Trump built a new passport.gov website

(Absolutely 100% must watch video. This is The Trumpening. This is the New World Order. Total Information Awareness and Control. The privatization of the government. Trying to wrangle all government facilities under the umbrella of the Unitary Executive. Making ready for absolute control of every aspect of your life not only thru CBDC but also thru the very recognition of yourself as a VIABLE AMERICAN CITIZEN... and it's all being done by the FASCIST DOGE BOYS. right in front of our eyes set to kick off July 4th 2026.) 

from The Drey Dossier

 

Why Can’t the Corporate Media See the Trump-GOP Shutdown Plan Lying in Plain Sight?

from Common Dreams

What is it about an insidious, long-term plan that causes commercial media to ignore what’s lying in plain sight?

With Congress at a standstill, the Republican-led House refusing to return to session, and the Senate unable to pass any bill to reopen the government, reporters seem stuck in a loop. 

Coverage of a government shutdown typically focuses on counting days and political blame games. Politicians are described as being stuck in an “impasse” with party leaders attacking one another and workers and the economy facing uncertain “disruption” and “fallout.”

That’s been the media’s approach again this time, even as workers are screaming in every way they can that this isn’t your usual standoff. 

Musk Exits Trump Administration, Leaving 'Legacy of Carnage and Corruption' in His Wake

(Elon Musk did NOT run DOGE. The Project 2025 people did. It was even explained in a court proceeding months ago. However, he was the frontman for it. He promoted it. They thought his image would make it 'cool' and they had to rebrand, so to speak. Him being gone will NOT stop the illegal fascist neoliberal government destroying practices of Project 2025.) 

from Common Dreams

Billionaire Elon Musk announced late Wednesday that he is leaving the Trump administration after spearheading a monthslong, lawless rampage through the government that hollowed out entire agencies, hurled critical functions such as the distribution of Social Security benefits into chaos, and installed many unqualified lackeys whose work will continue in the coming months and years.

Musk's announcement came just ahead of the official May 30 deadline for his departure as a special government employee. That designation allowed the world's richest man to play a key role in the Trump White House without facing Senate confirmation or the full slate of ethics rules that apply to ordinary federal officials.

"As my scheduled time as a special government employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President [Donald Trump] for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending," Musk wrote on his social media platform, X. "The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government."...

read more here 

‘This Is What We Were Always Scared of’: DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State

(Crippling our economy, destroying the social safety net, doing away with checks and balances and building a surveillance system worthy of Dick Cheney's wet dream of having total informational awareness over all of us all of a sudden. Why? I'll tell you why... because they plan to preserve their profit margins as they lose to BRICS by turning America into the UAE complete with that whole kafala system of slavery.)

from the New York Times

Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.

President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).

What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.

“This is what we were always scared of,” said Kevin Bankston, a longtime civil liberties lawyer and a senior adviser on A.I. governance at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a policy and civil rights organization. “The infrastructure for turnkey totalitarianism is there for an administration willing to break the law.”...

read more here

New Details Emerge on Trump Officials’ Sprint to Gut Consumer Bureau Staff

• Musk Wants to Delete the CFPB to Enrich Himself. It Gives a Green Light to All Corporate Scammers. 
• “Actions by Mr. Musk and DOGE at the CFPB have the potential to directly benefit X, Visa, and Tesla—and by extension, Mr. Musk.”
• Trump-Musk Attack on CFPB One of Biggest Cons on the American People in Recent History 
• Elon Musk Will Personally Profit from Dismantling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

from the NYT

Two weeks ago, a three-judge panel from the federal appeals court in Washington lifted a freeze on firing employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with some conditions. The judges, ruling on a Friday night, said that workers could be fired if agency leaders determined, after a careful assessment, that they were not needed to carry out the bureau’s legally required responsibilities.

Within hours, Trump administration officials — working closely with Elon Musk’s associates at the Department of Government Efficiency — scurried to fire nearly all the agency’s employees. By the following Thursday afternoon, bureau leaders sent termination notices to nearly 1,500 employees, retaining barely 200 people, and ordered that the fired workers’ access to agency systems be shut down the next day.

A judge has again stopped the cuts for now. But the details of what happened at the agency, which oversees banks and lenders and enforces consumer protection laws, will be vital to determining if the firings can proceed. Hundreds of pages of newly released agency records, supplemented by narrative accounts filed in court by more than 20 agency employees, were submitted ahead of a hearing this week before Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington.

Judge Jackson halted the planned firings less than a day after the notices went out, saying that they went far beyond what the appeals court had allowed. Starting Tuesday, she will hold a two-day hearing to take witness testimony and decide whether to extend her order blocking the firings...

read more here

How much has Elon Musk's Doge cut from US government spending?

from the BBC

 

... In October, Mr Musk pledged to cut "at least $2 trillion" from the federal government budget. He subsequently halved this target and on 10 April talked about making savings of $150bn from "cutting fraud and waste" by the end of the next financial year in 2026.

The US federal budget for the last financial year was $6.75tn.

