CDC data are disappearing

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-01-31/exclus...

Nasa took down their applied sciences page and is evidently scrubbing the data

https://www.reddit.com/r/gis/comments/1icqchv/why_is_the_nas...

(https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/)

Lots of other data sets are disappearing too:

https://mashable.com/article/government-datasets-disappear-s...

There is active discussion of this at https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/

as well as at https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/

Suddenly I feel out of the loop when it comes to US politics, how come Musk is suddenly seemingly seizing control of parts of the US government? I don't recall him being on any ballots or anything?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-...

Evidently set up an on-prem email server at the OPM to send out their emails asking disloyal employees to resign

https://gizmodo.com/federal-employees-sue-agency-over-new-em...

And is attempting to do the same at the US Treasury (edit: I meant to gain access to/control of, not the email server thing)

https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-...

The twitzkrieg seems to be working.

Hacker News isn't designed for this. The point at which it becomes mass censorship that computer hackers (in their capacity as The Internet) might take an active role in routing around, is more or less this point: you're quite correct that this is worrying, but up to this point it's been a deeply political conversation and only as it becomes mass censorship and control by technological means, does it become really on-message for Hacker News.

Hell, Captain Crunch didn't even use a computer.

in this case the de-facto US nobility (rank-and-file career politicians) are being usurped by the bourgeouise (billionaires like Musk) at the advent of AI and tech by promising the working class a combination of culture war policy and relief from the very capitalist excess they themselves endorse. by reducing congress and senate to a simple debate team (conversely similar to the German National Asssembly) the tech-elite are able to seize power once reserved for the crown.

the question will be, after four years, will they abdicate their power or concentrate it?

It’s all obvious corruption.

All of this is happening within the Executive Office of the President, which is essentially fancyspeak to mean the government employees working the Executive Branch of the federal government. Those government employees serve at the pleasure of the President; Congress only has very limited influence (namely budgetary influences from the House and certain positions that require Senate confirmation).

So Musk, being appointed as a part of the Executive Branch, derives authority vested in the President of which Trump has delegated some to Musk for the purposes of implementing and enforcing DOGE policies.

Musk for his part also serves at the pleasure of the President, so whatever he does is ostensibly what Trump wants regardless of who actually does it.

I'm leaning very hard into an HN 'tone' with this because this is Hacker News. There's other places where I can be a lot more direct, but the HN tone is perfectly valid as a response: being able to think dispassionately is both tactically and strategically useful as long as it's not purely used to obfuscate.

I fear HN folks have been sheltered from a lot of the reality of what's happening and led down the garden path BY intentionally asserting that tone anytime things get too assertive, but the tone still has its uses.

edit: woof! Ok ok, this is fully HN business and always was. Right on. Sorry I even suggested it could ever be otherwise. I didn't give my fellow nerds enough credit :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Refo...

So remember, when Trump talks about the "deep state," he means workers hired through a merit system.

I assumed the poster was using facist to mean “bad authoritarian government” - not that trump is actually a disciple of Mussolini style philosophy.

Right now the democratic system is working as designed, minus the incredible power of the executive branch which has been built up since FDR. Obama pioneered this approach to executive order.

Is Musk the head of the OPM?

Also, policy cannot break the law and certainly cannot break the constitution. That is fascism. The executive doesn’t get to rewrite laws and the constitution.

It’s really hard to argue why the president cannot get advice from anyone he would like. His staff includes anyone he wants to employ. He just can’t freely give them positions of official authority.

> The executive doesn’t get to rewrite laws and the constitution.

the judicial branch is working and can challenge orders and take them to court. And is already doing so.

> That is fascism.

It’s really not. You should study what fascists believed rather than using them as a caricature for bad policy.

A majority of U.S. voters chose this. After all that was already known about this admin, they aren't backing down, he's doing what he promised he would do.

It is going to be more catastrophic than I think anyone knows.

