We’ve covered how there’s a real push afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. Unfortunately, while all fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.
And among those states, not one has actually enforced them despite a wide array of ongoing corporate offenses (though to be fair to states there is kind of a lot going on).
This reform movement, which sees broad bipartisan support, had even started to reach toward the military, which is probably the poster child for over-billing, dysfunctional repair monopoly, “parts pairing,” and other predatory efforts to jack up the cost of maintenance and ownership.
Back in June we mentioned how Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had committed to including right-to-repair requirements in all existing and future Army contracts with manufacturers. Some very light language to this effect was to be included in the latest National Defense Authorization Act by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Tim Sheehy of Montana.
“Driscoll recently pointed to a Black Hawk helicopter part to show how contractor restrictions drive up costs. The original equipment manufacturer refuses to repair or replace a small screen-control knob that grounds the aircraft when it breaks — forcing the Army to purchase an entire new screen assembly for $47,000. Driscoll said the Army could make the knob for just $15.”
Picture that problem, at scale, across the entirety of U.S. military hardware, planet wide.
But despite the bipartisan popularity of right to repair reforms, companies weren’t keen on losing money via a government crackdown on their grift. So the various policy and lobbying fronts for America’s defense contractors spent much of this fall trying to frame the modest reforms as an affront on innovation to scuttle the reforms as the House and Senate debate over bill versions.
“The House’s Data-as-a-Service Solutions for Weapon System Contracts provision, which would have required DoD to negotiate access to technical data and necessary software before signing a contract, was removed from the final text of the annual legislation released over the weekend. The Senate’s provision requiring contractors to provide the military with detailed repair and maintenance instructions was dropped from the bill as well.
Instead, the legislation requires the Defense Department to develop a digital system that would track and manage all technical data and verify whether contractors and subcontractors comply with contract requirements related to technical data. The compromise version of the bill also requires DoD to review all existing contracts to determine what contractors were required to deliver and what data DoD can access.”
That’s basically worthless bureaucracy as it applies to any sort of meaningful right to repair reforms.
Again, these reforms were about as basic as they get. Still, they would have likely opened the door to taxpayers saving billions of dollars annually when it comes to paying too much for the repair and maintenance of U.S. military equipment. It was a no brainer reform, but because the United States is genuinely too corrupt to function, even that was ultimately a bridge too far.
To add insult to injury, we’ve got fake Trump populists and Silicon Valley execs like Elon Musk running around pretending they care about efficiency. But in instances like this, where there’s real potential to improve government efficiency, you’ll notice they’re nowhere to be found because the reforms would interfere with their ability to rip off the public.
You know this is a spectacle, right? A show. That’s what it is. A performance for social media. With blood.
Pete Hegseth just ordered the twenty-first strike on a suspected drug boat. Three more bodies. Another video posted to X showing a vessel bursting into flames. “Three male narco-terrorists” dead, the military announces. No trial. No evidence presented. No due process. Just boats exploding on camera and bodies labeled terrorists because the Department of Defense says so.
This is governance as content creation. TikTok foreign policy. Snackable clips of military strikes designed for engagement metrics while everything that actually matters falls apart around us.
Blowing up drug-running boats in the Caribbean isn’t going to stop the flow of drugs into America. Everyone knows this. The drugs will keep coming—they always do, they always have. Different boats, different routes, same product reaching the same streets. This isn’t policy designed to solve problems. This is spectacle designed to produce feelings. The feeling that someone strong is doing strong things. The feeling that enemies are being punished. The feeling that something is being done even as nothing actually changes.
But it is illegal. Under United States law and international law. The rule of law is being killed alongside these men in these boats. Admiral Alvin Holsey—the four-star admiral overseeing these operations—resigned because the boats weren’t showing immediate hostile intent. Colombia says we’re killing their fishermen. Ecuador released survivors for lack of evidence. Congress hasn’t authorized any of this. The Constitution hasn’t been consulted. Just Hegseth ordering strikes and posting videos while the legal framework that makes civilization possible burns alongside the boats.
So they can post it on X. So they can show you what an amazing job they’re doing. While your prices rise. While the Epstein files document twenty thousand pages of connections that cannot be explained away. While the artificial intelligence market bubble exhausts its last breaths of irrational exuberance. While American citizens are illegally detained by masked federal agents and some have been shot. This is a show for social media.
Twenty-one strikes now. How many bodies for the algorithm? How many “narco-terrorists” killed without trial before someone asks to see evidence? How many boats exploding on camera before Congress remembers it’s supposed to authorize military action? The carrier arrives tomorrow. Fifteen thousand troops ready. And still no authorization. Still no debate. Just Trump saying he’s “sort of made up my mind” while Hegseth produces content.
This is what authoritarian governance looks like in the age of engagement metrics. The policy is the spectacle. The spectacle is the policy. You’re not supposed to ask whether it works. You’re supposed to watch the boats explode and feel like winning is happening. You’re supposed to see bodies labeled terrorists and feel safer. You’re supposed to consume the content and move on to the next post before you have time to ask: Where’s the evidence? Where’s the legal authority? Where’s Congress? What is this actually accomplishing besides producing clips for social media?
The boats keep exploding. The videos keep posting. The body count keeps rising. And while you watch the performance, Trump’s Epstein connections sit in those twenty thousand pages. While you debate whether the targets were really terrorists, American citizens are detained without warrants. While you argue about drugs, the Constitution collects dust and admirals resign in protest and the rule of law dies with every strike that produces another video for posting.
This is governance for the algorithm. Bodies for engagement. Military action as content strategy. Twenty-one strikes. The carrier arrives tomorrow. Eighty people dead in undeclared war. Congress silent. The Constitution ignored. Admirals resigning. The rule of law burning.
For fucking TikTok.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
The “fresh hell” administration keeps on rolling. There’s no need to actually ask what fresh hell awaits. You need do nothing more than exist and a new fresh hell will be delivered, almost daily.
Here’s the freshest: the US military decided to blow up a boat traveling in international waters — one carrying eleven people, all definitely dead — because… well, no one really seems to be able to say definitively.
There’s a whole lot of vibes going on, but not much else. The man presumably capable of making a final call on extrajudicial killings during war time — famed accused day drinker and Signal chat enthusiast Pete Hegseth — said some stuff that lacked substance or, more importantly, any legal backing while being chatted up by PravdaUS:
The Trump administration has not offered any legal rationale. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday that administration officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing,” although he did not offer evidence.
For whatever reason, Secretary of State Marco Rubio felt compelled to offer his comments on the offshore murders, which went about as well as anything ever does for Marco:
Mr. Rubio had said on Tuesday that it was going to Trinidad, while Mr. Trump said the United States. On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio changed his version, saying the drug-laden boat was bound for the United States.
The secretary said in Mexico City that drug cartels and traffickers, including those on the boat, “pose an immediate threat to the United States, period.”
But no one actually offered any rationale for what happened (and was boasted about by Trump on Truth Social). While officials said some vague stuff about drug trafficking and made unsubstantiated claims about the eleven victims of this attack being Tren de Aragua members, the government was busy working its way backwards from the killings to find some reason for having already killed people:
Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.
A day later, the Defense Department must still have been working on a semi-plausible excuse for breaking all the rules of crime-fighting — especially one in which it certainly appears the US government destroyed a boat carrying eleven people but probably not much (if any!) drugs. The footage of the strike shows a boat more likely carrying refugees/migrants to another country (possibly even Trinidad). Half-mumbled claims about drug dealing and terrorism being pretty much the same thing were made by many in Trump’s cabinet.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, emphasized in a statement late on Wednesday that the strike took place in international waters and did not put American troops at risk. She said that Mr. Trump had directed the attack in “defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations who have long suffered due to the narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities of such organizations.”
“The strike was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict,” Ms. Kelly said.
