new authoritarianism

Federal Judge Orders ‘Very Limited’ Pause on Trump-Musk USAID Purge

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Tributes are placed beneath the covered seal of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., on February 7, 2025. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

“Frankly, there is zero harm to the government,” in a pause, said the Trump-appointed federal judge, who pressed administration lawyers to prove their claims of USAID fraud and corruption.

A federal judge said Friday that he would issue a “very limited” pause on the Trump administration’s midnight deadline for the U.S. Agency for International Development to place thousands of agency staff on leave.

Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia—an appointee of President Donald Trump—said he would approve a limited temporary restraining order preventing 2,200 USAID employees from being put on administrative leave at midnight. Nichols also said he would decide whether the 500 workers who have already been placed on leave will be reinstated.

“They should not put those 2,200 people on administrative leave tonight,” Nichols said, according to The Hill.

BREAKING: Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from placing 2,000+ USAID workers on leave as litigation continues.

— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) 2025-02-07T21:58:55.706Z

Nichols’ move came in response to claims by two unions—the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and American Federation of Government Employees—that their members would suffer “irreparable harm” as a result of Trump’s order. The unions said that the effort led by the Trump administration and unelected Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk constitutes an “ongoing, illegal scheme to gut” USAID.

“This is not something the president can unilaterally do,” Karla Gilbride, an attorney representing the unions, told Nichols during a Friday hearing.

Nichols said that “frankly, there is zero harm to the government” from a temporary pause. The judge pressed Trump administration attorneys to show proof of their claims of widespread fraud and corruption within USAID, which provides foreign aid and development assistance but also has a dubious history of funding subversion, drug trafficking, forced sterilization, Central American death squads, and torture during its 64-year existence.

Musk—whose DOGE has locked USAID employees out of internal systems and recalled thousands of personnel to the U.S. in recent days—has promoted conspiracy theories about the agency. Earlier this week, he posted on his X social media platform that it’s “time for it to die.”

Trump posted Friday on his Truth Social online platform: “USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!”

Responding to Nichols’ reprieve, AFSA president Tom Yazdgerdi said in a statement that “this ruling is a crucial first step in halting a reckless assault on USAID and in supporting the dedicated professionals who serve our country.”

“We will continue to fight to protect the professionals who advance America’s values and leadership abroad,” Yazdgerdi added.

Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group, said that “tonight’s ruling proves temporary relief for the over 2,000 workers set to be put on leave by the Trump administration. It is a step forward in our fight against the unconstitutional and illegal attempt to break the back of USAID.”

“Trump and Musk’s attempt to disrupt aid around the world is unfathomably cruel, and the ruling tonight pumps the brakes on the destruction of a vital tool of humanitarian relief and American diplomacy,” Bateman added. “The Trump administration must abide by the ruling, or it risks catapulting the entire U.S. government into chaos.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingFederal Judge Orders ‘Very Limited’ Pause on Trump-Musk USAID Purge

‘A Disgrace’: Trump Admin Targets Multiple Environmental Justice Offices

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

The Environmental Protection Agency flag flies outside the EPA headquarters in Washington on Thursday, February 6, 2025. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Donald Trump has decided that we do not deserve clean air or water, and our right to a livable and safe planet comes second to further enriching his fossil fuel friends and donors,” said one environmentalist.

The Trump administration plans to place over 100 workers who are employed with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights on administrative leave, according to Wednesday reporting from The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources.

Other outlets have since reported on the development, including The Washington Post, which wrote Thursday that Trump appointees at the EPA told staff that they plan to close the office.

This move targeting the EPA, one the latest efforts by the Trump administration to drastically reshape federal agencies, was panned by multiple environmental organizations, who accused the White House of turning its back on vulnerable communities.

