Today's Aaron

So, hang on a minute - are Republicans in Congress actually surprised that some of their main drivers and top-tier benefactors are moving closer to full blown White Nationalism?

Say what now? Where have these guys been?

Today's Agent Provocateur

They get more and more desperate for that Reichstag Fire thingie.

Today's Hawk

We are the majority.

America's Most Dangerous

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How It Happens

It's Not Hypocrisy

The authoritarian gangs mocked Trayvon Martin, and George Floyd, and Paul Pelosi, and Melissa Hortman, and and and. Now they've got their dander up because of Charlie Kirk. But that's not about hypocrisy. That's about normalizing and reinforcing "Us vs The Other".

ie:

MAGA's guy is a martyr deserving of sainthood, those other guys are Undesirables destined for the camps and extermination.

And all of you not toeing the line will suffer.

Now That's A Headline

Nobody has made it clear what crime problem we've got on The National Mall, and in Georgetown and NW DC.

Trump is looking to provoke a violent reaction, but if that doesn't materialize, he thinks he still "wins" by getting us accustomed to seeing big force in the streets.

Trump crime crackdown deploys troops in Washington's safest sites

Summary

• National Guard troops deployed in tourist district, not high-crime areas
• City leaders suggest it's more about a show of force by Trump
• Some troops say they doubt they will be involved in fighting crime

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Hundreds of National Guard soldiers in military fatigues and combat boots mingled with tourists, posed for selfies, and treated themselves to ice cream from food trucks on Thursday along Washington's National Mall, one of the safest parts of America's capital.

On occasion an angry local would hurl verbal abuse at them, but the soldiers simply shrugged and carried on what appeared to be an undemanding assignment.

Outside the National Museum of African American History and Culture, five members of the West Virginia National Guard were standing on the street corner far away from the city's crime hot spots.

"It's boring. We're not really doing much," said Sergeant Fox, who declined to give his first name.

Fox is among almost 2,000 troops, including 1,200 from six Republican-led states, who are being deployed in Washington as part of an extraordinary militarization inside the Democratic-led city.

The soldiers, some of whom told Reuters they did not get involved in arrests, are officially in Washington to support a federal crackdown on what President Donald Trump calls a crime epidemic. But that depiction appears to run counter to the fact that crime rates overall have shrunk in recent years.

That disconnect, combined with the troop concentration near the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and in view of the U.S. Capitol, highlights criticism by the city's Democratic leaders that this massive deployment is more a show of power by Trump, rather than a serious effort to fight crime.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said this week she did not think the arrival of troops was about tackling crime. She also expressed concern about the presence of "an armed militia in the nation's capital."

The soldiers seen by Reuters on Thursday were not armed, but the Pentagon said on Friday the troops will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons.

By contrast with central Washington, residents of Ward 8 in the city's southeast - the area with the highest crime rate - said there was not a guardsman in sight. With the ward's murder rate dwarfing that of most other neighborhoods, many locals said they would welcome troops on their streets.

"I haven't seen any. This is where they need to be," said Shawana Turner, 50, a housing case manager on a Ward 8 street.

The Joint Task Force for the District of Columbia, which is leading the crime crackdown, said where National Guard troops are deployed is based on requests from law enforcement agencies.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said teams of federal law enforcement officials are making arrests in Washington's highest crime areas every night.

"The National Guard is not making arrests at this time, their role is to protect federal assets - including law enforcement officers - and provide a visible law enforcement presence," she said.

The troops are one element of a surge of local and federal law enforcement agents in Washington, including the FBI, who have conducted active arrest operations since Trump announced earlier this month that he was federalizing law enforcement responsibility in Washington.

RARE DEPLOYMENTS

Deploying troops on American streets is rare and controversial. National Guard have been sent to Washington in recent years, to help bolster security at presidential inaugurations and during protests, including the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
But the city's declining crime rate, coupled with the limited involvement of the troops in crime fighting, has raised questions about the political motivations behind the current deployment.
Randy Manner, a retired National Guard major general, said he believed the deployment is a step towards Trump sending National Guard troops into other Democratic-led cities.
"Not in our lifetimes has a president said that I'm going to use uniformed soldiers to reduce crime," Manner told Reuters.