First things fucking last: NO ONE WAS EVER IN THE LEAST BIT CONCERNED ABOUT THE SAFETY OF US TROOPS. This answers a question no one asked and does nothing more than pad an answer that really isn’t an answer. It’s just more of the same deflection and dribble from the Trump administration. Saying it took place in international waters doesn’t mean — like far too many people believe — that all bets are off and any country can do whatever it wants in waters that don’t actually belong to any single country.
Finally, saying the strike was “consistent” with the “law of armed conflict” only means something if the strike, in fact, complied with law of armed conflict. Simply saying it does doesn’t actually make it legal. That’s what judges call a “conclusory statement” and that’s one of the most worthless things any entity can offer in defense of its actions.
If it was indeed “fully consistent” with the law, you’d think the administration would have already released a memo or statement from the White House Office of Legal Counsel explaining (with citations) why this strike complied with all applicable laws.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, we got some people saying it’s defensible because drug cartels have been called “terrorists” by Trump and another person saying “this was legal because I’m saying it was legal.” Instead, what we’ve been given is an extrajudicial killing, followed by some administration gloating, followed by some administration deflection, which is now followed by the unsettling feeling that this is just beginning of a new wave of awfulness. As Charlie Savage’s headline for the New York Times puts it plainly: Trump has claimed the power of summary execution, which aligns him directly with authoritarian leaders he so obviously admires.
And as if all of this weren’t horrifying enough, here’s the president’s official “War Room” account responding to Senator Rand Paul’s obvious question about the morality of summarily executing people only suspected of committing a crime:
This administration has no use for slippery slopes. It races all the way to the bottom of them and then dares anyone to do anything about it. There’s nothing too unethical, immoral, or illegal to be taken off the table when accomplishing its end goals. The justification for the means can always be generated after the fact and if that fails to hold up to judicial scrutiny, the administration will simply move on to the next lawless act on the authoritarian to-do list — whatever it takes to convert the land of the free into the “vast ecumenical holding company” of the GOP’s fever dreams.
When you specifically ask a judge for something, get exactly what you requested, then immediately start whining about how burdensome your own suggestion is — well, that’s not legal strategy. That’s performance art.
Worse: having a senior Justice Department official claim that the solution that the DOJ itself requested is being unfairly imposed on the government “putting ICE agents’ lives in danger.”
Even worse: doing this based on a NY Post article… while ignoring that just days earlier the judge himself in the case had directly scolded the DOJ for ignoring that they themselves had requested this state of affairs and that they were absolutely free to arrange alternatives.
But that’s precisely what’s happening in the ongoing South Sudan deportation case, where the Trump administration is now crying about conditions they themselves created and refuse to fix despite having obvious alternatives.
Quick recap: Last week I wrote about how the US government shipped people to South Sudan without required due process hearings. When a judge blocked the deportation mid-flight, the plane diverted to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
Here’s the key part everyone seems to forget: When the judge asked about next steps, the DOJ specifically requested that the men be held in Djibouti for their hearings rather than brought back to the US. The judge made it crystal clear this was the government’s choice:
THE COURT: I’m very much considering this, but, if this is the route we go, my inclination would be to say,if you want to do all of these [interviews] where they are, you have to do them appropriately; if you don’t want to, you can always bring them home of your own volition and do it there. And so I’m not going to mandate that the Department do anything overseas, but in an effort to craft as circumscribed a remedy as possible, I’m inclined to say if the Department wants to figure that out, I’m inclined to let them.
The DOJ responded that DHS had informed them that they could handle the interviews in Djibouti. But then, five days later, they complained that it was too rough to do it remotely like that. In response, Judge Brian Murphy again reminded them, in print this time, that they could always bring the men back to the US for their hearings:
… the Court never said that Defendants had to convert their foreign military base into an immigration facility; it only left that as an option, again, at Defendants’ request. The other option, of course, has always been to simply return to the status quo of roughly one week ago, or else choose any other location to complete the required process.
So it seems pretty rich that a little over a week after that ruling, the DOJ filed a declaration from a DHS official, whining about how much of a pain it is to hold these men in Djibouti while organizing their hearings.
The aliens are currently being held in a conference room in a converted Conex shipping container on the U.S. Naval base in Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti. This has been identified as the only viable place to house the aliens.
The only U.S. government personnel authorized to maintain care and custody of the aliens upon their arrival in Djibouti were the three ICE officers who accompanied the plaintiffs on this removal operation. The team of ICE officers that was originally assigned to this mission was replaced and expanded on May 27, 2025. However, having to switch teams creates additional problems as ICE must identify officers that are available to work in the same potentially deleterious conditions. Notwithstanding staffing challenges, the current group of ICE officers responsible for administering these duties is expected to be replaced soon.
There are currently eleven ICE officers assigned to guard and maintain custody of the aliens and two ICE officers assigned support the medical staff. The eleven ICE officers are divided into groups of two and work twelve-hour shifts. Five officers are assigned to the day shift, and six officers are assigned to the night shift. Officers within each shift may only take breaks when another officer assumes the assigned officer’s responsibilities during the break.
ICE officers do not have the capacity to maintain constant surveillance, custody, and care of the aliens for prolonged periods of time. The surveillance and security that ICE officers are expected to provide includes escort service to a designated area to distribute medications, as needed; to the same location for medical consultations between aliens and the medical staff, as needed; and the restroom for each alien upon an alien’s request. The alien-designated restroom has sinks, six toilet stalls, and six showers. The designated restrooms are located in a separate trailer, which is forty to fifty yards from the unit in which the aliens are housed. The ICE officers conduct pat-downs and searches for contraband during movements to the restroom, or for any other outside activity. Only one alien is allowed to use the toilet or shower at a time, and one officer is required to escort the alien. Aliens are permitted to shower every other day, and showers occur at night due to the heat. From the onset of these ICE operations, the daily temperature outside has exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day
The conference room in which the aliens are housed is not equipped nor suitable for detention of any length, let alone for the detention of high-risk individuals. Notably, the room has none of the security apparatus necessary for the detention of criminal aliens. If an altercation were to occur, there is no other location on site available to separate the aliens, which further compromises the officers’ safety.
ICE officers are currently sharing very limited sleeping quarters, consisting of a trailer with three sets of bunk beds and six beds in total. Storage space is limited to an individual locker for each officer.
There is limited lighting in the area, which makes visibility difficult and creates a significant security risk for both the officers and aliens.
Currently, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) resources are being used for the care of these aliens, causing disruption to the station’s operations and consuming critical resources intended for service members. DOD operators have expressed frustration, particularly about the proximity to DOD quarters of aliens with violent criminal records . ICE medical staff has also received limited medication and medical supplies for both officers and the aliens from DOD.
I have to imagine that it’s difficult, as a judge, not to respond to this by pointing out that they don’t need the judge’s permission to fix this. They have always been able to move them somewhere else, as the judge directly reminded them just a week ago.
Naturally, this manufactured crisis became fodder for the right-wing outrage machine, which then fed back into the administration, baiting the rabid MAGA crowd with lies.
First, the NY Post wrote a laughably false article based on this filing, claiming ICE agents were “stranded” in terrible conditions in Djibouti. Except, they’re not stranded. Again, the US government directly requested this and the judge gave them the option to stay there or to move somewhere else, so long as they provided the required due process.
Then, in a demonstration of how the Trump admin launders these lies, Chad Mizelle, chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi, tweeted — falsely — that the judge had ordered that ICE agents do this:
That’s Chad Mizelle linking to the NY Post’s story and claiming (again, falsely):
The Judge’s orders in the DVD case are literally putting ICE agents’ lives in danger. He grounded a removal flight to South Sudan that was already over east Africa, and now three ICE agents are “marooned in Djibouti with eight criminal migrants under ‘outrageous’ living conditions and the threat of rocket attacks from Yemen.” The illegal aliens these ICE agents are charged with securing in the meantime have been convicted of murder, sexually assaulting minors, robbery and arson.
