CDC data are disappearing

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.

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.

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

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?

[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)

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.

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?

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?

  "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."

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.

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.

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.