The Emperor's New Clothes

The madness inflicting US politics have, almost inevitably, taken a farcical turn under the mad reign of wannabe emperor Trump and his man-child lickspittle courtier Elon. Changes have come hard and fast, an avalanche of reckless activity; bending US policy to petty revenge, far-right ideology and child-like posturing.

Under the covers of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), Elon and his pack of cronies are attempting a coup of major state levers.

• Trump and Elon openly avowed to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.). It is a cruel, callous, capricious dismantling of humanitarian aid, selfish and utterly unnecessary. From Declan Walsh in the New York Times: Trump and Musk Bring Vast Aid Machinery to a Halt in Africa - The New York Times

The continent received over $8 billion a year, money that was used to feed starving children, supply lifesaving drugs and provide wartime humanitarian assistance.

By far the greatest price is being paid by ordinary Africans, millions of whom rely on American aid for their survival. Experts say the agency’s abrupt undoing will cost many lives by creating huge gaps in public services, especially in health care, where U.S.A.I.D. has poured much of its resources.

• They've also been granted access to Treasury Payment systems, almost certainly illegal and deeply concerning since this gives Elon and his crackpot band of non-elected, citizens, illegal access to private data such as Social Security Numbers and Bank Account details of private individuals and businesses. From Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System - The New York Times

In a process typically run by civil servants, the Treasury Department carries out payments submitted by agencies across the government, disbursing more than $5 trillion in fiscal year 2023. Access to the system has historically been closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government.

It is perhaps a little too easy to dismiss the grab for cover as well-intentioned efficiency seeking, a quest to minimise wasteful spending and make the federal government lean, laser-focussed, spending only what it needs, where its necessary. I cannot wrap my head around that. From Mike Brock in The 24-Hour Reality Check: Musk’s Impossible Power Grab And America’s Crisis | Techdirt.

And now, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we’re asked to believe he is also reorganizing the entire federal government. His twenty-something operatives are gaining unprecedented access to Treasury payment systems. Career civil servants are being purged for following security protocols. Congressionally established agencies are being illegally shuttered.

Tesla presents another stark example of illegal conflict. As a federal official with broad authority over government efficiency and procurement, Musk oversees policies that directly affect the electric vehicle industry. Yet he simultaneously runs the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in America. This means his official actions—whether about environmental regulations, government fleet purchases, or infrastructure decisions—inevitably affect his private interests. Federal law prohibits this arrangement because it makes it impossible to determine whether decisions are being made for public benefit or private gain.

The conflict-of-interest at the heart of Musk’s position as DOGE director represents more than just an ethical concern—it strikes at basic principles of constitutional governance.

Timothy Snyder described it best on his substack, Thinking About (Of course it’s a coup - by Timothy Snyder)

Imagine if it had gone like this.

Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”

Jamelle Bouie has also written a scintillating opinion on how drastic a constitutional crisis this is in Opinion | There Is No Going Back - The New York Times

Again, if Musk had been elected to some office, this would still be one of the worst abuses of executive power in American history. No one in the executive branch has the legal authority to unilaterally cancel congressional appropriations. No one has the legal authority to turn the Treasury payments system into a means of political retribution. No one has the authority to summarily dismiss civil servants without cause. No one has the authority to take down and scrub government websites of public data, itself paid for by American taxpayers. And no private citizen has the authority to access the sensitive data of American citizens for either information gathering or their own, unknown purposes.

Apart from the gleeful power-grab by Elon, there have been countless other directives from Trump himself.

• The far-right ideological, and lets be honest, racist hatred of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has put many minorities, and especially transgender people, in the firing line:
  • Trump Admin Orders Federal D.E.I. Efforts to Shut Down by Wednesday Night - The New York Times
  • Trump Administration Escalates D.E.I. Crackdown in Latest Threat to Federal Workers - The New York Times
  • Trump Pardons Jan. 6 Rioters and Signs Order on TikTok - The New York Times
  • Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday - The New York Times
  • Federal Workers Told to Remove Pronouns From Email Signatures After Trump Order - The New York Times
  • Trump Blames D.E.I. and Biden for Crash Under His Watch - The New York Times
  • Pete Hegseth Targets D.E.I. in Early Directives at the Pentagon - The New York Times
  • Education Dept. Investigates Transgender Athlete Cases After Trump’s Order - The New York Times
  • Trump Signs Executive Order Barring Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports - The New York Times
  • Trump Moves Toward Pushing Openly Transgender People Out of Military - The New York Times
  • New Administration Highlights: Trump Visits L.A. and Tours Fire Damage After Suggesting FEMA Be Eliminated - The New York Times
  • Trump Bars Transgender Women From U.S. Prisons for Female Inmates - The New York Times
• Netenyahu (another crazed power-mad self-styled emperor) and Trump have mind-melded to finalise the destruction of a people and homeland; to completely and utterly destroy any chance for peace or justice in the Middle East, and to throw the region into turmoil it could take centuries to recover from. The plan? Ah yes, Gaz-a-Lago. Honestly, you can't make this shit up. From Trump Proposes U.S. Takeover of Gaza and Says Palestinians Should Move - The New York Times

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, Mr. Trump vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

It's intense, a swirling maelstrom of chaos and posturing, of Trumpian negotiating tactics, of strong-arm politicking, of so much harm it can be very difficult to pull oneself out from the swirl, to actually assess and craft meaningful response. Throughout the frenzy, I couldn't shake the sense that this wasn't possible, that no President of the USA could have such untrammelled power to reign as they please.

And you know, Trump can't. Judges are already blocking Elon's DOGE team access to Treasury Department records and systems, other lawsuits and legal challenges are on their way. The mad flurry will be halted.

Ezra Klein breaks it down in his podcast episode Don’t Believe Him - The New York Times.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

I urge you to listen to the full episode.

The incessant, violently aggressive posturing by the madcap Emperor and his man-child courtier hides a very simple truth. He's parading puffery and nonsense as truth and power. Stand up to it, call it out, shout in his face and all will soon see, the Emperor has no clothes.