In addition to the $111 billion Paramount/Warner Bros merger just being foundationally bad for creatives, labor, and consumers, the Ellison family-owned company’s executives just keep demonstrating why they’re not really the kind of folks you want dominating the lion’s share of U.S. media.
Neighbors for Strong Communities doesn’t disclose its funding donors and insists it’s not being “directly funded” by Paramount, but it has all the telltale signs of “astroturf,” or fake public interest advocacy. One of the things the group does is generate comments to California AG Rob Bonta urging him to drop the 12-state antitrust lawsuit against the merger. You know… for the children.
Rachel Antell at The Contrarian took a closer look at the Neighbors for Strong Communities website, and tried to fill out a letter to Rob Bonta opposing the merger, only to see something curious happen: The website’s AI-assisted letter system simply changed her writing to not only express support for the merger, but make up an entire fake backstory about her. This is not what she told it:
Antell notes the astroturf group’s letters leverage Influent, an AI vendor founded by a guy named Tanner Kelly, who registered as a California lobbyist last year. Antell herself is an archival producer who founded the Archival Producers Alliance and has crafted guidelines for the use of generative AI aimed at more transparently disclosing when it’s being used.
U.S. corporations have a very long history of flooding regulatory comment proceedings (or the press) with completely artificial support for what’s almost always bad policy few people actually support. You may recall how the telecom industry was caught using fake and dead people to support the Trump administration’s destruction of net neutrality rules and other consumer protections.
This stuff was bad before AI, now everything’s been taken to the next level. There’s no meaningful effort afoot to stop or identify it anywhere in the U.S. government. It exists as an effective way to drum out genuine public interest opinion and replace it with lazy cack that supports whatever shitty policy companies drum up (gaining merger approvals, gutting oversight).
In this case, that means creating fake workers who are super excited about a merger that’s going to result in thousands of layoffs as the bigger company’s executives offload their massive new debt obligations to labor and consumers. How do we know this? It’s what happens literally every time regulators rubber stamp more media consolidation — particularly when Warner Brothers is involved.
Last March it was revealed that the Trump DOJ stabbed its antitrust lawsuit state partners in the back and struck a terrible settlement with Ticketmaster, scuttling a generational opportunity to break up one of the more glaring examples of modern monopoly power. Quite a curious choice for a Trump-addled party that spent all last election season insisting it was now “serious about antitrust reform.”
The states would go on to amazingly win their own lawsuit against Ticketmaster and LiveNation, though we’re still waiting to see if the remedies actually accomplish anything.
A follow up Wall Street Journal report (paywalled) this week offers some additional insight into the process that let Ticketmaster of the hook. Not too surprisingly, the story details how Trump demanded the DOJ settle the investigation just days before it was set to go to trial, which seemingly surprised (however credible that is) DOJ people already use to such ham-fisted interventions:
“White House involvement in law-enforcement matters, once taboo, is a regular feature of Trump’s second term. But many DOJ officials regarded the political interference in the Live Nation case as extreme even for an administration in which the president has openly pressured law-enforcement officials to pursue perceived enemies and pardoned allies.”
The settlement comes despite oodles of Trump promises that he was going to meaningfully crack down on Ticketmaster. It was one of several 2024 election-season campaign promises designed to pretend that corrupt authoritarianism was a genuine populist movement interested in antitrust reform (I did my very best to warn people as frequently as I could how this was bullshit).
From the story, it appears that Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, leveraging a connection to former Sinclair Broadcasting weirdo Boris Epshteyn (you might recall him from Sinclair’s “must run” propaganda segments) simply asked for the favor, and received it shortly thereafter. In exchange for some help booking guests at the then-Trump-controlled Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts:
“On Friday, Feb. 27, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino met with Trump in the Oval Office. Trump had called the meeting to discuss how to improve bookings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to people familiar with the conversation. He also wanted to know why the company hadn’t reached a deal over its lawsuit, the people said.”
So basically, the backstory is every bit as corrupt and stupid as one would imagine, though perhaps slightly dumber. It’s consistent in some ways, such as Trump’s promises being meaningless, and his policies once again being easily influenced by whoever was last whispering in his hear and promising him personal favors.
This was going on simultaneously alongside efforts to purge the folks in MAGA, like Gail Slater, that actually did occasionally seem semi-interested in antitrust reform. And even those folks weren’t really what you’d call consistent when it comes to standing up to consolidated corporate power.
