also.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, are there lawsuits being planned? There’s one week to go after this letter.

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Yeah. Well, there’s already multiple lawsuits. For example, my understanding is that the NIH funding has been paused in court, from a report that I read from President Ono.

AMY GOODMAN: The freeze has been paused.

JULIAN VASQUEZ HEILIG: Yeah, the freeze has been paused. Yeah, exactly. So, there is. I know that the APLU and the AAU — so, these are the conglomerates of the different kinds of institutions — that they’re involved in litigation, too. I suspect that you’ll see litigation from the civil rights community. And I think that’s part of the strategy for educators. And, you know, I think it’s important for us to understand that academics, educators, we have to create alliances with students and engage in political and legal advocacy, and research and document and publicize how these things are actually impacting our institutions and who they’re impacting.

And then I think it’s also — one final thought is that we have to leverage our professional associations or organizations, accrediting bodies. There’s a reason why accrediting bodies are also being targeted, because accrediting bodies set the standards for universities. So, it’s very important that we create these coalitions, and so that as this pressure continues on higher education and K-12, that we can respond, because the number one priority of our institutions is student success. And I don’t believe — my argument is that none of this is in the best interest of students.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Vasquez Heilig, we thank you so much for joining us, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, professor of educational leadership, research and technology at Western Michigan University. We’ll link to your new piece, “U.S. Department of Education’s 14-Day Ultimatum on Equal Opportunity: Will Universities Surrender or Resist?”

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https://cloakinginequity.com/2025/02/16 ... or-resist/

Cloaking Inequity: U.S. Department of Education’s 14-Day Ultimatum on Equal Opportunity: Will Universities Surrender or Resist?
by Craig Trainor
Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
United States Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20202
February 16, 2025

Dear Acting Assistant Secretary Trainor,

I write to you today to critically examine the claims made in your February 14, 2025, letter regarding race-conscious policies in education. Your letter, purportedly presented as a reaffirmation of nondiscrimination obligations, instead fundamentally misrepresents the critical need to improve access and graduation rates for minoritized students. It disregards decades of legal precedent supporting diversity in education, unjustly targets the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and promotes a regressive agenda that undermines student success. It is alarming that the Department of Education, an entity tasked with ensuring educational success, chose a lawyer and member of the Federalist Society as an Acting Assistant Secretary, to dismantle programs that seek to increase the success of historically marginalized communities in higher education.

Mischaracterization of Race-Conscious Policies

Your assertion that American educational institutions have engaged in “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences” is not only misleading but reflects a deep and purposeful misunderstanding of race-conscious admissions and equity initiatives. The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) indeed placed restrictions on the explicit use of race in admissions, but it did not, as your letter suggests, render all equity-based initiatives illegal. Programs designed to mitigate the effects of societal barriers—such as targeted outreach, mentorship, and holistic review processes—remain lawful and essential to fostering diverse educational environments.

At every institution in which I have served across four states Texas, California, Kentucky and Michigan, we have implemented successful race-conscious policies that have demonstrably increased success for underrepresented students and maintained our high academic standards. Our targeted outreach programs have helped ensure that students from marginalized communities are aware of and prepared for higher education opportunities. Additionally, mentorship programs connecting students with faculty and professionals have significantly improved retention and graduation rates among students of color. By dismantling such initiatives, the Department will reverse meaningful progress and undermining efforts that have directly contributed to closing achievement gaps.

Your letter further states, “Federal law thus prohibits covered entities from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.” However, this sweeping declaration ignores the lawful and necessary efforts many institutions undertake to ensure historically underrepresented students have access to the same opportunities as their peers to improve their retention and graduation rates. By conflating race-conscious strategies with discriminatory practices, the Department deliberately distorts the purpose and impact of these initiatives and will cause great harm to student success.

