MAGA updates: Musk's faux website; Regarding DJT's immunity; To the victor go the spoils

404 Media reports that Musk's highly touted government waste tracking website is the pinnacle of transparency in government. The problem is that it is an empty shell: Elon Musk's Waste.gov Is Just a WordPress Theme Placeholder Page -- Musk told reporters all of DOGE's actions are "maximally transparent." The website tracking waste is currently about an imaginary architecture firm. “Waste.gov: Tracking government waste,” the tagline for the website, archived here, says. .... “We actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions—we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X, and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions, which are maximally transparent,” Musk said. “In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know the case that where [sic] an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”

Once the 404 Media reported about the faux website, Musk took it down to hide it. The images above are from the archived web site page. 

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The New Republic reports about an implication of the USSC grant of immunity to DJT that TNR spins as a setback for DJT in a lawsuit. TNR writes: "Trump’s Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Just Came Back to Bite Him -- A federal judge ruled Monday that Trump’s FBI must disclose records from its Mar-a-Lago case file, complying with a FOIA request by Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell decided that the Supreme Court’s decision—combined with his return to the White House and its executive privileges—has insulated Trump enough from further criminal prosecution to allow the release of documents."

DJT did not want the case file documents to be released. To hide the documents showing his crimes, DJT ordered the federal agency involved to argue that the government could neither to confirm or deny the existence of the requested records or information because of the possibility of DJT being prosecuted in the future for the laws he broke in his Mar-A-Lago crime spree. That's an odd argument considering the DoJ released photos of the documents.

Remember these photos from

the fun-filled past?

Ah, the good old days . . . . .

Anyway, the judge blew a raspberry at DJT's argument and said the documents had to be released because (i) the USSC gave him vast immunity from prosecution in 2024 (Trump v. US), and (ii) because a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, even without the extra wall of immunity he got in 2024. Since there was no realistic chance of him being prosecuted for any of those federal crimes, his claim of possible future prosecution was baloney.

Although TNR spun this as a setback for DJT, it is in only a very narrow sense. The documents will be released, maybe causing a moment or two of mild discomfort for him, but probably not. To me, the much bigger point is a federal judge saying that all of his past federal crimes are no longer prosecutable. That's the main point.

“He didn’t get away with anything, yet.”

Remember what the cynical liar Mitch McConnell said in 2021 about a former president being prosecutable?

“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office. ... He didn’t get away with anything, yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being [held] accountable by either one.”

 

Guess what? He got away with all of his federal crimes. For practical purposes, we no longer have a significant criminal or civil justice system in this country for DJT or MAGA supporters or elites he chooses to protect. And, he can protect by (1) pardoning himself or his criminal friends for federal crimes, (2) ordering his subverted Department of Justice to not prosecute himself or his criminal friends for federal crimes, (3) pressuring or coaxing state law enforcement in red states to not prosecute himself or his criminal friends for state crimes, and (4) threatening state law enforcement in blue states to not prosecute himself or his criminal friends for state crimes in those states.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The Independent reports an incident that shows how aggressively DKT and MAGA are using their power to obliterate inconvenient facts and truths to advance their twin authoritarian and pro-corruption policy goals: "USAID inspector fired after revealing nearly $500m in food aid was about to spoil amid Trump funding freeze -- The inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development was fired on Tuesday – one day after his office issued a critical report warning that nearly $500 million in food was about to go bad due to President Donald Trump’s freeze on the agency."

If one isn't mistaken, isn't letting half a billion in food spoil a form of waste? Seems so. But, the spoils here isn't the food gone bad. It's DJT and MAGA's power to fire fraud and waste watchdogs in the federal government and replace them with deeply corrupt loyalist MAGA goons. This is the new normal. Like it or not, it's time to get used to it.

 ☹️

I don't like it!

MAGA’s incoherent social engineering

In another sign of MAGA irrationality, e.g., belief in false realities, a WaPo opinion discusses federal infrastructure spending guided by a false image of traditional family structure (not paywalled): 

The Trump administration recently issued new guidelines for the Transportation Department, surprisingly prioritizing spending and infrastructure for “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” In other words, communities with large traditional families. .... That means rural and small-town America — presumably President Donald Trump’s core constituency — will disproportionately benefit from these funds.

Our research shows that over the past three decades, among women ages 15 to 44, marriage rates have fallen much faster for rural women than for their urban counterparts. Between 1988 and 2018, the proportion of rural women who were married fell from 55% to 33%. Marriage among urban women also declined, but to a lesser degree. 

