"If Congress fails to fund the government next week, the White House is preparing for a shutdown that would reflect the purest version of President Donald Trump’s vision for the federal government..."

"... guided by White House budget director Russell Vought, an architect of the controversial Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s second term. Federal funds expire when the fiscal year ends Tuesday night, and Congress appears deadlocked over a stopgap measure that would keep agencies online for seven weeks while long-term negotiations continue. Under the Vought plan, the only agencies that would remain operating apace are those that received money in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the $4.1 trillion tax and immigration package that Congress passed in July. The Defense and Homeland Security departments were the main beneficiaries.The result, both during and potentially after a shutdown, could be a federal government dramatically reoriented to defense, immigration and law enforcement — and not much else...."

I'm reading "Trump’s shutdown plans: Mass layoffs, deregulation, military deployments/The White House’s call for mass layoffs in a looming shutdown tracks with past administration efforts to defang much of the federal government" (WaPo)(gift link).

Is this something like a return to DOGE? DOGE had "Musk’s high-visibility 'move fast and break things' ethos. But Vought, people in and around the administration say, has been quietly potent, drawing on four years out of government to surgically plan measures that overhaul the executive branch and Trump’s power."

So Vought is low-visibility, move slow, and wait for Congress to break everything, then put it together in the way you've been quietly calculating for decades. 

"But during the transition Ramaswamy and Musk increasingly disagreed about how to make the government more efficient."

"Ramaswamy, who had apparently come around to the fact that significant cuts would require an act of Congress, began meeting regularly with a small group of legislators. Musk mostly did not attend. A source close to doge told me that Musk seemed to regard members of Congress as irrelevant, sometimes referring to them as 'N.P.C.s,'—non-player characters—the often mute and nameless figures who populate the backgrounds of video games. Musk was more interested in cutting spending via the executive branch, and spoke often, according to the source close to doge, of a need to 'control the computers.' In meetings, Ramaswamy resorted to using metaphors from the tech world to emphasize the importance of deregulation, calling the government’s rules 'the matrix' and insisting that doge needed to rewrite its source code. Musk was unmoved...."

Writes Benjamin Wallace-Wells, in "What Did Elon Musk Accomplish at DOGE? Even before Musk fell out with Donald Trump, the agency’s projected savings had plummeted. But he nevertheless managed to inflict lasting damage to the federal government" (The New Yorker).

"The aim is clear: to stop the executive branch in its tracks and prevent the administration from changing direction on hundreds of billions of dollars of government largesse..."

"... that the executive branch considers contrary to the United States’ interests and fiscal health. Only this court can right the ship — and the time to do so is now."

Wrote Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, in an emergency application, quoted in "Supreme Court Lets Trump Suspend Grants to Teachers/In boilerplate letters, the administration told recipients that the grants supported diversity efforts and were wasteful." (NYT).

The Court's order was 5 to 4, with the Chief Justice voting with the 3 liberal Justices.

"At one point, Le Pen whispered: 'Incredible.' She then abruptly left without warning, before her sentence had been handed down."

From "Marine Le Pen barred from running for French presidency in 2027/Far-right leader found guilty of embezzlement of European funds and immediately barred from running for office" (The Guardian).

What kind of "embezzlement" was this? Is it anything like what Elon Musk and DOGE are finding in the United States?

"The D.C. Circuit is notorious for having a very far left bias. And when you look at the people closest to some of these judges..."

"... where are they working? Are they working at these NGOs? They're the ones getting this money. Does that seem like a system that lacks corruption? Sounds like corruption to me."

Said Elon Musk.

Devastating if true, so there's a strong motivation to prove it's not true. And yet, it's hard to disprove this charge, lobbed in the direction of a group of perhaps 11 judges and the "people closest" to them.

Everybody's talking about DogeFest.

pic.twitter.com/WvcbbXGYTd

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2025

ADDED: Listen to the clear succinct — almost robotic — voice of OPM Senior Advisor Anthony Armstrong (at 17:35):

"President Trump has been very clear: Scalpel and not hatchet. That's the way it's getting done, once those decisions are made. There's a very heavy focus on being generous, being caring, being compassionate, and treating everyone with dignity and respect."

"So this country has had higher education since before the signing of the Declaration of Independence."

