“They say that, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings’
Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king”

– Bob Dylan, Sweetheart Like You

One of my and our central points of interest is the identity of these “Musk operatives” who are actually doing these things we’re hearing about throughout the federal and especially the top administrative agencies (OPM, OMB, GAO, etc.). Notably some of the best reporting on this is being done at Wired. That’s not surprising. It plays to key strengths: it’s a top flight publication, heavily plugged into the tech and Silicon Valley worlds where these guys come from, and they do the kind of granular reporting that just isn’t what the big national/DC publications generally do. This article is a key read. Who are these guys? They’re generally between 19 and 24 years of age, often college dropouts who left to go into tech and various kinds of algorithmic financial trading, in most cases interns at Thiel’s or Musk’s companies, at least one “Thiel fellow.”

In other words, hard right, techno-red-pilled bros, who now have access to things like your social security checks (whether you get them or not), your financial and, likely in some cases, medical records and at least the ability to shut down whole sections of the federal government at will by simply turning off their funding spigots. (Not good!) It sounds crazy and absurd to think that individual people could have that kind of power absent anything the law recognizes. But this is what it means when you’re this far up (or down, choose your metaphor) in the brain stem of the national government. This is what it means when you have access to the central Treasury Department payment network. You can simply turn off a spigot of funding. (I’ve now had it described to me precisely how you do it.) If you have that access, whether it’s legal or not isn’t relevant. The best analogy I can provide is that there’s some person at your bank who could just change a setting and suddenly all your checks and payments would be rejected and your funds would be frozen. Now imagine if “you” is NIH or USAID or … well, Social Security.

The central point in my post yesterday was trying to balance two facts: First, voters made a decision last November to shut Democrats out of all but a series of powers on the margins within the federal government. There’s no hyper-exertion or Mike Pence “if he has courage” that undoes that fact. Second, an effective opposition needs to provide the public not only with some sense of “hope” but also the outlines of a plan. Given point one that plan doesn’t need to be and probably can’t be terribly detailed. But a basic sense that we are now here and we’re going to get there. And here are the tools we’re going to use to get from A to B. And we are going to get to B and it’s going to take all of us to get there. See yesterday’s post for more on this.

There’s a separate and pretty critical part of this equation I want to discuss.

Over the last few days, as I’ve struggled with everyone else to stay on top of all this, I’ve tried to balance two things. One of those is trying to keep people focused on what an opposition can actually do and what it can’t. The other is that you can’t simply be, in effect, yelling at people who are bewildered and scared. I saw a DNC member who was at that cattle call Thursday saying how weird it was hearing elected officials talking like these were normal times when actually the house is burning down around everyone. So, how to reconcile primal screams and concrete plans, and, in the midst of that, try to make some progress on thinking outside the box? How to counteract and defeat performative displays of powerlessness?

Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve tried to drive home the point that the Democrats in Congress mostly can’t do anything to stop what the Trump administration is doing. That’s not a matter of weakness or bad strategy. Voters decided in November to put all federal power in the hands of Republicans. That’s done. It already happened. Many of the cries for Democrats to “do something” amount to thinking that if Democrats get energized and forceful enough they can undo the consequences of that election, as though there’s some “off” lever that if you reach really high you can grab ahold of and make all of this stop. You might as well demand Kamala Harris show some gumption and start issuing her own executive orders.

This emphatically does not mean Democrats are doing all they can or that there’s nothing they can do. But it is critical at every level to understand what the menu of actions includes. As much as this might seem pedantic, it’s critical to think very clearly about what an opposition does and what its tools are. Otherwise you’re just getting riled up demanding your fighters run at full speed, head first into the castle wall.

Fundamentally this is a battle over public opinion. And there are three areas of action to engage that battle.

I don’t know the answer to this. I raise it here to focus us on the question, even though I don’t have the answer to the question. I’d also invite anyone who has a clearer understanding of the federal statutes to get in touch and explain them to me. As I noted below, Trump White House officials this morning ordered staff at the Office of Personnel Management (the federal HR office) to prepare plans to cut the agency’s staff and the programs it administers by 70%. And to do it fast. Executive staff at the agency have the weekend to devise the plans.

Now, is this legal? It would seem to me that reducing the staff size of a key government agency by 70% raises all the same equities and legal problems as impoundment (refusing to spend money that is obligated to be spent by laws passed by Congress). Is that true? I don’t see how it wouldn’t be. But my logic isn’t controlling here. Curious to hear from those who know these aspects of federal law and also the Impoundment Act. (Just this afternoon a federal district judge issued a restraining order blocking the budget freezes.)

According to a report from The Federal News Network out a half hour ago, at a meeting this morning Trump administration officials told staff of the Office of Personnel Management to prepare plans for a 70% cut in staff and programs at the agency. Agency executives were tasked with working over the weekend to prepare plans for the 70% staffing cut with final plans ready no later than Monday. Remember that OPM is essentially the HR department for the federal government — covering not only the immediate mechanics of employment but administering retirement and health care benefits as well as other programs. OPM is the source of those “resignation” emails and it’s the agency which appears to be most directly under the control of people working at the direction of Elon Musk.

As you’ve no doubt seen the White House attempt to institute an illegal, unilateral government shutdown in the form of freezing all federal government grants, loans and financial assistance collapsed this afternoon when the Office of Management and Budget rescinded the “memo” on which the attempt was based. It’s a major defeat — technically, a faceplant — for the White House just over a week into the presidency. Trying to recover from the embarrassment, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted on Twitter that the freeze is ongoing on the basis of the earlier executive orders targeting “wokeness” which indefinitely froze funding of things like cancer research and foreign aid. Those comments were apparently part of what got a judge this afternoon to grant a restraining order since the White House has left unclear what it is and is not currently freezing.