The opinion points out that in rural areas, cohabitation rose more sharply and divorce has declined more slowly. By 2018, rural women were more likely than urban women to be in an unmarried cohabiting partnership (19 percent vs. 14 percent). The proportion of urban women who never marry is still slightly higher, mainly because urban women marry at older ages. In addition, the “baby bust” in America is larger among rural women than urban. 54% of rural children are born outside marriage compared to 45% of urban children.

Collectively, the data indicate that using marriage and family size to guide transportation funding is going to disadvantage rural regions. Once MAGA elites come to understand the stupidity of their plans, assuming they ever do, maybe they will rethink and try to come up with sensible, cost-effective transportation policy based on reality, reason and empirical data. 

Ha! MAGA understanding? Fat chance.

Three bits: MAGA and corporate attacks on consumer protections

As promised in Project 2025, DJT and MAGA elites are making massive attacks on regulations and protections for workers, consumers and the environment. NPR writes about the killing of the CFPB, which is the federal agency that protects consumers from massive corporate greed, theft and fraud in finance: "The Trump administration has stopped work at the CFPB. Here's what the agency does -- The main U.S. agency tasked with overseeing the financial products and services used by everyday Americans — from credit cards to checking accounts to home loans — is the latest target of the Trump administration's effort to remake the federal government. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new leader has shuttered the agency's headquarters and told staffers to stay at home and refrain from doing any work. .... An independent bureau within the Federal Reserve, the CFPB's job is to ensure that the financial products and services offered to American consumers are fair and transparent."

The Hill comments: "The Trump administration is moving rapidly to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), halting the agency’s work, cutting off its funding and shutting down its headquarters. .... “I think everyone assumes this is the USAID playbook, and I think everyone’s operating off of the assumption that we’re about to get annihilated, the way that they were annihilated,” a CFPB employee told The Hill, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development."

So, there we have it, MAGA is doing exactly what Project 2025 promises and what DJT claims to be 100% ignorant of, while falsely claiming to not like some of it. How can anyone not know anything about something, but still not like some of it? They can't. But, they can lie about it.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

And, it's not just MAGA government that is going after worker, consumer and environmental protections. Brass knuckles capitalists are gleefully joining in the massacre. Techdirt writes: 

"Automakers Sue To Kill Maine’s Hugely Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law -- A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But as we’ve seen with other states that have passed right to reform laws (most notably New York), passing the law isn’t the end of the story. Corporate lobbyists have had great success not just watering these laws down before passage, but after voters approve them. They’ve also been swarmed by coordinated industry lawsuits and falsehood-spewing attacks. -- But the Alliance For Automotive Innovation also just filed a new lawsuit saying the law isn’t fully cooked and therefore violates the law. .... The group is correct that Maine’s right to repair law isn’t fully cooked yet. What they don’t say is they’re one of the reasons the law isn’t fully cooked. Or that they oppose the popular law either way."

It's just business as usual. Capitalism always does the same thing. It looks for new and exciting ways to screw the customer harder and harder. It always seeks to charge what the market will bear, and a little more if it can pull it off, e.g., via plutocracy or oligarchy. When capitalism is under-regulated, there are lots of new and exciting ways to screw the customer harder and harder.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

Another target of MAGA and Project 2025, is the right to privacy. MAGA and its Project are generally hostile to privacy rights for average people. It is hostile to the right to privacy, particularly in areas like reproductive care, data collection for marginalized groups, and in the broader context of consumer data privacy. Its proposals and policy directions reduce privacy protections. That transfers to power inherent in privacy from citizens and consumers to government and the business sector. With the loss of privacy power prioritize, government and business interests are free to take whatever advantage of newly exposed individuals there might be. 

Senator Charles Percy (R-IL, 1967-1985)

Commenting in the hearings on the Privacy Act of 1974

Lawfare writes about DJT and Musk grossly violating federal privacy law:

DOGE Betrays Foundational Commitments of the Privacy Act of 1974

Musk’s attempts to gain access to agency databases is an egregious violation of the act, which protects personal information from abuse

Under the auspices of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” Elon Musk and former staffers—all recent college and high school graduates—have been given access to agency databases teeming with sensitive personal information. The group has entered the Treasury Department’s payment system, which stores federal tax returns, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates; the Office of Personnel Management’s system, which contains background checks, medical information, bank account information, and biometric data of current, former, and prospective federal employees, contractors, and family members; and the General Service Administration’s system, which stores similarly sensitive personal data.

Condemnation and lawsuits followed, and rightfully so. No one—not even special government employees—should access agency “systems of records” without proper authorization under the Privacy Act of 1974. Nothing suggests that Musk or his employees have such authority. Privacy Act violations are not trivial. Profound harms to privacy and democracy are at stake.

