The Morning Sixpack - February 17, 2025

I don't normally do these on non-business days, but I'm making an exception because we need to help one another navigate this shitshow some of our fellow Americans bestowed upon us.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Steps in to Fix FAA—Because Who Else Will?

In the latest episode of "Tech Billionaire to the Rescue," SpaceX officials are swooping into the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) like a Silicon Valley superhero squad.

Transportation Secretary & Real World alum Sean Duffy announced that Elon Musk’s brain trust will visit the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia. Their mission? To evaluate the system, listen to air traffic controllers gripe about their outdated tools, and "envision" a shinier, better, Musk-approved version of air travel.

The timing is impeccable—just weeks after a tragic collision between a military aircraft and a passenger jet over the Potomac, and right as the Trump administration starts firing FAA employees en masse.

“To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country,” Duffy proclaimed in a lengthy post on X (formerly known as Twitter, before Musk took it over and made it “shitter”).

The plan? The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—because of course Musk named it that—will “plug in” and revolutionize air traffic control with “rapid safety upgrades.”

Meanwhile, critics, including Hillary Clinton, are raising eyebrows at Musk’s ever-expanding government influence.

Duffy preemptively shot back: “Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the @FAANews regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.”

Beyond the tech shakeup, Duffy is also embarking on a tour to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma, eager to hear from instructors and students.

His message is clear: The FAA is outdated, the government is cutting jobs, and Musk is here to reinvent the wheel—or at least, the air traffic system.

Whether this results in a safer, more efficient aviation industry or just another chapter in Musk’s ever-growing empire of dog(e)shit remains to be seen.

Source: The Hill

Trump’s Real Estate Buddy Turned Diplomat Is Now Negotiating Peace in Ukraine—What Could Go Wrong?

In a plot twist straight out of a political satire, Steve Witkoff—a New York real estate mogul with zero prior diplomatic experience—is now leading U.S. efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Witkoff, who Trump has labeled a “great negotiator,” is set to meet with Russian officials as part of a high-stakes U.S. delegation.

His resume? Facilitating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and brokering the release of an American from a Russian prison. Impressive, sure—but does closing multi-million-dollar real estate deals in Manhattan really qualify someone to handle one of the most complex geopolitical conflicts of the modern era?

Trump, never one to shy away from unconventional appointments, seems to think so. The former president has been touting Witkoff’s dealmaking prowess, crediting him with diplomatic wins in the Middle East.

Now, the special envoy is being thrown into the deep end, sitting across from Russian officials to “start talks” on ending the Ukraine war. Whether this move is sheer genius or another episode of Trump-era improvisational politics remains to be seen.

If history is any guide, expect a mix of high drama, big promises, and absolutely no shortage of eyebrow raises from the foreign policy establishment.

While Witkoff himself hasn’t made any grand pronouncements about Russia and Ukraine, his sudden ascension from developer to diplomat raises the obvious question: Is this a strategic masterstroke or just another case of Trump handing major global responsibilities to his inner circle? Yes, it is.

One thing’s for sure—this is a real estate deal that will be far more complicated than closing on a penthouse in Tribeca.

Source: The Washington Post

Musk’s DOGE Wants IRS Access to YOUR Personal Information—But Why?

In a move that has IRS officials clutching their calculators in terror, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is trying to gain access to one of the most sensitive databases in the country: the IRS’s Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS).

This system holds everything from Social Security numbers to bank details for every taxpayer, business, and nonprofit in the U.S.

Under White House pressure, the IRS is considering granting DOGE this unprecedented access, despite the fact that even IRS commissioners don’t get to peek under the hood of this treasure trove of financial data.

What could Musk’s efficiency squad possibly need with it? According to the administration, it’s all about “eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Sure it is.

The plan hinges on DOGE software engineer Gavin Kliger, who has been assigned a 120-day stint at the IRS to work on IT modernization. The agency’s systems are notoriously outdated—some still run on 1960s-era programming languages—so bringing in outside expert tech help makes some sense. This guy ain’t it.

But giving a political appointee access to taxpayer data is unheard of.

“The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal. Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated,” warned former IRS watchdog Nina Olson.

These goons always talk about the “dark web.” Once your info is out there, it’s out there for good. And you’ll be fucked every which way including twice on Sundays.

And yet, here we are, watching a Musk-affiliated department position itself alarmingly close to a system that lets users adjust tax records and generate collection notices.

The timing couldn’t be more suspicious, as the Trump administration has already announced mass IRS layoffs, reportedly targeting 10,000 employees.

Meanwhile, Kliger arrived unannounced at IRS headquarters last week and was promptly named a senior adviser to the acting commissioner—an appointment IRS staff only learned about after the fact.

While the White House insists this is all in the name of transparency and efficiency, the sheer scope of DOGE’s request has raised red flags across the board. It’s one thing to modernize outdated systems—it’s another to let a handpicked tech team rummage through Americans’ financial records.

Source: The Washington Post

Repeat after me: These guys are from the government, and they’re here to help.

That was Reagan’s infamous statement about getting government OUR of our lives. These guys wanna be all up in your junk.

Trump’s Agency Purge Aims to Rewrite Presidential Power—And the Supreme Court Will Help

In a sweeping move that has legal experts on edge, President Trump has been systematically firing the heads of independent agencies, setting the stage for a Supreme Court battle that will overturn nearly a century of legal precedent.