"But it wasn't until the late 19th century when Johns Hopkins University was founded as the Nation's first research university.... But around World War II is when the universities and the federal government really got to work with each other.... The idea was that the universities would get this research funding, it would fuel their labs, it would fuel the scientist, and then that research would flow into corporate America. It would flow into other parts of the government, other parts of academia. And the result was the country got new pharmaceutical drugs, new technology, Nobel Prize winners come out of university labs.... Now it's tens of billions of dollars a year that flow from the federal government down to the universities.... You know, you've got the University of Georgia, which for example, was getting federal funding for a lab that focused on peanuts. You know, Illinois, they get money for insulin research.... When you start talking about cutting research funding, the trickle down effect is enormous.... It's cutting off potentially state universities near you...."

Says NYT reporter Alan Blinder, in today's episode of "The Daily" podcast, "Trump’s Escalating War With Higher Education" (Podscribe link).

How did Georgia get all that money for peanut research? Are we supposed to think that's not super-elite, that shows the money is widely distributed and flows freely and equally — to the state universities as well as the Ivies — and the federal government is supporting research on practical things that benefit the general populace?

Or do we start wondering if there's something corrupt? I pursued my suspicion on Grok — you can read it here. I'll just quote one snappy sentence: "Georgia’s political muscle, peanut-centric identity, and strategic storytelling might give it an unfair leg up, leaving other universities and crops to wonder if the game’s rigged."

"Literally mutilating animals. Mutilating animals in demented studies that are like the worst thing you could possibly imagine from a horror show...."

"Some really some psychotic stuff that happens. So yeah, I mean the, I guess the, the, the, the real threat here is to the bureaucracy. So like, you probably saw like, you know, let's say, like, Trump as a threat to our democracy, which is ironic since he was elected with the majority of the, you know, popular vote. They, they started saying I was a threat to democracy. But if you, if you just replace threat to democracy with threat to bureaucracy, it makes total sense. Right. So, I mean, the reality is that our elected officials have very, very little power relative to the bureaucracy until DOGE. So DOGE is a threat to the bureaucracy. It's the first threat to the bureaucracy. Normally the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast. This is the first time that they're not, that the revolution might actually succeed. That we could restore power to the people instead of power to the bureaucracy."

Said Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan podcast last week.

I was re-listening to that because the part about "mutilating animals" and "the worst thing you can possibly imagine from a horror show" got quoted in this new article at Yahoo News, "Trump said the US spent $8m on transgender mice – he was right."

In his big speech last Tuesday, Trump spoke of "$8 million for making mice transgender," and anti-Trump media called him out, but a fact-check of the fact-check seems to have established that Trump got it right.

"President Trump has clipped the wings of Elon Musk by putting the cabinet in charge of federal firings after mounting complaints about the billionaire’s indiscriminate approach to cost-cutting."

"Trump told a meeting of his top team that it was time for the 'scalpel rather than the hatchet' after an outcry from voters, including in Republican districts, about the wave of sackings carried out by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). This is the first time Trump has acted to rein in the X and SpaceX entrepreneur, who has built a far-reaching power base at the president’s side — cemented by unrivalled access to his home and inner circle — prompting Democrat complaints of a plutocratic takeover of the US government."

From "Trump reins in Musk after Doge sacking spree upsets rivals and allies/The president is putting his cabinet in charge of federal firings after voters complain about Elon Musk’s cost-cutting layoffs" (London Times).

This is not the first time that the Trump administration has taken the position that Musk only gives advice and does not take the actions he's recommending. His lawyer argued it in court last week — blogged here.

But I'm glad to see Trump clarifying the lines of power. And, as I've said a few times, there needs to be more respect and empathy for the ordinary employees whose livelihood is threatened. I wrote this on February 23rd:

Fact-checking DOGE's "Wall of Receipts."

Let Musk justify his method in 5 bullet points.

I'm reading "Musk Says Government Workers Must Detail Their Workweek or Lose Their Jobs/Elon Musk has drawn inspiration from his 2022 takeover of Twitter with the tactic. His threat on social media of termination did not appear in an email to federal workers requesting the work summaries" (NYT).

Ugh. My draft of this post has been sitting in an open tab for 6 hours!

