- Via the NYT: Elon Musk Says His Efficiency Team Will Tackle F.A.A. Technology. What could go wrong?
- Via ProPublica: “We Feel Terrorized”: What EPA Employees Say About the Decision to Stay or Go Under Trump. What could go wrong?
- Via ABC News: Bondi, as new AG, launches ‘Weaponization Working Group’ to review officials who investigated Trump. Oh, you get the idea.
- Via Slate: Pam Bondi Instructs Trump DOJ to Criminally Investigate Companies That Do DEI. The piece is paywalled, but you get the idea, and there is a link to the relevant DOJ memo. And look, if the Trump administration wants to shutter DEI programs, that is within the president’s purview. But seeking to scare private entities into complying via threats is not only inappropriate, it is a bad use of resources.
- Via Politico: The US is ‘no longer the America we used to know,’ warns Germany’s Merz. Decades of reputation burning up before our eyes.
- Via Wired: US Shoppers Face Fees of Up to $50 or More to Get Packages From China. Keeping prices down, dontcha know!
- Via WaPo: Republican ire at USAID finds an unusual target: Politico. This is just so much silliness wherein people think they know how to read spreadsheets and glom on to something they don’t understand. Worse, the White House Press Secretary is propagating the lies and working to demonize the press.
- Via CNN: Rubio walks back State Department’s claim of free Panama Canal transit for US government vessels. Diplomacy in action!
Friday Tabs
MAGAing America edition.
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16 responses to “Friday Tabs”
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Re: Politico
I first heard about this from The Dispatch, via Yahoo.
The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance as it looks to curb unnecessary federal spending across the government. At the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—the primary U.S. agency responsible for providing humanitarian assistance abroad—hundreds of staff have been placed on administrative leave as the White House considers shuttering the agency’s operations entirely. With USAID in the national headlines, a viral post is now claiming that Politico LLC, the company that publishes Politico and several other publications, received substantial funds from the agency. “Fun Fact: @Politico received USAID funds. Everything makes sense now,” Kyle Becker, a former Fox News producer, wrote on X.
The post, which had been viewed more than 2 million times as of midday Wednesday, includes a screenshot showing that Politico LLC received $8.1 million from the agency. In a follow-up post, Becker linked USAID funding freezes to a payroll issue at the company earlier this week. “The ‘technical error’ was reportedly resolved,” Becker wrote, referencing an email sent to Politico employees explaining that the issue had been caused by a system glitch. “The error of sending U.S. taxpayer money to a biased, partisan, establishment publication, however, is being fixed.”
The claim was picked up by right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson, who called the news “the biggest scandal in news media history” in an X post with more than 3 million views.
The WaPo piece does not mention the origin, Kyle Becker, but does mention Benny Johnson.
These two clowns were suspended by IJR for publishing a conspiracy theory involving Obama and the federal judge who blocked part of Trump 1’s travel ban. Johnson was Becker’s supervisor, and IJR warned t Johnson that the story may be promoting a conspiracy theory. Johnson published it anyway.
Becker subsequently resigned. Johnson did not. But he was eventually demoted for being a terrible manager (read: office terrorist).
Not to mention that Johnson has been fired from multiple outlets for repeated instances of plagiarism.
If one wants to connect the dots and say these two are coordinating misinformation, or even disinformation, I would understand it. But I would recommend caution; I would rather not commit the same sin.
These two ‘independent journalists’ are too undisciplined and toxic to be employed by publications with actual editorial standards. No reputable publication risks their reputation to endorse them.
In my view, they were never journalists, more like employed bloggers.
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Diplomacy in action indeed. Way to really gain respect overseas.
Panama’s President Raúl Mulino said he was “very surprised” by the US State Department’s claim and criticized it as an “intolerable” falsehood.
“[The State Department] are making an important and institutional statement from the entity that governs the foreign policy of the United States under the President of the United States based on a falsehood, and that is intolerable. Simply and plainly intolerable,” Mulino said at a news conference earlier on Thursday.
Mulino expressed Panama’s “absolute rejection” of maintaining bilateral relations with the US “on the basis of lies and falsehoods.”
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@Kurtz:
It looks like a whole lot of BS claims from Trump and his minions are originated by something some bozo has posted to X.
I will look at links to X posts, apart from that I no longer look at that site.
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Ah, iterative testing of new air traffic control systems. Launch Mark I with little or no testing, then see how many fatal air accidents you have. Retool and try mark II.
