Trump tracking thread / general hell thread

[gorzek]

Do we have any reliable sources for keeping track of what Musk is actually doing with his Treasury access? I have a vested interest in having some kind of heads up if certain grants are frozen.

I don't think anyone knows yet. Odds are we will hear about it as people stop getting payments. There's zero transparency happening here.

I would say anyone who can make contingency plans about these funds, should start doing so.

I don't think people are understanding how quickly things can collapse if federal payments are stopped. Even if SSA benefit payments, FAFSA, and SNAP payments continue, halting funding to state governments, non profits, and research would effectively make millions of people unemployed overnight and halt many social services. The job market is already bad, and thousands or millions of federal, state, and private nonprofit employees will be added to those looking for work. At that point, we have more issues than high unemployment; social services, already insufficient, either cease to exist or are effectively buried. Millions of people lose their jobs, homes, and assets.

Oh, this is fucking terrifying. I agree, people are just kinda shrugging at something would be completely apocalyptic for this country. Like, Great Depression bad. And even if it was reversed quickly, even if it only happened for a few weeks, it would be months or years before any kind of return to "normal." (And "normal" is not great now either, as you said.)

The only macabre silver lining in this potentiality is that, as in 2020 when a large reduction in the workforce meant a lot of people suddenly had a lot of time on their hands and we saw the largest continuous protests in American history, that a similar thing might happen now. Of course, 2020 ended up being largely materially ineffective at changing systemic police brutality, and I think people learned from that too -- protests as we know them do not meaningfully change anything. Alternative tactics must be explored.

This time around they are risking pissing off a hell of a lot more people. I hope that adds up to something.

So really, I don't think any of us know what will happen. There are so many what-ifs and threats and unprecedented action that it's difficult to predict what we will need to face, or respond to.

Yeah, especially since they are going out of their way not to tell us what exactly they are up to. It's a very dynamic situation and we're facing disruptions that could collapse the whole economy or at least large segments of it, to say nothing of the human cost. Even just shuttering USAID, it would not be hyperbole to say there are countries who governments might collapse as a result, producing millions of refugees and regional instability for years or longer.