Week 2 of Musk's Coup - Dispatch from Below
Today, we cover Musk's takeover of the Treasury and USAID, a shakeup in the Sahel, the Costco strike aversion, and more ways in which the oligarchy is flexing its influence.
Dispatch from Below is a digest delivered every Monday and Thursday, highlighting what I find to be the most interesting stories covering politics, working class struggles, and current events, along with my own brief commentary.
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Welcome to the first edition of this new digest. I was already producing a sort of digest as a form of coverage of Trump’s executive actions, but I wanted to broaden the scope a bit and increase the cadence. This way, I can keep the longer-form content more focused on the sorts of bigger picture analyses that I’d prefer to write about, rather than covering the seemingly endless barrage of Trump hysteria with unique articles.
With that out of the way, let’s get into it.
Trump’s Bid for Greenland is More Than Bluster?
Reporting from the Lever suggests that Trump’s bid for Greenland may be a serious commitment to some of his closest robber baron companions, such as Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel, who happen to be funding various initiatives seeking to exploit Greenland’s rare-earth metals and land to establish AI pet projects and fiefdoms.
Trump Threatens to Deport Pro-Palestinian Protestors
Trump’s threats to revoke student visas mirror a Heritage Foundation proposal from last year called Project Esther. Both parties frame this attack on speech rights as a defense against antisemitism.
Three West African States Exit France-Aligned Economic Bloc, Rejecting Neocolonialism
France’s capture of ECOWAS and Macron’s imposition of ruthless dictatorships and sanctions on the bloc of nations have compelled some of them to break away, forming a new and budding independent alliance.
Costco and Teamsters Reach Tentative Agreement and Avert Strike Days After Costco Raises Non-union Pay to $30 an Hour
The deal comes in spite of a currently dysfunctional two-seat NLRB, meaning that there is currently no government body to adjudicate any wrongdoing by Costco were such a thing to take place.
Elon’s Unprecedented Hostile Takeover of Government Agencies
Aided by recent high-school graduates who go by monikers online like “Big Balls”, Elon Musk, the unelected billionaire who has bought his way into the government, and his quasi-agency, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have sought to gain access to and undermine multiple government agencies over the last few days.
It was first reported a few days ago that DOGE had gained access to the Treasury payment systems responsible for processing $6 trillion yearly in federal cash flow with the intent to stymie federal payments. The systems include sensitive information about Medicare and Social Security recipients and could impact those and other vital services if meaningfully disrupted, which is seemingly exactly what Musk intends to do. Musk and his DOGE acolytes (who are supposed to be private citizens) could also potentially misuse the sensitive information to attack political and economic enemies.
Musk and Trump have also sought to pause all foreign aid and dismantle USAID, a controversial agency tasked with delivering aid to developing countries whose budget totals over $50b yearly. While the agency has delivered meaningful aid to the developing world, critics of the agency have lambasted it for delivering aid with strings attached (usually in the form of neoliberal reforms) and often being a friendly front for regime change and counterinsurgency programs and propaganda.
Regardless of how one feels about USAID, many in the third world are actively depending on its benefits and activities today. It being shuttered unexpectedly without reconstituting these functions guarantees significant short term pain for many of its beneficiaries. Between Trump’s imperialist saber-rattling and the agency’s duties seemingly being subsumed by Trump’s State Department, all signs would indicate that the Trump administration has no intention of reforming U.S. intervention abroad (as if that needed stating). Additionally, Trump bucking constitutional precedent, unilaterally dismantling an agency, and locking out its employees with zero input from congress bodes ill should he seek to extend this power elsewhere.