The Fallacy of “Reverse Discrimination”

Your letter implies that white and Asian students are being systematically discriminated against in favor of Black and Latino students. This argument echoes the rhetoric of those who weaponized the concept of “reverse discrimination” to dismantle affirmative action. However, your claim that “an individual’s race may never be used against him” ignores the reality that for centuries, race has been used against Black and Brown individuals to limit their educational and professional opportunities and we live with that legacy today. It still happens extensively and on purpose, take a look at the literature on the disparities in school finance and educational opportunities authored by economist Bruce Baker. Equity policies are not about disadvantaging one group but ensuring that historically marginalized communities have fair access to educational opportunities and achieve success in higher education.

Your claim that “a school may not use students’ personal essays, writing samples, participation in extracurriculars, or other cues as a means of determining or predicting a student’s race and favoring or disfavoring such students” is an attempt to intimidate institutions into eliminating holistic review processes that recognize the complexity of a student’s lived experience. To argue that race must be ignored in all contexts ignores the profound and documented impact that racial identity has on a student’s educational journey and access to resources. This statement clearly attacks the US Supreme Court’s Chief Justice. As John Roberts noted in the SFFA decision, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” His statement directly contradicts the Department’s rigid and overly broad interpretation, making it clear that race can still be a relevant factor in an applicant’s personal story and experiences.

Diversity as a Compelling Interest

The letter erroneously asserts that “nebulous concepts like racial balancing and diversity are not compelling interests.” This stance contradicts decades of precedent, including Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), in which the Supreme Court recognized the educational benefits of diversity as a compelling government interest. The Court affirmed that diverse educational environments promote cross-racial understanding, reduce racial isolation, and prepare students for a pluralistic society. To dismiss diversity as “nebulous” is to ignore the wealth of research and practice supporting its benefits in both education and the workforce.

The benefits of diversity in higher education extend beyond the classroom. Studies have shown that students educated in diverse environments are better prepared for the modern workforce, exhibit stronger critical thinking skills, and demonstrate greater civic engagement. Research by Sylvia Hurtado, my former mentor at the University of Michigan, has extensively documented how diverse learning environments enhance educational outcomes by fostering deeper cognitive engagement, promoting leadership skills, and reducing racial biases. The assertion that diversity efforts are merely political in nature disregards these well-documented positive outcomes. Moreover, the Department’s attempt to erase diversity efforts ignores the fact that a lack of diversity has serious consequences for educational institutions, workforce readiness, and national social cohesion.

The Misrepresentation of DEI Initiatives

Your letter claims that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs “preference certain racial groups” and “teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens.” This characterization is not only false but represents a deliberate effort to discredit educators committed to fostering equitable learning environments for ALL students. DEI initiatives are designed to address persistent disparities and create spaces where students of all backgrounds—regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status—can thrive.

The claim that DEI programs “stigmatize” students misrepresents their purpose and ignores the fact that minoritized students have long endured systemic stigmatization—well before DEI initiatives existed. The stigma you reference is not a product of these programs but a continuation of racism itself. For example, slavery is not Black history; it is white history—an essential truth that must be acknowledged in education. Teaching about historical oppression and systemic inequities is not about assigning moral burdens but about fostering an accurate and honest understanding of our shared past.

Conclusion

We recognize the strategy being employed here. As one Polish minister aptly described former President Trump’s approach, the tactic being used is what the Russians call razvedka boyem—reconnaissance through battle: pushing forward to see what resistance arises before adjusting the approach accordingly. The Department’s effort to curtail diversity initiatives appears to be a similar attempt to gauge the response of institutions before proceeding with further restrictive measures. We must not only recognize this maneuver but also respond with unwavering commitment to equity and inclusion.

The Department’s arbitrary 14-day compliance ultimatum is an aggressive overreach intended to intimidate institutions into immediate submission. This threat of federal funding loss is a coercive tactic designed to suppress dissent and discourage thoughtful institutional responses and constitutional freedom of speech. I urge universities and colleges to resist this unlawful directive and stand firm in their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

I fully understand that some universities will immediately comply with your demands. However, these institutions lack the courage to challenge your problematic tendencies and defend the fundamental principles of academic freedom and equity. The institutions that yield without resistance betray their mission and the students they serve.

I implore the higher education community to recognize this moment as a test of its resolve. This is a time for courage and support of policies and practices that improve our students’ success, not capitulation.

Julian Vasquez Heilig

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