"There will be soldiers in other cities in the not-too-distant future. We're turning this into a militarized environment, and it's extremely sad."

During a visit to a police base in Washington on Thursday, Trump said his law enforcement crackdown will "go onto other places." Earlier this month Trump suggested he could shift his focus to cities including Chicago and New York.

To be sure, the presence of the guard in the heart of Washington was welcomed by some visitors.

As troops on the National Mall mingled with tourists from the U.S. and abroad, a group of guardsmen from Mississippi were walking alongside Anu Pokharel, his wife, and two daughters aged 8 and 5.

The software engineer, 43, who lived in Washington in the 1990s, was visiting the city with his family from Boston.

He said he supported the deployment. "It feels cleaner and safer," he said.

PRINTED STATEMENTS

As they strolled around central Washington, some soldiers told Reuters that they did not expect to get involved in arrests.

Specialist Nevaeh Lekanudos, part of West Virginia's National Guard, was outside a Metro station in the National Mall with several fellow guard members. She said she had not assisted in crime incidents or arrests.

Asked if she thought that is likely, she said, "Honestly at this rate I don't believe so." She added by being deployed in the National Mall, "it frees up the local law enforcement to do what they need to do."

Reuters spoke to 20 National Guard members, from West Virginia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Governors from two other Republican-led states, Ohio and Louisiana, have also sent National Guard troops at Trump's request.

Most of the soldiers told Reuters they had been instructed not to talk to the press. Instead they had all been issued with a printed statement they produced from their pockets. It states that they are in the city to support "district and federal law enforcement by keeping DC beautiful and safe."

Our History Is Now

Lessons of the past are there for us to apply to what's happening now.

First they came for the illegals,

but I'm not an illegal, so I didn't speak up for them.

Then they came for the law firms and the media companies,

but I'm not a lawyer or a journalist, so I didn't speak up for them.

Then they came for the universities,

but I'm not a student or a professor or a researcher so I didn't speak up for them.

Then they came for the mayors and the governors,

but I'm not a politician so I didn't speak up for them.

When they finally turn and come for you and me - and they will because they always do -

who will be left to speak up for us?

So Do It Already

When you're going thru hell, keep going.

Horny For - Something

It sucks that The Daily Show gets better as the slide towards plutocracy accelerates.

Another Step Down The Slope

What Trump is doing doesn't have to mean the dark and foreboding Nazi shit that it definitely looks to be.

But if it isn't that Nazi shit, it shouldn't look so much like that Nazi shit.

And all that really bad Nazi shit didn't start with gas chambers and crematoria - it started with "common sense" ideas like restoring law and order, and taking back the streets.

ACLU Condemns Trump Executive Order Targeting Disabled and Unhoused People

WASHINGTON – President Trump signed an executive order today directing states to criminalize unhoused people and institutionalize people with mental health disabilities and substance use disorder.

The order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets,” directs the Justice Department to expand indefinite forced treatment for people with mental health disabilities or substance use disorder, and those living on the street who “cannot care for themselves.” The order also purports to eliminate federal funding for evidence-based programs, like harm reduction and housing first, that save lives, and directs federal funds toward cities and states that criminalize substance use disorder, punish people for sleeping outdoors, or enforce other laws targeting unhoused people.

The order also calls for sweeping federal data collection on unhoused people and those with mental health disabilities, raising serious concerns about surveillance, privacy, and how such data could be used to justify further criminalization. Instead of funding services or support, the administration is prioritizing profiling and control.

Scout Katovich, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality, issued the following statement in response to the executive order:

“From the so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that will strip health care from millions to this dangerous executive order, every action this administration takes displays remarkable disdain for the rights and dignity of vulnerable people.

“Pushing people into locked institutions and forcing treatment won’t solve homelessness or support people with disabilities. The exact opposite is true – institutions are dangerous and deadly, and forced treatment doesn’t work. We need safe, decent, and affordable housing as well as equal access to medical care and voluntary, community-based mental health and evidence-based substance use treatment from trusted providers. But instead of investing in these proven solutions, President Trump is blaming individuals for systemic failures and doubling down on policies that punish people with nowhere else to go – all after signing a law that decimates Medicaid, the number one payer for addiction and mental health services.