This is a top-level DOJ official lying to the American public. The judge made it quite clear, multiple times, that officials could move the men elsewhere or bring them back to the US, complete their “reasonable fear interviews” and get on with the deportation effort. The DOJ itself — which Mizelle is supposed the chief of staff for — directly requested of the court that the men be held in Djibouti.
This is, yet again, how the Trump admin works. They lie with impunity. They blame others for problems they themselves caused and refuse to even take the options in front of them to fix the mess they themselves caused. I get that their MAGA followers love this thing where they play the victim and blame big evil judges, but at some point, it would be nice if senior government officials lived in the land of reality.
Donald Trump’s two terms in office have proven Orwell right. No, not the “1984 is not an instruction manual” thing. The other one. Animal Farm. Some animals are more equal than others. At the top of the heap? The pigs.
One of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe community. A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence. The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.
Trump was wrong about at least two things in January 2017. First, there’s no “fundamental right” to live in a safe community. If there was such a right, cops would be getting sued and prosecuted for failing to actually, you know, protect and serve. Unfortunately, the courts have made it clear law enforcement gets to have lots of power and extra rights, but they have no Constitutionally-obliged duty of care.
Second, Trump didn’t end the “anti-police atmosphere.” He never had a chance. Cops continued to be cops and before Trump was shoved out of office (following a police-assaulting insurrection attempt by his supporters) Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin decided to singlehandedly personify an entire lynch mob by kneeling on unarmed Black man George Floyd’s neck until he stopped breathing… and then for several minutes after that. After that, all bets were off, and Trump still had seven months left in office.
STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS
“Strengthening?” Cops have plenty of power, especially now that so many of them have signed up to be part of the federal War on Brown People. It’s not like cops are easy to sue or prosecute and they’re pretty much able to do whatever they think they’ll get away with at any point in time. There’s already plenty of strength. But (spoiler alert!) they’re going to get even more.
I’m much more concerned about the word “unleashing,” which sounds pretty much like Trump is going remove the few deterrents that actually make cops think twice before violating rights, killing people, or generally just being assholes.
And, indeed, both of the things listed above will happen, if this Executive Order manages to mobilize those just waiting around to be mobilized.
Here’s the lead-in, which is surrounded by a couple of paragraphs that insinuate this is necessary because the United States is besieged by violent criminals. Nothing could be further from the truth, except maybe Donald Trump himself. Crime rates remain at historic lows. And being a cop has never been safer. Nonetheless, the big man is angry because sometimes not everyone is waving “COPS#1!” over-sized novelty foam fingers.
When local leaders demonize law enforcement and impose legal and political handcuffs that make aggressively enforcing the law impossible, crime thrives and innocent citizens and small business owners suffer. My Administration will therefore: establish best practices at the State and local level for cities to unleash high-impact local police forces; protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials; and surge resources to officers in need. My Administration will work to ensure that law enforcement officers across America focus on ending crime, not pursuing harmful, illegal race- and sex-based “equity” policies.
MINNEAPOLIS — Starting Monday, prosecutors in Hennepin County will be required to consider race when offering plea deals, according to a new policy from County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
Of course, this policy won’t survive for long because it’s going to be hard to square it with the Constitution, but there can be little doubt things like these — along with the Administration’s desperate desire to separate itself from anything that resembles diversity, equity, or inclusion (the horror!) — helped prompt this dangerous word salad that could actually give cops the last little push they need to fully become a law unto themselves.
But that’s just the table-setter. The devil is in the details and oh holy fuck, these demons are legion.
Trump starts with promising that cops accused of rights violations and crimes will be lawyered up even more than they already are.
The Attorney General shall take all appropriate action to create a mechanism to provide legal resources and indemnification to law enforcement officers who unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law. This mechanism shall include the use of private-sector pro bono assistance for such law enforcement officers.
OK. This is insane. And the last sentence indicates Trump and his DOJ plan to lean on the law firms that have already been hit with executive orders. And some may do that to buy their way back into the administration’s good graces. (This assumes the administration has any good and/or grace.) But cops don’t need this. It already exists. Cops are usually represented by union lawyers. Cops that don’t have unions are usually represented by government lawyers. Indemnification is a given, even when cops lose lawsuits. It’s not like cops don’t have a wealth (and by wealth, I mean “taxpayer-funded”) of options when it comes to free lawyers.
The only cops that may not have these options are cops who have been fired, or who have resigned rather than be fired. At that point, they’re no longer cops, which means no expense they incur in defense of their actions is “unjust” and any liability is their own. But these are extremely rare cases. By and large, all this does is create the perception that even ex-officers will be given access to pro bono and/or taxpayer-funded lawyers — a new privilege (that’s being declared like it’s a new right) that this government would never extend to anyone other than its own.
Under the sub-heading “Empowering State and Local Law Enforcement,” Trump has added even more perks and benefits for cops:
(iii) increase pay and benefits for law enforcement officers; (iv) strengthen and expand legal protections for law enforcement officers; (v) seek enhanced sentences for crimes against law enforcement officers
Some cops should be paid more. Some should be paid way, way less. Across the board raises do nothing but burden smaller communities with bills they can’t pay and enrich officers who are earning far above the standard wage for their occupation. While it may attract more people to the law enforcement field, it certainly won’t do anything to make them better than the people that already work there.
We definitely don’t need any expansion of legal protections for officers. Federal officers are already 99.9% impossible to sue in civil court. Regular cops aren’t quite as protected but every government employee has access to qualified immunity, which has been steadily expanded by Supreme Court rulings over the past few decades to create a massive barrier most litigants aren’t able to surmount.
The last one is just more “blue lives matter” garbage — something that turns people who have tons of power and almost zero accountability into a “protected class,” as though police have been marginalized by their own government like every single racial minority in this country since its inception. This somehow attempts to turn cops into the people at the other end of the cop-operated fire hose in 1960’s Birmingham, Alabama, which is one of the stupidest things I can imagine.
Of course, these expanded powers come with the complete removal of responsibility. Trump has already dumped and destroyed the only police accountability database run by the federal government. He’s gutted the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, leaving what’s left of it to do what it can to prop up [checks notes] Second Amendment rights unfairly trampled by [checks notes again] fairly minor gun control efforts.
Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall review all ongoing Federal consent decrees, out-of-court agreements, and post-judgment orders to which a State or local law enforcement agency is a party and modify, rescind, or move to conclude such measures that unduly impede the performance of law enforcement functions.
Kiss all your ongoing consent decrees goodbye, along with any reform efforts they contained. Not only will the DOJ refuse to punish cops for bad behavior going forward, it’s going to claw back anything any previous administration put in place.
All highly problematic and all guaranteed to set us back two or three decades in terms of law enforcement accountability. But here’s where it jumps the police state shark:
Sec. 4. Using National Security Assets for Law and Order. (a) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement. (b) Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Attorney General, shall determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime.
Paragraph (a) says any restrictions on the federal government’s 1033 program (which allows local law enforcement to buy or obtain for free surplus military gear) are being removed. Anyone wanting anything from a set of filing cabinets to an MRAP (mine-resistant armored personnel vehicle) just has to ask. If it’s in the cupboard, it can likely be had for next to nothing. And because it’s a direct line from cops to the federal government, local oversight likely won’t be allowed to ask questions, much less prevent local officers from playing G.I. Joe with all their new accessories.
I think some of us may be fine with the National Guard being sent in to serve as (non-combatant) backup to police forces overwhelmed during violent riots. I think far too many people are also fine with the National Guard being sent to the border to handle the alleged “border crisis.” (Lord knows current DHS head Kristi Noem definitely is.)
But who’s on board with this? This isn’t asking for the military to respond to some unforeseen situation where immediate violent force is needed to protect lives and communities. This is Trump directing Pete Hegseth to see if the US military might be used to prevent crime. Hell, even regular cops are barely in the “preventing crime” business. This sounds like an excuse for Trump to scramble US warfighters to any place he thinks needs more crime prevention, which will almost certainly be any city run by a liberal where literally any criminal activity of note manages to bubble up into the goldfish tank Trump calls his attention span.
