Perhaps the only good thing that remains of American politics is their mastery of naming their government things via wince-inducing backronyms.
Of course it goes without saying that it is absolutely no coincidence that the current Demonic King of the Cringe-Coup-Castle, Musk, is head of a magical new non-governmental unelected Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE, you see, his favourite shitcoin).
In reaction, one of the apparently less cowardly members of the House of Representatives, Mark Pocan has introduced a bill called the “Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy” act. Or, ELON MUSK, of course.
Very hilarious, but also very necessary, at least to the extent that they’re still pretending that the rule of law matters. As it stands, Musk is a “Special Government Employee”, which seems to mean there’s not such a hard limit on how money he can personally receive via federal contracts. Proper, actual, government officials - those who were not appointed solely on the basis that they are very rich but are still prepared to debase themselves in public in service to Trump’s whim of the day - such as Members of Congress are banned from such obvious conflicts of interest.
Last year, Elon Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Donald Trump. Since Election Day, he has become $154 billion richer, a nearly 600x return on his investment. Now, Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire, has taken control of highly sensitive information in the U.S. Treasury Department and has tried to shut down USAID without any federal oversight. Contracts to his business interests by the Federal Government have exceeded $20 billion, with some additional contracts with undisclosed amounts, as in the case of Starlink.