In reality MAGA was always about one thing: Donald Trump’s power and wealth. These sorts of egomaniacal autocrats exploit existing corruption and institutional failure to ride into office on the back of fake populism pretending they alone can fix it, then, once entrenched, introduce something far worse. The administration’s “anti-war,” “anti-corporate,” “anti-corruption” rhetoric are all part of the same lie.
In the Ticketmaster case it’s worth repeating that the states were completely blindsided by this settlement, which involved a relatively tiny (compared to Ticketmaster revenues) $280 million payout, and some pinky swearing related to ending exclusive booking at around 13 amphitheaters.
The states still managed to win their lawsuit last April, and we’re now simply left waiting to see if the finalized remedies actually accomplish anything, or include an actual physical breakup of the monopoly (fairly necessary when it comes to actually policing consolidated corporate power).
For a long time organizations like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Memphis disproportionately pollutes the air in minority neighborhoods. A joint lawsuit by SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn’t even bother to get the necessary permits to run the turbines at its xAI’s Colossus 2 data center.
The lawsuit also notes how these 27 turbines (which has ballooned to 57 turbines since the lawsuit was filed) belch all manner of contaminants, including formaldehyde, into minority neighborhoods already seeing some of the highest asthma rates in the country, violating the Clean Air Act.
But this being Elon Musk, he apparently has been able to leverage the presidency he helped purchase to get those pesky Memphis minorities off of his back. In a filing this week obtained by Wired, the DOJ is trying to claim the lawsuit can’t proceed because xAI and Grok are highly tethered to the country’s national security efforts:
“In a filing, the agency sided with Elon Musk’s company, saying attempts to stop xAI from running the natural gas turbines “threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”
Musk and his friends at the DOJ are asking the courts to dismiss the lawsuit. In May, the NAACP filed a request for a preliminary injunction, stating that the climbing rates of environmental pollution “increases risks of asthma attacks and heart disease” in communities that already face significant pollution thanks to regulatory capture and systemic racism.
Over on Elon Musk’s right wing propaganda website, Marc Andreessen pretended to not understand why a civil rights group might be upset that unregulated data centers are pumping pollution into minority Memphis neighborhoods:
It’s worth noting that when Musk built the Colossus 2 data center near Memphis, he promised that the facility would largely re-use water via a next-generation water-recycling plant as to not strain the area water supply. But curiously, construction of that part of the project has stalled out completely. Musk says the company needs to focus on finishing their other data center in the region, then will finish construction. But, well, it’s Musk. The guy always saying we’re *this close* to settling Mars.
The youth movement has tethered AI to the country’s growing fascist, racist corruption and income inequality (and the tech sector that openly embraced it at almost every turn), and it’s going to take a lot more than sloppy CBS propaganda and new software updates to shift the perception. I’m not sure the tech sector truly groks what their enthusiastic support of Trumpism will ultimately reap them.
This is the future we’ve built in a country too corrupt to have functional regulatory oversight of obscenely rich men and corporate power. Without a meaningful ethical renaissance and profound political sea change, it only gets uglier and more violent from here.
Last week we noted how the BBC has been tripping over itself to apologize to Donald Trump for some edits made to a BBC documentary. Admittedly the edits weren’t the best idea; they effectively cobbled together two different parts of Trump’s January 6 speech 54 minutes apart not to misrepresent, but to make it more clear that Trump actively encouraged an open, violent insurrection that resulted in fatalities.
Obviously our mad, idiot king didn’t much like that.
“US President Donald Trump says he intends to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion “probably sometime next week” despite the broadcaster’s apology to him over a documentary Trump’s lawyers described as defamatory.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated … They cheated, they changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
Again, the edits didn’t entirely “change the words coming out of Trump’s mouth,” because he actively did vocally support a violent insurrection against the government. They did however cobble together two different parts of a speech to make it sound like they were said all at once, something the documentary editors should have known better than to do given king dingus’ litigious nature.
Granted Trump may not have as much fun in British courts, where Justices and Judges are likely to be less receptive to Donald’s incoherence. UK defamation laws are also an entirely different affair, with Trump being particularly challenged by the fact the BBC edits occurred more than twelve months ago, and defamation action in UK courts must occur within twelve months of the alleged offense.
Last week we noted how the BBC’s over-groveling undermined the most important thing: that Donald Trump really did actively incite a violent insurrection resulting in $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol, 174 assaulted police officers, and four belated law enforcement suicides. And he’s abusing the courts to stifle journalism critical of his radical extremist authoritarianism.