“Homelessness is a policy failure. Weaponizing federal funding to fuel cruel and ineffective approaches to homelessness won’t solve this crisis.”

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose and Policy.  Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.  The number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the previous administration — 274,224 — was the highest ever recorded.  The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.  Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes.  An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions.  The Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.

Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.  Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.  My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.

Sec. 2.  Restoring Civil Commitment.  (a)  The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall take appropriate action to:

(i)   seek, in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States’ policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time; and

(ii)  provide assistance to State and local governments, through technical guidance, grants, or other legally available means, for the identification, adoption, and implementation of maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment, and “step-down” treatment standards that allow for the appropriate commitment and treatment of individuals with mental illness who pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.

Sec. 3.  Fighting Vagrancy on America’s Streets.  (a)  The Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of Transportation shall take immediate steps to assess their discretionary grant programs and determine whether priority for those grants may be given to grantees in States and municipalities that actively meet the below criteria, to the maximum extent permitted by law:

(i)    enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use;

(ii)   enforce prohibitions on urban camping and loitering;

(iii)  enforce prohibitions on urban squatting;

(iv)   enforce, and where necessary, adopt, standards that address individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, or who are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves, through assisted outpatient treatment or by moving them into treatment centers or other appropriate facilities via civil commitment or other available means, to the maximum extent permitted by law; or

(v)    substantially implement and comply with, to the extent required, the registration and notification obligations of the Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act, particularly in the case of registered sex offenders with no fixed address, including by adequately mapping and checking the location of homeless sex offenders.

(b)  The Attorney General shall:

(i)    ensure that homeless individuals arrested for Federal crimes are evaluated, consistent with 18 U.S.C. 4248, to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment;

(ii)   take all necessary steps to ensure the availability of funds under the Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance program to support, as consistent with 34 U.S.C. 50101 et seq., encampment removal efforts in areas for which public safety is at risk and State and local resources are inadequate;

(iii)  assess Federal resources to determine whether they may be directed toward ensuring, to the extent permitted by law, that detainees with serious mental illness are not released into the public because of a lack of forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, State, and Federal jails or hospitals; and

(iv)   enhance requirements that prisons and residential reentry centers that are under the authority of the Attorney General or receive funding from the Attorney General require in-custody housing release plans and, to the maximum extent practicable, require individuals to comply.

Sec. 4.  Redirecting Federal Resources Toward Effective Methods of Addressing Homelessness.  (a)  The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take appropriate action to:

(i)    ensure that discretionary grants issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery fund evidence-based programs and do not fund programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called “harm reduction” or “safe consumption” efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm;

(ii)   provide technical assistance to assisted outpatient treatment programs for individuals with serious mental illness or addiction during and after the civil commitment process focused on shifting such individuals off of the streets and public programs and into private housing and support networks; and

(iii)  ensure that Federal funds for Federally Qualified Health Centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics reduce rather than promote homelessness by supporting, to the maximum extent permitted by law, comprehensive services for individuals with serious mental illness and substance use disorder, including crisis intervention services.

(b)  The Attorney General shall prioritize available funding to support the expansion of drug courts and mental health courts for individuals for which such diversion serves public safety.

Sec. 5.  Increasing Accountability and Safety in America’s Homelessness Programs.  (a)  The Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall take appropriate actions to increase accountability in their provision of, and grants awarded for, homelessness assistance and transitional living programs.  These actions shall include, to the extent permitted by law, ending support for “housing first” policies that deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency; increasing competition among grantees through broadening the applicant pool; and holding grantees to higher standards of effectiveness in reducing homelessness and increasing public safety.  

(b)  The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall, as appropriate, take steps to require recipients of Federal housing and homelessness assistance to increase requirements that persons participating in the recipients’ programs who suffer from substance use disorder or serious mental illness use substance abuse treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation.

