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This blog explores politics from a liberal/left perspective but also deals heavily with conspiracy theories and various unusual topics. Although I started this blog to research 9/11, my most pressing issue of concern now is anthropogenic climate change.

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THE LOGIC OF DESTRUCTION - AND HOW TO RESIST IT

"What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. 

America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together. 

The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate. For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. 

Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions. The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. 

Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes. All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. 

The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. 

The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves. Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow. 

Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them. 

The gap between the oligarchs’ wealth and everyone else’s will grow. Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump’s deliberately destructive tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. 

But that is just tomorrow and the day after. 

In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark. 

The self-chosen few will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside, they will be alone to dominate. 

Trump’s tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump’s attacks on America’s closest friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. 

As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible. Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power. 

The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. 

Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way. 

In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. 

It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else. After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. 

We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics. 

For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. 

The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth. They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted. 

The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. 

The people in charge, though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. 

I describe it not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions. I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. 

Here are a few ideas. If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you otherwise disagree. Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work. 

Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong. 

Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever. 

Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover. There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens. 

Trump should obviously be impeached. Either he has lost control, or he is using his power to do obviously illegal things. If Republicans have a sense of where this is going, there could be the votes for an impeachment and prosecution. Those considering impeachment should also include Vance. He is closer to the relevant oligarchs than Trump, and more likely to be aware of the logic of destruction than he. The oligarchs have likely factored in, or perhaps even want, the impeachment and prosecution of Trump. 

Unlike Vance, Trump has charisma and followers, and could theoretically resist them. He won’t; but he poses a hypothetical risk to the oligarchs that Vance does not. 

Democrats who serve in state office as governors have a chance to profile themselves, or more importantly to profile an America that still works. 

Attorneys general in states have a chance to enforce state laws, which will no doubt have been broken. 

The Democratic Party has a talented new chair. Democrats will need instruments of active opposition, such as a People’s Cabinet, in which prominent Democrats take responsibility for following government departments. 

It would be really helpful to have someone who can report to the press and the people what is happening inside Justice, Defense, Transportation, and the Treasury, and all the others, starting this week. 

Federal workers should stay in office, if they can, for as long as they can. This is not political, but existential, for them and for all of us. They will have a better chance of getting jobs afterwards if they are fired. And the logic of their firing is to make the whole government fail. The more this can be slowed down, the longer the rest of us have to get traction. 

And companies? As every CEO knows, the workings of markets depend upon the government creating a fair playing field. The ongoing takeover will make life impossible for all but a few companies. Can American companies responsibly pay taxes to a US Treasury controlled by their private competitors? Tesla paid no federal tax at all in 2024. Should other companies pay taxes that, for all they know, will just enrich Tesla’s owner? 

Commentators should please stop using words such as “digital” and “progress” and “efficiency” and “vision” when describing this coup attempt. The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That’s it. They are offering no future beyond acting out their midlife crises on the rest of us. It is demeaning to pretend that they represent something besides a logic of destruction. 

As for the rest of us: Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. 

The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. 

Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them. 

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free together."

                -- DR. TIMOTHY D. SNYDER, Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University

The President*

 Charles Pierce--

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." 

I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. 

I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. 

These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. 

They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless. 

And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. 

Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House. 

The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. 

We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt. 

Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. 

Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too. 

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now." 

NATIONAL SECURITY EMERGENCY -- from Malcolm Nance

Please watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrHFFt5VZvI

 

What the Tech Oligarchs Want-- Complete Libertarian Madness Enabled by Dictator Trump

 Insanity:

DARK GOTHIC MAGA: How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America

Mixed In All the Trump Chaos, A Constitutional Crisis: Trump/Musk Dictatorship

From Brian Beutler:

 

• To my mind we have four main kinds of provocation raining down on us: headfakes, attacks on liberal pluralism, policy sabotage, and genuine constitutional crises.

• This schema isn’t perfect. The categories are largely distinct, but sometimes overlapping, and in some cases it isn’t clear what belongs where. For instance, at the moment I sort Donald Trump’s incitement against Canada, Denmark, and Panama into the nonsense or headfake bucket. It isn’t nonsense for the officials in those countries who have to ascertain whether Trump is menacing them for show or a genuine madman. And obviously if he were to use American military and economic power to steal territory from sovereign nations, that would probably necessitate a bucket all its own. But for now I think those of us trying to limit the damage should bracket these things as clownish bluster. Mock Trump for being a fool who can’t even succeed at bullying, but focus real energy on real crises.

• The most mean-spirited and demoralizing provocations fall into the pluralism bucket. They range from the largely symbolic (the elimination of Black History Month observances, the prohibition on federal worker affinity groups, the blaming of all policy failure on DEI) to the cruel and lawless (discharging transgender service members, the contemplation of a concentration camp for illegal immigrants in Guantanamo Bay).