Doge publishes a running total of its estimated savings on its website - which stood at $160bn the last time the site was updated on 20 April.

However, less than 40% of this figure is broken down into individual savings.

We downloaded the data from the Doge website on 23 April and added up the total claimed savings from contracts, grants and leases.

Our analysis found only about half of these itemised savings had a link to a document or other form of evidence...

read more here

Rubio Announces Major Cuts at State Dept., Accusing It of ‘Radical’ Ideology

from the NYT

Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a plan on Tuesday to make major cuts to the State Department as part of a restructuring, calling the government’s diplomatic agency “bloated, bureaucratic” and “beholden to radical political ideology.”

Mr. Rubio released the plan in the form of an organizational chart and a brief official statement. The move is the latest by the Trump administration to reduce and reshape the government to a degree unseen in generations, which critics call a shortsightedly blunt assault on the federal bureaucracy.

The announcement on Tuesday is only the first step in an overhaul of the department. It focused on changes to operations in Washington, but the cuts will affect the work of embassies and consulates overseas. Closures of diplomatic missions and layoffs abroad are expected later, according to U.S. officials and earlier leaked memos.

Protesters Nationwide Rally Again to Condemn Trump Policies

from the NYT

Thousands of protesters across the country once again took to the streets on Saturday to rally against President Trump and his policies, a sign of sustained resistance to his leadership just two weeks after cities and towns nationwide saw mass demonstrations.

Although the turnouts in cities like New York, Washington and Chicago appeared to be smaller than the protests on April 5 — several thousands marched in the nation’s capital on Saturday, compared with tens of thousands earlier this month — more than 700 events were planned from Jacksonville, Fla., to Los Angeles, according to one of the organizers, the group 50501.

The participants raged against the president, who they say is trampling on civil liberties and the rule of law, and overreaching in immigration, federal job cuts, the economy and other areas...

read more here

The Economics of a Dying Empire (w/ Richard Wolff) | The Chris Hedges Report

from The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel

 

Us and Them

April 1 video covering a number of DOGE (Department of Oligarchs Getting Everything) related news stories.

Direct Support 

Call It the 'Dismantling Government Act': House GOP Advances Bill Backing Musk-Led Destruction

from Common Dreams

The top Democrat on the U.S. House committee tasked with holding the Trump administration accountable said Tuesday during a debate on a Republican proposal that the GOP knows President Donald Trump cannot legally "'delete' whole federal agencies" or "take a chainsaw to beloved programs like Social Security and Medicaid."

"Congressional Republicans also know these dangerous, deeply unpopular cuts would never be approved by Congress through regular order," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "So now they've brought us H.R. 1295, the so-called Reorganizing Government Act, in a desperate attempt to circumvent the normal congressional process."

The bill, said Connolly, would more accurately be called the Dismantling Government Act, with its resurrection of a "long-dormant statute as a Trojan horse to give President Trump and Elon Musk unprecedented, filibuster-proof authority to eliminate federal departments and agencies, statutory programs, government services, and regulatory protections that promote the health and well-being of American families."

read more here

Stricter Social Security measures may challenge elderly and disabled beneficiaries

from Ch. 13 WHAM

Some 70 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits. As of Monday, the Social Security Administration will imposing stricter identity-proofing measures.

Millions of recipients and applicants will no longer be able to phone their information in. Instead, they will have to come to regional offices in person or complete forms online.

For those with limited transportation or computer access, that could be a problem. It's all part of an effort by the Trump administration to root out what it calls Social Security fraud, waste and abuse.

“I think it's bad because the folks that it's going to impact are the elderly and the disabled," said Lisa Arrington, an attorney who specializes in elder law.

“My elderly clients, they can't use email, they don't have a computer," Arrington continued. "And those are the people that are going to be forced to come in here (the Social Security office) physically."

John Ettlie said he’s fortunate to have a car. For other seniors, though, "It's going to be difficult."

"I suppose they could take Uber if they're aware," he said. "A lot of people are retired, don't even have a computer, so they may not even aware that you have to come in person."...

read more here

Meryl Nass Goes Full Neoliberal on EPA Destruction

by Scott Creighton

Meryl Nass thinks we gotta break some eggs to make America fascist again.

Get that EPA out of the way of Big Business! Let 'em pollute til the cows can't come home anymore cus they can't see their way through the smog!

Gotta break some eggs for Big Business to be unleashed upon the world for profits and prosperity. Screw your backyard! The invisible hand will clean it up and if not... it's your fault for being poor and living there anyway.

'Sure there will be problems. Sure there will be new and different forms of pollution. Sure people will lose their jobs. And then we will work diligently to fix the messes that resulted as we try to make our country better: more prosperous, healthy, and able to think clearly. Businesses were being smothered, and when the Net Zero targets got implemented, that was going to be the end of American industry.' Meryl Nass

Yeah folks will lose their jobs and property and health and... she forgets to mention... their lives. The lives of their parents, children, friends, pets, neighbors... yeah... so what? asks Meryl. We'll just rebuild in the wake of the Fascist Wet Dream as they count all that prosperity... we'll rebuild and think about it and everything will be alright in the end... says Meryl Nass...

