DOGE accesses federal payroll system and punishes employees who objected

Report: IT officials who fought DOGE access put on leave and under investigation.

See full article...

 

[TechnicaGratiaArs]

Musk told Fox News last week that DOGE is working on "[...] it will greatly improve the efficiency of government systems."

Fascists "making the trains run on time" is just fascist propaganda, the didn't. But Nazis making the trains run on time to the death camps was true, with American computers doing the work. Inefficiency is part of how Americans are protected by limited government.

Musk is a nazi. He will both create only propaganda about his government efficiency, and speed the trains to the death camps.

 

[mpfaff]

These DOGE guys have an extremely important but unimaginably difficult job to do, it's one that is desperately overdue to be done, they have the highest possible executive authorization to do it, and they have the most impeccable credentials imaginable for doing it. It would sure be nice if all the whiners got out of the way and just let them do their job.

What are those impeccable credentials? No one in the Trump administration has been on anyone's shortlist of SMEs for any role they've been given.

 

[graylshaped]

They've already said they're looking at ways to remove government spending from GDP, as if it's not real. Trying to mask the economic hit from laying off tens of thousands of federal workers. They're already starting to cook the books.

Funny thing is there are three ways to measure GDP already, and all signs point to them tanking all of them.

 

[aleph_nought]

Fascists "making the trains run on time" is just fascist propaganda, the didn't. But Nazis making the trains run on time to the death camps was true, with American computers doing the work. Inefficiency is part of how Americans are protected by limited government.

Musk is a nazi. He will both create only propaganda about his government efficiency, and speed the trains to the death camps.

If Musk were truly evil, he already has enough data on vulnerable Americans who will have aid cut off and left to die on their own. He doesn't need trains to death camps.

I think Musk is more stupid than anything, afflicted with a kind of malicious incompetence and a total lack of empathy. He's not Himmler but it doesn't matter - the end result is still the same.

I'm reminded of KSR's Red Moon novel where an inefficient Chinese Communist government can't do a brutal crackdown on protesters because reformist insiders themselves don't want efficiency. Having a virtual panopticon on society doesn't lead to efficiency, it leads to total tyranny.

 

[Dr Spiff]

With so many Americans living paycheque to paycheque, I get why people are afraid to speak up. But in the end, there aren’t that many people working in DOGE. In absolute numbers, there aren’t that many republican collaborators destroying your country. In comparison to the number of people they’re affecting, they’re vanishingly few. I guess the average American needs to decide if they’re going to let that few individuals ruin their country or not.

Civil resistance/ disobedience might be he best option - it’s looking less and less likely that there will be more elections. Trump will likely call a national emergency for some phoney reason and cancel the midterms, and then change the constitution to get elected a third time. He’s already openly talking about a third term - it may be wise to listen to that and realise he means it, and what that means for you.

Or you do nothing and get what you get. Up to you, I guess. Good luck.

 

[delightful hag]

The US will never recover from all this. The damage is too great. It's like that saying that whatever you put on the internet can never be taken back.

Countries who's governing regimes behaved very badly at different points in the 19th and 20th century and seem to be fine (relatively speaking) now: Germany, Italy, Japan, England, France, Spain, USA (in the early days when we just wiped out everyone we encountered on the continent who wasn't us). I'm sure I've missed oodles more, but I'm tired. Regardless, things are very bad right now and may stay that way for the remainder of our lives, but it is possible for a country's reputation to change given time and the desire of it's citizenry to do so.

 

[SubWoofer2]

...word has it that Musk, Thiel, Bezos, et al subscribe to the Dark Enlightenment theory.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

If I had read that shit a couple of years ago, I would have made fun it of, and asked if it also included a pedophile ring run out of the basement of a pizza joint in Washington.

Thanks @SplatMan_DK I had been wondering when the flawed but pervasive ideology would arise and become known to the general punter rather than just to the cult eyeball-spinning average maniac in the street (or in the corridors of power).