You honestly think that's a question?

Power corrupts. You saw Trump, who in 2016 said he'd get everything done so he'd see no need to run again, he'd have Made America Great Again. He then tried to rig the 2020 election so he could stay in power, despite saying "if I lose the election you'll never hear from me again", and 4 years later, here we are.

These people are here to entrench themselves permanently.

Fortunately we have depository libraries, so some key stuff won’t be destroyed by these barbarians. https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/services-for-...

Why would they? Once they come for the judges and replace them with “real Americans”, there’s no bottom.

A lot can happen in 4 years though. Maybe self-inflicted catastrophic wounds will drive down support for Trump enough where it becomes possible for R pols and oligarchs to abandon him. Or maybe they'll choose the dark path, and go farther into repressive authoritarianism to stay in power.

The problem for Musk et al is that they are concentrating power directly to Trump, not themselves. They're shackling themselves to the leopard and betting it will never eat their face.

Let's check back on these in a few years (months?).

Basically, your argument boils down to "you're wrong, the current sitation is not fascist enough yet"?

banning the existence of other parties

They don't need to. Similar to Russia, they will allow the appearance of other parties and elections, but the outcomes will be pre-determined.

changing the constitution to give all power to executive

SCOTUS has already done that: everything the president does is legal by default.

cancelling elections

Again, they won't need to. They proved in November that they already have done the right amount of voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering to secure a win.

What? That's exactly what happens. The president (or his puppet masters) chooses the person, and then they go through a Senate confirmation process. I don't see how this isn't being appointed

Of course, carbon offsets are still a huge cash cow for Tesla, so Musk won't be eager to touch those.

You are putting the burden on me to argue they are NOT fascist? (whatever meaning you want to attach to that word)

> They proved in November that they already have done the right amount of voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering to secure a win.

Ah so you think the election was stolen?

> gerrymandering

How do you gerrymander state boundaries?

Yeah, no. This is a coup and they are all in. They would not be this blatant about taking control illegally and fast if they expected to leave any institutions to still enforce the law against them.

And Tesla?

https://www.tesla.com/IRA

Historically, they are just a bunch of rich morons that got lucky, got power, and decided to stage a coup. This is not some enlightened movement trying to replace the social norms. It's just your run of the mill personal power switch, and the only notable things about it are it's on a country that has been extremely stable before, and those people are stupid enough to willfully destroy it.

What individual(s)? You just mentioned a family and not an individual. Forbes lists Elon's net worth at $419 billion.

The US is a known bad design, nation builders working for the United States stopped trying to use this design for new countries in the 20th century, it doesn't work. It's inherently unstable and you previously got very lucky, although you have had a civil war and numerous close calls.

It's like oh, why don't we make coal-powered cars. Well because it's a known bad idea. We actually did try that, it's a bad idea, don't do it again.

Also, any king or dictator effectively owns their nation’s entire treasury, including all real estate. Maduro, for example, is wealthier than Musk.

[1] https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pres...

(yes, I'm aware of the irony of linking to federal agency data in this thread)

A lot of "woke" people warned it but several ignored as being "political speech" now we pay the consequences.

Tho in the Maduro sense, which is a dictator that just make sense while he is in power, it's not actually own by him.

Where are the CDC people growing a spine to stand up to this? This is obviously bad.

The reason why bullies only understand 1 language (force) is exactly why counter-bullies who also speak that language are needed. And these are (usually) men (and some smaller percentage of women). (I'm seriously not trying to genderize this. I'm speaking of "fighting/disobeying/confronting energy" instead of "nurturing/complying/keeping-copacetic energy". Anyone who's good at that, should exercise it.)

If you have to take good science to the darknet, then fucking do so. That's what it's there for.

"The [Dark]Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore.