“The EPA’s environmental justice office was created to challenge the historic pattern of pollution disproportionately affecting low-income communities and communities of color,” said Chitra Kumar, managing director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Kumar was also formerly an official with the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

“Once again, the Trump administration is sidelining both science and the nation’s most overburdened people,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also reportedly working to “remake” the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, which defends the U.S. government’s environmental actions in court and brings cases against individuals who violate federal environmental law. The Washington Post reported that Trump appointees at the Department of Justice said they plan to fire roughly 20 workers at the division, “among other actions that have sent morale there plummeting.”

The Office of Environmental Justice within the division has already “been eliminated,” and the five people working in that office have already been put on administrative leave, according to the outlet.

And in one of her first acts as U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi undid a Biden-era directive ordering the Department of Justice to emphasize enforcement of environmental laws in disadvantaged and low-income communities.

Trump administration attacks on what the White House deems “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) initiatives were expected. On his first day in office, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating the end of all federal DEI programs, goals, mandates, and plans. The order also specifically called for the termination, “to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions.”

“By shuttering these offices, Donald Trump has decided that we do not deserve clean air or water, and our right to a livable and safe planet comes second to further enriching his fossil fuel friends and donors,” said Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous in a Thursday statement. “Trump has been on the job for less than a month, but every single day he is making our communities less safe.”

Like Kumar at the Union of Concerned Scientists, senior VP of environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council Matthew Tejada (also an alum of the EPA’s environmental justice office) said that the country’s most vulnerable communities would lose out.

“Shuttering the environmental justice office [at the EPA] will mean more toxic contaminants, dangerous air, and unsafe water in communities across the nation that have been most harmed by pollution in the past,” said Tejada. “Trump EPA is turning its back on those who need a cleaner environment more than anyone. This is a disgrace.”

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Continue Reading‘A Disgrace’: Trump Admin Targets Multiple Environmental Justice Offices

Ocasio-Cortez Denounces Musk-Led Attacks on Agencies as ‘A Plutocratic Coup’

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) delivers a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. on March 22, 2024.
 (Photo: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/YouTube Screengrab)

“It is important that we continue to signal to one another what we believe, because if we get quiet… then everyone around us is going to think that everyone has given up,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a recent livestream.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York took to social media on Sunday to denounce billionaire Elon Musk, who has been tasked with leading the new administration’s effort to slash federal spending and bureaucracy, and is currently working to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In response to reporting that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration placed two security chiefs at USAID on leave after their refusal to hand over classified materials to Musk’s “government-inspection teams,” per The Associated Press, Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday wrote: “This is a five alarm fire. The people elected Donald Trump to be president—not Elon Musk.”

“Having an unelected billionaire, with his own foreign debts and motives, raiding U.S. classified information is a grave threat to national security,” she continued.

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1886149143980032275?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1886149143980032275%7Ctwgr%5E09882732aa1f4cbdf4a9c5c2efd6ea2b06c32f8b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Faoc-elon-musk-plutocrat

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Her remarks were reposted by the venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who wrote that Ocasio-Cortez is “wrong” and that the real five alarm fire will happen after Musk’s team reveals government waste and fraud.

Ocasio-Cortez hit back, casting doubt on the legitimacy of Musk’s efforts and writing: “This is a plutocratic coup. If you want the power, run for office and be chosen by the people.” The entire exchange took place on the Musk-owned social media platform X.

Musk, a billionaire and GOP megadonor, established himself as a major power player in Trump’s orbit even before Trump was inaugurated. In December, Musk sank a bipartisan spending bill, leaving Congress to scramble to come up with a new spending agreement to avert a government shutdown.

But since Trump’s return to the White House, Musk’s power has only grown as he’s moved swiftly to exert influence over levers of power within government. In a day one executive order, Trump established his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, by repurposing an existing entity, the U.S. Digital Service, an agency conceived to help improve the federal government’s services through better technology and design. Now called the U.S. DOGE Service, the move “will give centibillionaire Elon Musk and his allies seemingly unprecedented insight across the government, and access to troves of federal data,” according to WIRED.

Musk’s influence now extends to the General Services Administration as well as the Office of Personnel Management. Representatives from DOGE were also granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.

Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez has been one of the most vocal members of Congress speaking out about Musk and the Trump administration’s actions.

In a livestream on social media shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Ocasio-Cortez implored her audience not to take the Trump administration’s actions quietly.

“It is important that we continue to signal to one another what we believe, because if we get quiet… then everyone around us is going to think that everyone has given up,” said the New York Democrat.

“I want you all to know that you’re going to be hearing more from me,” she explained. “My responsibility is in trying to explain to you all what is going on as best as I can and leaning into our ability to collectively organize.”

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingOcasio-Cortez Denounces Musk-Led Attacks on Agencies as ‘A Plutocratic Coup’

Will Elon Musk Do to the Federal Government What He Did to Twitter?

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https://newrepublic.com/article/191037/elon-musk-destroy-federal-government

An unchecked, unelected oligarch is yanking wires out of the machinery that powers American life—and there’s no telling how many people will get hurt.

Michael Tomasky

It literally sounds like the plot of a dystopian science fiction movie: The richest man in the world befriends—and helps finance—another rich man who becomes president of the United States, who then gives his plutocratic benefactor carte blanche access to the operations of the federal government. The bedlamite billionaire instantly zeroes in on the obscure little office that oversees the writing of all the government’s checks, thus ensuring that he has the power to bring down the U.S. and global economy and even, if he so wishes, topple said president.

Oh, and—he’s also a right-wing extremist who recently spoke to the far-right German political party whose leaders say things like “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.” He told them—with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge—that Germans placed “too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.” And then there’s the matter of that salute, which of course, he denies was what many people—even or especially among those who delighted in it—thought it was.

What does Elon Musk want with control of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and its computers that write the federal government’s checks? Maybe it’s benign. Maybe he and his team just want to scrutinize the hundreds of millions of payments the government makes to individuals, businesses, other governments, nonprofits, and so on and root out inefficiency.

It seems awfully unlikely that it’s benign. Musk tweeted over the weekend that the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has existed for six decades and spends billions on poverty relief, disaster aid, economic development, and more, is a “criminal organization.” But Musk’s motives aren’t even the main point here. The main point is that even if it is benign, it’s unprecedented and antidemocratic.

…

Will Musk do to the federal government what he did to Twitter? The plundering of that platform was a crime, metaphorically, but at least it was (more or less) victimless. Here, there will be victims—immigrants, refugees, poor people, sick people, and many others who interfere with the schemes of the world’s richest man, who believes Germany should stop apologizing.

Read the complete original article at https://newrepublic.com/article/191037/elon-musk-destroy-federal-government

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingWill Elon Musk Do to the Federal Government What He Did to Twitter?

United to defy the racist lies

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/united-to-defy-the-racist-lies

Stand Up to Racism marches in London

THOUSANDS of people took to the streets of London over the weekend in a counter-demonstration against far-right supporters of Tommy Robinson.

The protest on Saturday demanding the release of Mr Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, heard Islamophobic chants such as “F*** your Islam” and “Allah, Allah, who the f*** is Allah.”

One speaker at the far-right demo said: “Round them up and kick them out,” and “Start the deportation programme for those who refuse to assimilate.”

It attracted an estimated 5,000 marchers, far smaller than the 25,000 at the last national march called by Mr Robinson in October.

In contrast, the counter-protest by Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), also about 5,000-strong and largely attended by young people, heard calls for unity from community leaders, campaigners and trade union representatives.

David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group spoke at the opening rally at St James’s Street, saying that anti-racists “have a job to do, not just to defend [minorities]” but to “expose the Robinsons and the [Reform UK leader Nigel] Farages to their own supporters as the self-centred grifters and exploiters they are.

“We won’t achieve that by simply saying racism is bad or screaming ‘Nazi,’ but by showing how racism ruins and destroys lives, how fascism exploits everyone for the benefit of an elite,” he said.
…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/united-to-defy-the-racist-lies

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingUnited to defy the racist lies