(c)  With respect to recipients of Federal housing and homelessness assistance that operate drug injection sites or “safe consumption sites,” knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia, or permit the use or distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control:

(i)   the Attorney General shall review whether such recipients are in violation of Federal law, including 21 U.S.C. 856, and bring civil or criminal actions in appropriate cases; and

(ii)  the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in coordination with the Attorney General, shall review whether such recipients are in violation of the terms of the programs pursuant to which they receive Federal housing and homelessness assistance and freeze their assistance as appropriate.

(d)  The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall take appropriate measures and revise regulations as necessary to allow, where permissible under applicable law, federally funded programs to exclusively house women and children and to stop sex offenders who receive homelessness assistance through such programs from being housed with unrelated children. 

(e)  The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall, as appropriate and to the extent permitted by law:

(i)   allow or require the recipients of Federal funding for homelessness assistance to collect health-related information that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development identifies as necessary to the effective and efficient operation of the funding program from all persons to whom such assistance is provided; and

(ii)  require those funding recipients to share such data with law enforcement authorities in circumstances permitted by law and to use the collected health data to provide appropriate medical care to individuals with mental health diagnoses or to connect individuals to public health resources.

Sec. 6.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d)  The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,

July 24, 2025.

A Question For A.I.

From The Bulwark

An oldie but a goodie from Nov 18, 2024

It’s Time to Consider the Worst-Case Scenario
Let’s go to the Bad Place together.

Jonathan V. Last

Until today I’ve resisted writing about the worst-case scenario for Trump’s second term. Instead, I’ve written (twice) about the best-case scenario.

But the conventional wisdom seems to have settled on the view that, Sure, this is all very bad. But also: It’s ultimately fine.

I view this as a dangerous failure of imagination.

So I’m going to lay out two big ideas for you today. The first is something like the worst-case scenario. It isn’t the literal worst-case scenario. The real worst case is always some version of “nuclear holocaust and everyone dies.” Instead what I’m going to describe is a 90th percentile variant: A set of outcomes that are the worst of the unlikely-but-not-black-swan timeline.

The second idea is that I’m going to try to persuade you that if Trump were actively pursuing such a set of outcomes, it would look very much like what we’re already seeing, right now.

In short, I’m going to ask you to expand your mind and peek over the horizon with me. But be warned: This isn’t going to be any fun.

Buckle up.

1. Forests and Trees

Last week Freddie deBoer wrote that liberals shouldn’t panic because, sure, Trump would be bad. But he wouldn’t be that bad.

A lot of awful stuff is going to happen. Some immediate pain points include the replacement of Lina Khan at the FTC with a pliable pro-corporate stooge, the dismantling of Joe Biden’s excellent NLRB, and an immediate gutting of federal wildlife and environmental protections. A lot worse will follow, very likely including even more tax cuts, which are the real reason so many upper-crust types held their nose and voted for Trump. (At the end of the day, there’s always enough will in Congress to cut taxes.) The incoherence that’s inherent to Trump’s foreign policy means that an honest-to-go shooting war might be possible. No relief will be coming for the Rust Belt or any other part of the United States hurt by deindustrialization. This all sucks and there’s going to be some dark times ahead.

At the same time, recent doomsaying has a lot of that usual Trump-era liberal chauvinism in it, where the relentless panic seems competitive and performative. . . . Yes, things are bad, but they’ve been bad before, and as destructive as the first Trump term was it wasn’t as terrible as people predicted. We’ve also had a worse presidential administration in clear living memory.

Is this a joke? Because I’m sorry but if you look at Trump’s second term and put “wildlife and environmental protections” in your top hundred concerns then something is deeply wrong with your priorities.

And the assertion that Trump’s first term “wasn’t as terrible as people predicted”?

He fired the federal government’s pandemic response team and then talked about injecting people with bleach while a global pandemic killed a million fucking Americans.

Then he assembled an armed mob and directed them to march on the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the duly elected incoming president from taking power.

If anyone had predicted either of those outcomes in 2016, they would have been dismissed as barking mad. The reality of Trump 1.0 turned out to be every bit the Worst-Case Scenario 1.0.

DeBoer is, like many people grappling with Trump 2.0, making a bunch of category errors and failing to imagine what a true worst-case scenario could look like.