• These are almost all bigoted initiatives, because the administration is bigoted to its marrow, but also because Trump wants Democrats and liberals to flock here. They want to catch Democrats advocating to reinstate “DEI” in the government, or to find some flimsy pretext to accuse them of that. They want Democrats to side with “criminal” immigrants, to fixate on where we incarcerate trans prisoners, and which if any barracks they should sleep in. But they aren’t just mining the liberal conscience for attack ads—they know that time is a non-renewable resource, and the more time Democrats spend on these issues, the less they’ll have to spend resisting dictatorship and the dissolution of the liberal order.

• Republicans also recognize that these are all wedge issues; that when liberals and Democrats like me argue that we shouldn’t make Trump’s gratuitously nasty H.R. policy or bigoted propaganda the epicenter of resistance, it’s upsetting to advocates and others who devote themselves to the causes of immigrant rights, trans rights, workplace diversity, etc. But holidays can be restored, personnel decisions can be reversed, Trump can (and probably will) discredit his institutionalization of cruelty by wrecking the country again.

• One way to block the wedge is to recognize that resistance around these issues won’t be resolved through public-facing activism. There are things that the Trump administration has the power to do that liberals and progressives simply can’t stop; there are other things (military discharges, violations of due process) that courts will either gum up or reverse.

• Damage here will not be entirely reversible no matter what happens, though. Trump and his loyalists recognize that changing facts on the ground can alter things irreversibly, even if they’re ultimately forced to revert to the status quo ante. If they drive people out of government through unlawful means, those orders might not survive court challenges, but many if not most of the affected people will have moved on by the time it all gets sorted out. There is, unfortunately, little that can be done about that.

  Policy sabotage refer to things Trump is doing, or intends to do, to upset the applecart domestically and internationally, in ways that are much stickier. Here in the U.S., that’s punishing blue states after natural disasters, angling to kick millions of people off Medicaid, pitting his supporters against the rest of America, further curtailing reproductive freedom etc. Internationally it’s threatening or imposing tariffs on certain allies, rattling his saber at others, undermining NATO. Much of this is improper, irregular, corrupt. But most of it is legal.

• To illustrate the point about overlap, culture-war provocations can veer into policy sabotage easily. When smearing immigrants becomes the Laken Riley Act, it transforms into a rooted policy booby trap; if the government really does build a concentration camp in Guantanamo, and begins to fill it with people, that’s no longer simply psychological warfare against liberals.

• Generally, though, this is where Democrats in Congress feel most comfortable. It’s where Trump’s antics show up in grocery prices and service outages and health care access. It’s where Republicans in Congress feel wedged themselves. It’s already the source of real misgivings among marginal Trump voters.

• For this reason, I’m least vexed by these crises, even though they threaten to be disruptive, impoverishing, even deadly. Democrats don’t really fear engaging on these issues, and are poised to capitalize on them. Part of me thinks they should do less to resist Trump here and simply get out of his way. In too many realms over too many years, our system and the liberal-minded people in it have insulated too many Trump voters from the consequences of their decisions, and it’s hard to defeat MAGA as a movement if MAGA is mostly bluster mixed with the economic stability Trump inherits from his predecessors.

• Again, that isn’t to suggest anyone should be indifferent about anything. It certainly isn’t to say Democrats shouldn’t try to stop Republicans from gutting Medicaid, for instance. The potential for damage in this realm is tremendous. It includes economic crisis, the dissolution of NATO, and legislation that rolls back safety-net policies that help people be truly free, among many other things. Stopping that stuff will be important, more important than letting Trump and the GOP own the consequences of their catastrophes. Alliances can’t easily be rebuilt; major legislative reforms are hard to enact. But questions like “how should the U.S. government serve its citizens?” and “what is America’s proper place in the world?” are also at the heart of “normal” politics. Trump may not care about policy or have “normal” reasons for doing what he does. He certainly lied about his agenda in order to obtain power. But even major changes to social and foreign policy are survivable. Unless, of course, they’re imposed dictatorially.

• That’s why I’m most fixated on that final category: constitutional crises. 

   
  

I have no doubt that Trump/Musk are going to try to take complete dictatorial control of the US and tear down all our good, decent democratic institutions.

We must all do what we can to stop this.

Two Weeks into Trump Two and It's a Massive Racist Shitshow of Epic Proportions Plus a Coup Over The American Treasury

So much shit but first the Coup.

 Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat (via newsletter):

It seems like the plot of a political thriller. We are living through a new kind of coup in which Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has taken over the payment and other administration systems that allow the American government to function, and has locked out federal employees from computer systems. Many of Musk’s collaborators in this endeavor previously worked for his private companies and/or helped him take over Twitter.

