Now An Update On Elon Musk And His Band Of Pubeless Basement Dwellers!
Who the hell is running this thing? What are they doing? And why?
The mystery of the Elon Musk chainsaw squad continues!
Who are these creeps? While ProPublica has been keeping a tracker of the various Musk-company infiltrators, tech-startup squids, and Heritage Foundation unfuckables who have been infesting the various government agencies, Trumpistan itself has been loath to publicly say.
But it’s not Musk, Trump’s government lawyers swear! “Special Employee” Musk’s name may be the Canary M. Burns at the top of the org chart, and he may be Tweeting 24 hours a day about what “we” at DOGE are doing. But the Department Of Government Efficiency isn’t legally a government department, even as it takes $39 million of scraped-together government cash. And since Musk hasn’t been officially hired, he’s not supposed to be doing any actual work besides giving Trump his sage advice. And neither he nor Trump legally have any authority to override Congress and decide how money is spent, which they know and are actively choosing to ignore, at least until the Supreme Court (possibly) stops them.
Musk sure isn’t hanging out in some smelly Social Security office basement, he is too busy Xitting a hundred times a day, when he isn’t busy forgetting his kid on a stage or passing his sperm around.
So whose hands are actually (unlawfully) wielding the spigot of the government payment systems, deciding which people to fire? Who’s opening the digital barn door for the rats to root around in taxes, student loans, Social Security statements, the CIA’s payroll, etc., and doing things so hinky that yesterday 21 government tech workers resigned instead of agreeing to participate? Who was posting that DOGE “Wall of Receipts” that turned out to be riddled with billions in “mistakes,” and then quietly deleted it?
The government has been stalling to avoid giving any kind of answer, either because not even government lawyers are actually being told what is going on, and/or because the sooner people are named, the sooner those people could be more directly ordered by a judge to cut it the fuck out or else, and go ask Daddy Trump to ask Congress to make you a real department.
But there is now one official name, thanks to Karoline Levitt. The filler in her top lip may be less lumpy than usual, and her lipstick is mostly inside her liplines for the first time ever, but is she happy? NO, she is fucking more pissed than ever that reporters are asking her questions.
“Can you tell us who the administrator of DOGE is?”
A: Elon Musk is overseeing DOGE, and there’s some career officials, there’s some appointees, and I’m not going to reveal the name of that individual, except maybe to you later, but we’re incredibly transparent kthanxbye!
Later Leavitt did finally make with a name, it was Amy Gleason, a nurse-turned-technology-product-officer who served under Obama and Biden, whose LinkedIn lists her as a US Digital Services senior adviser. Then Leavitt fumed that she had so told the stupid reporters that already, as if it was not completely obvious that she had not and that was the whole reason they were asking.
“Everybody knew and we said who she was to all of you because you are hounds in the media who are so obsessed with this for some reason. So, in the effort of transparency, we told you who that person is.”
It wasn’t just new news to reporters, but also apparently a surprise to Gleason, who was on vacation in Mexico at the time.
Meanwhile in court, government lawyers have continued to be all hurr durr, who, whut?
Almost two weeks ago, federal Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the administration to resume funding to USAID, which owes like $2 billion dollars to organizations for food aid and paychecks. But in a phone hearing yesterday, government lawyer Indraneel Sur refused to say if his order had been followed (spoiler, it hasn’t, and USAID workers are still stranded and not being paid what they’re owed around the globe):
“I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this,” puzzled the judge. “Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before February 13?”
“I’m not in a position to answer that.”
“We're 12 days in and you're here representing the government [...] and you can't answer me whether any funds that you've kind of acknowledged are covered by the court's order have been unfrozen?”
“All I can do, really, is say that the preparations are underway for the joint status report on compliance,” Sur said.
The judge was unimpressed at the existence of some future report, and gave the government until the end of today to start paying up. Marco Rubio even backtracked and issued a waiver for humanitarian aid, but as of now, the payment system is still down. The government filed an appeal, and we shall see what happens if DOGE refuses to comply, or possibly even can’t comply because Big Balls forgot the passwords.
Meanwhile, according to Wired, a former Musk employee named Riccardo Biasini has been inserting some kind of code into a program called AutoRIF to help DOGE fire people. Biasini was also listed as the main point of contact in that government-wide email demanding that employees list five things they did in the past week, which a bunch of agencies told their people to just ignore. Trump clarified: “It's somewhat voluntary. But it's also, if you don't get answer, I guess you get fired.”
Is the chaos the point? Do they have no fucking idea what they are doing? Yes!
Why are they doing it? To punish enemies of the Project 2025/techbro agenda! To make everybody in government scared and miserable! To give Musk a competitive advantage! To have blackmail material! Take your pick. And somebody’s got to find the cash for billionaires to keep paying less in taxes than schoolteachers, and to keep subsidizing Elon, king of the parasite class.
Until next time!
[Wired / NPR / ProPublica]
Clusterfuckeritry at its finest.
“Why are you SO OBSESSED with learning what I’m hiding from you?” — every cheater ever born