5 ms·

> Musk is evidently seizing control of the Office of Personnel Management Suddenly I feel out of the loop when it comes to US politics, how come Musk is sudden

by diggan 2y ago

> Musk is evidently seizing control of the Office of Personnel Management 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?

CalRobert 2y ago
As it so happens he did not appear on any ballots. But Musk (his aides more specifically) have locked federal employees out of their own systems https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/ 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-email-system-allegedly-linked-to-elon-musk-2000556737 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-answers-following-report-of-musk-personnel-seeking-access-to-highly-sensitive-us-treasury-payments-system https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-... The twitzkrieg seems to be working.
- treis 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    They didn’t exaggerate with “locked federal employees out of their own systems”. That is accurate even if both sets of “employees” and “systems” are non-exhaustive.
  - albedoa 2y ago
    Buddy, if I told you that I have fostered dogs from shelters, would you take that to mean that I have fostered all dogs from all shelters? Someone is certainly being ridiculous.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      We're in for an impressive four years of mental gymnastics from the most pathetic thinkers on the planet.
Applejinx 2y ago
The trouble is, to talk about WHY Musk is attempting to seize control of parts of the US government and why the Trump administration is attempting to censor mass quantities of data would be a political conversation. 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.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  Hacking includes systems, not just code, and what Musk is doing certainly counts as systems hacking I would say. Hell, Captain Crunch didn't even use a computer.
  - Applejinx 2y ago
    Oh, I don't disagree. I'm getting downvotes as if I didn't think this was Hacker News business. I think it became Hacker News business when unelected guys seized offices and computer systems and started doing… what? We don't know, but there's a lot of data deleting, censoring, and grant-freezing going on. 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 :)
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
  > to talk about WHY Musk is attempting to seize control of parts of the US government and why the Trump administration is attempting to censor mass quantities of data would be a political conversation. 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.
Dalewyn 2y ago
Musk was appointed as the administrator of DOGE, itself a subordinate "temporary organization" under the United States DOGE Service (formerly the United States Digital Service). 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.
- vharuck 2y ago
  Most federal workers do not serve at the pleasure of the President, ever since the Pendleton Act in 1883: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act 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.
  - harshreality 2y ago
    > In January 1981, the Jimmy Carter administration settled the court case Luévano v. Campbell, which alleged the Professional and Administrative Careers Examination (PACE) was racially discriminatory as a result of the lower average scores and pass rates achieved by Black and Hispanic test takers. As a result of this settlement agreement, PACE, the main entry-level test for candidates seeking positions in the federal government’s executive branch, was scrapped.[36] It has not been replaced by a similar general exam, although attempts at replacement exams have been made. The system which replaced the general PACE exam has been criticized... 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?
bongodongobob 2y ago
The US is undergoing a fascist takeover basically.
- nehal3m 2y ago
  You’re being downvoted but looking from the outside in, Gitmo being scaled up to house 30k people that the administration expects never to be able to repatriate, an unelected billionaire running around destroying institutions and a president actively starting trade wars and threatening occupation with allies looks an awful lot like it.
  - RIMR 2y ago
    People aren't downvoting because they disagree about what's happening. They are downvoting because they agree with fascism, but don't like it when people say the truth out loud. It's a fundamental reality of fascism that those who support it will also deflect all valid criticism of their movement. 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.
    - CalRobert 2y ago
      Nitpick - fewer than fifty percent of votes went to trump
      - 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
        I was sure this was wrong, but it's true: according to official state counts, Donald Trump won 49.80% of the popular vote to Kamala Harris's 48.32%. The top 5 was rounded out by Jill Stein (0.56%), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (0.49%), and Chase Oliver (0.42%) [1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024presgeresults.pdf 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)
dylan604 2y ago
Not every person in the government is elected. Some positions are appointed. Not one judge from SCOTUS is elected. None of the members of the president's cabinet are elected. They are all Senate confirmed though, which is what's going on now with the current clown show. Somehow, Musk has created a role for himself where he even gets to bypass the Senate confirmation stage. That's the most disconcerting thing to me. Not that I think he wouldn't get confirmed, but the fact that he has this much power totally unchecked.
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  > the fact that he has this much power totally unchecked. 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.
refurb 2y ago
President add unelected civilians to their cabinet every election. 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.