The dismissals, including the heads of the National Labor Relations Board and the Office of Government Ethics, have triggered lawsuits arguing that Trump violated federal laws protecting these officials from at-will removal.

But that might be exactly what Trump wants. His administration is openly challenging the 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which limits the president’s power to fire independent agency heads. If the current Supreme Court—which has already chipped away at those limits—overturns Humphrey’s Executor, Trump and future presidents would have far greater control over the federal bureaucracy.

Legal scholars are already calling this a constitutional showdown.

“It really was kind of a matter of time before a test case made its way to the court, where the court would have a chance to overrule Humphrey's,” said Joel Alicea, a law professor at Catholic University.

Some justices, including Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have made it clear they’re ready to toss the precedent. In a 2020 ruling that struck down job protections for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas wrote that Humphrey’s Executor is a “direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people.”

With Trump’s solicitor general now expected to ask the Supreme Court to uphold these firings, the conservative-majority court may finally be ready to gut the nearly century-old law that has kept independent agencies insulated from political control.

For Trump’s critics, this is less about constitutional principles and more about raw power.

Senator Dick Durbin warned that dismantling independent agencies will let the White House cater to “wealthy special interests—not the American people.”

Meanwhile, legal battles are already underway, with fired National Labor Relations Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox arguing that her removal was not just illegal but also designed to be a test case to “render the NLRA’s protections—and, by extension, those of other independent agencies—nugatory.”

Whether this is about efficiency or executive overreach, one thing is clear: Trump isn’t just firing people. He’s firing at the foundation of how the federal government works.

Source: CBS News

Trump’s Nuclear Layoff Fiasco: Fire, Rehire, and Chaos at the NNSA

The Trump administration’s latest attempt at “government efficiency” turned into a full-blown disaster after abruptly firing hundreds of employees working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs—only to reverse course within 24 hours.

Up to 350 National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees were locked out of their offices on Friday morning, some learning about their termination only after their email access was cut.

The layoffs, part of a broader purge spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), left nuclear experts baffled and national security officials raising alarms.

“The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons more than it is the Department of Energy.”

Remember when Rick Perry, running for president, didn’t know that the Department of Energy was the head of the US nuclear program and everybody thought it was funny?

It ain’t so funny anymore, is it?

By late Friday night, the administration had second thoughts, with acting NNSA Director Teresa Robbins issuing a memo rescinding nearly all the terminations.

However, the damage had already been done—many workers weren’t even aware they had been reinstated, and others were reconsidering whether to return to a job where they could be axed overnight.

The chaos particularly affected the Pantex Plant in Texas, responsible for reassembling warheads, where nearly 30% of the workforce was initially let go. Given the U.S.’s ongoing $750 billion nuclear modernization effort, the firings sparked bipartisan backlash. “This is utterly callous and dangerous,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Sen. Patty Murray in a joint statement.

The government’s official response to the debacle? Downplay it. Or, more correctly, lie about it.

The Department of Energy claimed fewer than 50 staffers had been let go, mostly in clerical roles.

But NNSA officials and nuclear experts dispute that account, warning that the reckless firings not only disrupted critical national security work but also signaled instability to America’s adversaries.

Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists put it bluntly: “I think the signal to U.S. adversaries is pretty clear: throw a monkey wrench in the whole national security apparatus and cause disarray. That can only benefit the adversaries of this country.”

With Musk’s DOGE team running cost-cutting experiments on nuclear security, the bigger question remains: what’s next on the chopping block? Do we want to know?

Source: AP News

Trump Guts Election Security—CISA Forced to Shut Down Its Entire Program

In yet another move catering to his election fraud narrative, President Trump’s administration has ordered the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to freeze all election security work, effectively dismantling the federal government’s primary effort to help states secure their voting systems.

CISA’s acting director, Bridget Bean, issued a memo ordering a sweeping review of every election-related program, service, and even employee role since 2017, halting funding and cutting off support to election offices nationwide.

This is the first major example of the administration bending federal cybersecurity policy to fit Trump’s false claims of election fraud and online censorship.

“CISA will pause all elections security activities until the completion of this review,” Bean wrote in the memo.

For years, CISA has been a bipartisan resource for election officials, offering guidance on securing voting systems, preventing cyberattacks, and even dealing with polling-place disruptions.

But since 2020, conservatives have labeled the agency as part of a vast government “censorship” scheme, blaming it for flagging misinformation to tech companies.

Trump’s return to office virtually guaranteed that CISA’s election security mission was doomed, and officials who worked on it have reportedly been bracing for retaliation.

Congressional Republicans have gone so far as to call the agency “the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.”

Now, Trump’s White House is forcing CISA to not only stop all election security work but to purge anyone involved with it.

Once the review is complete, CISA will submit a report to the White House detailing its plan to “streamline” its work—aka, eliminate anything that contradicts Trump’s directive.

The agency must also identify any “misconduct” related to alleged censorship, a not-so-subtle signal that heads will roll.

The administration has made no secret of its intent to erase the last eight years of federal election security efforts.

Whether this is about “refocusing” CISA’s mission or setting the stage for 2026 and 2028, one thing is clear: the U.S. just lost its best election security watchdog, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

Source: WIRED