This is a literal police state invitation, being extended by a guy who loves law and order (except when he or his followers are caught up in the system) to a subservient dude who’s just happy to be on TV now and then. It’s a “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” but I have to imagine even Aleister Crowley during his most hashish-addled days might have thought twice before turning soldiers into cops. And I would like to think even some cops might have a problem with this.
There it is. Prepare for the worst. If you do that, at least you’ll get to enjoy each and every day in which the worst doesn’t happen. And when the worst does happen, at least it won’t be a surprise.
There’s a certain predictable pattern when unqualified MAGA political appointees get put in charge of highly technical government operations. First, they demonstrate their complete misunderstanding of the systems they’re supposed to oversee. Then, they make a series of increasingly dangerous mistakes. Finally, they try to distract from those mistakes by focusing on culture war issues.
For Pete Hegseth, this pattern has revealed itself pretty quickly.
Last month, when it was revealed that the top echelon of the Trump administration’s national security team were sharing attack plans over an insecure Signal group chat in which The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added, it seemed obvious that this couldn’t be the only such chat. Indeed, a week later it was reported that there were at least twenty similar Signal group chats set up by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz for each crisis he was dealing with.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t just Waltz who was terribly insecure with national security information. Last night, the NY Times revealed that our least qualified Secretary of Defense ever had also set up a similar Signal chat, in which he also shared extremely sensitive Yemen attack information… with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
If this sounds incredibly stupid and dangerous, that’s because it is. But it’s also a perfect example of what happens when you put someone who fundamentally doesn’t understand security in charge of… security. The kind of person who thinks “well, Signal is secure, so I can share whatever I want with whoever I want” is exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be making decisions about military operations.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.
Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentiallythe same attack plansthat he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day thatmistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.
Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.
Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.
This is a stunning level of operational security failure that goes beyond mere incompetence — it’s a pattern revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of how secure communications should work.
To say this is bad is an understatement. To say this puts an exclamation point on how ridiculously unqualified Hegseth is would be somewhat more accurate, though it is difficult to describe just how fucked up this truly is. It absolutely suggests that Hegseth has a horrifically bad understanding of what his job is and how to keep important information secret.
He shouldn’t be sharing attack plans outside of a secure communications channel. He shouldn’t be sharing attack plans with those not within the National Security realm. He certainly shouldn’t be sharing attack plans with his wife who is not even in the government and whose experience is as a TV news producer.
With Goldberg, the administration tried to misleadingly brush it off as “well, we all accidentally text someone we shouldn’t.” That’s not a good excuse, of course, because this isn’t about accidentally texting someone, it was about sharing sensitive, classified info, on an unsecure channel.
But this is even worse. Because rather than “accidentally” adding someone who shouldn’t be in the chat, here, Hegseth appears to have deliberately added these people. Indeed, it sounds like there were even more people “from his personal circle” in the chat… and it was on his personal phone, not a government one, meaning it is almost certainly a compromised device.
Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth.It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circlein January, before his confirmation as defense secretary,and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said.He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.
Among those included in the chat… two of the folks from Hegseth’s inner circle who were fired just last week for leaking:
The chat also included two senior advisers to Mr. Hegseth — Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick — who were accused of leaking unauthorized information last week and were fired.
Seems super secure.
The Times article also notes that Hegseth had been warned “a day or two before the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat.” Of course, that suggests that a ton of people who worked with Hegseth knew full well that he had a habit of regularly sharing information he shouldn’t be sharing in Signal chats. Otherwise why warn him that he shouldn’t share details of the Yemen strike plan?
The story gets even dumber. Remember John Ullyot? One of Hegseth’s first hires at the Defense Department, the guy who proudly led the charge in “removing DEI” and managed to bungle that so badly they ended up accidentally erasing Jackie Robinson from military history? Well, he just quit as Pentagon spokesman and published a tell-all in Politico about how fucked up everything is there.
Upon leaving the Defense Department, he told Newsweek: “I remain one of the secretary’s strongest supporters going forward.”
If that quote makes you raise an eyebrow, well, just wait until you see what “one of the secretary’s strongest supporters” actually wrote. His Politico piece basically screams “Trump needs to fire this guy”:
President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.
Then we get a month-by-month catalog of incompetence… from, he claims, one of Hegseth’s “strongest supporters”:
First there was Signalgate, where thesecretary shared detailed operational plans, including timelines and specifics, about an impending military strike on the Houthis in Yemen over an unclassified Signal chat group that happened to include a member of the news media.
Once the Signalgate story broke, Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through avague, Clinton-esque non-denial denialthat “nobody was texting war plans.” This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.
His nebulous disavowal prompted the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, torelease Hegseth’s full chat stringwith the detailed operational plans two days later, turning an already-big story into a multi-week embarrassment for the president’s national security team. Hegseth nowfaces an inspector general investigationinto a possible leak of classified information and violation of records retention protocols.
That was just the beginning of the Month from Hell. The Wall Street Journal and other outletsreported that Hegseth “brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed.”
He also claims that the firings last week weren’t actually over leaks, but over other reasons, and bemoans: “Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.”
Which is a fascinating accusation coming from someone who just went out the door.
And just to put a cherry on top of this chaos sundae, Ullyot warns that there are “even bigger bombshell stories coming this week.” Because of course there are. When your Defense Secretary is sharing military strike plans with his wife over Signal, there’s always another shoe waiting to drop.
This is what happens when you place unqualified loyalists in positions requiring technical competence and security expertise. The problems go far beyond just operational security — they extend to a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology works, how information should be protected, and the proper channels for sensitive communications.
Hegseth, for his part, is trying to tweet through it, attempting (and failing) to turn the story of his gross incompetence and putting the American military at risk into one about DEI:
Of course, as law reporter Chris Geidner notes, this tweet alone appears to be Hegseth admitting that he’s violating a court order from last month, which blocked Hegseth’s ban on trans people serving in the military. And literally on Friday, just two days before Hegseth tweeted that trans people were banned from the military, the Ninth Circuit upheld the injunction against the ban.
Even worse, the DOJ in arguing that case had said directly to the court that Hegseth’s policy did “not discriminate against transgender people,” but rather only a subset, which the DOD defines as those “who have or have had gender dysphoria.” Indeed, the DOJ harped on the claim that the policy “scrupulously avoids using the word ‘transgender.’”
So, for him to now just tweet out that “trans” people are no longer allowed at DoD not only appears to violate the court order (upheld by an appeals court) blocking such a policy, but it undermines the (already laughable) claim that it wasn’t a “trans” ban in the first place.
This morning, Hegseth blamed the whole thing on the media (naturally) and “disgruntled former employees.” Trump echoed that claim, saying “I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people.”
Of course, this leaves out that the “bad people” Hegseth got rid of in the last few weeks were all in his inner circle of close advisors and were people he, himself, had hired.
The pattern here is unmistakable: an administration that simultaneously doesn’t understand technology while using it recklessly, doesn’t respect legal constraints, and attempts to distract from its failures by focusing on culture war issues. This is government incompetence taken to a dangerous new level.
In short, Hegseth is beyond incompetent and unqualified. He has put everyone in danger. His own “strongest supporters” are calling for him to be removed, his inner circle are being removed from the Pentagon for unclear reasons, he’s sharing attack plans with his wife and others on his personal phone using unsecured communications channels.
And his response is to tweet in a manner that not only shows he’s violating a court order, but undermines the argument he made in court.
This isn’t about policy disagreements. This is about just basic competence — or lack thereof. Hegseth never should have been nominated for the job, and every second he remains in it puts American national security in greater and greater peril.
I think lots of people know the kind of person who thinks they’re more clever than they really are. The kind of person who thinks that they can outwit the system by playing stupid games. The kind of person who thinks that this kind of beating the system is because they’re smart. This kind of person is usually viewed as a dipshit. Donald Trump’s DOJ seems to be, as a group, acting like just that kind of dipshit.