Alternately, move the data hosting to Switzerland, Iceland, or the Netherlands as a data-haven. Hetzner might be OK too, since very-left-wing Germany (while it has an agreement to comply with legal MLAT requests) might savor the opportunity to snub Trumpian requests or stall them indefinitely due to lack of obvious national-security importance.

I found it shameful that we hold so much a power hungry war while however as Memento Mori teach us, the only certainty is death, and that power is simply gone.

In the US, you can fly multiple planes into skyscrapers, rape three whole kindergartens, and lynch an entire race to extermination. As long as you then win the next election before you get convicted, you're in the clear.

This is the United States of America.

Vulgar examples? The bare minimum necessary to make people remotely feel the severity in their bones. Problem is that no one dares to say them out loud in fear of their reputation, despite it being a good thing to do.

They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

  ― George Orwell, 1984

In an attempt to keep it non-political: perhaps they (DOGE) are trying to put a "freeze" on the records while they consider who to fire. That would imply DOGE does not trust the people who have access to the records not to alter them in their favor. (Irony, since DOGE is demanding trust themselves.) You might not agree with that reason, but it is a reason.

Even the most aggressive speculative estimates from opposition figures, investigative journalists, or geopolitical analysts do not approach that figure.

No credible leaks (like the Panama Papers or Pandora Papers) have hinted at such vast assets tied to Maduro.

No intelligence reports or financial investigations from entities like the U.S. Treasury, the EU, or independent watchdogs have ever approached figures remotely close to hundreds of billions.

They will blame women, minorites and especially trans people for all of that.

And when dust settles, those who supported Trump and Musk will see themselves as primary victims - and will blame minorites, women, democracts and trans people for consequences of their own actions.

At least some of these were covered by BBC [3, 4].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pence#Vote_counting_and_s...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55524838

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55559172

I'd love to read about the new designs.

Source: personal experience, as well as https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/manufacturers-and-mod...

What is common sense about sewing chaos in the federal government, inhibiting it's ability to function? In removing datasets that help us keep track of how effective our actions are?

It's more a way for people to start see politics in the medium long term.

People couldn't agree what merit was, and sued over it. Now it's not only [still] unclear what merit is, but it's also unclear how aligned federal hiring practices are with any platonic ideal of "merit".

Trump and Elon taking a blowtorch to a lot of agencies isn't better, or even good. It looks to me like a different kind of bad that can't be quantified at the moment. Some of the worst of this will be temporary, since various resources are offline so that federal agencies can be compliant with Trump's EOs while they figure out how to change the resources and their databases, or wait for lawsuits to clarify before changing much or putting it back online.

Hiring through a merit system does not imply that the employees' work is meritful.

Congress had over 140 years (1883 to 2024) to carefully balance the rights of civil service workers against the need for top-down executive authority to ensure agencies are effective, in a way that would survive judicial review. Unfortunately, Congress is inept at almost everything. The Pendleton Act, followed by the CSRA, don't seem to have very well addressed the original patronage-based exec-branch staffing issue; as the article describes it, they've only ensured that replacing high-level staff is delayed by a term. Have they also made it too difficult to dismiss lower-level staff if agencies are ever in need of scaling back?

This clearly states the person's feelings (curiosity) about some observations (seeing comments of a particular sort).

Your statement might give somebody the impression that somebody in the previous administration singled out Tesla. This is obviously not correct. EV credits were available to all car makers. But there was a limit and Tesla reached their limit first. And later GM did as well.

Musk, Thiel, and their friends clearly intend to consolidate power, and the people they associate with openly advocate for the creation of independent corporate fiefdoms with authoritarian control over society. There is no doubt at this point. These are not good people. They are oligarchs. They are the bitter nerds that just want power for themselves so they can be the bullies.

Are you saying something like, "You know I hate everything Musk stands for, everything he does publicly — but he might be an okay guy as a person"?

