[h197BQcV]

They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI, SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI.

It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential and critical production system.

Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on this.

Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.

[bee_rider]

Like Democratic elected officials? They lost. They have no power. They don’t control any branch of government.

They have as much ability to pass laws as you or I personally do. They have as much ability to hand down a Supreme Court or direct law enforcement as you or I personally do. None. Where are we? Complaining on social media I guess.

I’m quite frustrated why my elected officials as well but it is kind of hard to blame them when we don’t give them any actual power to wield.

[maximilianburke]

Sure, but there's other things they can do. They can all stop trying to achieve bipartisan support on things, as the republicans do when they're in the minority. Senators can withdraw their unanimous consent. They can vote against everything. They can drag a bunch of reporters over to Treasury and start loudly asking questions

It sounds like some are finding a clue, like the ones who stomped down to USAID with reporters in tow today. They need to do more of this.

Just because they can't pass legislation doesn't mean they are out of ideas.

What you can do is write to or call them. Ask them to vote no on every senate confirmation. Ask them to not provide unanimous consent. Ask them to make a scene. Demand answers!

[SamBam]

> They can vote against everything.

Have they voted on a single thing yet except the Laken Riley Act? (Which they probably shouldn't have done, but anyway.) This administration is not waiting on Congress to do anything.

But that aside, I agree that they need to start getting back attention. Being absolutely silent except for individuals saying things that are only reported on Bluesky is not enough to be taking back control of attention.

[maximilianburke]

> Have they voted on a single thing yet except the Laken Riley Act?

I mean on things like confirmations, but when bills start coming up reps need to go full on toddler mode and say no to everything.

They need to read the Mitch McConnell book on gumming up the works of government and grind everything to a halt until the madness stops.

> But that aside, I agree that they need to start getting back attention. Being absolutely silent except for individuals saying things that are only reported on Bluesky is not enough to be taking back control of attention.

I completely agree. Social media doesn't help anything, unless they're live streaming themselves daring the people obstructing Treasury to arrest them.

This isn't a "business as usual" moment, this is a five-alarm-fire moment.

[bufferoverflow]

And why did they lose?

[ashoeafoot]

They ignored economic problems for a majority of the population similar to the republicans for 20 years and focused on projects(wars) and culture war topics that are big mostly for the wealthy elite offspring of the ever shrinking middle class. They are by definition unable to act, all they want, left,right,center, is to conserve longer,slow down the decay.

[theossuary]

Propaganda, mostly. Conservatives have gained control of most Media outlets, and have been using them to launder consent. It's incredible that we've given Democrats absolutely no power, they can do literally nothing, and yet they're still somehow to blame for what Republicans are doing.

[latency-guy2]

Which ones?

Democrats received more money than Republicans from big tech and media for a very long time, including the most recent presidential election. Are big media stupid for donating more to their enemies than who they purportedly support?

Your other option is admitting that Democrats had previously owned the media and doing precisely the thing you're accusing Conservatives of doing. You definitely cannot claim they did not seeing the checks written out to DNC and other PACs alongside the board seats from previous administrations.

[bufferoverflow]

I doubt it was propaganda. If you look at the polls, the most important issues have been the economy, the immigration and the violent crime. All 3 of which have been absolutely disastrous for the Biden/Harris administration.

And people voted accordingly, and correctly.

Biden's approval rating is 39%, disapproval at 58%.

https://www.cnn.com/polling/approval-rating-poll-of-polls

[bee_rider]

Polling on particular issues can be shifted by propaganda, so this isn’t a particularly strong argument against the idea.

Although, I’m not sure what propaganda really means in this context anyway, I mean, “the economy” is a pretty abstract thing so people engage with it mostly through reporting of various sorts. The decision of what aspects of the economy to focus on could be seen as propaganda.

The admin plays in a global economy which is ridiculously complex, so there’s always room for it to be doing as well as possible when my guy is in charge, underperform expectations when the bad guy is in charge.

[bufferoverflow]

When we speak about these 3 issues, there's no need for any propaganda.

Violent crime is out of control.

Illegal immigration is out of control.

Purchasing power of the population went down a lot, while average salaries haven't grown (or dropped significantly in some areas).