I was wondering what would be that modern-day counterpart of Mein Kampf and Himmler's ideology. These things need an intellectual foundation. Ayn Rand didn't seem to be quite robust enough.

Along with the purges, you need a book, to replace the books you burn. Also to replace the readers you burn, but that comes later.

Looks like the software engineers are to blame. This too fits the mould: someone who isn't an actual historian or sociologist, just a dabbler. Such people are dangerous, because they don't know when they are not even wrong.

Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American far-right, monarchist, and reactionary blogger.[1][2][3] He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx).[4][5][6]

In his blog Unqualified Reservations, which he wrote from 2007 to 2014, and in his later newsletter Gray Mirror, which he started in 2020, he argues that American democracy is a failed experiment[8] that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations.[9] In 2002, Yarvin began work on a personal software project that eventually became the Urbit networked computing platform. In 2013, he co-founded the company Tlon to oversee the Urbit project and helped lead it until 2019.[10]

Yarvin has been described as a "neo-reactionary", "neo-monarchist" and "neo-feudalist" who "sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system, and who wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy".[11][12][13][14] He has defended the institution of slavery, and has suggested that certain races may be more naturally inclined toward servitude than others.[3][15] He has claimed that whites have higher IQs than black people, and opposes US civil rights programs.

Yarvin has influenced some prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians, with venture capitalist Peter Thiel described as his "most important connection".[16] Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[17] U.S. Vice President JD Vance "has cited Yarvin as an influence himself".[18][19][20] Michael Anton, the State Department Director of Policy Planning during Trump's second presidency, has also discussed Yarvin's ideas.[2] In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right".[21]

The pieces of the picture are coming together.

 

[delightful hag]

It is so much easier to destroy than create. A house that took six months to erect can be ashes in an afternoon.

I don't know what the end result here is going to be, but it feels highly likely it won't be pretty for nearly everyone.

Maybe we should beat them to it. Shut the country down. National strike without the picket lines. See how business likes it without the cooperation of their "production units".

 

[graylshaped]

The idea that getting "all" these different data bases fully integrated is a security debacle just waiting to happen. Besides, hasn't it worked so well for DHS? Compartmentalization is key to maintain security, but we have already seen how cavalier the Trump White House is about National Security. I have never put in someone else's phone number for a different name on my contact list. Have you?

Trump’s war cabinet apparently has Phone Contact List Deficiency Syndrome…

 

[Jordan83]

Everything else aside (and that is a LOT to put aside, I know) this administration has the gall to criticize the appearance of someone like Zelenskyy when this fucking clown is repeatedly shown in photos dressed like a tech-bro hobo sitting in The Oval Office and addressing cabinet members and other high ranking US officials?

The slobbish hat/t-shirt/suitcoat look with jeans and a stupid ass belt buckle and sometimes sunglasses is one of the most cringey looking "style" choices I've ever seen, and this dude just walks around The White House and other prominent chambers of government dressed that way all the time.

What a dingbat.

Oh, but Obama wore a tan suit once, amirite?

 

[scrimbul]

I'm more about calling the real Americans out who don't just talk the "patriots" talk but instead walk that walk.

Protesting is NOT going to work. These people have no sense of hearing, nor of morality. They need to go. Forcefully.

How much force depends on how much they resist being shown the door.

That's not the only problem.

There are 77 million people who can't be trusted at all, with any ability to vote or any input on policy.

There's a further 90 million that probably also aren't trustworthy because there aren't enough carrots to make them give a damn and it takes courage to implement the necessary stick (mandatory voting + 30 day voting holiday, mail-in and absentee voting, federally enforced for all 50 states to figure out how with funding assistance disbursed from the Federal Election Commission)

MAGA has successfully engineered a governing situation which is not only not sustainable beyond decade, if that (and this is being VERY generous assuming they cheat themselves a third Trump term with an Alzheimer's vegetable Takeda Shingen style) so there's no win condition, they have literally already blown up everything necessary to stay in power as long as possible. Disappearing people and military force aren't sufficient, especially if they saber rattle or start wars with allies to really make sure shit can't be fixed. Russia isn't a sustainable governing model no matter how Putin makes it look.