Like that overconfident student who thinks they’ve discovered one weird trick to beat the system, the DOJ keeps playing increasingly transparent games in court — making patently ridiculous arguments while acting shocked and offended when judges see right through their obvious nonsense.
It is a form of contempt. Not necessarily in the legal sense. But it is a kind of obvious contempt for the very systems and institutions of our judicial system that they are supposed to be protecting as a part of the constitutional order. And while judges are often willing to give great leeway to bad actors in their courtroom, at some point the outright contempt for the court can turn into something judges will start calling out.
I’m reminded of a college classmate who exemplified this mindset perfectly. He’d spend countless hours finding elaborate ways to game every assignment and test, devising increasingly convoluted schemes to avoid doing the actual work. The irony was that his schemes typically required far more effort than simply completing the assignments properly would have taken. But he sure was proud of the ways he believed he was beating the system.
That same misguided energy now permeates Trump’s DOJ (indeed, I just looked up on LinkedIn if that classmate might now work for the DOJ — thankfully he’s not there). These officials pour tremendous effort into crafting obviously laughable legal arguments, filing misleading declarations, and playing semantic games with court orders — all while seemingly convinced of their own clever brilliance. Just like my former classmate, they’re expending more energy trying to game the system than it would take to actually fulfill their constitutional duties and serve the American people. The result is a particularly toxic form of institutional contempt — not just disregard for the courts, but a sort of smirking certainty that they’re somehow outsmarting the entire judicial system.
It is nearly impossible to keep track of all of the various lawsuits that have been filed against the plethora of illegal actions taken by the Trump administration in the last two months since inauguration (though kudos to folks like Just Security who have been tracking them as best as they can).
The Boasberg case represents a critical escalation in this pattern of contempt. While legal scholars debate what precisely constitutes a constitutional crisis, Corbin Barthold makes a compelling case that we’ve now crossed that threshold. When a federal judge explicitly orders planes carrying deportees to return and the administration simply ignores that order, we’re witnessing something qualitatively different from their usual games.
THE LONG-AWAITED CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS has now arrived. It is time for a court to say so.
On Saturday night, James Boasberg, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, issued a pair of emergency orders. The government, he had just been told at a hastily convened hearing, was removing from the country, without due process, more than a hundred alleged gang members. The planes, he learned, were already in the air. To justify this stunning move, President Trump had issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
At around 6:45 p.m., Boasberg orally ordered the planes turned around. “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” he ruled from the bench. “This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
At 7:26 p.m., he issued a briefwritten orderbarring the government from relying on the Alien Enemies Act to remove noncitizens from the country.
The government ignored both orders.
This outright defiance marks a subtle, but notable, departure from the administration’s playbook the past few months. Until now, they’ve preferred more smirking forms of contempt — slow-walking court orders, playing word games with compliance, or burying judges in misleading declarations. But each of these smaller acts of contempt has apparently emboldened them toward more brazen defiance.
A second administration official said Trump was not defying the judge whose ruling came too late for the planes to change course: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.”
This argument, that the order came too late, is nonsense. But it’s notable how the administration is trying to insist it’s actually obeying orders in court, while doing wink, wink, nod, nod stuff out of court.
The administration’s attempts to characterize this as a routine “deportation” matter represent perhaps their most cynical wordplay yet (and one the media should stop repeating, though that’s a different issue). Deportation is a legal process with established due process rights. What happened here was something far darker: the US government engaging in what amounts to human trafficking, shipping people to El Salvador as forced labor without any due process. The mask slipped entirely when El Salvador’s President tweeted “Oopsie… too late” in response to Judge Boasberg’s order — a tweet that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk both found amusing enough to amplify:
The full scope of what’s happening deserves to be called out directly. Start with the legal sleight-of-hand: The administration has resurrected the Alien Enemies Act, a widely disparaged authoritarian relic that only applies during “a declared war” or “invasion” — neither of which exists. They’re wielding this zombie legislation to deny basic due process rights to people on American soil, shipping them to El Salvador (not even their country of origin) to become literal slave labor — all funded by US taxpayers.
The contempt deepens with their public justification. Without due process requirements, they don’t actually have to prove their claims that these people are gang members. And they can’t — because the claims are false for many of those shipped out. Reports show that many of the deportees have no gang connections at all. Any competent law enforcement official would recognize these allegations as nonsense.
But the most chilling display comes in their response to judicial oversight: when a federal judge attempts to restore basic due process rights, the administration not only ignores his order, but the Secretary of State publicly mocks it while coordinating with their partner in human trafficking. This isn’t just contempt of court — it’s contempt for the entire concept of legal constraints on executive power.
The administration’s response to Judge Boasberg perfectly encapsulates their broader strategy: when the facts aren’t on your side, attack the judge. Their characterization of Boasberg as a “radical left lunatic partisan” would be merely laughable if it weren’t so deliberately misleading. This is the same conservative judge who repeatedly ruled in Trump’s favor in other cases — ordering Hillary Clinton’s emails released, blocking the release of Trump’s tax returns, and limiting disclosures from both the Mueller investigation and the classified documents grand jury.
The contempt here operates on multiple levels: there’s the surface-level dishonesty of painting a conservative judge as a radical leftist, but more insidiously, there’s the implicit message that any judge who dares enforce the law against Trump must be acting from partisan motives. This fits a broader pattern where the administration’s lawyers aren’t just playing games with legal arguments — they’re actively working to undermine the legitimacy of judicial oversight itself.
The Boasberg case may be the most brazen example, but it’s far from isolated. Across multiple courts, judges are increasingly witnessing this administration’s attempts to treat the judicial system like a game they can cleverly exploit. Their contempt generally takes three forms, each more concerning than the last:
First, there’s the malicious compliance playbook — taking court orders so literally they become absurd. The Social Security Administration exemplifies this approach. When Judge Ellen Hollander blocked DOGE from accessing records, interim SSA head Lee Dudek responded by threatening to shut down the entire Social Security system, claiming his entire IT staff were somehow “DOGE affiliates.” This led to an increasingly furious series of clarifications from the judge, culminating in her observation that either Dudek was lying or the DOJ lawyers were.
Second, there’s the strategy of procedural manipulation — exploiting court customs and courtesy to gain tactical advantages. Take the EPA case, where officials used procedural games to try to circumvent judicial oversight. They asked for a routine 24-hour extension on a hearing (which opposing counsel typically grant as a professional courtesy), then used that delay to sneak in actions that would have been prevented by the pending TRO:
Third, we’re seeing increasingly more open defiance of court orders, coupled with attempts to delegitimize any judge who rules against them. The Perkins Coie case perfectly demonstrates this escalation. When Judge Beryl Howell issued a TRO blocking an obviously unconstitutional executive order targeting the law firm for representing Democratic interests, Attorney General Pam Bondi and OMB Director Russell Vought responded with explicit defiance:
The Executive Branch’s position is that Executive Order 14230 is permissible, and that the Court’s order was erroneous. The government reserves the right to take all necessary and legal actions in response to the “dishonest and dangerous” conduct of Perkins Coie LLP, as set forth in Executive Order 14230.
At the same time, the DOJ is trying to disqualify Judge Howell for… “hostility” towards the President, again setting up the idea that any judicial action holding them to account is driven by bias, rather than an actual respect for the Constitution.
The pattern of contempt continues across other cases, each fitting into these three categories of increasingly brazen defiance:
More malicious compliance games appear in the DOGE leadership saga, where pretend DOGE boss Amy Gleason filed a declaration claiming to run the agency even as Trump himself said in his address to Congress that Elon Musk runs it. When called on this discrepancy, Gleason’s response dripped with technically-accurate-but-misleading wordplay: “Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.” The contempt deepened when it emerged that Gleason was simultaneously appointed as an HHS consultant a week after being named DOGE head.