by diggan 2y ago

CalRobert 2y ago

As it so happens he did not appear on any ballots. But Musk (his aides more specifically) have locked federal employees out of their own systems https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/ 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-email-system-allegedly-linked-to-elon-musk-2000556737 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-answers-following-report-of-musk-personnel-seeking-access-to-highly-sensitive-us-treasury-payments-system https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-... The twitzkrieg seems to be working.

treis 2y ago
[flagged]
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  They didn’t exaggerate with “locked federal employees out of their own systems”. That is accurate even if both sets of “employees” and “systems” are non-exhaustive.
- albedoa 2y ago
  Buddy, if I told you that I have fostered dogs from shelters, would you take that to mean that I have fostered all dogs from all shelters? Someone is certainly being ridiculous.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    We're in for an impressive four years of mental gymnastics from the most pathetic thinkers on the planet.

Applejinx 2y ago

The trouble is, to talk about WHY Musk is attempting to seize control of parts of the US government and why the Trump administration is attempting to censor mass quantities of data would be a political conversation. 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.

CalRobert 2y ago
Hacking includes systems, not just code, and what Musk is doing certainly counts as systems hacking I would say. Hell, Captain Crunch didn't even use a computer.
- Applejinx 2y ago
  Oh, I don't disagree. I'm getting downvotes as if I didn't think this was Hacker News business. I think it became Hacker News business when unelected guys seized offices and computer systems and started doing… what? We don't know, but there's a lot of data deleting, censoring, and grant-freezing going on. 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 :)
MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
> to talk about WHY Musk is attempting to seize control of parts of the US government and why the Trump administration is attempting to censor mass quantities of data would be a political conversation. 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.

Dalewyn 2y ago

Musk was appointed as the administrator of DOGE, itself a subordinate "temporary organization" under the United States DOGE Service (formerly the United States Digital Service). 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.

vharuck 2y ago
Most federal workers do not serve at the pleasure of the President, ever since the Pendleton Act in 1883: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform_Act 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.
- harshreality 2y ago
  > In January 1981, the Jimmy Carter administration settled the court case Luévano v. Campbell, which alleged the Professional and Administrative Careers Examination (PACE) was racially discriminatory as a result of the lower average scores and pass rates achieved by Black and Hispanic test takers. As a result of this settlement agreement, PACE, the main entry-level test for candidates seeking positions in the federal government’s executive branch, was scrapped.[36] It has not been replaced by a similar general exam, although attempts at replacement exams have been made. The system which replaced the general PACE exam has been criticized... 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?

bongodongobob 2y ago

The US is undergoing a fascist takeover basically.

nehal3m 2y ago
You’re being downvoted but looking from the outside in, Gitmo being scaled up to house 30k people that the administration expects never to be able to repatriate, an unelected billionaire running around destroying institutions and a president actively starting trade wars and threatening occupation with allies looks an awful lot like it.
- RIMR 2y ago
  People aren't downvoting because they disagree about what's happening. They are downvoting because they agree with fascism, but don't like it when people say the truth out loud. It's a fundamental reality of fascism that those who support it will also deflect all valid criticism of their movement. 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.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Nitpick - fewer than fifty percent of votes went to trump
    - 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
      I was sure this was wrong, but it's true: according to official state counts, Donald Trump won 49.80% of the popular vote to Kamala Harris's 48.32%. The top 5 was rounded out by Jill Stein (0.56%), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (0.49%), and Chase Oliver (0.42%) [1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024presgeresults.pdf 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)

dylan604 2y ago

Not every person in the government is elected. Some positions are appointed. Not one judge from SCOTUS is elected. None of the members of the president's cabinet are elected. They are all Senate confirmed though, which is what's going on now with the current clown show. Somehow, Musk has created a role for himself where he even gets to bypass the Senate confirmation stage. That's the most disconcerting thing to me. Not that I think he wouldn't get confirmed, but the fact that he has this much power totally unchecked.

Ajedi32 2y ago
> the fact that he has this much power totally unchecked. 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.

refurb 2y ago

President add unelected civilians to their cabinet every election. 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.