You then have the situation to do with the fact that even 10 years later you have 77 million Nazis to deal with and an unknown amount of indoctrinated additional 18-28 year-olds taking marching orders from Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes who are probably not alive at this point to be frank, for a couple dozen easy to imagine reasons and outcomes they think they can outwit and can't.

This means by definition even if you somehow manage to keep a democracy uninterrupted... which is highly in doubt... to apply a figurative defibrillator to the social safety net and salvage the entitlement systems absolutely will require using/abusing the very same methods used to destroy them BEFORE putting a functioning Congress and democratic elections in place to continue to run them. If you try to throw the bums out then hold elections to fix them someone will pick a shitty manager or contractor in the chaos and make shit worse, it absolutely must be repaired in and authoritarian manner the way it was broken to begin with.

Then you STILL have a situation where the 77 million conservative voters aren't just fooling themselves with propaganda that they are second-class citizens but must necessarily BE second-class because of all their doubling down. In which case they've now wasted 20 years and are no better off than when they've started, they've just harmed roughly two generations of people for no reason.

Conservative fascist thinking is uniquely evil in that they willfully set up cyclical periods of their own setbacks, incompetent government and then set the stage for their return using their own poison if a country isn't vigilant enough.

The question is CAN a country be vigilant enough to stop this. Most indications say 'yes' except China, India and Pakistan are all very much on the edge, and both Russia and Iran fell ages ago into the fascist abyss and none of those five seem to be pulling away more classically liberal anytime soon.

 

[stehsegler]

Given these presidential executive orders appear to be above both federal law and congress what would any US president stop from making up their own laws and rules as they go along?

 

[SpankyFrost]

I'm more about calling the real Americans out who don't just talk the "patriots" talk but instead walk that walk.

Protesting is NOT going to work. These people have no sense of hearing, nor of morality. They need to go. Forcefully.

How much force depends on how much they resist being shown the door.

Unfortunately that is not going to happen. I've never encountered them at the door, but Ive heard that they have the backing of the white house BEFORE they arrive. So the agencies know they are coming. And if there is ANY resistance what so ever, they bring (or threaten to bring) the US Marshall service with them and WILL execute firing, dismissal, admin leave and as you see with this case, under investigation of what ever that means. They are a bunch of very young criminal hackers. And I mean that literally. Some of them DO have a criminal background. How did they get a security clearance... tRump! Now the bad news? Each and EVERY congress person KNOWS this illegal crap is going on and COULD stop Musk and tRump... but they won't because they fear them! It's like a bad dream or a weird sci fi novel!

 

[yopmaster]

It was kind of funny first, but not so much anymore.
We, citizens of the few remaining democracies, should thank the USA for reminding us that our vote actually matters.

 

[johnsonwax]

Oh, that's easy.

They're young, ignorant, and naive enough to believe everything that Elon Musk tells them without questioning even the slightest detail. This makes them absolutely perfect for ruining functional government departments with a veneer of plausible deniability for Musk and his cronies.

The fact that this is likely to utterly ruin their lives once word gets out of their involvement in all this is neither here nor there - all that matters is that Musk has a decent ablative shield. What happens to the components of the shield in question is a question for the little people.

I'll note, while true, none of those things are credentials.

 

[JaneDoe]

Just imagine if Soros would attempt to do any of this.

 

[DanielTheManual]

Countries who's governing regimes behaved very badly at different points in the 19th and 20th century and seem to be fine (relatively speaking) now: Germany, Italy, Japan, England, France, Spain, USA (in the early days when we just wiped out everyone we encountered on the continent who wasn't us). I'm sure I've missed oodles more, but I'm tired. Regardless, things are very bad right now and may stay that way for the remainder of our lives, but it is possible for a country's reputation to change given time and the desire of it's citizenry to do so.

Bad behaviour is recoverable. Stupidity is more damaging.

