Following (with added links) is an excerpt from her latest post, “Did You Hear About the Friday Coup?”
This week felt like the first battle of a long war — and that’s because it was. On Monday the White House Office of Management and Budget announced a freeze on all federal funding, and — aside from that order being blocked by a judge later in the week — it was all downhill from there. The enormity of the week culminated in a deluge of distressing developments on Friday that you may or may not have heard about.
Elon Musk has, for all intents and purposes, taken control of the inner-workings of the federal government. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he’s been given a mandate by President Trump to severely cut the number of federal government workers by whatever means he sees fit, like pressuring them to retire early or accept a deferred resignation. He’s also been tasked with slashing spending — and if it benefits him personally as well, that’s fine, too.
Friday began with the news that the highest ranking nonpolitical staffer and acting director at the U.S. Department of Treasury was retiring after a dispute with Musk’s henchmen. They wanted access to the payment system that the government uses to disburse trillions of dollars, and David Lebryk, a career civil servant, was not having it.
Lebryk was the only thing standing between DOGE taking control of the system that pays out Social Security and Medicare benefits, federal salaries, tax refunds, among many other crucial systems. And on Saturday, we learned DOGE has, in fact, been handed full access to the nation’s wallet by newly-confirmed Department of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“Mr. Musk, who has been given wide latitude by President Trump to find ways to slash government spending, has recently fixated on Treasury’s payment processes, criticizing the department in a social media post on Saturday for not rejecting more payments as fraudulent or improper,” the New York Times wrote. “It is not clear whether the team led by Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has blocked any payments since gaining access to the system.
“It’s like a bank heist and the bank is America,” a source in the federal government told me. “Not really being hyperbolic to say control of those systems would allow an extremely fast collapse of the economy. Imagine it’s a plumbing system and someone takes a sledgehammer to the central pipe.”
. . . It’s essential to reiterate that all of this is illegal. What remains to be seen is how broadly the legality of it will be challenged, and whether Trump-appointed judges will rubber stamp Musk’s actions anyway.
At the end of a historically hellish Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could only offer toothless posts on Bluesky. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar told the New York Times, “If there is a middle of all of this hot mess of division, Americans want us to work together when we can and find common ground.”
The impotence is as staggering as the abdication is sickening. But the current message from elected Democrats is loud and clear: You’re on your own. And the message from the Musk/Trump administration is even clearer: You’re next.
As someone wrote to me today, “The first coup was violent insurrection. The second coup is administrative. We failed to ensure Donald Trump could never return to power again after the first coup; our job right now in this moment is to acknowledge reality and halt the second.”
Organizers are trying to get the wheels in motion for a real opposition. Sunday night at 8pm ET there will be a virtual call hosted by Indivisible, a group that rose to national prominence during the first Trump administration. RSVP here if you’d like to join.
. . . It’s not even two weeks into the second Trump administration, but the breadth of the destruction is clear. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say we’re witnessing a coup by an unelected billionaire propped up by a felonious president, and we must treat it as such. Even if, as some have reported, it wasn’t even featured on Friday’s nightly news.
– Marisa Kabas
Excerpted from “Did You Hear About the Friday Coup?”
The Handbasket
February 1, 2025
Excerpted from “Did You Hear About the Friday Coup?”
The Handbasket
February 1, 2025
Timothy Snyder on Resisting
the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
Related Off-site Links:
Call It by Its Name: A Coup – Robert B. Hubbell (Today’s Edition Newsletter, February 1, 2025).
The Logic of Destruction . . . And How to Resist It – Timothy Snyder (Thinking About, February 2, 2025).
Dictator Donald Thinks He’s Invincible; He’s Not – Ralph Nader (Common Dreams, February 1, 2025).
We Must Create a Broad Anti-Fascist Movement to Fight Back Against Trump 2.0 – C.J. Polychroniou (Common Dreams, February 2, 2025).
Top Treasury Official Out as Musk Cronies Demand Access to Payment System That Funnels Trillions in U.S. Funds – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, January 31, 2025).