[umeshunni]

https://www.wsj.com/politics/democrats-have-a-new-leader-but...

Good read on that topic

[tim333]

I was thinking of a theory that from evolutionary instinct people want to be king of their castle, secure against the enemy tribes and having a happy family - prince meets his princess has kids etc. The Democrat woke principles go against that rather - the rival tribes will take your job because you're the wrong skin color or a bunch crossed over the open border, your prince and princess stuff is outdated because male and female is replaced by gender fluidity and trans etc.

I don't have a strong opinion personally but I don't think it's a vote winner. The dems probably should have gone with a popular mainstream candidate like Shapiro say rather the the pro woke, most left voting in the senate Kamala.

[freitasm]

> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.

You mean the same Democrats who were not given a majority on neither legislative houses, nor the Presidency?

Some people voted against their best interests. Consequences.

[daedrdev]

The democrats have effectively no power. They control neither the house, senate, or presidency, the courts have become more conservative, etc. They can only talk. The filibuster will prevent new laws, but that isn't much when the federal government acts according to the presidency, and the filibuster does not prevent government appointments

[dml2135]

And the filibuster is nothing more than a polite restriction that the majority of the senate places on themselves — they are free to remove it if they wish.

[cma]

I doubt they will maintain the filibuster

[PhunkyPhil]

I guess Elon believes that long wait times for government services is because of an O(n^3) function somewhere...

> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition

I think because this is so unprecedented the structures to oversee simply don't exist. The article mentions that congress has no mechanisms for oversight, and Elon is moving too quickly in this area for any checks to take place.

[lukev]

The courts are just now beginning to order injuctions and restraining orders, for the stuff that happened last week. The process seems to lag by 2-3 business days. So hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more this week.

How the administration responds to those is going to define how this constitutional crisis unfolds. And it is a constitutional crisis: congress unambiguously has the power of the purse, not the executive.

If Trump gets away with this, it isn't clear that Congress has any power at all.

[bagels]

The executive is just going to ignore any court orders.

[SamBam]

It's utterly wrong to give Elon any benefit of the doubt in terms of his motives right now.

He's helping destroy the Federal government because doing so aligns with his interests as a billionaire.

[bobbylarrybobby]

The democrats were there on Election Day. They were shown the door.

[gadders]

They should try coming up with some popular policies and winning elections.

[sunshowers]

Policies don't really determine elections in this age -- the only thing that determines them is people's brains being cooked.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Policies do a great deal to determine elections - American political parties are more polarized by policy now than they've ever been. It only seems otherwise because there's a lot of people who don't consider opposition to their policy objectives legitimate, and thus diagnose it as cooked-brain syndrome rather than attempting to understand and compromise.

[sunshowers]

People's policy preferences are downstream of how cooked their brains are. So it's not really policies that are determining it, it's the fact that their brains are cooked through constant exposure to bad things. If their brains are uncooked through constant exposure to good things, then their policy preferences will also change.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Now I'm not sure what we're talking about. If you postulate that brains can be "cooked" and "uncooked" in response to new information, doesn't "cooked" just mean "persuaded"? I definitely agree that my policy preferences would be more dominant if people spent more time ingesting the good arguments and good evidence that convinced me to hold them.

[sunshowers]

That's fair -- "cooked" does imply an increase in entropy that can't be reversed. I think it sadly is irreversible in some people, but many others can be brought back (you're already starting to see a backlash to Trump).

Being exposed to the arguments over and over, repeatedly, probably matters more than their quality. That's what I was going for with "cooked", since "persuaded" isn't quite the right word for it.

[chihuahua]

No, they must talk about nothing but identity politics for the next 4 years, surely that is the best way to gain majorities in the Senate and House.

[mkoubaa]

That's certainly one way to get a Trump third term

[chihuahua]

I have a feeling that's a part of how we got a 2nd Trump term.

[hashishen]

I would look to c-span for some accurate real time reactions from dems

https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/congressional...

[bb88]

> Where are the Democrats in all of this?

I think there's a fear they'll end up on the Kash Patel FBI enemies list:

https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemie...

[bilbo0s]

Democrats can oppose, but they don’t have any votes. All 3 branches of government are controlled by Republicans.

So, yeah. I guess we got the government we voted for? And since it’s a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the government we deserve?