It sounds like BBC leadership isn’t entirely invertebrate. While BBC officials like Chair BBC chair Samir Shah admit the edits were an “error of judgment” (unlike executives at CBS) it appears they’ll actually be putting up a fight in court of Trump follows through:
“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”
As Trump’s health, power, and influence wanes, this sort of bullying is only going to become less and less effective and more and more toothless. In the interim, it would be nice if some major media institutions could dig deep and find a little backbone; especially given how many lawyers and donors would be happy to help fund a pro bono acceleration of Donald Trump’s inevitable collapse.
To say the irony was lost on them would be to assume they ever thought some irony might exist. DC resident Sam O’Hara came across a bunch of out-of-state National Guard troops and put his own spin on their Trump-enabled interloping. As he followed the troops through the neighborhood, O’Hara engaged in protected expression — that being the recording of government employees… with a little musical accompaniment.
In the Star Wars franchise, The Imperial March is the music that plays when Darth Vader or other dark forces enter a scene or succeed in their dastardly plans. It is also the soundtrack of Sam O’Hara’s protest against the National Guard deployment in D.C.
Those troops arrived in the District in August 2025, after President Trump decided to flood D.C. neighborhoods with National Guard members from around the country. A few weeks passed, and yet the troops remained. Given the roughly 200-year-old tradition of civilian law enforcement in the United States, Mr. O’Hara was deeply concerned about the normalization of troops patrolling D.C. neighborhoods. And so, he began protesting the Guard members’ presence by walking several feet behind them when he saw them in the community. Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played The Imperial March as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring. Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them.
O’Hara did not impede the troops’ movement. He did not attempt to close the several-foot gap between him and them. He just followed behind them, playing a theme song the Trump administration likely would have approved of. In fact, we already know it considers itself to be the Empire. After all, just weeks ago it posted a video that portrayed immigration enforcement efforts as Darth Vader “cleansing” a spaceship of rebel soldiers. (Skip to 0:52 if you’re impatient.)
If the government itself thinks it’s Darth Vader and the rest of us are just rebel scum, those participating in Trump’s invasion probably shouldn’t be so bothered someone’s willing to memorialize their unwanted presence with what I assume is the song they hear in their heads every time they start chasing a day laborer across a Home Deport parking lot.
The out-of-state National Guard wasn’t impressed, however. Instead, the person who should have been the adult in the room decided he was going to tattle:
Ohio National Guard member Sgt. Devon Beck was not amused by this satire. On September 11, 2025, […] In less than two minutes, Sgt. Beck turned around and threatened to call D.C. police officers to “handle” Mr. O’Hara if he persisted. Mr. O’Hara continued recording and playing the music. Sgt. Beck contacted the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Defendant MPD Officers Brown, Campbell, Reyes-Benigno, and Lopez Martinez came to the scene and, in essence, did what Sgt. Beck had threatened, putting Mr. O’Hara in handcuffs and preventing him from continuing his peaceful protest.
Adding to idiocy of this interaction is that O’Hara had done the same thing on three previous occasions. Those times he was either greeted with laughter and smiles from the National Guard troops or ignored entirely. It was only Sgt. Devon Beck who couldn’t handle this alleged “harassment,” which was so far short of every definition of the word that the MPD officers had to make up a bunch of bullshit to justify their detention of O’Hara.
Defendant Officer Campbell immediately walked up to Mr. O’Hara, without conducting any investigation. He said to Mr. O’Hara accusatorily, “[i]f you’re harassing them”—at which point Mr. O’Hara interrupted to ask for Defendant Campbell’s badge number. After providing that information, Defendant Campbell said, “if you are assaulting them,” which again prompted Mr. O’Hara to interrupt, this time to say that he was not assaulting the Guard members but rather peacefully protesting.
Mr. O’Hara was correct. He was not harassing or assaulting the Guard members. He was, in fact, standing several feet away, recording them and playing the March. Nor had Mr. O’Hara assaulted or harassed the Guard members at any point during his interaction with them.
Officer Campbell also accused Mr. O’Hara of standing in front of the entrance to a store when, in fact, Mr. O’Hara was standing to the side of the entrance and not blocking anyone’s passage.
In response to Mr. O’Hara’s statements that he was engaged in protest, Officer Campbell said, “That’s not a protest. You better define protest. This isn’t a protest. You are not protesting.”
That is some dumb shit. The MPD is not under any obligation to respond to calls by the National Guard. The National Guard deployment definitely isn’t in the clear, legally-speaking. And since it’s not engaged in law enforcement efforts (because it definitely can’t do that legally), the MPD is not its backup.