Some of the would-be philosophers around Trump seem to admire Singapore, or Fascist or Monarchical Europe, but the state they seem more likely to emulate is Russia, in any of its historical and current variations of dysfunctional kleptocracy

 

[Bungle_00]

Musk promised Full Self Driving by the end of the year for the past 10+ years... and we're supposed to think his claims, schedule and capabilities are up to snuff.

For an administration so hung up a merit-based hiring, Musk clearly is NOT competent for doing IT and large system rewrites. He can't even get new code (FSD) to work.

To be fair FSD is hard. I’d be more concerned that he can’t get windscreen wipers to wipe when it’s raining.

 

[johnsonwax]

Countries who's governing regimes behaved very badly at different points in the 19th and 20th century and seem to be fine (relatively speaking) now: Germany, Italy, Japan, England, France, Spain, USA (in the early days when we just wiped out everyone we encountered on the continent who wasn't us). I'm sure I've missed oodles more, but I'm tired. Regardless, things are very bad right now and may stay that way for the remainder of our lives, but it is possible for a country's reputation to change given time and the desire of it's citizenry to do so.

Will note, all of those countries went through a war and got thrashed pretty badly between the behaving badly and not periods - including the US.

 

[eukiwi]

I have to believe they thing they are doing the right thing, but even so it’s myopic and foolish to think anyone should have such unchecked power, regardless of what it is used for.

These dudebros just love the power and personal gain. They don't care if they're doing the right thing.

 

[Formedras]

I sometimes talk about trying to avoid the Second American Civil War (or to get on with it already), but...... this is it, isn't it? We actually are literally at war now, even if nobody's shooting yet?
Dammit.

 

[Zephro]

On the plus side, if the federal government spends the next four years in chaos, at least it will be a little harder for America to invade Canada or Greenland.

 

[Deleted member 1083584]

I'm more about calling the real Americans out who don't just talk the "patriots" talk but instead walk that walk.

Protesting is NOT going to work. These people have no sense of hearing, nor of morality. They need to go. Forcefully.

Protesting will not change their minds—that’s not its purpose. It’s to change yours! To prove to yourselves that y’all have the strength and resolve to beat them. Unite Organize Action!

Maximum legal force required. Maximum ballot box.

[Lead won’t work unless you are planning to shoot them ALL, and all at once—if you miss, they WILL shoot all of you and yours in return. Can’t recommend that. Absolute last 2A Hail Mary, and highly liable to backfire at that. You spot any tankies waving weapons, you jump them first!]

…

Talking of legal force: Judicial Election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court is TODAY, people!

Start breaking the ketamine-addled chud and the Kmart Rouge. Make your power heard.

 

[Deleted member 1083584]

I just finished listening to an insightful two-parter on Elon Musk on the Know Your Enemy podcast. Toward the end of the second episode they touch on what kind of people work for him given the stresses he puts them under. One suggestion is that these people see themselves as akin to heroes in an RPG working to save the world. To them, the rest of us normies who just want to work 9-5 and go back to our boring lives are basically NPCs. It doesn't matter if our lives get fucked up by their actions on their path to building their lore and saving the world.

Some members of this community would know people who worked like this, or have been there. Does this ring any bells?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ManagedByNarcissists/

The Abuse IS The Point.

 

[Deleted member 1083584]

My oldest won't be returning to the states. They went to school in Canada, and it was cheaper to pay International Tuition than for me to pay in state California tuition. When they graduate soon, as a US citizen with a Canadian diploma, they can get a job, then apply for a work visa after.

They had already changed their plans. Their original plan had been to get a masters in Canada, then go to University of Texas for a PhD. UT is the highest ranked in their field. The kid is LGBQT+, and realized that Texas wasn't a good fit for them. So it looks like they're staying in Canada with their Canadian partner.

As an individual, that is understandable. Look after yourself first: you are no use to anyone if you don’t.

As a long-term survival strategy, good luck. Canada will be State 52 should the Kmart Rouge achieve their objectives.

Plenty other states more friendly, fwiw; but, whatever your kid does, I hope they do find ways to play their part. Democracy needs everyone!