But your argument is inherently flawed. Part of the point of government is to regulate and direct the use of force. We have mechanisms that are supposed to apply force to "bullies". The problem is that the "bullies" have co-opted that system to use it for their own ends. This happened gradually so it didn't become obvious until the most recent "bully" decided he didn't even want to pretend that he wasn't in control.

Individuals who directly stand up to this administration will be hammered down with the full force of the government. The best we can hope for is a passive resistance and malicious compliance. That combined with grassroots efforts to fill the media with protests of objectionable policies is probably the best we can do for now.

The only other option is to apply force outside of the system to correct it, but things are not nearly to the point where revolution is the better option.

The social support system in the US is being dismantled and when people can no longer afford to eat, the ensuing riots will provide the necessary trigger to declare martial law and suspend democracy completely.

[1] DARK GOTHIC MAGA: How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no

  "The government of Columbia has agreed to all of President Trump's terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay. Based on this agreement, the fully drafted IEEPA tariffs and sanctions will be held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement. The visa sanctions issued by the State Department, and enhanced inspections from Customs and Border Protection, will remain in effect until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned. Today's events make clear to the world that America is respected again. President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation's sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States."

The US has proper separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The legislative has a per-state and popular representation. Which part of this is "inherently unstable"?

The only part lacking a proper proportional representation (as in a parliament).

At some point you're going to have to stop spouting the bullshit talking points and accept that this administration are actively worse on most metrics that they campaigned on improving.

The latter inevitably slide towards autocracy. Too much power is concentrated in one person, who is almost impossible to legally remove before their term is up, and who will happily punish dissenters within the party.

In parliamentary republics, every PM is one internal party vote away from being deposed. You tend to see less of the tail wagging the dog in them.

Did anyone elect Anthony Blinken? Janet Yellen? Lloyd Austin?

None of these people were elected yet have substantial power delegated through the President.

And while these people were approved by Senate vote, plenty of people in the Biden circle weren’t - Chief of Staff, members of the National Security Council, etc.

It's literally to detach the person from the projects, of course times changes and the elected project can not be achieved by an X factor, tho we should have checks and balances in that too.

Today we follow X or Y politician/party but in this polarization we lost the focus that in the end a politician is elected to execute goal/project and not to hold power and then maybe do it.

My understanding of your original comment was similar to how 'JkCalhoun understood it, but this comment reads more like "the country show follow through on decided changes" regardless of who is in power. That I agree more with, with exceptions of course. (One example is maybe Obamas connection with "Obamacare" that is still a thing even though he is not in power.) Perhaps another way to put it is to detach the project from the person, but the person will still be linked (in some way) to the project.

Especially when it comes to international policies. For one, international relations and agreements are (normally) much slower moving and longer lasting than internal ones, and if countries can't depend on agreements lasting longer than the current leadership then such countries will see themselves not taken very seriously.

Kind of like if a president signs a trade deal with his country's closest neighbors and then a few years later instigate a trade war against the same countries.

Also, the per-state representation doesn't seem to lead to good results at all. As you said, the popular representation isn't proportional, what is a more relevant flaw than anything before this point on this comment.

And that is before you get into the details that are actually bad. It's incredible that they managed to stay stable with that electoral system, for example.

That said, looks like they will have an almost perfect opportunity to fix some of those in a few years...

I think this is just a symptom of the amount of power the office of the president has accumulated over the years. Musk has no authority on his own; he's acting on the authority of the president.

Due to the number of things Congress has delegated to the executive branch over the years, that's quite a lot of unchecked power indeed. But it's not Musk's power, it's the president's.

The funny thing is that people have always said this exact thing except paraphrased in various ways (perhaps the term was less "bully" and something more conventionally a universal term of disparagement like "fascist"). I definitely didn't want Obama going after whistleblowers, increasing domestic surveillance and not closing Guantanamo when I voted him in... and I liked his healthcare plan, until it died...

I suspect that everyone says this when the person they didn't want in charge, now is, and starts doing things that their biased media always depicts only the negative side of.