And let me tell you: It has nothing to do with tax cuts, the FTC, and the NLRB.

Today's WTF

Seriously - what the fuck are we doing?

At CPAC yesterday

Gov Pritzker

It took the Nazis 1 month, 2 days, 8 hours, and 40 minutes to dismantle Germany's constitutional democracy.

JB Pritzker, sounding the alarm. Fascism is here, y'all. 2025 America is 1934 Germany. 😳👇 pic.twitter.com/XZOSx5ILUX

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) February 20, 2025

The road to tyranny

is crowded
with people telling us
we're overreacting. 

Driving On

It has to be pretty obvious by now that everything Trump and Elon are doing is aimed at pushing towards that magic moment - The Constitutional Crisis.

I don't think we're there yet, but I can't deny we're practically on the brink. 

Trump's gang is attempting to line up as many issues as possible at the edge of the abyss so it would only take a fairly minor instigating incident to get enough people amped up - so it could all crash over the edge - seemingly as if it was inevitable and nobody's really to blame.

There could still be a Reichstag Fire, but if you have all the pieces in place, you don't really need it. In fact, you don't want that. You just pull the last lever, and all the other levers are activated, and away it goes, practically all by itself.

You want people to go fascist a little at a time, so it feels like a seduction instead of a rape.

Anyway, here's another step towards the edge. 

Fourth judge blocks Trump’s birthright executive order

A fourth federal judge blocked President Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship in the U.S., yet another blow to the president’s controversial idea.

In a pair of lawsuits, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin agreed that a group of 19 states and the District of Columbia as well as nonprofit organizations were “exceedingly likely” to prevail on the merits of their claims against the Trump administration.

“It is difficult to imagine a government or public interest that could outweigh the harms established by the plaintiffs here,” Sorokin wrote. “Perhaps that is why the defendants have identified none. Instead, they point only to the Executive Branch’s discretion in matters of immigration.”

Sorokin argued that birthright citizenship is guaranteed by 14th Amendment in the Constitution and has been moved “beyond the bounds” of executive authority from the president.

The attorneys representing an anonymous mother and immigrant groups celebrated the judge’s decision.

“We are gratified by today’s ruling,” Oren Sellstrom, the litigation director for Lawyers for Civil Rights, said in a statement. “Birthright citizenship is a sacred right granted by our Constitution, and the President cannot change that with the stroke of a pen.”

Hegseth responds to blowback from Ukraine, NATO remarks

On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order narrowing birthright citizenship by limiting the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship guarantee to exclude children born in the U.S. to parents without permanent legal status.

Sorokin’s ruling joins him with judges in several other states who have blocked Trump’s executive order.

Just days ago, a judge in New Hampshire granted an injunction. Two nearly identical injunctions were granted by two other judges, both criticizing the decision and protecting birthright citizenship across the country, at least temporarily.

The legal battle kicked off immediately after Trump signed the executive order. The original injunction, set forth by a judge appointed by former President Reagan, was set to expire when the two near-identical injunctions came in.

A 10th lawsuit was filed Thursday afternoon challenging Trump’s order, this time from the New York Immigration Coalition.

In his ruling, Sorokin pointed to the 1898 Supreme Court decision that allowed birthright citizenship and noted that the Trump administration could try to revisit that case, but it would have to be brought to the Supreme Court. Still, Sorokin said there have been no presidents in the past who have had issue with the more than a century-old ruling.

The judge slammed the Trump administration for not having a “legitimate interest” for the order and said it has not attempted to demonstrate how the continuation of birthright citizenship would harm the American public. The judge also pointed out that birthright stood under Trump’s first term.

It's The Unitary Executive, Stupid

American Bar Association:

Misty Roundtree - JustLaw

The Unitary Executive

In American law, the unitary executive theory is a Constitutional law theory according to which the President of the United States has sole authority over the executive branch. It is "an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House". The theory often comes up in jurisprudential disagreements about the president's ability to remove employees within the executive branch; transparency and access to information; discretion over the implementation of new laws; and the ability to influence agencies' rule-making. There is disagreement about the doctrine's strength and scope, with more expansive versions of the theory becoming the focus of modern political debate. These expansive versions are controversial for both constitutional and practical reasons. Since the Reagan administration, the Supreme Court has embraced a stronger unitary executive, which has been championed primarily by its conservative justices, the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation.