The EPA case shows how procedural games escalate to outright dishonesty. EPA boss Lee Zeldin, fixated on a deceptively edited Project Veritas video, illegally froze a Citibank account, and attempted to launch a grand jury investigation. When challenged in court, DOJ lawyers told Judge Tanya Chutkan they couldn’t provide evidence of any criminal violation because “this Court is not in a position to rule upon whether or not this termination was consistent with the contracts.”
Perhaps most telling is the transgender military ban case, where the administration’s contempt for judicial oversight is laid bare. The DOJ keeps insisting to the judge that there is no ban on transgender service members, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth openly declares exactly the opposite:
These examples paint a clear picture of an administration that, like my college classmate from years ago, believes it’s brilliantly outsmarting the system while actually just making itself look increasingly desperate to avoid any accountability. But unlike that student’s academic games, these legal shenanigans carry profound constitutional implications.
What started as wannabe-clever-but-obvious attempts to circumvent court orders has evolved into something far more dangerous: a systematic effort to delegitimize judicial oversight itself. Each time they respond to a court order with malicious compliance, procedural manipulation, or outright defiance, they’re not just showing contempt for individual judges — they’re undermining the very concept of judicial review.
The progression is clear: first came the word games and barely-technically-accurate-but-misleading declarations, then the exploitation of court procedures and customs, and now increasingly open defiance coupled with attempts to paint any judge who enforces the law as politically biased. This is how institutional guardrails get dismantled — not through dramatic confrontation, but through a thousand small acts of contempt that gradually normalize the idea that court orders are merely suggestions to be cleverly evaded.
Trump has already effectively neutered congressional oversight. Now his DOJ appears determined to do the same to the judiciary, treating federal judges like frustrated professors whose rules are just obstacles to be gamed. But unlike my former classmate’s academic adventures, the stakes here aren’t just a passing grade — they’re the continued functioning of our constitutional system of checks and balances.
Judges are starting to catch on, calling out these games with increasing fury. But judicial anger alone won’t be enough. An administration that responds to court orders with winks, nods, and “technically accurate” lies isn’t demonstrating clever lawyering — it’s showing fundamental contempt for constitutional governance itself. Those who shrug this off as mere legal gamesmanship are missing the escalating danger: when government lawyers treat the judicial branch as a system to be cleverly gamed rather than an essential check on power, they’re not just failing their professional obligations. They’re actively participating in the dismantling of judicial review itself.
These officials seem convinced they can keep playing these games forever — or at least until there’s no independent judiciary left to play games with. At some point, judges need to stop writing angry opinions and start issuing contempt charges. And Congress needs to wake the fuck up before it’s too late.
The only silver lining in just how stupid this supposed anti-DEI purge of government records has become is that it appears the stupids doing the stupid are now finally starting to realize just how stupid it has become. Stemming from one of Trump’s many executive orders, one which instructed the government to essentially purge its policies and records of anything that could be tied to programs for Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the government has apparently decided to approach this in the laziest and most capricious way possible. Some automated system was setup to flag, and in some cases remove, content on all kinds of government systems content based on broad search terms with nary a human to review the results to be found. Instead, this appears to be something of an anti-woke scream test. These records, often matters of valuable historical content, get removed and the administration waits to see who screams about it so they can clean up any messes they made.
That’s no way to run a government, of course, but here we are. And the end result has been about what you’d expect if you thought this through for ten seconds. Terms that are only sometimes used in DEI-type conversations are being searched and purged for, resulting in the removal of content that has nothing to do with DEI. Historical content has been scrubbed from government websites in the same way, with one example being the removal of references to the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first American nuclear bomb, simply because of the plane’s name.
But rather than stop and admit that this was all going terribly, the Trump administration has steadily marched on. And because it did so, we have a whole new trove of erroneously removed content from Pentagon systems and websites.
But dozens of the articles either flagged for removal or removed already — but still accessible via the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine — and reviewed by CNN have no ostensible connection to DEI programs; race theory; gender ideology or identity-based programs.
At least half a dozen articles already removed are about the Holocaust and now have the word “DEI” in their URL. Articles related to September 11 remembrance, including service members reflecting on their service and where they were that day, have also been removed. So have articles about cancer awareness, including those related to Breast Cancer Awareness month and colon cancer awareness.
Several articles about sexual assault have also been removed and now have “DEI” in their URL, including “April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month” and “A call to action – Three ways to combat sexual assault.”
Also included in the collateral damage were materials relating to Jackie Robinson. Robinson is an American hero, of course, not only for breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, but for what he endured in the military as well. A recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Robinson was court-martialed for refusing to sit in the back of a bus (the other charges against him were made up). An all-white jury acquited him of those charges. The article that was removed was one that detailed his military career.
Now, some of this content, including those concerning Robinson, has since been restored. The scream test resulted in screaming, you see. But much of it has not and the comments coming from the administration about it all are, well, fairly indecipherable.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot said in a statement Wednesday that the Defense Department was “pleased by the rapid compliance” across the Pentagon with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms.
“In the rare cases that content is removed – either deliberately or by mistake – that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content so it recognizes our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans, period.”
If you’re sure you know what actual hell that means, your confidence is impressive. But voices from inside the Pentagon give lie to Ullyot’s claim that this is all going well.
That automated process has led to “a high level of irresponsible collateral damage,” one of the defense officials said. “People don’t understand the scope and the carelessness of ‘unpublishing’ that’s happened,” the official said.
Another of the defense officials said that the Pentagon understands that the process needs a significant course-correction and is now undergoing a more thorough review of what has been purged to determine if it should be republished.
“Because of these series of events, the department recognizes that this needs to be a more deliberative process involving human beings to ensure that a thorough review of content is completed,” the official said. “This may take more time than originally planned.”
Well, gosh golly gee, welcome to the real world. If only someone could have predicted that this haphazard effort to whitewash history would result in such collateral damage. This is, after all, somewhat akin to content moderation. Which, as we’ve noted repeatedly, is essentially impossible to do correctly at scale.
And when the collateral damage amounts to the erasure of our history, it really is the sort of thing you should want to get as close to correct as possible.
Update:After the NY Times reported this story last night, Donald Trump denied that Musk would be getting the China war plan, and now the NY Times is reporting that, while that was the original plan, it was scrapped because of the public outcry The Wall Street Journal is similarly reporting that the nature of the meeting changed because of the public revelation. We’re still running this article from Mike Brock that he wrote yesterday, because of the seriousness of this situation. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, continuing to show his anti-free speech instincts, has threatened whoever leaked the original story.
The New York Timesreports that Elon Musk is about to receive access to one of America’s most sensitive military secrets: the Pentagon’s war plan for a potential conflict with China. Let that sink in for a moment.
The same Elon Musk who is currently CEO of Tesla, which operates a flagship factory in Shanghai that produces more than half of the company’s global deliveries. The same Elon Musk whose company has a $2.8 billion loan agreement with Chinese lenders. The same Elon Musk who has publicly stated that Taiwan should be a “special administrative zone” of China. The same Elon Musk who wrote a flattering column for China’s censorship agency and has consistently praised Chinese leadership on social media.
This isn’t just a routine conflict of interest—it’s a national security nightmare unfolding in plain sight.
According to the New York Times, Musk will be briefed Friday on the top-secret operational plan that includes “what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period” in the event of war. This information is so sensitive that it’s typically only shared with those directly in the military chain of command. Even presidents usually receive only the broad contours, not the specific operational details.
Defenders of this unprecedented access might argue that Musk’s role in the Department of Government Efficiency necessitates his understanding of defense capabilities to make informed budget decisions. But this justification collapses under scrutiny. Budget oversight has never required access to operational war plans—Congress has managed defense appropriations for centuries without such detailed briefings. Moreover, if budget efficiency were truly the goal, why not provide similar briefings to the Office of Management and Budget or congressional committees with actual constitutional authority over spending?
What this justification reveals is alarming: DOGE isn’t just about eliminating waste; it’s about fundamentally reshaping America’s defense posture with minimal oversight. We are witnessing the privatization of national security decision-making, where unelected billionaires with business conflicts receive information traditionally reserved for the military chain of command.