What are the consequences of abandoning the right to privacy? Things like (i) unlimited government and corporate surveillance without oversight, (ii) abuse of power by unrestrained law enforcement, corporations and religion, and (iii) reduced data security to save money. China's digital tyranny relies very heavily on it unrestricted power to surveille its people and its corporations. There, all the power is with the government. In the US, all the lost privacy power will flow to governments, corporations and Christianity.

Asymmetry in power 

Wealthy and powerful elites will have their privacy and private affairs (figurative and literal) protected as much as they want. How much? Essentially all of it, if that's what they want. How can that be possible? Easy. They can live their lives and run their businesses shielded behind privacy laws they demand remain intact, e.g., tax privacy laws, business privacy laws and NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). Elites and big corporations routinely use NDAs to hide wealth, personal activities and illegal activities. How many NDAs shield you? I bet none. 

Qs: Do you think that DJT, Musk or MAGA elites generally care at all about our loss of privacy rights and abuses that will entail? Do you think that obliterating the Privacy Act of 1974 will lead to more transparency in the federal government, wealthy people and large corporations?

Two bits: MAGA attacks on pro-democracy guardrails, including ethics; The Musk wrecking ball

The AP reports:

In the first three weeks of his administration, President Donald Trump has moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government’s public integrity guardrails that he frequently tested during his first term but now seems intent on removing entirely.

It’s all being done with a stop-me-if-you-dare defiance by a president who the first time around felt hemmed in by watchdogs, lawyers and judges tasked with affirming good government and fair play. Now, he seems determined to break those constraints once and for all in a historically unprecedented flex of executive power.

Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer is quoted: “The end goal is to avoid accountability this time. Not just being protected by his party and counting on the public to move on when scandals or problems emerge, but this time by actually removing many of the key figures whose job it is to oversee. .... It’s a much bolder assertion than in his first term, and if successful and if all these figures are removed, you’ll have a combination of an executive branch lacking independent voices that will keep their eye on the ball and then a congressional majority that at least thus far isn’t really going to cause problems for him.”

In direct attacks on ethics, Trump fired (1) the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which processes whistleblower complaints and handles the Hatch Act that prohibits federal employees from partisan activities on the job (that firing is now contested in court), and (2) the head of the Office of Government Ethics. To head watchdog agencies DJT named Doug Collins. Collins is a loyal DJT ally. 

Ethics in the federal government is now a true oxymoron. Ethics is dead and buried.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

The NYT reports (not paywalled) about another deeply troubling blast of MAGA damage to respect for truth, democracy and transparency in government:

The billionaire Elon Musk said in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance on Tuesday that he was providing maximum transparency in his government cost-cutting initiative, but offered no evidence for his sweeping claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”

The goal is to “restore democracy,” Mr. Musk said. “If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?”

Among Mr. Musk’s claims, which he offered without providing evidence, was that some officials at the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development had been taking “kickbacks.” He said that “quite a few people” in the bureaucracy somehow had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” without explaining how he had made that assessment. He later claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks were as old as 150.

Musk is quoted as saying “We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.” Musk was referring to some postings by his team on X as evidence of transparency. But as the NYT points out, Musk’s team operates in secrecy. They surprise federal employees by barging unannounced into agencies to get access to vast amounts of sensitive data. 

In another act of secrecy, since Musk is a “special government employee,” DJT says that his financial disclosure filing will not be made public. That is the opposite of transparency. But, it is the epitome of corruption. 

In all of this, DJT claims that he is just delivering the radical overhaul of the federal government he promised in his campaign. What he fails to say is that his intended radical overhaul was authoritarian and kleptocratic. His dark free speech rhetoric subtly led people to believe that his reforms would be pro-democracy and anti-corruption. This is somewhat like DJT claiming he mentally declassified all the classified government documents he stole and refused to return.

 

So, what MAGA delivers so far is secrecy, corruption and allegations of vast criminal activity in government. The allegations are yet not supported by one shred of evidence. That is just like DJT’s completely unsupported allegations of vast vote fraud and criminal activity in the 2020 election. We're still waiting for the Pillow Guy to release all the evidence.

Qs: If Musk’s allegations of vast criminal activity in government are true, should we expect that the DoJ would start dozens or hundreds of investigations and then criminal prosecutions of the criminals? If few or no prosecutions happen, would that constitute solid evidence that Musk is lying? Do MAGA elites lies to the public no longer matter because denying or ignoring inconvenient facts and truths no longer matter because most people still like what DJT is doing?