With apologies to Rick Wilson, whose weekend social media quip I’ve stolen for the headline of today’s BradCast, I’d say both things are true. We are both overwhelmed and under attack. In a way that the United States has never been under attack before. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]
The “attack”, of course, is coming from inside the house. In this case, from inside Donald Trump‘s White House. Or, at least from his extra-Constitutional White House henchmen: Elon Musk and his band of personal employees, none of who have been elected to anything or approved by the U.S. Senate or anything else. And yet, this band of miscreants that call themselves the “Dept. of Government Efficiency” or DOGE, some just literally out of high school, are unlawfully taking over the command and control functions of independent federal agencies in the Executive Branch, including the one that at Treasury that controls the nation’s actual checkbook and its payments of more than $6 trillion each year. That system includes checks to federal workers, Social Security and Medicare payments, tax refunds, foreign aid and much much more.
They are doing all of this, apparently, with the lawless President’s blessing. It is a Trump-approved attack on the rule of law, our Constitutional order, and, of course (the enemy of all MAGA!) the “Administrative State”.
Doing my best today to overcome some local transmitter issues here in L.A. and technical issues inside our flagship local KPFK studios during our live show, I tried to put into stark perspective what appears to be unfolding — what we know and what we don’t, some of the heroes standing up in opposition — over the past 72 or so unprecedented hours since we last spoke.
Here are just some of the media reports I was culling from. You’ll have to tune in to hear how all the pieces fit together, what they portend moving forward, and for a quick listener call or two at the end…
- “Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings” – NBC NEWS
- “F.C.C. Chair Orders Investigation Into NPR and PBS Sponsorships” – NYTIMES
- “US health websites, datasets taken down as agencies comply with Trump executive orders” – CNN
- “More USAID staff ousted after Trump administration dismantles aid agency” – REUTERS
- “Trump and Musk move to dismantle USAID, igniting battle with Democratic lawmakers” – AP
- “Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System” – NYTIMES
- Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts a lot of this into perspective in her “Letters from an American” newsletter for February 1.
- Journalist Josh Marshall of TPM reports on several conversations with “people in the key executive departments” over the weekend, as Musk and his DOGE boys were taking over control of everything…
As noted, that’s just a bit of today’s source material. And a bit of what has happened over these past 72 hours. Tune in for much more today and, no doubt, on tomorrow’s program, as Trump’s attack on our Constitutional democracy, with the help of co-President and heavy Elon Musk, continues…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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why is it bad to decrease government waste and increase efficiency?
It’s not “bad”. It just doesn’t happen to be what they are doing in the least.
Also, what they are doing is completely illegal. Which, for those of us who still believe in law and order and the Constitution is, indeed, very bad.
Remarkable that any of that needed to be explained to you.