Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and unelected adviser to President Donald Trump, is asserting control over much of the federal bureaucracy and sensitive government computer systems despite lacking clear authority. The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department was pushed out after refusing to hand Musk’s team the keys to the government’s entire payment system and the $6 trillion in payments the system processes annually, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and Medicare benefits. Musk and his team have also seized control at the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration, key institutions that function as the central nervous system of the U.S. government. “In any other situation, this would be called state capture, and people around the world would be condemning it,” says Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who writes in a new blog post that Elon Musk is staging a coup. We also speak with Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, who warns that Musk could be laying the groundwork for major tax cuts Republicans have promised that will disproportionately benefit corporations and wealthy people like him. “Elon Musk is going to pay for his tax cut with your Social Security,” says Owens.

There is a coup occurring now

  • mhague@lemmy.world
    602·
    1 day ago

    Musk is who we deserve. The country that treats money as speech and corporations as people and bribery as political action has the worlds richest man controlling it. Finally, the world is making some fucking sense.

  • thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world
    842·
    2 days ago

    it’s only a coup if it comes from the Coup d’Etat region of France, otherwise it’s just a sparkling government takeover.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 day ago

      Which is why the US has never actually staged a coup in a foreign country. Not many people know that

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
    1113·
    2 days ago

    Step 1: Remove all the inspector generals

    Step 2: Gain access to the U.S. treasury payment system

    Step 3: Lock out all the rest of the treasury staff

    Step 4: Impose a 25% Tarriff on your largest trading partners

    Step 5: Profit!

    Step 6: Realize Trump backed down on the Mexican Tarriffs because the president of Mexico called and stroked Trump’s ego.

    • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
      7·
      2 days ago

      applying for citizenship in a country that isn’t a failed democracy

      Which country is that, exactly? What are their immigration requirements?

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      36·
      2 days ago

      News organizations and politicians should think really carefully about publishing stories that make it seem like the United States is failed democracy.

      Yes

      Do you really believe that all it takes is one president and an aligned congress to completely destroy the country?

      Yes

      If so, the smart move would be applying for citizenship in a country that isn’t a failed democracy, and getting the fuck out.

      I’m not giving up without a fight first.

    • MareOfNights@discuss.tchncs.de
      26·
      2 days ago

      You mean one executive branch, one legislative branch and one judicative branch (supreme court, which you forgot)?

      So like all the branches, that are supposed to check and balance each other? Good one mate

        • Nastybutler@lemmy.world
          13·
          2 days ago

          Why don’t you go read some books on Hitler’s rise to power, and after you’ve educated yourself, re-read these insipid posts you’ve made in this thread. Or maybe you already know how it happens and are cheering it on, pretending to be ignorant in how fascism works. Either way, get bent.

        • MareOfNights@discuss.tchncs.de
          12·
          2 days ago

          After he replaced some Generals, created some New units completely loyal to him, yes.

          Maybe integrate the proud boys, who he already pardoned.

          As a German, this all looks very familiar. The SS didn’t start in the military.

          Interesting to watch it all happen on twitter instead of a history book tho XD

      • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
        252·
        2 days ago

        That isn’t just standing by, that advocates for opposition to leave as the right answer to their concerns.

        To emigrate from a country that openly hates immigrants.

        To grow the majority.

        • fuzzy_ad@lemmy.world
          18·
          2 days ago

          I am not advocating for the “opposition” to leave. I am advocating for anyone who thinks America is a failed Democracy who thinks we’re about to be genocided to leave. Just because it’s a smart thing to do. Which is exactly what my original comment said.

          I don’t assume everyone who disagrees with even a single word someone who is anti-trump says is pro-trump, because I’m not suffering from delusional internet political brainrot.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            4·
            2 days ago

            Way ahead of you. And yet I still care about the lives of the millions of people we left behind who didn’t have the luck of that option.

            You do know that you can’t just leave and hope someone will let you live in their country instead, right?