Musk is subject to no Congressional or other oversight because he seems to have no real official function other than as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a plunder operation that was named after the cryptocurrency DOGE.

When I wrote my 2017 CNN essay, “Trump and Bannon’s Coup in the Making,” that described Donald Trump’s intent to give power to “a small group of loyal insiders, who take orders directly from the leader’s inner circle and…bypass those of the existing federal government and party bureaucracies,” Musk was not on my radar. Today, Musk would replace Steve Bannon in the title.

What is happening now builds on classic authoritarian dynamics as I described them in Strongmen and in many essays for Lucid. There is always an “inner sanctum” that really runs the show, with its mix of family members and cronies, some with histories of working with or for foreign powers. And there is almost always a purge of the federal bureaucracy. That is now being carried out on a mass scale.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, former FBI agent Asha Rangappa, former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, and others have analyzed these processes and the interrelated factions that are implementing what I have called a Fascist-style counterrevolution: the MAGA loyalists inside and outside of the GOP, the Project 2025/Heritage Foundation crew (roughly two-thirds of the executive orders Trump has issued conform to Project 2025 plans), and the technocrats around Musk and Peter Thiel.

Vice President J.D. Vance shows the overlap among the categories. Vance is a MAGA loyalist; he wrote the forward to Heritage CEO Kevin Robert’s book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington To Save America; and he is the surrogate of Thiel, who bankrolled not only Vance’s Senate race but also his private business ventures.

All of these individuals and groups want to rearrange government around an extremist ideological project of Christian nationalism and White supremacy, and most of them want to enact neoliberal deregulation and privatization meaures to “free” America from “corruption” and “drain the swamp.” This is part of the “revolution” Roberts has long talked about, and it has a history that runs through right-wing dictatorships across a century.

The speed of its implementation makes Trump’s takeover stand out within an authoritarian framework. The more corrupt and criminal the autocrat, the more he is obsessed with punishing enemies and feeling safe. Cue the immediate execution of the revenge and retribution part of this plan, with anyone who was involved in attempts to bring Trump and his collaborators to justice for the Jan. 6 insurrection or anything else, FBI employees included, is now a target.

Only with coups –or crackdowns initiated in response to coup attempts, such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s post-July 2016 purges—do you see such a rush to punish and expel non-loyalists from the government.

The new administration also builds on the idea of “power verticals” such as that created by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who allied with oligarchs and billionaires to expand control of the media and other sectors and allow him to consolidate his personal power. Those personalist dynamics characterize current autocracies in Turkey, Hungary, and India, and the support Trump receives from media tycoons such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are an American equivalent.

And here is where the U.S. 2025 situation starts to look different. The point of personalist rule is to reinforce the strongman. There is only room for one authoritarian leader at the top of the power vertical. Here there are two.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump watch the launch of a SpaceX Starship rocket test flight, Nov. 19, 2024, Brownsville, TX. Brandon Bell/Getty Images.

Musk’s Autocratic Capture

Musk already had dangerous amounts of power in America due to his defense and other government contracts that make our national security partly dependent on his products. His takeover of Twitter, a platform widely used by governments and politicians around the world, gave him even more leverage. What he lacked was the key to the castle, a way to get control of government from within. The $250 million he spent to help Trump get elected helped to unlock the door. And so DOGE was created as a vehicle for his infiltration.

The press reported on Musk’s unusual and constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, and the input he had on the presidential transition process, but did not highlight the likely aim behind it: to insert his private businesses into the governance equation. Employees from SpaceX and other Musk entities interviewed potential appointees for the Trump administration.

Now Musk and his surrogates have physically occupied the Office of Personnel Management, setting up beds to have a 24/7 presence. They have also infiltrated the General Services Administration, which manages technology in government buildings. Thomas Shedd, a former software engineer at Tesla, is now director of Technology Transformation Services within the GSA.

That means that random individuals, whose credentials seem to lie mainly in their loyalty to Musk, now have enormous power over America’s purse strings and access to a treasure trove of sensitive personal data. They locked out the federal employees to prevent any obstructions to this access.

This is what militaries do during coups: you capture the major targets, with government buildings high on the list, and you take over communications and other systems.

Yet Musk did not need to deploy a private army to stage his coup. He was given permission to stage this operation by Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager. Acting Deputy Treasury Secretary David Lebryk, a career civil servant, resisted when Musk allies demanded access to the payments system. Lebryk was then placed on administrative leave, at Bessent’s suggestion.

According to a person interviewed by Politico, Musk’s team gained entry on Bessent’s assumption that the DOGE team’s access would be “read-only.” But Musk’s social media posts indicate an intention to cut off funds of people and organizations designated as enemies.