Maybe it gets better later in the administration? That’s my hope anyway.

[arrosenberg]

> I guess we got the government we voted for? And since it’s a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the government we deserve?

Well, we voted based on the only two options that were shoved down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people on the planet. I don't personally think we deserve this, why would we? That said, if we don't do something, it won't get better.

[bilbo0s]

we voted based on the only two options that were shoved down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people on the planet

Well, we should have made a system that didn’t allow the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.

Not trying to be flip, I’m just trying to point out that it still all comes back to us in the end. We just have to hope for the best at this point. Buyer’s remorse is not gonna change the actions these people are likely to take.

I do agree with you when you say, something needs to be done. If these pres-vice pres pairings are the best the current system could come up with, then obviously there is a need to add some new aspects to the system that might encourage more competence in the candidates it produces.

[gameman144]

> Well, we should have made a system that didn’t allow the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.

This feels correct-ish, but also pretty unrealistic. If you're born into a system where you have to choose between getting slapped and getting stabbed, then obviously the system shouldn't have been made that way -- that doesn't change the fact that it is that way, and you have to act within that system regardless of what ought to be the system instead.

[arrosenberg]

I agree to an extent. Most of us are either still young, or just getting our bearings and seeing the problems as adults in the last 10 or so years. I feel comfortable saying that, knowing the demographics of the site. Most of us had little-to-no ability to shape the current situation. Our window has just opened.

[spencerflem]

or closed forever

[spencerflem]

We didn't make the system, some slavers hundreds of years ago did.

It seems like we won't have to worry about the current system much longer though

[philjohn]

No, but enough people voted for the party that put the supreme court justices in place who ruled on citizens united over the years.

Voting isn't a one time thing, it has repercussions that can be felt decades later (see shortages of ATC because of the actions of Reagan in the 80's).

[spencerflem]

I don't disagree, but I also don't see how that's a contradiction

[krapp]

We had two options, and we chose the greater evil. We absolutely deserve what's coming.

[mythrwy]

Increased prosperity, intelligent leadership and lawful order? I'll take it!

[tombert]

Ok, so you stalked my comment history so I stalked yours.

What about the Trump administration is "intelligent"? Trump lies about everything. Pointing out other politicians lie isn't a good comeback. Trump lacks all understanding of how tariffs work, he said he was going to "repeal and replace" Obamacare on "day 1" in 2016, only to say he has "concepts of a plan" in 2024, whatever the fuck that means. He rarely has "ideas", he just bitches about stuff and handwaves away everything when pressed for any details.

"Lawful order"? I don't know that that means. I would say that writing a lot of executive orders that go directly against the constitution is literally the opposite of "lawful order", but you're free to disagree.

[theonething]

Deporting all these violent illegals has been outstanding in my opinion. He's actually enforcing existing immigration laws.

By way of threats of tariffs, He's gotten Columbia, Mexico and Canada to enact policies in the interests of America.

America gets constantly screwed by other nations because we've allowed great trade imbalances and weak borders. Other nations have been happy to step back and let the US fund the UN, NATO, etc. Historically, we have the lowest tariffs and accept the most illegal immigrants in the world. Trump's changing that and I'm here for it.

Btw, I'm all for legal immigration. I'm one myself. My family escaped a communist country and has experienced life under a leader much more authoritarian that what the Left conjures up about the other side.

[arunabha]

I guess time will tell if you're right. I hope you're right, because if not, we are in for very dark times.

[rtkwe]

The filibuster in the Senate is powerful but it basically only blocks new laws from going in you can't really touch all the things Trump is doing via EO through Congressional obstruction the main avenue for blocking that is through the courts which ultimately have limited enforcement power.

[fennecbutt]

Where it's going is largely irrelevant I suppose. The only reason the "doge" thing is going on is because Elon needed a way to insert himself into the government, and everybody else involved is too technically inept to realise (or care).

But the effects don't really matter because this is what the American public voted for. As an outsider who's read Daemon and Freedom when are you yanks gonna start the darknet already?

[rsoto2]

The democrats are busy trying to squeeze more AIPAC money for when they get massively primaried for backing a genocide. No, i'm not joking the house minority leader gave a speech on israel's success in gaza this week

[wesselbindt]

> Where are the Democrats on all this?