But cops are cops. And this group of cops just kept copping and coping. The dumb stuff said by Officer Campbell was repeated by other officers until the whole thing ended with O’Hara handcuffed and taken to the station. Eventually he was released when people who actually knew better realized they didn’t actually have any reason to keep holding him. And if they didn’t have that, they certainly didn’t have any reason to detain/handcuff him in the first place.
It’s already terrible enough that this administration has, in essence, declared war on cities the president doesn’t like. Using local police power to aid and abet the incremental roll-out of martial law isn’t helping.
The ACLU’s summary of the complaint is on point, albeit perhaps too confident in its assumption that Trump (and his loyal lapdog of a Supreme Court) haven’t already turned us all into residents of a mostly constructed Death Star:
The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures.
The Supreme Court has already made it clear that suing federal officers (which I imagine will be expanded to cover federalized National Guard units) is a non-starter. And the cops who showed up to perform the bogus arrest will likely be forgiven for being too professionally ignorant to comprehend the finer points of “not making shit up to excuse your actions” when they’re obviously unjustified. But there’s always a chance this actually ends in something comparable to justice. Let’s hope — for the sake of DC and the country itself — that’s the case here.
Techdirt has long lamented how in the modern era, you don’t really “own” what you buy. That game console, smart lock, or smart refrigerator can quickly become less useful (or completely useless) with a firmware update, bankruptcy, or addition of annoying subscription paywall.
The problem is particularly bad when it comes to digital rentals. In streaming video, you often have the option to “rent” or “buy” a video. But the latter is misleading given you don’t really “own” the purchase; you’re given a license — subject to the whims of an amoral, giant corporation — that can be revoked or changed by profit-seeking executives with an eye on enshittification.
That recently appears to have gotten Amazon in trouble via a new lawsuit that alleges that Amazon is misleading consumers by misrepresenting the word “buy.” From the lawsuit:
“On its website, Defendant tells consumers the option to ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ digital copies of these audiovisual works. But when consumers ‘buy’ digital versions of audiovisual works through Amazon’s website, they do not obtain the full bundle of sticks of rights we traditionally think of as owning property. Instead, they receive ‘non-exclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicensable, limited license’ to access the digital audiovisual work, which is maintained at Defendant’s sole discretion.”
Ars Technica notes that a similar lawsuit was filed in the same court back in 2020, but was dismissed in 2021 for lacking standing. The website notes this new lawsuit stands a slightly better chance of success thanks to a new California law that bans the the sale of a “digital good to a purchaser with the terms ‘buy,’ ‘purchase,’ or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.”
The fight has parallels to efforts to hold telecom giants accountable for abusing the dictionary definition of words like “unlimited,” by promising users unlimited data, then imposing restriction, caps, and overage fees to drive up profits.
Such cases generally struggle due to companies that hide such restrictions in overlong fine print, then successfully argue this constitutes an effective and clear warning for consumers. In this instance, plaintiffs have to prove that it was clearly communicated to them that they would enjoy permanent, restriction-free “ownership” in perpetuity, and were harmed when that ownership was taken away.
Last year Trump Republicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) had broad, bipartisan support, and more than 23 million Americans received the discount at its peak.
At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason, of course, was that the ACP was popular with their constituents (the majority of ACP participants were in red states) and they didn’t want Dems to use it as an election season issue. Follow up studies showed the program more than paid for itself via other benefits (like reduced health care costs).
When Republicans killed the program, it immediately resulted in millions of struggling Americans suddenly facing much higher broadband costs. This, in turn, resulted in a lot of folks ditching their broadband access entirely. At some major providers, like Charter (Spectrum), the impact was fairly significant.
Now Charter is facing a class action lawsuit by an investor who claims that Charter executives misrepresented the impact that the death of the ACP would cause the cable giant. The lawsuit claims that Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey and CFO Jessica Fischer made “materially false and misleading statements” downplaying the scope of the ACP-related losses:
“Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the impact of the ACP end was a material event the Company was unable to manage or promptly move beyond; (ii) the ACP end was actually having a sustaining impact on Internet customer declines and revenue; (iii) neither was the Company executing broader operations in a way that would compensate for, or overcome the impact, of theACP ending”
The Charter investor who filed the complaint (Mark Sandoval) isn’t much of one; he bought just two shares of Charter in April and 2 shares in May, then sold the shares on June 9. Charter has been bleeding cable broadband subscribers due to the popularity of 5G home Internet and modest improvements in fiber deployments (many from city utilities or municipalities).