      • fuzzy_ad@lemmy.world
        121·
        2 days ago

        !remindme in 4 years when a genocide does not take place.

        I wish you had the capacity to understand how juvenile these types of comments are.

        • Typhoonigator@lemmy.world
          15·
          2 days ago

          There’s literally an internment camp planned at gitmo.

          The hyperbole has been going on so long that maybe it’s easy to miss that it’s getting progressively more accurate.

            • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              111·
              2 days ago

              Yes. Trump’s administration called for “a genocide of trans people” (direct quotation) once the election was over, before he was even in office.

              Trans people are having their government IDs and identifying documents seized when they try to renew their passports. Any info on gender is being scrubbed from medical and scientific research papers as we speak. An executive order was passed saying that there are only 2 genders in the US, and passports no longer accept an X gender marker.

              Then there’s the immigrants being deported. They need camps to house all of them in.

              All of this is very much in line with Nazi Germany, from the burning of research from the Institute of Sexual Wellness (remember the famous picture of Nazis burning books? All research and medical records from the Institute relating to gay and trans people) to the camps for immigrants, gays, socialists, and, later on, Jews which began being built 53 days after Hitler took office.

              • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                112·
                2 days ago

                Content Warning for Ya’ll, Transphobia-

                Hey I went digging and I found that one of the speakers at CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) in 2023, a prick named Michael Knowles, said “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”

                And then he got all mad and demanded a bunch of retractions because he claims that saying you want to eradicate transgenderism is somehow different than saying you want to eradicate transgender people and went on to say some extremely upsettingly stupid things about how it can’t be calling for genocide because “It’s not a legitimate category of being.”. Out of the two links, that one at Human Rights Campaign has a lot of other instances of assholery, so it’s a good link for this conversation.

                So it seems (unsurprisingly) like chuds are trying to move the goalposts on, “it can’t be genocide if they’re not really people,” which is actually way, way more disgusting than anything else I’ve read. Glad I went looking for supporting documentation, sad I found so much of it so quickly.

                And for any chuds who want to argue these points as if this is distinct from the Trump administration, please actually read that second link. There are exact quotes from Trump, from Reps, from former advisors. They did a great job collating info for us.

              • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                1·
                2 days ago

                Would be helpful to have a link to the quote - searching for it I’m having trouble finding it. I think I have seen language about “removing transgenderism from public life” or something like that. They seem to be bringing back rhetoric used against gay folks in the 1980s, e.g. emphasizing how the “homosexuals” groom children, how they just need to not flaunt their (sexualized / perverted) lifestyle in front of the children, how it’s fine if they’re gay in private - just not in public, etc.

                • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  41·
                  2 days ago

                  The quote has been buried in all the anti-trans executive orders that have been passed in the past week. I tried looking for it as well, since I saw at least a couple of articles that had quoted it directly from somebody in his administration, but all you can find now are the executive orders banning trans people from the military, etc.

            • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              16·
              2 days ago

              I’m sad to tell you this, but there were camps there in the 90s, and people died of lack of health care.

              As I said to my last suicide counselor- you don’t really need a plan to kill someone. You can just stop doing all the things they need in order to keep living. It’s pretty easy.

              • fuzzy_ad@lemmy.world
                117·
                2 days ago

                Ok so if you arrest people that are illegally in your country and put them in jail, when does it become a genocide?

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
              5·
              2 days ago

              I think you need to open a history book since you don’t seem to know how many years it took from Hitler becoming chancellor to the Final Solution.

              Or do you think putting everyone from certain ethnic groups or with certain sexual preferences or with certain political views or just with disabilities in concentration camps wasn’t genocide enough to count?

              And Trump is heading to concentration camps exponentially faster than Hitler did.

            • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              4·
              1 day ago

              They just pulled all medicare and are publically looking to store tens of thousands of people they consider subhumans in a hot climate without supplies or medical aid. Ran by people who managed to bankrupt a fucking casino. Three times. In a row.

