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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   35783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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The reports of DOGE's demise may have been premature. Things apparently move at lightning speed now, so the easiest thing is a timeline of what happened this morning to resurrect DOGE before the weekend.

  1. Elon posts a poll asking if the fired DOGE employee should be rehired: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887867644814020902

  2. JD Vance quotes the poll, giving his support to the fired employee: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633

  3. In the press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, Trump is asked about his opinion. He says 'I don't know...I'm with the Vice President': https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1887950091937530324

  4. Elon says 'he will be brought back': https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887957783783391423

It's like for the first time in my lifetime people said 'no, we don't do that anymore.' And our leaders now share values sufficiently enough that they didn't ignore the sentiment or just listen and commiserate, they actually...obeyed. Pretty much instantly.

I had made a comment earlier today after Elon posted the poll about how the ideal scenario would be to quickly hire him back before the Super Bowl/whatever new developments break on Monday. Beyond that, I don't want to write too much about my own personal opinion because it's fairly scattered as I'm more than a little giddy from surprise at the moment. But, I am interested in your thoughts as this seems positively seismic.

It's Joever again: Judge blocks Musk team access to Treasury Department records.

Does anyone have the text of the injunction? I've seen some news articles that sort of imply that blocks all political appointees from having access to Treasury records (this would of course prevent the Secretary of the Treasury from having political (read "democratic") oversight of the Treasury)

Does anyone have the text of the [restraining order]?

It's document 6 on this page.

Pending the hearing of the States’ application for a preliminary injunction, the defendants are:

(1) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations;

(2) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and

(3) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.

I don't really understand the procedural issue. The president is the chief executive. Among other things, can view all classified material in the nation, can he not? The treasury is part of his branch of government, isn't it?

Why is his delegate not allowed to audit the treasury? Why do the procedures that he's not following actually matter? He has to appoint several people in various places and file the proper forms to do it, instead? What's the effective difference, other to frustrate the effort?

The plaintiffs’ memorandum of law in support of the injunction is here. I can’t evaluate all of the claims in it (partly because I don’t see a memorandum of law from the defendants. Were they not allowed to submit one? Were they too busy? Did it just not get uploaded?). The Administrative Procedure Act is the big statute in these sort of cases, but it looks like they also cite some privacy statutes that I’m not familiar with. Ironically, the Administrative Procedure Act was passed to shrink the size of the administrative state, but its procedural safeguards are also held to slow down the pace of deregulation as well.

Lawsuit text

Based on the injunction order, it reads as based in risks of "disclosure of sensitive and confidential information" and "[making] the systems in question more vulnerable to hacking." This despite all of DOGE's supposed violations. Yeah, some of those don't necessarily qualify as risking "irreparable harm" but DOGE just chewed through USAID, the plaintiffs would have the argument to be concerned about the harm from sudden unconstitutional freezes of congressionally-apportioned funds. That argument was ignored. Maybe it's that narrow angle/narrow risk of judgment against thing.

Not that it matters. The executive can audit itself and investigate itself for any reason, "arbitrary and capricious" or otherwise, and with Musk's statement, it is otherwise. Treasury employees estimating a minimum of $50 billion a year in fraud gives them probable cause. So it sounds like all this injunction will result in is DOGE coming back with the DOJ as they announce a full forensic audit.

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