Let's move on to a more recent article on the subject: "Government agencies give conflicting guidance on Musk email/An email sent to 2.3 million workers asking them to outline their work last week is leading to confusion and differing instructions across the government" (WaPo).

Do the American people feel outraged when federal workers lose their job?

Or are we happy to see all this vigorous economizing? 

I keep seeing articles that seem to assume that it's a good issue for Democrats: How terrible that humble workers are getting fired! 

Is that the public opinion, or do people think the federal government is over-inflated and not terribly beneficial? Trump got elected for a reason. What's the evidence that people want to see a preservation of the status quo?

The latest article I'm reading is "Records show how DOGE planned Trump’s DEI purge — and who gets fired next/A DOGE team plans to fire federal workers who are not in DEI roles and employees in offices that protect equal rights, internal documents show" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study 'large scale social deception.' GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!"

Writes Trump on Truth Social, here.

This is also Trump on Truth Social: "DOGE: Why was Politico paid Millions of Dollars for NOTHING. Buying the press??? PAY BACK THE MONEY TO THE TAXPAYERS! How much has the Failing New York Times paid? Is this the money that is keeping it open??? THEY ARE BUYING THE PRESS!"

Is he saying there's an obligation to give back the money, that it was fraudulently obtained? Perhaps it's more of an appeal to give the money back as a gift, now that the taxpayers are seeing what happened and disapproving.

Trump doesn't take much care with these "truths" — that's what the press secretary calls them, "truths." He wrote "How much has the Failing New York Times paid?" when he must mean "How much has the Failing New York Times been paid?" He took the trouble to add "Failing" (idiosyncratically capitalized), but he omitted a word and left the meaning reversed.

Little X and Big T listen as Elon Musk — AKA Harry Bōlz — expounds on the first few days of DOGE.

 

"If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?... It does not match the will of the people."

ADDED: "We're told the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like well, why why why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual — on paper — it's manually calculated, then written down a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine. I'm like what do you mean a mine. Like, yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork... and this this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955 so it looks like it's like a time warp and then... the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire... and the elevator breaks down and then sometimes and then you can't — nobody can — retire doesn't that sound crazy? Like, a thousand people that work on this... working in in a mineshaft, uh, carrying manila envelopes to, you know, boxes in a mineshaft..."

Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!

I assume videos like this are scripted by someone other than the person on camera. Are these not commercials?

pic.twitter.com/4M5uNd6U0l

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025

I watched the Super Bowl last night because I fell prey to the rumor that Elon Musk had spent $40 million of his own money on several pro-DOGE commercials that would air. That didn't happen, and I spent the evening viewing the actual commercials, which, by the way, were terrible.

They weren't funny. And since any damned thing you can think of — such as the singer Seal as an actual seal — you can make look "real," there's no wow factor in showing anything. And how many times was the narrative arc simply: 1. Wonder what this is an ad for? 2. Oh, yeah, that.

Anyway, propaganda for DOGE, yeah, why not? Let the anti-DOGE folk propagandize back. I'm sure there's some clever way to express the old anti-transparency idea. Maybe a glossy CGI take on the old metaphor of government as a sausage factory. You like the sausage well enough, so don't be looking inside.

"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. 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."

From "Elon Musk’s team has gotten access to the Treasury Department’s payments system" (NYT).

This continues the story discussed earlier today in "What the DOGE team discovered."

What the DOGE team discovered.

The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.

They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.

Not even once. https://t.co/kInoGWdw4C

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2025

Here's how The Washington Post processes that: "Senior U.S. official exits after rift with Musk allies over payment system/A top Treasury career staffer, David A. Lebryk, announced his retirement. Surrogates of Musk’s DOGE effort had sought access to sensitive payment systems":

Is there any alternative interpretation I should consider?

pic.twitter.com/eYTt40ahVq

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 7, 2024

I'm assuming this clunky labeling is correct. But why would Musk want his effort to be represented by a dust storm and the bloated government to be represented by an orderly suburban neighborhood?

Musk seems to feel comfortable — and amused! — portraying his worldly efforts as divine retribution. 

I remember, "it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."

The dog is cute, so that takes the edge off, but Satan would take the edge off. Ha ha. So amusing. Destruction!