Likely fueled by ketamine or whichever his drug of choice was in the wee hours Saturday night/Sunday morning, Musk was responding to his followers’ calls for impeaching judges he doesn’t agree with.
Ian Swanson reported that he was pissed off at Federal District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who decided over the weekend that the MuskRats can’t have access to Treasury Department information that don’t need to do legitimate civil service jobs— whatever legitimate jobs they supposedly have to begin with. The judge ordered the Treasury Department to block the invaders. Paul Engelmayer’s ruling came in response to a suit by 19 state attorneys general, “worried over the access Musk and his team was getting to the information. Musk’s efforts have sparked concerns from Democrats and career public servants at Treasury and other agencies that sensitive private information of citizens could be endangered. It has also raised questions about the end-game behind Musk’s actions, including whether the access to the payment systems could be used to cut off appropriated funds by Congress that Trump’s team feels are not in line with the new administration’s policies or objectives… Musk’s threat to impeach a judge could open a new front in what is emerging as a battle between the executive and judicial branches of the federal government.”
In another front of the MAGA war against America, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Andy Kim, Gary Peters, Jeanne Shaheen and Elissa Slotkin all voted with the Republicans to confirm) appeared on State of the Union yesterday to tell the CNN audience that “Elon Musk is part of the administration that is helping us identify where we can find savings and what we can do and he has gone through the processes to make sure that he has the authority the president has granted him. She also said she wants to get “rid of FEMA.”
Apparently she’s invited “Big Balls,” a 19-year old intel who works for Musk, into FEMA to wreck it from inside. “The presence of DOGE at FEMA,” wrote a quartet of Washington Post reporters, “has caused uncertainty and confusion, raising fears that Trump could soon follow through on his pledge to dismantle the agency… [A] small team that does not have security clearance has access to FEMA’s network, which contains the private and sensitive information of tens of thousands of disaster victims.”
The agency spends the majority of its budget on grant programs, which are the main vehicles for helping people recover from disasters and rebuild their communities. Along with the agency’s best known efforts to help people find temporary housing after disasters, other programs help state and local governments bolster infrastructure, train firefighters and other first responders, or limit communities’ exposure to floodwaters and other hazards.
…Agency staff also shared concerns that Trump has not offered an official nominee to lead the agency, and that the man leading it on a temporary basis [Cameron Hamilton] does not meet the legal qualifications for the job… Hamilton recently lost a Republican congressional primary race in Virginia.
…Two other officials expressed concerns that the Trump administration will not only gut the agency, but rewrite the Stafford Act, the federal law that gives the president the ability to declare major disasters or emergencies when states and communities need federal assistance. That law authorizes FEMA to respond to a disaster and open funding and resource channels, including assistance programs and loans from the Small Business Administration.
…In January, Trump issued an executive order to establish a 20-member Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council, stating that it’s crucial to evaluate “whether FEMA’s bureaucracy in disaster response ultimately harms the agency’s ability to successfully respond.”
Trump also said there were “serious concerns of political bias” and said he wanted the council to review the agency and recommend “structural changes.” However, a current official and former executive said there has been no information about who is on the council and what it is doing.
Gutting FEMA could have serious financial consequences to dozens of communities that have begun massive, costly projects that the agency has promised to reimburse, said a former senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of professional retaliation. And losing more staffers at an already stretched-thin agency could also greatly hinder people’s ability to recover from disasters
“These are public servants and many could have gone to work in the private sector but because they want to serve they took these harder, lower-paying jobs to do work they could be proud of,” the former senior official said. “There is a great misunderstanding of the work they do and the role that they play.”
Trump appears to be preparing for a move against the judiciary... or maybe put warning Roberts not to dare step out of line.