“DOGE-Affiliated Goons” Accused of Locking Career Civil Servants Out of Key Databases – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, January 31, 2025).
Trump’s First Week: “Designed to Destroy the United States From Within" – Chauncey DeVega (Salon, January 30, 2025).
How to Organize Under Authoritarian Creep in a Closing Civil Society – Nadine Bloch (Waging Nonviolence, January 30, 2025).
In High-Speed Power Grab, Trump Seeks to Remake the Federal Government – Don Kettl (The Bulwark, January 29, 2025).
Amid Confusion, Panic and Backlash, Trump’s White House Rescinds Funding “Freeze” on Grants and Programs – Chris Walker (TruthOut, January 29, 2025).
Think Trump’s Tyranny Can’t Be Opposed or Stopped? Think Again – Jeremy Brecher (Common Dreams, January 29, 2025).
The Hostile Takeover of the United States by Corporate Raiders Has Arrived in Full – Thom Hartmann (Common Dreams, January 29, 2025).
Trump Is Clearly Moving in an Authoritarian and Potentially Fascist Direction – John Ripton (Common Dreams, January 29, 2025).
What Trump’s Pardons and Retribution Say About His Fascist Threat – Chuck Idelson (Common Dreams, January 29, 2025).
“Trump Is Trying to Collapse Our Economy”: War on “Woke” Revealed as a War on All Americans – Amanda Marcotte (Salon, January 29, 2025).
“We Do Not Consent” Says Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Illegal “Power Grab” as Judge Halts Trump Order – Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams, January 28, 2025).
Trump Tries a January Coup – Again: The President Wages War on the Separation of Powers – The Ink (January 28, 2025).
Trump’s Most Lawless Action Yet – David Dayen (The American Prospect, January 28, 2025).
Trump’s First 7 Days: The Framework for Presidential Dictatorship – Socialist Equality Party (January 27, 2025).
Energized Neo-Nazis Feel Their Moment Has Come as Trump Changes Everything – Ben Makuch (The Guardian, January 26, 2025).
Donald Trump Is the Empire Unmasked – Caitlin Johnstone (CaitlinJohnstone.com, January 21, 2025).
Can Nonviolent Struggle Defeat a Dictator? This Database Emphatically Says Yes – George Lakey (Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025).
UPDATES: Is Elon Musk Staging a Coup? Unelected Billionaire Seizes Control at Treasury Department and Other Agencies – Democracy Now! (February 3, 2025).
Elon Musk Has Plunged America Into a Constitutional Crisis. He Must Be Stopped – Will Stancil (Zeteo, February 3, 2025).
Unions Sue to Revoke Musk Cronies’ Access to Critical Payment System – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, February 4, 2025).
Musk Intensifies Government Spending Attack with Push to Cut All Regulations – Robert Tait (The Guardian, February 4, 2025).
It’s a War. Do Democrats Get That? – David Corn (Mother Jones, February 4, 2025).
Marianne Williamson: “This Will Not Stand” – Piers Morgan Uncensored (February 4, 2025).
Elon Musk Stages Coup d’etat – Owen Jones (Owen Jones Talks, February 4, 2025).
Stating the Obvious: The Replacement of Our Constitutional System of Government With the Whims of an Unelected Private Citizen Is a Coup – Heather Cox Richardson (Letters From an American, February 4, 2025).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Signs of the Times: The 2025 People’s March
• Democrat Talk on the Eve of Trump’s Return
• Inauguration Day Thoughts
• Neoliberalism vs Neofascism: Cornel West on the State of U.S. Politics
• How Empires Are Built and Rebellions Are Born
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Election
• What the Republican Party Now Stands For
• Venice Williams on How We Get Through the Next Four Years
• Progressive Perspectives on Kamala Harris’ Faltering Presidential Campaign
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Living in Very Serious Times and We Need to Be Very Serious People”
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• History Matters
• Progressive Perspectives on the Crisis in U.S. Electoral Politics
• Will We Let Fascism Come to America?
Image: Artist unknown.
No comments:
Post a Comment