Russo demanded that Bobba be given full access to “everything, including source code,” Flick recalled. This included the SSA’s Enterprise Data Warehouse, which contains the “names of spouses and dependents, work history, financial and banking information, immigration or citizenship status, and marital status,” according to Flick’s affidavit.
This piece from Wired (alternative link here) magazine should be reason enough for you to subscribe. The publication has been ahead of Big Journalism in its coverage of the coup that Trump, Musk and their minions have been carrying out since taking power.
The article explains how far the "Doge" incels have gone into the workings of our federal government – invading the databases that hold essentially all of the most personal data that the government holds on all of us. Rulers of the past could only dream of this kind of granular information on their subjects.
The regime won't merely use it for nefarious purposes. Musk's wrecking crew will be able to change what's inside those databases – and I believe it's a certainty that at some point they will.
Are you old enough to be collecting Social Security payments or Medicare? Musk's incels could decide that you don't deserve any of that, and delete you from the system. That's what people with access to "everything, including source code," can do. When people working in good faith are replaced by people who exemplify bad faith, expect the worst.
Musk’s attention-seeking and fondness for organizational chaos are usually unmatched, giving him an advantage in most of his dealings. This is not the case with Trump, whose shamelessness and penchant for discarding close confidants when they become liabilities are well documented. Musk is rich and powerful, but he is not the durable, singular political figure that Trump is. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where this ends poorly for Musk. The flywheel could reverse: Musk could become universally reviled, causing the protests to increase and his net worth to shrink.
The quote above, from this Atlantic story about the beyond-shameless Musk-Trump makeover of the White House lawn into a corrupt car dealership, is the most hopeful possibility in freeing America from Musk's staggering power over our lives: Trump might tire of and then depose his (in all but name) prime minister.
The article has some useful context about Musk's career, notably what a sleazeball he has always been in his business and public dealings. It also points up the way governments have refused to do their regulatory jobs – and, less explicitly, how journalism has been a lapdog along the way.
But as it accurately points out Musk's desperate efforts to slow or reverse the well-deserved slide at Tesla, it doesn't get into the truly scary stuff. Namely, Musk won't give a damn about Tesla or its shareholders if his coup (per the first piece in this newsletter) succeeds. If he can divert U.S. government spending even more (see: SpaceX) into his bank accounts, Tesla will be an afterthought. Everything we know about this guy says there are no boundaries on his lust for money, and power.
I have one other major beef with this article – and countless others like it in recent days. Musk has not lost $148 billion, as the headline says. It is a demonstration of financial illiteracy to say that so-and-so "lost" gazillions of dollars after the company shares he owns dropped in value.
Wealth based on unsold stock is not synonymous with actual wealth, though they are related. Musk's paper wealth is certainly less than it was before Tesla shares went into the tank. But as with all appreciated assets, the gains are illusory until he sells shares for, you know, dollars, or borrows against them (riskier) when value is high and lenders believe he'll be able to pay it back.
Musk is still unconscionably rich. But it's just not correct to say he lost what he never actually had.
It is not surprising or all that meaningful to discover that Bari Weiss is a hypocrite whose values are not sincerely held. Anyone who has paid even slight attention to her career should have already known this. But hypocrisy can be revealing, and in this case it has revealed something amusing, which is that for all her bluster about the Times becoming a sclerotic and ideologically captured institution, she has now built a nearly identical one around herself. She started a media company, hired her wife and little sister, secured investment from the likes of David Sacks and Marc Andreessen, and has never once published anything that might piss off her investors or subscribers.
I recommend that you read the Defector's snarky but worthy takedown of a right-wing hypocrite. It highlights the way Weiss has leveraged her celebrity – earned from her days complaining about the New York Times, where she once worked – into a minor media barony. Media criticism doesn't get much better than this.
Among the least surprising things about Weiss' "Free Press" website is where it lives: on the odious Substack platform in which Andreessen's firm is a major investor and whose management is fine with helping right-wing extremists spread and monetize their bile. Go figure, right?
Regarding which, it pains me that a number of people whose work I respect have chosen to use Substack. I suspect many of them don't know they are helping to support bad people, and I wish they'd move to platforms that are funded and operated by more honorable folks.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Makena Kelly
Charlie Warzel
Tom Ley