The theory is largely based on the Vesting Clause, which singularly grants the president with the "Executive Power" and places the office atop the executive branch. Critics debate over how much power and discretion the vesting clause gives a president, and emphasize other countermeasures in the Constitution that provide checks and balances on executive power.

The Commander in Chief Clause has also been interpreted to reinforce the unitary executive theory, as it makes the president the highest ranking officer of the United States Armed Forces.

Historically, as part of the campaign to support ratification, Alexander Hamilton contrasted the powers of the presidency and that of the King of Great Britain. Namely, the King exercised powers in military affairs that would be delegated to Congress. In the 2020s, the Supreme Court held that, regarding the powers granted by the vesting clause, "the entire 'executive Power' belongs to the President alone".

Fuck You, Elmo

Somebody tell those fuckwads to keep their grubby fingers off my stuff.

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE’s Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.

US Treasury Department and White House officials have repeatedly denied that technologists associated with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had the ability to rewrite the code of the payment system through which the vast majority of federal spending flows. WIRED reporting shows, however, that at the time these statements were made, a DOGE operative did in fact have write access. Not only that, but sources tell WIRED that at least one note was added to Treasury records indicating that he no longer had write access before senior IT staff stated it was actually rescinded.

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE technologist, was recently installed at the Treasury Department as a special government employee. One of a number of young men identified by WIRED who have little to no government experience but are currently associated with DOGE, Elez previously worked for SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and X, Musk’s social media company. Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal inquired about his connections to “a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.”

As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veteran’s pay.

Over the last week, the nuts and bolts of DOGE’s access to the Treasury has been at the center of an escalating crisis.

On January 31, David Lebryk, the most senior career civil servant in the Treasury, announced he would retire; he had been placed on administrative leave after refusing to give Musk’s DOGE team access to the federal payment system. The next morning, sources tell WIRED, Elez was granted read and write access to PAM and SPS.

On February 3, Politico reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Republican lawmakers in the House Financial Services Committee that Musk and DOGE didn’t have control over key Treasury systems. The same day, The New York Times reported that Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that DOGE’s access was “read-only.”

Are you a current or former employee at the Treasury or Bureau of the Fiscal Service? Or other government tech worker? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporters securely on Signal at velliott88.18, dmehro.89, leahfeiger.86, and timmarchman.01.

The significance of this is that the ability to alter the code on these systems would in theory give a DOGE technologist—and, by extension, Musk, President Donald Trump, or other actors—the capability to, among other things, illegally cut off Congressionally authorized payments to specific individuals or entities. (CNN reported on Thursday that Musk associates had demanded that Treasury pause authorized payments to USAID, precipitating Lebryk’s resignation.)

On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.

Sources tell WIRED that by afternoon of the next day, February 5, Elez’s access had been changed to “read-only” from both read and code-writing privileges.

That same day, a federal judge granted an order to temporarily restrict DOGE staffers from accessing and changing Treasury payment system information, following a lawsuit alleging the Treasury Department provided “Elon Musk or other individuals associated with DOGE” with access to the payment systems, and that this access violated federal privacy laws. The order specifically provided a carve-out for two individuals: Krause and Elez. At a court hearing later that day, Department of Justice lawyer Bradley Humphreys asserted that the order said their access would be “read-only.”

“It’s a distinction without a difference,” a source told WIRED. Referring specifically to the PAM, through which $4.7 trillion flowed in fiscal year 2024, they said Elez should not have had “access to this almost $5 trillion payment flow, even if it’s ‘read-only.’ None of this should be happening.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“People will be held accountable for the crimes they’re committing in this coup attempt,” Wyden tells WIRED. “I’m not letting up on my investigation of what these Musk hatchet men are up to.”

Today's Belle

This may be what we have to do - use Trump's favorite tactic against him.

ie: Delay, appeal, delay, appeal, delay, appeal ... repeat as needed.

Strangling