The historical precedents for such arrangements are uniformly disastrous. During the 1930s, German industrialists with international business ties were given increasing influence over military planning, ultimately subordinating national security to corporate interests. More recently, the revolving door between defense contractors and the Pentagon has raised serious ethical concerns—but never before has a sitting CEO of multiple companies simultaneously directed government “efficiency” efforts while receiving classified operational briefings.
This meeting represents an unprecedented blurring of lines between private business interests and national security. Musk simultaneously heads SpaceX, a major defense contractor receiving billions in Pentagon funds, while directing government efficiency efforts that could determine which competitors receive future contracts. In the Times piece, defense expert Todd Harrison noted, “Giving the CEO of one defense company unique access seems like this could be grounds for a contract protest and is a real conflict of interest.”
Most concerning is China’s explicit identification of Musk’s Starlink satellite network as an extension of the U.S. military—a view that puts his profound business interests in China in direct conflict with his privileged access to U.S. war planning. This is precisely the kind of conflict that led the Air Force to previously deny Musk an even higher security clearance, citing potential security risks.
The mechanisms through which this conflict could compromise national security are not theoretical. Knowledge of U.S. targeting priorities creates leverage that can be exploited in multiple ways. Chinese authorities, well aware of Tesla’s vulnerability in their market, could apply subtle pressure through regulatory actions against his Shanghai factory. Even without explicit coercion, Musk’s awareness of which Chinese facilities would be primary targets in a conflict could unconsciously influence his business decisions—perhaps steering Tesla investments away from areas identified as strategic targets, inadvertently telegraphing U.S. military priorities. The Chinese government, which maintains sophisticated intelligence operations, would analyze any such patterns for insights into U.S. planning.
What we are witnessing is, in fact, an oligarchical coup—a term I’ve repeatedly used here at Notes From The Circus, and one that becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss as hyperbole with each passing week. The transfer of core governmental functions to private interests with minimal oversight represents precisely the kind of capture that transforms democracies into oligarchies. When billionaires simultaneously direct government operations, receive classified briefings, and maintain private business empires—all with minimal accountability—we have moved beyond normal governance into something fundamentally different: rule by the wealthy few rather than democratically elected representatives.
The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated. This briefing is scheduled for today. By the time many of you read these words, one of America’s most closely guarded military secrets will have been shared with a businessman whose company depends on the goodwill of the very country those plans are designed to counter. Once this line is crossed, it cannot be uncrossed. The precedent it sets—that private citizens with business conflicts can access war plans—will be cited to justify even more egregious breaches in the future. With each successive norm violation, our capacity to be shocked diminishes, and the machinery of constitutional governance rusts further.
This unprecedented arrangement threatens not just domestic governance but international stability. America’s allies, already questioning U.S. reliability under Trump, will further distance themselves when they see sensitive security matters handled with such cavalier disregard for conflicts of interest. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), built on decades of mutual trust, faces particular strain as partner nations grow increasingly reluctant to share sensitive information that might find its way to private citizens with complex international business interests. Japan and South Korea, frontline states in any potential conflict with China, must now factor in the possibility that U.S. war planning is being influenced by private business considerations. Meanwhile, adversaries will be emboldened, seeing in this arrangement confirmation that U.S. national security has been subordinated to private financial concerns.
Congress, in light of its constitutional prerogatives, should immediately demand a full accounting of who authorized this briefing and under what authority. It should establish clear statutory limits on what information can be shared with DOGE personnel, require security clearance reviews for all private citizens given access to classified information, and mandate recusal from any matter involving countries where officials have substantial business interests. While it’s highly unlikely that the complicit Mike Johnson and the current GOP majority in Congress will undertake any of these actions, I make these suggestions for the sake of posterity and to make the ethical, legal, and constitutional point.
Public engagement remains our most viable path forward when institutions fail. History shows that citizen action has successfully preserved democratic guardrails even during periods of institutional capture. The Pentagon Papers revelations, which exposed government deception about Vietnam, demonstrated how courageous individuals can create accountability when formal channels fail. More recently, the post-9/11 surveillance revelations prompted significant reforms only after public pressure made inaction politically untenable. In both cases, the combination of whistleblowers, independent journalists, and sustained public attention created counterweights to unchecked executive power.
Similar citizen vigilance is required today, and it must be immediate and sustained. Support for independent journalism investigating these conflicts, advocacy for stronger ethics laws, attention to congressional oversight hearings (or lack thereof), and consistent pressure on representatives across party lines can create political costs for normalizing such conflicts. Professional associations like the American Foreign Service Association, the Military Officers Association of America, and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance should leverage their credibility to formally condemn this breach of security protocol. Retired intelligence officials, military officers, and national security experts—many of whom have spent careers protecting classified information—must speak out collectively, making clear that this is not a partisan issue but a national security emergency. Most importantly, voters must demand answers from candidates about where they stand on private influence over national security decisions.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And a businessman with billions in financial exposure to China should not have access to classified war plans against that same country. This is madness. Anyone who defends this is deranged. This isn’t a partisan observation—it’s a fundamental principle of national security that appears to have been casually discarded.
At stake here is more than just operational security—it’s the principle that national defense decisions should be made by democratically accountable officials sworn to uphold the Constitution, not by private citizens with competing financial interests. When we allow the line between public service and private gain to blur this dramatically, we undermine the foundation of democratic governance itself: that power flows from the people through their elected representatives, not from wealth and proximity to those representatives.
The question isn’t whether this represents a conflict of interest—it plainly does. The question is whether we still possess the collective will to defend democratic principles when they’re most threatened. The vigilance required to preserve constitutional governance doesn’t rest with officials alone—it falls to each of us to recognize, name, and resist the normalization of conflicts that strike at the heart of democratic accountability. If we cannot draw the line at giving war plans to businessmen with financial ties to potential adversaries, it’s difficult to imagine where we would draw it at all.
Our democracy’s survival requires not just awareness but action—not just concern but commitment. The Constitution’s promise of government by the people, for the people depends not on parchment guarantees but on citizens willing to stand for its principles when they are most threatened. This moment demands nothing less than our full engagement in the defense of democratic governance against its capture by private interests. That is both our inheritance and our obligation to those who will follow.
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 47
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Look, there are different ways to manage people. You could, for instance, have regular performance reviews, set clear expectations, and provide constructive feedback. Or… you could send an email late on a Saturday to the entirety of the federal government workforce (even those outside the executive branch) demanding that everyone list five things they did last week, while simultaneously tweeting that anyone who doesn’t respond will be fired.
The latter is what happened this weekend when federal employees received this email:
What did you do last week?
Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.
Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments.
Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.
Now, you might think this is just another story about Elon Musk’s catastrophically bad management style. (And it is!) But it’s actually much, much dumber than that.
It was sent on Saturday. And Elon Musk is taking credit for it, even though the Trump administration last week stated in court that Musk has no authority other than to advise the President, and has no official role with DOGE. Even more bizarre, Musk claimed on ExTwitter that anyone who failed to reply to the email by Monday night would have that failure to respond be taken as a resignation.
There are several problems here. Well, actually there are about fifty problems here, but let’s start with the obvious ones:
The email doesn’t mention anything about resignations. That part came in a separate tweet, because apparently that’s how the federal government works now. (If you’re a federal employee who doesn’t obsessively follow Elon Musk on ExTwitter, I guess you just… accidentally resign? Maybe?)
The federal government is, how do I put this, kind of big? Some federal employees are on maternity leave. Some are on vacation. Some are in submarines deep under the ocean where checking email would literally compromise national security. (I assume Musk would count “maintaining radio silence to avoid detection by foreign adversaries” as one of your five accomplishments for the week, but who knows?)
If this all feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this movie before: Musk pulled exactly the same stunt when he took over Twitter, right before destroying about 80% of that company’s value. (You would think he’d recognize how badly that has gone and think that maybe a different approach is needed, but not Elon Musk!)