BTW, on a completely unrelated note, Texla has the highest crash rate of all car brands.
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If Musk were actually simply trying to simplify and modernize computer systems within the government, I think B) There would be a giant disruption, with stuff breaking, B) He would probably be successful, and C) He would have accomplished something that has proven to be very, very hard. The tales of how typical government contractors do these things that came out of the Obamacare website rollout demonstrate that what those contractors do has systemic problems, not all of which are their fault.
This is contingent on an assumption of good faith on the part of Musk, which once upon a time I would have been willing to make, but I sure am not willing to now.
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@Jay L Gischer: FWIW, I am in favor, at least in the abstract of a massive modernization of the federal computer system.
But having watched Elon with Twitter, I have little confidence in his ability to fix things.
And I definitely do not see him as a good faith actor.
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@Jay L Gischer: Anyone who is familiar with any of the government’s systems, in any capacity, knows they need to be upgraded. But, as I have repeatedly stated on numerous occasions, it will take a TON of money and a TON of time to *successfully* update these systems.
Elon Musk has approximately zero chance of doing this correctly without massive disruptions.
I need to find an independent verification of this, but it wouldn’t surprise me: I saw that in his first week of carnage, DOGE has spent upwards of $7 million already.
Anyone want to guess how Musk’s contracts are going to go? Will, say, StarLink be tapped as the go-to vendor for the FAA overhaul?
The American public is being robbed by this charlatan, enabled by the toddler-in-chief who really, really does not look like he wants the job anyway, so he’s doing the bare minimum while allowing Musk to run amok.
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The roll-out of the Healthcare.gov site was a disaster in largw part because the different contractors were not effectively collaborating, coordinating, and communicating. Shove the DOGE developers in a time machine, set the dials to the Obama Administration, and put them in charge. The result would have been even worse, even if the Muskins would be more technically proficient. Working on large federal projects, especially ones that integrate a lot of systems, requires experience and skill that they don’t have.
Which is even more reason to be worried about whatever the hell they’re doing.
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@Steven L. Taylor:
Modernizing a massive, and massively interlinked, system of databases is self-evidently a good idea, in the abstract.
But massively difficult and expensive in practice, when you are considering systems that MUST run with 100% reliability (more resilience = lower efficiency), and probably rely on links kluged up over decades between various highly customised databases on different operating systems, protocols, and programming languages involving arcane and under-documented code.Basically, you’d need to create a whole new infrastructure and databases running in parallel to the extant one, and test massively for data integrity and resilience.
And then migrate over while keeping the old systems running in case of failure of the new.Getting Congress to fund that looks likely to be big ask.
Getting the current crop of DOGE-loons to implement effectively, even more so. -
The US is ‘no longer the America we used to know,’ warns Germany’s Merz.
And please note: Merz is a conservative, being leader of the CDU/CSU.
Also, Politico editors screw up: Merz is NOT chancellor.
He’s very likely to be so AFTER the upcoming elections.This is a rather massive indicator: even the mainstream European right is looking at the US and thinking “what the f@ck?”
Even some sensible UK Tories are quietly worried.
Despite the leadership, and the “party in the media”, who mostly see the issue as another opportunity to bash Starmer and woo the overly-online Reform inclined.
Because Badenoch is a dimwit, and Jenrick would sell his granny for electoral advantage. -
Trump has ordered the GSA to terminate every single subscription it has with a media company. I expect this is a precursor to an order that it subscribe to Truth Social and rely upon it exclusively as the source of all information and analysis. Once bedded down at the GSA, the same orders will be issued across all agencies.
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@Ken_L:
Wait for the food fight with Fox News. -
@JohnSF: Agreed on all counts.
One of the challenges at the university where I worked was that all of the systems were antiquated and there was a huge challenge and expense in upgrading them. So the solution tended to be limping along and various bandaids. Compared to the federal government, this was a minuscule problem.
Any real changes would be massively expensive, manpower intensive, and take a lot of time. This DOGE stuff is nonsense.
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@Steven L. Taylor:
iirc, various Federal offices have pleaded with Congress for funding for a systematic systems upgrade/replacement for a decade or more.
And every time, presented with the likely bill, Congress has just blanched, and mumbled along the lines of “oh, do just your best”.
And the executive has failed to force the issue.Sooner or later, the whole thing is going to have to be addressed.
But that will require a Congress sensible about spending and budgeting.
*waves at increased taxes*Also, university student records and finance databases.
*shrieks*
*runs away*