Except of course for the people who loose their lives, land, family, businesses... 

Don't want them glorious businesses to be smothered do we Meryl? 

It's no wonder she was doing panel talks with Frank Gafney and other neocons last summer. She's one of em.

Ranking Member Whitehouse Blasts Trump's "Gangster Government" Funding Freeze in EPW Opener

from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

 

Rep. Larson BLASTS The GOP For Blocking Elon Musk From Testifying

from The Bulwark

 

Musk Suggests His Team Will Scrutinize Social Security and Entitlement Spending

from the NYT

Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, suggested on Monday that his government cost-cutting team would scrutinize Social Security and other entitlement spending, describing the expenditures as rife with fraudulent transactions and repeating a conspiracy theory that Democrats were using the programs as a “gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants and have them stay in the country.”

In an interview with Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business commentator who served as Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser in his first term, Mr. Musk said that his team now numbered over 100 staff members and repeated familiar and unsupported claims about entitlement spending that dovetailed with the great replacement conspiracy theory — the idea that white Americans are deliberately being pushed out by noncitizens — which Mr. Musk has nodded to on other occasions.

“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements,” he claimed, “so that’s the big one to eliminate.”

Earlier this month, Mr. Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” And he has dispatched members of his cost-cutting team — known as the Department of Government Efficiency — to access databases housed at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency that manages the health coverage of more than 100 million people, to flag suspicious payments...

read more here

Peter Thiel has major influence on Trump government – Bloomberg

from RT

Tech mogul and billionaire Peter Thiel exerts considerable influence over US President Donald Trump’s administration, a Bloomberg article has claimed. Unlike Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, however, he prefers to keep a low profile.

More than a dozen individuals connected to Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, have been integrated into the Trump administration, Bloomberg wrote on Friday. This group includes “current and former employees of his companies, as well as people who have helped manage his fortune or benefitted from his investments and charitable giving.”

The outlet listed 15 individuals within the government who are seen as having ties to the entrepreneur, five of whom serve in the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Among the officials are Vice President J.D. Vance and AI and crypto czar David Sacks. According to Bloomberg, the former had worked at Thiel’s Mithril Capital, while Thiel reportedly acted as Vance’s “mentor” and sponsor. The tech tycoon is also said to have helped Vance make inroads with Trump in 2021 after the then-Ohio senator publicly criticized the Republican firebrand. Sacks, a longtime associate of Thiel, is also a PayPal co-founder...

read more here

Industry-Backed Legislation Would Bar the Use of Science Behind Hundreds of Environmental Protections

from ProPublica

For decades, Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists have tried to chip away at the small program in the Environmental Protection Agency that measures the threat of toxic chemicals.

Most people don’t know IRIS, as the program is called, but it is the scientific engine of the agency that protects human health and the environment. Its scientists assess the toxicity of chemicals, estimating the amount of each that triggers cancer and other health effects. And these values serve as the independent, nonpartisan basis for the rules, regulations and permits that limit our exposure to toxic chemicals.

Now IRIS faces the gravest threat to its existence since it was created under President Ronald Reagan four decades ago.

How Social Security cuts could put millions of older Americans at risk

from PBS

Laura Barron-Lopez:

The acting agency head told employees this week that it's Musk and DOGE that are calling the shots at SSA.

The Washington Post reported that Leland Dudek told senior staff at SSA that Musk's team of — quote — "outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs are making decisions and that they will make mistakes."

And, this morning, the agency told its workers they can no longer use their government computers to look at, among other things, news Web sites, even blocking access to some of them. The restriction was said to help protect sensitive information. But news sites and obituaries are often relied on to confirm death information and prevent fraud.

For a closer look at the effect of potential cuts to Social Security, I'm joined by Martin O'Malley, who was the commissioner of SSA during the Biden administration and previously served as the governor of Maryland.

Governor O'Malley, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

Former Social Security head claims DOGE will cause payment interruptions

(The DOGE fascists and Nazis are going to cut costs at the SSA by cutting employee numbers from 57,000 to 50,000. The plan is to save government money so they can justify Trump's tax breaks for billionaires like Trump and Elon Musk who runs DOGE supposedly. The layoffs will put lots of people out of work and cause delays on everything at the administration including payments. They tried to lie about waste and fraud over there but people fact checked them and discovered they were lying... so now they are firing a bunch of people instead. In the end they WANT the delays and the problems so they can come back in 6 months and say 'see? Social Security doesn't work cus Gubmint so we have to PRIVATIZE it' and then Elon and Trump and Thiel and all their billionaire friends get to ransack that money pot as well. This is sickening and obscene.) 

from SAN

A former director of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) claims that reduction efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will lead to an interruption of benefits. The administration has reportedly never missed a payment, but the former agency head predicted it could happen in the near future.

Martin O’Malley, the former Democratic Maryland governor who former President Joe Biden tapped to run SSA, told CNBC that payment interruptions could come as soon as this spring. 

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”...

read more here