You are here / Musk menace / ‘Signal me’

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1. We may be in the middle of a trade war. Or maybe not
2. We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis. No maybe.
3. We may be in the midst of a sort of digital coup, which might as a side consequence cause large parts of the federal government to cease functioning at all.

The unifying theme here … is that the federal government has been taken over by bad people who also are also stunningly ignorant.

 

Notes from the front. News Not Noise columnist Jessica Yellin says every federal employee she’s heard from regarding the buyout offered by Donald Trump’s administration—echoing Elon Musk’s approach at Twitter X—parallels the words of one: “Fuck Musk. I’m staying.”
■ Inside Medicine’s getting similar signals from within the Centers for Disease Control, where one employee characterized the offer as bullshit.
■ … and his Treasury secretary has essentially shut down the government’s main bulwark against consumer financial fraud, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
■ The Onion: “Musk Offers Self $10 Billion Federal Buyout.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
■ Gov. Pritzker, interviewed by Puck: Trump “hired a bunch of these Project 2025 types, who … don’t actually know how to effectuate things that help people.”
■ Law Dork Chris Geidner: “Meet two lawyers fighting for trans people’s lives against Trump’s anti-trans attacks.”
■ Law professor Joyce Vance: “Call or write your senators before they vote” on Trump’s cabinet nominees …
■ … one of which, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., made it out of committee this morning.
■ Yellin has phone numbers for you.
■ Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square link to details of an Indivisible demonstration Wednesday—to “demand our senators shut down Trump’s power grab”—went bad after publication; here’s one that still works.
■ The American Prospect: “The attempted hostile takeover of the U.S. government by Trump and Musk is beginning to hit a wall.”

Musk menace. Wired—whose scoops have driven a record increase in subscriptions—reports that “a 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has admin privileges over the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns and more.”
■ An information tech worker with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service tells Notes on the Crisis investigative reporter Nathan Tankus that the level of access granted to the bureau’s files “is apocalyptic.”
■ Intercept reporter Ryan Grim: “Musk sending minions with fake lanyards into the bowels of the Treasury Department … indicates he’s a man bent more on conquest than liberation.”
■ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Republicans control both chambers of Congress … the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development … they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. … Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk … to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and canceling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.”
■ USA Today’s Chicago-based columnist, Rex Huppke, has a question for right-wing conspiracy theorists: “Remember how you spent forever babbling on and on about shadowy billionaires trying to implement a totalitarian government and bring about ‘a new world order’?”
■ The Washington Post: As Musk’s power grows, some Jewish leaders are renewing a call for an X boycott.
■ Northwestern University’s one of five across the country under Trump administration investigation for antisemitic activity.

Reproductive rights in the crosshairs. Abortion, Every Day columnist Jessica Valenti: The Trump administration’s scrubbing Health and Human Services Department website information on reproductive health privacy and pharmacy discrimination.
■ New York’s governor has signed a bill protecting those who ship abortion medication to anti-choice states.
■ Popular Information: Trump’s war on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs is “effectively affirmative action for white men.”
■ Columnist Eric Zorn, who’s long resisted such rhetoric, says the president’s response to the D.C. air disaster proves that he is indeed “just plane racist.”

‘World’s dumbest trade war.’ That’s Jimmy Kimmel, assessing Trump’s tariff offensives.
■ Late Night host Seth Meyers explains those tariffs really hurt American consumers: “No importer has ever said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna cover this one.’”
■ China’s firing back, with tariffs on U.S. imports—including coal and natural gas …
■ … which would bite Illinois.
■ A monthlong pause on Trump’s threatened tariffs against Mexico and Canada has done little to calm nerves in a sector that Politico’s Shia Kapos calls “Illinois’ No. 1 economic driver,” agriculture.

‘Trump proofing’ student rights. ProPublica and the Tribune report that lawmakers will try to end police ticketing in Illinois schools.
■ Under a settlement that also reins in Chicago cops’ traffic-stop authority, the city’s offering $1.25 million to the family of a man they shot and killed last year.

Bird flu resurgence. Ducks and geese washing up dead on Illinois’ lakefront seem to signal the flu’s advance as the weather gets warmer.
■ A Sun-Times editorial calls on the White House to “marshal resources toward solving the bird flu problem that’s been killing off egg-laying hens by the millions.”

Investigate this. Award-winning ABC 7 investigative reporter Chuck Goudie’s joining NBC 5.
■ Chicago radio legend Steve Dahl has prostate cancer.

‘Signal me.’ CNN’s Brian Stelter says those words are getting echoed “all around Washington and across cyberspace” as reporters encourage people “affected by President Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to U.S. government to … share what they know” via secure texts in the Signal app.
■ OK, we’re game: Testing, 1, 2, 3 … ChasM.01
Thanks. John Ruberry made this edition better.



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