Or Boeing. Boeing certainly seems to not have an issue with taking care of people who are causing them problems.

With the way things are going, I fully expect them to make a beneficial deal that includes Elon because fuck everything

Yep, mercenaries get rowdy when they don’t get paid, just ask Constantinopole.

Can only hope he goes for them and not just the small businesses and academia. Something tells me he’ll go for civil facing departments and generally avoid DOD

He doesn’t. However, that is only according to this pesky technicality called “the law”. If the President does not want to follow the law, and appoints people who also do not care for following the law, then the law stops being a thing to look for for authority; and Musk can do this because Trump says he can.

In the short term, expect this to be shut down by the courts. In the medium term, a bunch of these orders will end up in front of the Supreme Court that unironically said “if the president does it, it might be illegal, but he is absolutely immune from prosecution”. Even if the SC come down on the only legally defensible position, Trump could still say “them and what army”

This is 100% a coup by Trump to centralize power in the executive. When staging a coup, “authority” is merely an inconvenience.

Everyone is not “just complying,” two security directors of USAID were dismissed when they tried to stop the musky henchmen.

We do have safeguards. They’re all being removed one by one by the party in charge. I’m guessing that some just comply because they figure it’s inevitable. On the other hand we have a long history of allowing people in power to do what they want. Bush walked into Iraq, we’ve had many military actions in many countries but haven’t declared war since world war II.

Or maybe Musk is just pushing the boundaries before he’s deported. LOL.

EDIT: changed WWIII to the intended WWII.

Because our government is filled with a bunch of geriatric FUCKS who don’t give a shit and whose whole personality is ‘fuck you I got mine’. There are checks and balances and this could be stopped if anyone was fucking useful to any capacity. We shouldn’t have to rise up in the streets or deal with this as that’s the whole god damn point of the gov. But because we allowed corporate interests to infiltrate and line the pockets of these assholes, along with there being no term limits, this is what we get.

Trump’s government is basically pay-to-play and Elon paid the most so he gets to do whatever he wants.

So I was looking at this today. It looks like a combination of serendipity and malicious behavior. The US Digital Service was effectively leaderless on Jan 20 when it was renamed DOGE. That’s the serendipity. But it was already “excepted service” under the president instead of a congressionally chartered agency. So they could (and likely would have) simply fire any leadership.

USDS’ purpose was to fix computer systems all over the government. And it was doing a great job of that. But in order to do that it does get access other agencies don’t. This is where the malicious part comes in. Trump turns them into DOGE and links them with lawyers and HR people. They use their existing access authorization to get into systems and then do HR stuff instead of systems engineering. Furthermore they aren’t currently funded, which means they shouldn’t be operating at all. Their last funding ran out in September.

Trump can just appoint people to it because he has a wide ranging authority to do temporary hires. Another malicious catch though is Musk is clearly operating DOGE but he hasn’t been put on payroll.

This is illegal, and there are lawsuits already filed. But they’re counting on people not understanding the intricacies of the different kinds of federal service to enact their plan. Which to me is pretty transparently to force all agencies to submit to DOGE as a stand in for the White House and an end run around all laws about the civil service. Basically an unconstitutional power grab by the President.

Because we’re all just people and at the end of the day some person is agreeing to not dispense the funds or not provide aid or to round up individuals … Until there is meaningful pushback by people who actually are carrying this bullshit out it won’t change.

Idk same as how the Nazis managed the Holocaust, at the end of the day thousands of individuals agreed and did their part to exterminate the Jews. Same as how Israel now is committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza with their military and all those individuals are carrying out their orders.

Authority, like many other things in our society, is an emphemeral concept we all agree to. Authority is given when we agree to abide by what that authority says. Same like our laws, sure we have laws against things but it’s not like those actually mean anything if they’re not obeyed by the majority. Nothing stopping you from doming Elon with the a large brick if you got one and can get close enough, you know what I mean?

Because yall wanted this by voting for it

Eeeeeeehhhhh, I’m not sure trading one coup for another is the solution here