Furthermore, the email went to all federal employees, including many who are not a part of the executive branch. There are multiple reports of clerks and judges in the judicial branch receiving it as well. And while we’re still waiting to see the courts sort out if Musk has authority over the executive branch (he likely does not), he absolutely does not have authority over the judicial branch.
Now, you might wonder what possible justification there could be for this bizarre demand. Well! According to Musk (who, remember, suffers from the most ridiculous level of troll-fueled confirmation bias we’ve ever seen) this is just a simple test to make sure federal employees are checking their email. Because apparently the biggest problem facing the federal government is… insufficient inbox monitoring?
There are a few problems with this theory:
Some federal employees literally can’t check email (see: aforementioned submarine crews)
Some federal employees shouldn’t check email (see: anyone handling classified information on secure systems)
Some federal employees don’t need to check email on weekends (see: basically everyone else)
But the real kicker is what Musk’s defenders are saying.
The argument goes something like this: “Actually, this is totally normal! Companies do this all the time!” Which… no? Look, I’ve worked in and around plenty of companies, and yes, you typically have regular performance reviews. You might even have weekly check-ins with your manager. But there’s a slight difference between “scheduled performance review with your direct supervisor” and “surprise email from someone who may or may not have authority over you demanding immediate justification for your existence.” (The difference is that one is management and the other is performative chaos.)
That’s just being an asshole with too much power.
Also, because these are federal government emails, they’re subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which means reporters are already lining up to request copies of all the responses. I suspect we’ll soon have a fascinating database of federal employees explaining their jobs to… well, to no one in particular, since Musk doesn’t actually have any actual authority here.
Not surprisingly to most people, but apparently surprising to Musk, it turns out that various federal agencies have opinions about their employees sending detailed work descriptions to random email addresses. And those opinions are mostly variations on “please don’t do that.”
The FBI, for instance, whose new director Kash Patel (in theory a Musk ally, mind you) seems particularly annoyed:
Then there’s Tulsi Gabbard, the new Director of National Intelligence (and, again, typically a Musk ally), who had to explain something that really shouldn’t need explaining: “Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, I.C. employees should not respond to the OPM email.” (Translation: “Please don’t send classified intelligence work details to a random email address, even if Elon Musk asks nicely.”)
The Defense Department, meanwhile, sent out what might be the most diplomatically worded “absolutely not” in recent memory. From their memo:
“DoD personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information. The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” Selnick wrote. “When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled, ‘What did you do last week.’”
The Administrative Office of the Courts, which is run by John Roberts, sent out a mealy-mouthed email to the judicial branch recommending not responding: “this email did not originate from the judiciary or the administrative office and we suggest that no action be taken.” Roberts could have taken a stand and noted that the executive branch has no authority whatsoever here, but I guess he’ll have an opportunity to do that in court before long.
The State Department and Homeland Security both also told employees not to respond. Though CISA, which is a part of Homeland Security, first told employees to obey the email. That kind of confusion is happening elsewhere as well:
Other departments gave conflicting guidance. The Department of Health and Human Services told its employees on Sunday morning to follow the directive. An hour later, an email from the Trump-appointed acting director of the National Institutes of Health, a subordinate agency, told employees to hold off on responding. Hours later, the health department told all employees to “pause” responses to the ultimatum.
One message on Sunday morning from the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., instructed its roughly 80,000 employees to comply. That was shortly after the acting general counsel, Sean Keveney, had instructed some not to. And by Sunday evening, agency leadership issued new instructions that employees should “pause activities” related to the request until noon on Monday.
“I’ll be candid with you. Having put in over 70 hours of work last week advancing Administration’s priorities,I was personally insulted to receive the below email,” Keveney said in an email viewed by The Associated Press that acknowledged a broad sense of “uncertainty and stress” within the agency.
Keveney laid out security concerns and pointed out some of the work done by the agency’s employees may be protected by attorney-client privilege: “I have received no assurances that there are appropriate protections in place to safeguard responses to this email.”
Look, even if you were somehow convinced this was a good idea (it’s not) and that demanding work summaries via surprise weekend email is totally normal corporate behavior (it really, really isn’t), you’d still have to marvel at the sheer incompetence of the implementation. All this is doing is generating a shit ton of confusion across the entirety of the federal government.
That doesn’t seem very useful for “efficiency.”
And then there’s Ed Martin, the US Attorney for DC (who, you might remember, we just last week discussed as spectacularly incompetent), who sent what might be the most confusing “clarification” email in federal government history:
“Let me clarify: We will comply with this OPM request whether by replying or deciding not to reply.”
Well! That certainly clears things up. (For those keeping score at home, Martin is saying they will comply by either… doing the thing or not doing the thing. Which is technically true and also technically useless.)
But wait, there’s more! Because Elon (who, remember, is supposedly just an advisor with no actual authority) didn’t take kindly to the Pentagon’s “please ignore this” memo. His response? To threaten to fire the person who wrote the Pentagon’s memo. Yes, the person with no authority is threatening to fire people at the Pentagon for not recognizing his non-existent authority. It’s like a fractal of nonsense.
Meanwhile, Musk has been gleefully mocking anyone pushing back on this demand, insisting that people are only upset because they can’t come up with five things they did last week. Which is… not the point. At all.
Let’s be clear about this (in “five bullets”):
Everyone can list five things they did last week
The issue isn’t the difficulty of the task
The issue is being asked to justify your existence via a pointless busywork exercise to someone with no authority over you
…via a weekend email
…that threatens termination in a separate tweet
But Musk wasn’t done yet. Because his solution to this manufactured crisis is… wait for it… to use his own proprietary AI chatbot to generate fake responses. Yes, you read that right. Musk sent Trump a screenshot of someone (possibly himself) asking Grok (his own AI) to make up fake accomplishments for such an email reply, which Trump then posted to Truth Social, which Musk then reposted to ExTwitter as proof of how “easy” this all is.
So to summarize: The person demanding accountability from federal workers is actively encouraging them to use AI bullshit generators to create fake responses. And not just any AI — his AI specifically. (Nothing says “government efficiency” quite like using a private company’s AI to generate fake work reports for that same private company’s CEO who has no actual government authority but pretends he does.)
It also suggests a disturbing comfort with using AI to generate artificial accountability rather than pursuing any kind of meaningful government oversight (in case you were one of the three rubes left in the country who still believes that’s what Musk is doing). The fact that neither Musk nor Trump seem concerned about the security implications of federal employees feeding their work details into private commercial AI systems is particularly alarming.
There are a whole host of problems with all of this, but mainly, it’s just fucking stupid.
Kelley said in the letter that the union has “received numerous reports from dedicated civil servants, including those who care for our veterans and safeguard our nation, expressing frustration over the email’s tone and intent. Rather than fostering professionalism and respect for their work, this hastily written email left many feeling undervalued and intimidated.”
And even Republicans are having trouble defending this one.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, also criticized Mr. Musk’s order.
“Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform,” she wrote in a statement on social media. “The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.”
The whole thing is an exercise in dickishness for the sake of dickishness. But beyond the obvious management failures, this episode raises serious concerns about data security and privacy. The combination of FOIA-able responses, encouraged use of commercial AI systems, and the broad scope of affected agencies creates a perfect storm of potential security risks. Federal employees’ work details could be exposed in ways that compromise ongoing operations, especially in sensitive areas like national security and law enforcement. It’s yet another example of how tech-bro solutions to imagined problems often create very real security vulnerabilities.
Of course, Musk fans will cheer it on, insisting that the federal workforce deserves to be treated like shit, even as this will impact many people who actually supported Trump and Musk. The entire attitude is “if you’re not part of the inner circle, you’re worthless.”
It’s obnoxious. And it’s designed to demoralize workers on purpose. The assumption that all federal employees are a waste is such a stupid, ignorant position. But it’s clearly how Musk is treating everyone who works for the government.
