This is very common for Muskolini, any press contacts are often let go, makes obtaining damning information impossible/improbable. None of his companies staff a PR department as far as I know. Why anybody puts up with this guy and his companies is beyond me.
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
1154 points (99.6% liked)
Not The Onion
17048 readers
1045 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Same thing happened with the Twitter takeover.
All the official, PR/Communications staff were fired or quit, nobody had any idea what any actual policy changes were real or not.
load more comments
(1 replies)
They are literally fucking up entire US government.
That's the point
Yep:
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” — Grover Norquist
That was 25 years ago. It's always been their plan. They want to dismantle democracy and replace it with a corporatocracy, oligarchy, or similar authoritarian structure.
Americans wouldn't let that happen.
Right, Americans?
Of course! Isn't this situation what the second amendment is for? 🤔
It's the situation they claim it's for, but no it isn't. The second amendment is to have a militia ready to defend the nation in case of invasion. Militias were the norm at the time, not standing professional armies, which the newly founded tiny union of states certainly didn't expect to have. That time came and went though and some people carried the corpse of the second amendment and turned it into something else that it clearly isn't.
There's one more step that brings it back to the same place. The thinking behind standing armies is that they would be used for tyranny. The reason for loosely connected militias is that there isn't a singular guy who is Commander-in-Chief of all of them. There was even attempts at a militia Navy, which is a hilarious idea to me ("Got my musket and my rowboat. Off to defend the motherland!" Rows up to 28-gun British heavy frigate)
It's not a practical system of defense in the modern age. It barely was back then.
load more comments
(1 replies)
When it’s not single digits and ice storming in a couple weeks I think people are going to take to the streets. Everyone I talk to is pissed except the unreachable morons.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Part of the GOP plan. First fuck up government so completely it doesn't work, then scream that government doesn't work and should be defunded and shut down.
Exactly. Destroying the government is thier wet dream.
Well, not all of the government. Just the parts that could hold them accountable for anything they do.
I think at this point, it's all of the government. If it can be privatized, why wouldn't they push to eliminate that sector of the government and then install their own corporate entities?
Because the central guy can't control those corporate entities directly. He primarily wields political power, not financial power. There's a tension between the two.
Musk (financial power) is currently winning out over Steve Bannon (political power). Musk doing that Nazi salute brought a lot of MAGA people underneath him who were otherwise getting worried that Musk was the wrong kind of authoritarian.
Financial power might win in the end, and the reason is that Trump is a doddering old man. This is unique; it's not quite following the same script as Nazi Germany, where Hitler was relatively young and still had the same mental faculties he always did (even if those faculties were twisted).
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
I think the driving forces are more likely sociopathic corporate interests that want deregulation and foreign adversaries who want to see the US government dismantled (and allies driven away, and growing social division)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Not entirely true.
All these firings are likely going to result in classaction lawsuits, and the judiciary (so far) has been very responsive to Trump's power grabs. You'll recall they shut him down on DOGE's Treasury incursion, birthright citizenship, and the funding freeze. (Among others)
It may seem like everything's fucked up, but that's only because your social media feed and executive orders create chaos faster than the judiciary can check it.
All these firings are likely going to result in classaction lawsuits, and the judiciary (so far) has been very responsive to Trump’s power grabs. You’ll recall they shut him down on DOGE’s Treasury incursion, birthright citizenship, and the funding freeze. (Among others)
Yeah, good luck with that in 2-4 years, when those lawsuits pan out. And then they get appealed to the Supreme Court, where the GOP-majority lapdogs say "yessir" and rule in favor of chaos.
We couldn't even get Trump convicted of criminal charges in time. What makes you think the judiciary is going to save us?
load more comments
(1 replies)
You may want a more recent news update before you claim the judiciary has been responsive. Judge Tanya Chutkan, the same one who ruled against insurrection charges "because we don't prosecute sitting presidents", just blocked the multi-state lawsuit requesting DOGE be restrained.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/politics/doge-temporary-restraining-order-chutkan/index.html
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
One thing I would like to say for people who aren't familiar and won't read the article:
Every federal agency has its own FOIA team, in this case the OPM FOIA team was slaughtered and flayed for sport. It's possible other agency's FOIA teams were removed, but also more likely that they still exist. This wasn't a blanket death of all FOIA, just the death of arguably the most important FOIA team
OPM is the most important? I don't even know that acronym
I would argue FOIA requests on the intelligence community is the most important
Office of Personnel Management, basically oversees all US Gov employees.
-
Intelligence Communities work with classified stuff more than anyone. You may only FOIA unclassified stuff so the information and documents you can FOIA is limited
-
OPM is the most important at the moment as they are the office primarily under attack and being abused by Elon Musk and DOGE. They are the vehicle that Musk is using and abusing to try and destroy all Federal workers across every agency.
load more comments
(2 replies)
OPM is the most important in the “keeps the gears of the government moving” sense. It’s basically the federal government’s HR department. Without OPM, no federal workers get hired, get paid, etc… It’s not glamorous or politically charged work, which is why you rarely hear about them. But they recently hit the news because Elon kicked their doors in and illegally installed his own servers to capture personal data about every single federal worker.
Why not post the actual CNN article? https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/politics/opm-privacy-team-fired/index.html
Common dreams headline is funnier and more succinct.
Holy shit, I called it.
I thought they’d have Congress do it, but this was more efficient, so yay?
Who needs Congress when the supreme Court is behind you?
They already know the Supreme Court is too slow. By the time it lands on their desk, the damage was already done a long time ago.
load more comments
(1 replies)
So it seems like CNN doesn't follow the news of the day do they? To my recollection Trump had DOGE actions covered under the Presidential Records system so they are classified for a number of years and not allowed to be requested by FOIA requests until that time passes. So as of now their request would just be denied anyway.
You know, Totally Transparent Government™©® things... Definitely not doing anything wrong that needs to be hidden right?
Slight clarification, presidential records are subject to foia a few years after the presidency. But yes, transparent in the way that Elon "jail CNN for badmouthing doge" musk is a free speech absolutist.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) five years after the President has left office.
https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/presidential-records-act
EDIT: thinking about this more, you can definitely foia the clearances he had from SpaceX contracts. You know, back when he smoked weed on Joe Rogans podcast and got absolutely no consequences.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
💩 coming soon
🎶 Doo doo doo🎶 its an oligarchy 🎶 doo doo doo 🎶 it's happening right now 🎶 tell your friends.
I'm confused with the "doo doo doo", so I'm just gonna read your comment to the tune of "baby shark"
Here I'll add the notes emoji
load more comments
(5 replies)
This was planned and on purpose.
It's hard to keep track of everything getting killed.
With this one now the transparency they're touting so much has been cut off at source. What next?
How convenient, considering one of the extremely few checks we have available on DOGE destructive powers is FOIA requests.
view more: next ›