It's a big club...

[jacobjjacob]

Maybe the strategy is to let it play out until there is enough of a case that the other branches can’t look away? Let Elon show himself out by inevitably crossing Trump and going the way of so many other advisors?

[energy123]

> * Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payments systems of the Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people. The US Congress does that under Article 1 of the Constitution ... we don't have a fourth branch of government called 'Elon Musk”

> * Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) “This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let’s call it what it is.” -And- "Let's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions off of his business with China. And China is cheering at this action today. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our govt right now is doing it based on self-interest."

> * Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) "It is a matter for Congress to deal with, not an unelected billionaire oligarchy named Elon Musk. And Elon, if you want to run USAID, get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate and good luck in getting confirmed."

> * Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) “We asked to enter the Aid building, really on behalf of the American people, but to talk to Aid employees, because … there’s been a gag order imposed on Aid employees. So we wanted to learn first-hand what’s happening. We were denied entry based on the order that they received from Elon Musk and Doge, which just goes to show that this was an illegal power grab by someone who contributed $267bn to the Trump effort in these elections.”

Estimated crowd of 100 protesters (reported). Other attendees and speeches made by Congressmen Beyer, Raskin, Connolly, Omar, Olzewski, Senator Van Hollen (seems like more maybe there not much coverage to confirm)

[FactolSarin]

> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.

This is the kind of thing that someone who's on TikTok a lot says. The line being fed to people by the Chinese government to make the Democrats look bad as well. But the truth is the Democrats have no power. None. They can't do anything to stop this. Elizabeth Warren and AOC have just as much power as I do to stop Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

[xmprt]

Democrats have bigger fish to fry and DOGE isn't a real department so it doesn't have a whole lot of authority to do things on its own. It can only advise the government so in the end, until an executive order is signed or some other action is taken, there's nothing to be done.

[affinepplan]

I'm not sure what could possibly be a bigger fish right now. This is, quite literally, the dismantling of our entire government and its public services unfolding before our eyes.

[theonething]

> quite literally, the dismantling of our entire government

So the three branches of government are being dismantled? There won't be anymore Congress or Supreme Court?

It's really hard to take hysterical comments like this seriously.

[XajniN]

It sound bad when you say it like that.

[computerthings]

https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation...

> I try to keep emotion out of this newsletter. I have always tried to write Notes on the Crises in a calm, detached tone so that the information I highlight shines through. However, I must be honest with readers: I’m absolutely terrified. When I first read the Washington Post’s reporting I subsequently had a panic attack. I am not subject to those. I didn’t have one during the start of Covid-19 when I started writing about the full health, economic, and political consequences in March 2020 and knew before many, many people that millions would die. Nor at any time subsequently did I have one. Even as someone who has spent an unusual amount of time thinking about the Treasury’s internal payments system for a person who has never been in government, I find grasping the full implications of Elon Musk and his apparatchiks reaching into and trying to exert full control over the Treasury’s payment system mind-boggling.

> There is nothing more important on the entire planet than getting Elon Musk and DOGE out of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and allowing career civil service employees to run the Treasury’s internal payments system without capricious and self-serving interference from billionaires and their allies. This effort must fail if we are to safeguard any semblance of due process and lawfulness in the executive branch. A vague anonymous promise that DOGE only has “read only” access is not enough. They need to be rooted out so that we can return to the slower moving, less dangerous, “five alarm fire” constitutional crisis we were having as of Friday morning.

[XajniN]

He who dares wins

[computerthings]

What's the "win" here?

[9283409232]

You have no real handle on the scale of damage being done and DOGE is a real department as it was merged into the US Digital Service through executive order.

[kelnos]

Who is running USDS, though? If it's now Musk, doesn't that require Senate confirmation?

[9283409232]

You would think so but the legality of it all is very disputed.

[SpicyLemonZest]

No, USDS is an organization within the President's executive staff.

The constitutional requirement is that "Officers of the United States" need Senate confirmation unless Congress has provided otherwise. The precise contours of this have never been super well defined, but it doesn't sound like Musk is exercising sovereign power under his own authority, at least not yet.

[mrkeen]

Democrats don't have a frypan.