 

[gigaplex]

This is what fascism looks like.

 

[mihail_pramatarov]

he just wants to have access in order to complete his everything app. this doge thing is nothing else, but free access for training and laying ground for future banking and whatnot app.

 

[Deleted member 1083584]

I've said it a hundred times, I'll say it again:

Government isn't supposed to be efficient; it's supposed to be accountable.

Not that this exercise has anything to with "efficiency". That is a bald-faced lie and everyone with the IQ of a turnip knows it. It's about control. Fuck accountability, fuck security, fuck efficiency, fuck you, we have a Treasury to loot and sissy liberals to take on one-way helicopter rides.

And nobody can stop it.

FTFY: Nobody can stop it today.

So stop bloody wringing your hands over it!

That ground is already lost.

You lost it last November, your bad. All you can—should—do about it is document everything, for inquests/trials. Regroup, harden your resolve, plan for the future.

Pol Potty and Kmart Rouge’s Year Zero has written you free license to achieve Democratic supermajority in the coming years, just as LBJ gifted the fascists the South 62 years back. Astonishing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Trump is bonfiring the US and world economy in service to his own insatiable ravening personal ego, destroying the GOP as a political party. The GOP has no choices left: it must pivot to single-party police state within 18 months to win the game, or else it loses it all! They must bet everything they are and have: huge, imposing, massively intimidating. Also incredibly brittle, delicate, and wonderful friable! Identify all their weaknesses and turn every one against them.

Now you know all you must lose, identify what you do have to hand (you, you dopes! 160 million!), and what y’all must take in order to rebuild your USA in future.

Midterm Elections 2026. And there’s tons more work to do on your way there!

…

You must look past all the suffering and sorrow of the next 18 months, stop caring about those. All the deaths coming: those lives too are already lost. Every hour you fixate on what’s happening today, you lose your resolve to work for your tomorrow. So easy, seductive, wrong.

Abusers don’t win by abusing you. They win by convincing you to apologize for it.

Don’t give them that. Don’t defeat yourselves, even though you want to right now. That’s their con now: to trick you into fooling yourself, tell yourself there is nothing you can or should do. So you destroy your own hope for them, give up, surrender your self willingly to their abuse, and so make of yourself abusers too.

Unite. Organize. Strategize. Get moving. Harden your hearts (for the right reason! not like theirs at all), so you can press forward, do what your roadmap requires you to do. Don’t take their bait, don’t riot in streets, don’t do nothing at all; don’t do anything that facilitates their agenda.

Y’all are smart people: understand yourselves, understand them (essential); you can think rings around these yahoos! Never give up. Never surrender. Can your self-pity, get up off your own asses, for you and your children. For all of humanity.

Stop playing their game. Write your own. And win it.

START NOW. TODAY: Wisconsin Judicial Election.

 

[Komarov]

You need to qualify this: “Give us some time to pull ourselves together, unite, organize, strategize, action.”

…

BTW, nuking Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a necessary atrocity. The narcissists running Japan would have made every last citizen throw themselves into Americans guns just to slow a land invasion, just to break your soldiers’ willingness to reach them.

Nukes was pure Powell Doctrine: a near perfect end run around that. Destroyed that deranged leadership’s will† to resist utterly. Truman took the guilt from American people onto himself in one unforgivable, correct act.

This could be somehow construed as being true IF at least one of the nukes had been dropped on a military target. They were not, so instead those bombings were pure war crimes.

Far from being the only ones in WW2; see Hamburg and Dresden bombings for similar effect, and that's just from one side of the divide. The other side was far worse.

The only positive moment in the whole "nuking Japan" fiasco was Truman preventing the bombing of Kyoto. And the fact that Kyoto was even on the list gives you a good idea of what kind of lunatics were involved in planning those bombings. That's if the whole idea of dropping nukes isn't lunatic enough for anyone.