              Its literally a death camp in the making. And you have a good chance of ending up in there as well.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zipEnglish
      71·
      2 days ago

      If so, the smart move would be applying for citizenship in a country that isn’t a failed democracy, and getting the fuck out

      Me setting up a bug out bag while I arrange moving to another country

    • dmention7@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      2 days ago

      If so, the smart move would be applying for citizenship in a country that isn’t a failed democracy, and getting the fuck out. Not posting sensationalist news articles and claiming fascist nazis are one step from putting us up against the wall. It kind of betrays your point.

      What an absurd take!

      “Clearly you don’t ACTUALLY believe something bad is happening, because you’re spreading the word about it instead of quietly preparing your escape”

      • fuzzy_ad@lemmy.world
        117·
        2 days ago

        Shouldn’t the fascist Nazis be knocking on your door, OP’s door, and the publishers of Democracy Now! door and putting them in a political torture camp?

        Or are we just being hyperbolic when we say it’s a nazi coup?

        • whoxtank28@lemmy.worldEnglish
          18·
          2 days ago

          Even Hitler did not manage to get the Gestapo set up until 4 months after he was appointed as chancellor. It has only been 3 weeks. Auschwitz was not set up until 7 years after his rise to power. Though the first concentration camp, which I imagine was more mild, was set up after a few months.

          It feels like you are arguing in bad faith.

          If I am getting ready to go hiking in an area where there may be bears, I don’t say to myself, “I am not currently being attacked by a bear, so I will probably not need bear mace.” In this analogy I like hiking (living in the democracy that I was born in and served to defend) therefore I will not choose to just not go hiking (leaving).

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            5·
            2 days ago

            I don’t know whether they’re just ignorant of history or are trolling, but this person’s whole argument seems to rely on the idea that Nazis aren’t Nazis until they start actively killing people in concentration camps and until then, it’s not fair to call them Nazis.

            So I guess the Nazis weren’t Nazis for the first seven years Hitler was in power (or any of the years before that).

  • Pollo_Jack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    70·
    1 day ago

    2A thumpers defend school shootings as required to defend against tyrants. Tyrants literally in our buildings and giving nazi salutes? Nothing.

    • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      44·
      1 day ago

      Americans currently rereading the 2nd amendment: “Damn, if we could only use them outside of schools, things would be fixed quickly”

      • Wogi@lemmy.world
        25·
        1 day ago

        It’s weird that Jefferson literally demanded helpless children be shot in schools like that but hey that’s what the Constitution says so I guess we gotta let em do it.

        WHAT DO YOU MEAN SOMEONE TOOK A KNEE AT THE NATIONAL ANTHEM??!!???

  • takeiteasypolicy@lemmy.world
    10·
    6 hours ago

    It’s time that people who believe in principles of democracy should come together and create their own counter project 2025 plan. A long term strategic document, with action plans to not only restore but strengthen democracy in US

  • Hegar@fedia.io
    273·
    2 days ago

    It’s a fascist coup.

    They took control of the judiciary some time ago, they recently seized the executive and now they’re destroying any remaining institutional power that can oppose them.

    The current regime is not legitimate.

    • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
      473·
      2 days ago

      The current technically still is, but the regime they are transforming into won’t be anymore legitimate.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
        671·
        2 days ago

        With all the voters suppression tactics, gerrymandering in the house, and all the ballots they had discarded, it’s not legitimate.

        • Xanthobilly@lemmy.world
          16·
          2 days ago

          No one has convincingly explained away the abnormally high number of bullet ballots and odd ballot switching at 500 votes in swing states like AZ, IMO.

        • Hegar@fedia.io
          321·
          2 days ago

          Elon’s cash for votes scheme, the amount of russian money and planning on one side, plus there’s a decent chance that the fascists just committed direct electoral fraud as well.

      • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
        16·
        2 days ago

        Except the current “president” isn’t constitutionally eligible to hold the office after inciting insurrection, so no, it really isn’t legitimate even now

      • leadore@lemmy.world
        17·
        2 days ago

        It’s not legitimate because most of the stuff they are doing is plain out-and-out illegal. But like they (Don Jr., etc) said before the election, they were going to go ahead and do it anyway and dare anyone including SCOTUS to try and stop them. It’s going to come down to our military to choose a side.

        • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          11·
          2 days ago

          Honestly, if this gets bad enough, I won’t be surprised if the military indirectly allows him to be removed by force.

          It’s incredibly rare for a tyrant to actually be removed by force by a mob of disorganized revolutionaries. When you see instances of this happening, what’s usually actually happening is that the military has lost all confidence in the dictator, and they simply stand aside and let the mob storm the palace.

          Think about just what a precarious situation Trump and Musk are going to find themselves in after they fire half the federal government. The DC metro area is going to be at a level of unemployment that dwarfs that of the Great Depression. The whole population of DC will be wanting to see heads on pikes.

          The military wouldn’t even have to intervene directly themselves. All they would have to do is stand aside and let the mob storm the gates. That exact scenario has brought down countless tyrants over the generations.

          Dictators don’t tend to meet good ends.

          • leadore@lemmy.world
            9·
            2 days ago

            One thing I feel sure of is that at some point Trump will order the military to fire on civilians. I thought it would take some time to build up to that point, but I hadn’t factored the magnitude of the Musk variable into the equation. I’d love it if there really was a deep state that would step in and come to our rescue via some kind of “special operation”.

            • Mirshe@lemmy.world
              5·
              1 day ago

              And the new SecDef can just throw out anyone who decides to get in the way or defy orders, no matter how illegal. They’ll keep digging until they either scare everyone into following orders, or they’ll deputize loyal GOP members as a sort of paramilitary (including their friends in the various militias).

          • futatorius@lemm.ee
            2·
            7 hours ago

            The whole population of DC will be wanting to see heads on pikes.

            I wonder how dangerous a mob of laid-off middle-aged civil servants can be?

            The military wouldn’t even have to intervene directly themselves. All they would have to do is stand aside and let the mob storm the gates.

            Yeah, the military might not be 100% reliable in not attacking US civilians, but in this case those citizens would be rebelling against a tyrant who’s also trying to seize control over the military, destroy alliances, attack friendly countries and drag the military into direct involvement in genocide.

  • MyOpinion@lemm.ee
    2111·
    2 days ago

    Fully understand what is happening here in America. The far right has destroyed the rule of law and are just acting to destroy our government. Don’t let this happen to your country. Don’t let Elon Musk any where near your elections or near your country.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
      85·
      2 days ago

      Further, look and see what courting the rich and meritocracy has bought. This is the natural and probable consequences of decades and decades of austerity, privatization, and supply side economics. They’re telling you the same lies they told us, and telling you it will be different for you. It won’t be.

    • Sabata@ani.social
      40·
      2 days ago

      Don’t let Elon Musk any where near your elections or near your country.

      A little late.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 day ago

    If you were still under the impression that conservatives were patriots that gave a flying fuck about the Constitution, now you have your definitive answer.

  • militaryintelligence@lemmy.world
    771·
    2 days ago

    Nah, everybody relax. Go to work, come home to your 2.3 kids. Everything is normal. President Musk is doing everything he can to take care of the immigrant and LGBTQ problem, the only problems the USA has. Men could be playing womens sports, guys. I mean it. Massive fucking problem.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      211·
      2 days ago

      Exactly. He has every American’s personal details and total control of the nation’s finances. He really doesn’t need anything else.

    • kava@lemmy.world
      21·
      2 days ago

      they won the election. now they are dismantling the levers of government. the goal is to weaken all other national institutions until eventually they can just ignore Congress or Supreme Court