"Wake up America. A clique of right wing billionaires led by Trump and their sycophants have taken over the government, endangering lives and businesses, and the well being of those who need care and support. Contrary to the scapegoating efforts of Trump and his crowd, the danger is not immigrants to this country, including refugees from oppressive lands, but the President and those who are supporting him. Time for freedom loving Americans to get off their butts to take back our country." - NY Times comment
"I think I need someone who is more intelligent than me (probably anyone on the NYT staff) to explain to me how an unelected entity can push out government professionals and gain access to payment systems the way they evidently are. Where are the legal challenges to this? So, oligarchy in US is a real thing? I mean it. I truly, truly do not understand how this is happening." - NY Times comment
"A power-mad president possessed of radical theories of executive authority and convinced of his own royal prerogative has given de facto control of most of the federal government to one of the richest men on the planet, if not the richest, whose own interests are tangled up in those of rival governments and foreign autocracies as well as the United States. The public has no guarantee that its most sensitive data is secure."- Jamelle Bouie, ‘There Is No Coming Back’, NY Times
The Trump administration has made the U.S. Agency for
International Development, a decades-old organization responsible for carrying
out foreign aid programs around the world, a top target in its campaign to
remake the federal government.
A week after Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid, his administration removed two
top USAID security officials after they refused to grant representatives of
Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” access to restricted spaces
at the agency, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Musk took
to X on Sunday to brand USAID a “criminal organization”
and called for its death. As of Sunday afternoon, the agency’s website is inaccessible.
The cost-cutting effort led by Musk's "DOGE" is not a department but rather a quasi task force with no official governmental standing but that nevertheless has been granted unusual power. An executive order signed by President Trump gives its workers unfettered access to government agencies. But in theory, the employees would still need to get proper security clearances to access classified material. Beyond that, this intrusion of Trump and Musk into the purse is a gross violation of Article 1 of the Constitution. (Donnie Dotard and Musk claim they have the right to decide how the federal government spends the people’s money. They do not!)
Here’s what to know about USAID and its work:
USAID provides humanitarian and development assistance to
other countries, primarily by dishing out funds to nongovernmental
organizations, foreign governments and international organizations, or other
U.S. agencies, according to
the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
In fiscal year 2023, USAID managed over $40 billion of
appropriations — less than 1 percent of the federal budget, according to
federal records — provided to about 130 countries. The top recipients of USAID
funding included Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, South Sudan, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo
and Somalia. In other words, among the
most needy places on Earth.
More than 10,000 people work for USAID, about two-thirds of whom serve overseas, according to the CRS. USAID’s projects included providing assistance to famine-stricken regions in Sudan, providing textbooks for displaced schoolchildren in Ukraine and training health workers in Rwanda, according to an archived version of its website. Many worked in Barbados when we lived on the island, and you could see the positive effects of their influence everywhere, especially in education.
In the words of
“An abrupt collapse of the agency would put the rights of
millions of people around the world at greater risk as a result What
dismantling U.S.A.I.D. doesn’t do is make anyone safer or more prosperous.
Congress should immediately step in to challenge this.”
Former USAID official in the Bush administration Andrew Natsios - on Deadline Whitehouse- bluntly spelled out the downstream costs of dismantling USAID. He noted, for example, the popularity of Bin Laden in Indonesia before the 2004 tsunami (that killed 225,000) and the USAID infusion. Bin Laden held at 62% to barely 23% for the US of A. After the USAID assistance, Bin Laden's popularity collapsed to 21% and the U.S. rating reached 67%. As Mr. Natsios noted that timely and massive aid clearly redounded to the U.S.' benefit - and arguably enhanced our security.
Ditto with sending foodstuffs to places such as South Sudan, Senegal and Kenya. As Mr. Natsios noted, with those aid shipments halted famine will spread and the famine-affected populations will be driven to seek refuge in Europe and the U.S. This is what the 'DOGE' dummies have wrought with their derelict attacks on USAID. As for Musk's claim it was 'evil', Mr. Natsios replied, "total garbage", and then cited example after of example of conservative Republican colleagues going on site to see the work done by the agency and coming away as powerful supporters. Each of them fretting that if the aid ever stopped, the Russians and Chinese would quickly fill the vacuum.
Many foreign policy veterans struggled to understand the seeming animus Mr. Musk has displayed toward the agency, especially given the small fraction of the federal budget (1%) it constitutes. But the solution to this question resides in the fact U.S.A.I.D. funds democracy-promotion programs around the world. That includes European countries where right-wing populist movements are thriving.
It thus makes sense a traitor and fascist felon like Trump would wish to stamp it out. Like he wishes to exterminate any budding democracy anywhere, as well as what remains here in the U.S. It is also why he has recruited a foreign fascist- Elon Musk - to help him. Musk has become an ally of those fascist movements, some of whose leaders have specifically targeted the agency’s pro-democracy programs in recent years. Only recently he praised the quasi-Nazi AfD party in Germany - sending sensible and rational Germans into a furor.
Of course, as WaPo columnist Eugene Robinson points out in his column today ('The single most important battle Democrats must wage') "congress may defund USAID if it chooses. But an out of control plutocrat, elected by nobody and accountable to nobody, may not."
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 passed in response to a similar power grab by President Richard M. Nixon, makes it crystal clear that presidents do not have the power to "impound" or withhold congressionally mandated spending. This is where Dems need to step in and cool off the big shot's delusions of grandeur. Begin by educating John Q. Public about Article 1 of the Constitution and the Impound Control Act. Above all, don't let anyone think for a minute this latest Trump gimmick is a fait accompli.
See Also:
The U.S. Treasury Department's internal systems that handle roughly $6 trillion in annual payments to millions of Americans are now in the hands of a young software engineer who works for Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
That's according to a recent report by WIRED, which identified the Musk employee as 25 year-old Marko Elez. The outlet reported that Elez has administrator-level access to systems managed by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). WIRED's article disputes previous reporting by the Wall Street Journal that Musk's team was limited to read-only access, as Elez can now "log into servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions and delete or modify critical files."
"You could do anything with these privileges," one unnamed source told WIRED. The outlet noted that anyone with that level of access could "bypass the security measures of, potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to."
Trump’s attack on USAID is an assault on Americans’ safety
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Elon Musk vowed yesterday to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants after he and his goons gained access to the Treasury Department’s vast payments system over the weekend.
The Treasury system disburses $5.4 trillion a year, or 88 percent of all federal payments, including Social Security checks. David Lebryk, who had spent more than 36 years in government and was responsible for overseeing the payments system — resigned abruptly Friday rather than turn over the system to Musk.
In short, the world’s richest man bankrolled Trump’s reelection campaign to the tune of some quarter of a billion dollars. In return, Trump tasked him with running a so-called “department of government efficiency” and allowed him to get his hands on the keys to the kingdom.
But Musk hasn’t been confirmed by Congress. His “department” was never authorized by Congress. No one other than Trump has given Musk any authority. No one knows exactly who Musk’s goons are; they have not been vetted yet are handling some of the most sensitive personal information in the government.
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