The Times this morning has an apparent explanation for why DOGE operatives were so eager to take control of the unified government payment system at the Treasury: they wanted to be able to shut off payments to USAID projects without going through USAID personnel. They say this is based on emails between Elon-backed Trump appointees now at Treasury. I assume this is accurate in itself but I wouldn’t be sure this is the only reason and perhaps not even the main reason. But it’s the only non-speculative explanation we have so far.
David Kurtz notes this morning that the judge overseeing a lawsuit aimed at halting the actions at Treasury is almost certainly being given false information about what’s actually happening, though as David notes we can’t say for certain the Justice Department lawyers representing the administration are affirmatively lying. (They may use weasel words; they may not themselves know; many possibilities.) Those lawyers continue to insist that the Musk operatives at Treasury only have “read-only” access to the computers. As Wired and I have independently reported, that’s not true. They have full administrator privileges and, as I have reported, they’ve already altered the code.
It’s not clear to me that “read only” is even a privilege category on the system in question. It’s occurred to me that they’re saying this and meaning that the operatives do not have authorization to alter data. To the best of my knowledge they have not yet altered data or rejected any payments. So under one creative and I think self-made definition you could find a way for that to be true.
This would answer at least one pretty big question: just why are they doing this, what are they trying to accomplish? It’s a discussion I’ve had with several people. The changes made to the code base create a new pathway to reject payments and one that is further upstream.
Let’s visualize it like this: imagine the software as a waterfall with a series of stop-off points on the way down where different things can be done to the data at each point. Let’s say there are ten stop-off points in the waterfall, from 1 at the top to 10 at the bottom (this framework is purely for illustration of the concept). Let’s say the current “deny payment” stop-off point is at point 7. The changes to the code create another denial of payment stop-off point upstream. Let’s say that’s at stop-off point 3. I believe under the current set up, payments can only be stopped if a payee is on some other restriction list. But big picture: a new path in the code to deny payments, and one further upstream. It also changes the way these denials are recorded for reasons I am unaware of.
But why would you do this? If you control the agencies, which you do, you can just cut off the payments at the agency level. You could also just deny the payments in the existing way through this payment system though that might require creating a new category of reason to deny payments. I’m not sure on that point.
What it comes down to is that it’s not really clear why you’d do this unless you don’t plan on controlling the system for that long. If you’re going to be in charge of everything, why jury-rig things like this? Your appointee runs USAID. So just tell them no more payments. (Basically tell them to stop writing checks rather than putting a hold on the account at the bank.) Or maybe you put existing contractors on what I understand (possibly I’m oversimplifying how this part of the program works) is a list of entities who can’t be paid money. Everything about what seems to have been done makes a lot more sense as a short-term smash-and-grab type plan than anything you would do if you planned on actually running things on a long term basis.
Something like this is what I’d imagined this must be for when I first heard about this: you’re fanning out through the government. It’s big and you can’t be everywhere at once or understand all the org charts. According to published reports, DOGE is made up of just a few dozen people. So you want a way to shut down parts of the government without waiting to do it in an organized let alone a legal way. At least according to the Times, this was the idea for USAID and at least part of the reason why this was done. Maybe they weren’t sure they’d be able to decapitate and stand down USAID as successfully as they have, and they wanted a way to kill it through a cut-off of payments from Treasury.
I emphasize that these last points are genuine questions, an attempt to reconcile the Times reporting with Wired’s and my own. And I should emphasize again that I at least am not aware of any actual denials of payments happening.
NOTE: As I have for 25 years, I welcome your responses, which you can send to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo dot com. If you’re a government worker or anyone else who has sensitive or confidential information to share about what’s happening inside the federal government you can reach me via encrypted mail at joshtpm (at) protonmail dot com or via Signal at joshtpm dot 99. Please only use these encrypted channels for confidential communication.