By the way, Japan was already prepared to negotiate a peace treaty before the bombs were dropped. Guess who backed them into a corner by demanding unconditional surrender? Yup, the same guys who ordered its nuking. And why? Well, the usual answer you'll get to that question is, predictably, "saving American lives." The little detail that the Soviets had invaded Manchuria and were only weeks if not days from reaching Japan's home waters is a detail conveniently left out. It wouldn't do to have Stalin involved in the defeat of Japan, would it. Better end this quickly before the commies get too close.

 

[alxx]

So if x/shitter uses mysql does this mean dodgy has moved or is moving all US gov databases to mysql?

 

[yahve]

Being raised in an authoritarian world (I’m from Belarus), I observe what is happening in the USA right now with sheer horror. This is exactly how an authoritarian society arises: the enforcers don’t follow the law, they just break it. There’s no time to fix things, they just push forward. Only strikes, mass protests, and the collapse of their structures will help.

 

[bosyber]

Thanks @SplatMan_DK I had been wondering when the flawed but pervasive ideology would arise and become known to the general punter rather than just to the cult eyeball-spinning average maniac in the street (or in the corridors of power).

I was wondering what would be that modern-day counterpart of Mein Kampf and Himmler's ideology. These things need an intellectual foundation. Ayn Rand didn't seem to be quite robust enough.

Along with the purges, you need a book, to replace the books you burn. Also to replace the readers you burn, but that comes later.

Looks like the software engineers are to blame. This too fits the mould: someone who isn't an actual historian or sociologist, just a dabbler. Such people are dangerous, because they don't know when they are not even wrong.





The pieces of the picture are coming together.

That bit of 'accountable monarchy', does he develop ideas of who's accounting to whom, and about what; also, how does he propose the decision of who's the monarchist, and in what role, a puppet or someone with real power who then needs to have some sense which might be hard to actually decide on; and then hereditary? Well. Not going to read it it seems a bad sort of fantasy novella.

 

[iim]

The US will never recover from all this. The damage is too great. It's like that saying that whatever you put on the internet can never be taken back.

Massive damage will come in the form of institutional memory loss.

The group that took the brunt of Elon’s axe are the young workers those with the least amount of seniority. And what is the point of these workers? To learn the skills of those elder workers who will be retiring from the system in the coming years.

The damage done here won’t be fully realized for years and years. Long after Trump has left office.

 

[Komarov]

The damage done here won’t be fully realized for years and years. Long after Trump has left office.

Trump will leave office? He'll just be embalmed in The Chair and his internal organs put in jars on the mantle (the biggest one for his gut and the smallest for his brain, I presume).

 

[coolblue2000]

But what if, having taken down the fence, you now discover the rabbits that have come across are multiplying uncontrollably?

We are now seeing what happens when the richest country in the world turns into East Germany. And East Germany lasted 45 years of relative decline, perhaps only lasting as long as it did because it managed to run a reasonable public health and free education system.
Zuckerberg said "privacy is dead, get over it" and now Musk wants to go one better than learning everybody's information that they thought (foolishly) was OK to publish, by getting all the information they don't want published. A Stasi but run at computer speed with the aid of artificial intelligence to make mistakes far faster than people with typewriters and index cards.

At least two of my family have been checking their ability to obtain UK citizenship based on one of their parents. Failing that there's France where the local Trump equivalent, despite being Musk-supported, has just been banned from standing for election for five years and will probably do prison time. Because unlike the USA, the French take their Constitution very seriously indeed.

Yeah, I am worried the UK government has not put a plan in place for when tens of thousands of US citizens seek asylum...

 

[Komarov]

Yeah, I am worried the UK government has not put a plan in place for when tens of thousands of US citizens seek asylum...

It hasn't? And here I thought the cargo flights to Rwanda were a done deal.

 

[adamsc]

Two thousand years elapsed since one guy got nailed to a tree for suggesting how great it would be if everyone could be nice to each other for a change, and his followers still haven’t figured out what he was trying to say.

To be fair, his serious followers figured out the broad strokes. What’s been taking the right-wing so long is looking for loopholes in what he said about taking care of the poor, disabled, elderly, immigrants, etc. and, most importantly, how rich people can still be on top.