Charter lost 140,000 cable broadband customers during the last quarter of last year. Last quarter Charter lost 117,000 broadband subs, which included roughly 50,000 ACP-related disconnections. Charter’s stock has been down up to 20 percent this year as investors respond to the losses. As per telecom tradition, Charter’s focus is primarily in greater consolidation via a proposed merger with Cox.
Like many telecoms, Charter is a heavy campaign contributor to Trumplican lawmakers who seem dedicated to making the entire sector worse by destroying functional corporate and consumer protection, gutting already modest programs aimed at helping the poor (and rural students), or rubber stamping terrible deals that make U.S. broadband less competitive and more expensive in the first place.
The lawsuit also points out that Trump’s FCC and agency boss Brendan Carr have “acted favorably on several Starlink initiatives,” and recently opened a dodgy “investigation” into Dish Network, which the suit alleges is flimsy cover to force Dish to sell its valuable spectrum holdings to Elon Musk and Starlink.
The lawsuit also claims that the Trump FCC violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by wrongfully withholding records on DOGE’s activities at the FCC.
The Judge managing the lawsuit apparently doesn’t think much of Trump and Brendan Carr’s FCC responses to the inquiry so far. The plaintiffs in the case filed a motion for preliminary injunction last week (hat tip, Ars Technica) and received a quick ruling from US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the District of Columbia.
While Jackson said the plaintiffs failed to meet the legal requirements for an injunction, she did take time to point out that Trump’s FCC is stonewalling on providing documentation:
“On July 2, 2025, the Court ordered that defendant “must file a dispositive motion or, in the alternative, a report setting forth the schedule for the completion of its production of documents to plaintiff, on or before July 23, 2025.” However, defendant’s July 23, 2025 status report provided no timeline, and it was vague and uninformative. Further, the anticipated “initial production” defendant referred to [in] that filing, amounted to only 35 pages.”
DOGE has also provided flimsy “innovation efficiency” cover in the press for the brutal dismantling of both corporate oversight and the social safety net, in addition to just generally being a wasteful, costly mess all by itself. What’s left of federal consumer protection and corporate oversight really is being summarily executed by radical assholes, and the impact will be massive and generational. Yet, with scattered exception, most U.S. journalists, politicians, and policy folks don’t seem particularly interested.
Back in 2023 we wrote about how regional Polish rail company and a train manufacturer NEWAG had taken to using DRM to lock down trains that are repaired by independent technicians, in a bid to both monopolize — and drive up the costs of repair. This kind of effort to monopolize repair is common across numerous industries, driving an organic, grass roots “right to repair” reform movement.
The original story by 404 Media noted that NEWAG put code in their train’s control systems preventing them from running if a GPS tracker detected that it spent any time at an independent repair company, and if certain parts had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number. Some independent companies responded by hiring a white hat hacking group dubbed Dragon Sector to bypass the DRM and get the trains running again.
Two years later and it sounds like NEWAG has taken all the wrong lessons from the experience.
The folks at iFixit note that the company has now sued both the Polish repair service SPS that fixed those original trains, and has also gone after the individual members of ethical hacking group Dragon Sector for helping them. NEWAG is looking for $1.7 million for copyright violations and “unlawful competition” in one court, and $1.36 million for unlawful competition and infringement of personal rights in another.
Like most unethical companies trying to monopolize repair, NEWAG tries to insist that this isn’t about making more money, but about the public’s safety. But iFixit notes that the company’s case has several major inconsistencies, including both claiming that the hacking group did and didn’t modify their software:
“Newag claims that the Dragon Sector team endangered passengers’ safety by modifying the software without proper experience. But Newag then turns right around and claims that Dragon Sector did not modify the software at all. They point out that EU law only allows reverse engineering of software in order to fix bugs. And if Dragon Sector did not actually modify the software, it cannot have fixed any bugs, in which case their reverse-engineering must be illegal.”
The Biden FTC under Lina Khan issued a report stating that such safety claims were almost always bullshit; a useful bogeyman used by companies trying to justify anti-competitive, anti-consumer behaviors.
The problem for companies like NEWAG is the harder they try to monopolize repair and bully independent repair shops, the greater public attention and animosity is. The greater public attention and anger becomes, the more likely companies are to see “right to repair” legislative reform forcing them to do what was the right thing in the first place.