When extremist and proponent of Evangelical Christian holy war Gen. Michael Flynn claimed on X that Lutheran Family Services charity and aid work was a cover for a “money laundering operation” that profits from federal funding, Musk responded: “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”

Musk and his minions are not working alone to destroy America. The GOP, Heritage, and many American actors are embedded in foreign autocratic and right-wing populist networks, while billionaires Musk and Thiel (and their muse, Curtis Yarvin, who tells his followers that “democracy is done”) have ambitions on a global scale that hinge on destroying open societies.

Through his various investments and companies, Musk is a business partner of China, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and other autocracies, and has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose dream is to see America implode from within. Even if Musk were removed tomorrow, he is part of a larger design to wreck America as a functioning democratic society and a global power. It is now America’s turn to be a laboratory of autocratic innovation.

Links:

World's richest man's takeover of U.S. Treasury is a coup

Elon Musk’s Cronies Locking Federal Workers Out of Computer Systems; Musk’s aides overseeing OPM have taken over critical computer systems—locking everyone else out. 

Senior U.S. official exits after rift with Musk allies over payment system

'Hair-on-fire moment': Critics react with horror to Elon Musk's latest scheme 

Senior USAID security officials put on leave after attempting to refuse Musk’s DOGE access to agency systems 

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk's Government Takeover

(related) Elon Musk's weird plan to make everyone put their money into his X site and use it as a bank. 

The rest of the shitshow (at least some, anyway, there's so fucking much)

Trump’s disregard for US constitution ‘a blitzkrieg on the law’, legal experts say

 Trump’s “Wildly Illegal” Spending Gambit; Congress limited presidents’ ability to redirect appropriations. This one doesn’t care.

Donald Trump Wants You to Die; The attack on public health begins 

Trump's public health gag order is causing doctors to panic

CDC Data Are Disappearing; The agency has already removed scientific data from public view. More could follow.

Executive orders show Trump is already running Project 2025 playbook despite denials

Trump's 'Grotesque' Plane Crash Comments Leave Democrats Gobsmacked; "What a horrible, pathetic, little man," one said of the president blaming DEI efforts for the deadly crash.

Related: 180 Republicans Voted Against Funding the FAA, the Agency That Keeps Planes from Crashing  

Justice Department official orders firing some of some prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases

JD Vance reignites GOP’s feud with the Catholic Church over immigration

The Dumbest Trade War in History; Trump will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for no good reason.

US refuses to back down on Panama Canal claim: Rubio’s threats and Panama’s rejectionThe ongoing dispute between the US and Panama over control of the Panama Canal intensifies as Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns of potential US measures against Panama’s sovereignty.

--------------

IN SUMMARY, they are incredibly goddamn fucking evil assholes.

RED ALERT: Elon Musk is going to loot and destroy the federal government

 This is a governmental and constitutional crisis of the highest order.

"The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration. (snip)

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

The executive order Trump signed creating DOGE also instructed all agencies to ensure it has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which would appear to include the Treasury payment systems."

https://wapo.st/4jH7XYa

General Smedley Butler Speaks to the Veterans Bonus Army, 1932

Context:

In the years after World War I, a long battle over providing a bonus payment to WWI veterans raged between Congress and the White House. Presidents Harding and Coolidge both vetoed early attempts to provide a bonus to WWI veterans. Congress overrode Coolidge’s veto in 1926, passing the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, otherwise known as the Bonus Act. The act promised WWI veterans a bonus based on length of service between April 5, 1917 and July 1, 1919; $1 per day stateside and $1.25 per day overseas, with the payout capped at $500 for stateside veterans and $625* for overseas veterans. The catch was this bonus would not pay out until each veteran’s birthday in 1945, paying out to his estate if he should die before then. Although veterans were allowed to borrow against the bonus certificate beginning in 1927, by 1932, banks were short on credit to give. 

In May 1932, jobless WWI veterans organized a group called the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces” (BEF) to march on Washington, DC. Suffering and desperate, the BEF’s goal was to get the bonus payment now, when they really needed the money. Led by Walter W. Walters, the veterans set up camps and occupied buildings in various locations in Washington, DC. The largest camp was a shantytown on the Anacostia Flats, across the river from Washington’s Navy Yard. By summer, at least 20,000 people had joined the camps, with some estimates putting the total number above 40,000. Many were joined by their families. But the camps attracted an undesirable element as well. President Hoover later claimed “the march was largely organized and promoted by the Communists, and included a large number of hoodlums and ex-convicts bent on raising a public disturbance.” Using scrap wood and other salvaged materials, the protesters constructed a vast field of shacks in view of the Capitol dome, prepared for a siege of Congress.

Smedley Butler is famous for the essay "War Is A Racket" also his involvement in an attempted coup of FDR that he blew the whistle on.

The Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch[1] and the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy in 1933, in the United States, to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator.[2][3] Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified under oath before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the "McCormack–Dickstein Committee") on these revelations.[4] Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, "there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."