Still, there’s no shortage of companies across a dozen different industries which seem to think it’s a good idea to try and monopolize repair through DRM, making parts and manuals hard to find, or engage in “parts pairing” that makes it impossible to simply replace individual “unsanctioned” parts.
The destructive force that is DOGE still somehow manages to exist, despite it not being (depending on which claim is made and when) an official federal agency and/or overseen by anyone specifically identifiable as the head of DOGE.
Until recently, everyone — including Donald Trump — knew (and said as much in public) that DOGE was both a government agency andheaded by Elon Musk. When the lawsuits started flying, the backtracking began by the administration, which apparently thought it could cover its tracks by walking backwards in its golf-cleated clown shows.
Trump’s love for DOGE has managed to undercut the protections DOGE hoped it would be able to avail itself of when the FOIA requests began pouring in and the discovery demands started hitting federal dockets.
The administration is now attempting a Hail Mary play, albeit one that hails Thomas and Alito (and possibly, Roberts), rather than the patron saint it’s named after. Given the makeup of this current court, it probably has a far better chance of success than simply hurling the ball into the air and hoping someone on their own team manages to come down with it. (And, indeed, it has already scored a temporary stay, thanks to an emergency order issued by Chief Justice John Roberts.)
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has been suing DOGE ever since it rejected its FOIA requests for the agency’s operational documents. The Trump Administration is now fighting back, albeit with at least one hand inadvertently tied behind its back, as Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney report for Politico:
The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Wednesday urging the high court to put a hold on a judge’s orders giving a watchdog group access to documents detailing firings, grant terminations and other actions proposed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which was overseen by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Solicitor General John Sauer is also asking the Supreme Court to block a deposition of the obscure official the Trump administration has identified as the leader of the budget-cutting drive: DOGE administrator Amy Gleason.
The crux of the administration’s opacity argument [PDF] is this: DOGE is nothing more than an advisory entity that lacks the power to make independent decisions. Obviously, everything about DOGE says otherwise, as it has propelled massive staffing and funding cuts across multiple agencies, participated in extremely careless (and possibly illegal) data exfiltration, and done pretty much whatever it wants since it materialized as the barely-sentient wet dream of a guy who insists on wearing a baseball cap to every Oval Office meeting.
But that has been undercut by Trump himself, who has stated the agency definitely can do everything the administration is now claiming in court it can’t do, as well as thrown someone under the DOGE bus to act as the recipient for the negative attention (and FOIA requests, and deposition demands) Trump managed to successfully shield his fascist-saluting man-child from since his return to the Oval Office.
This trouble has been brewing for a few months:
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found there were strong indications that DOGE was actually directing cuts and layoffs at numerous federal agencies. That substantive operational role suggests DOGE’s activities fall under the Freedom of Information Act, the judge wrote.
Now that a judge is saying stuff we’ve all been able to clearly observe since DOGE’s inception, the administration now wants the Supreme Court to declare that the public (and multiple litigants) shouldn’t be allowed to believe their own eyes.
Making matters worse for the administration’s anti-transparency efforts is the fact that it has finally decided to put someone’s name on the top of the department’s letterhead: DOGE administrator Amy Gleason. (From what’s known about Gleason, it seems clear she’s being used to catch bullets meant for Trump/Musk, rather than actually direct DOGE operations.)
While this will probably keep Musk and his mouth out of court, it does make it clear that DOGE not only acts on its own impulses (rather than just offer mass termination “guidance”) but that someone will ultimately have to answer questions about DOGE’s actions in court, should discovery requests manage to secure some depositions.
Obviously, the normal court processes and determinations in litigation against DOGE cannot be allowed to stand. That’s why the administration wants the judges it bought to give it a free pass on destroying the federal government while simultaneously preventing the public from learning anything more about the salt-the-earth tactics being spearheaded by DOGE. And it really doesn’t matter whose name is currently at the top of the org chart in terms of destruction. But it does matter when it comes to FOIA litigation and the administration’s insistence DOGE is limited to simply suggesting moves the administration might want to make.
There’s no telling how this desperation move will work out. The Supreme Court has played both sides of the encroaching fascism line in recent weeks, giving Trump some free passes while occasionally shutting down the administration’s efforts to vanish constitutional rights into the anti-immigration cornfield.
Let’s hope this will end up being one of the latter. What’s already known about DOGE and its operations is extremely disturbing. Perhaps the exposure of more internal information will help more people realize the government they chose to elect is actively trying to destroy many of the things they still hold dear and propel some opposition from citizens who never thought they’d be #NeverTrump. We can only hope.
