The Times this morning has an apparent explanation for why DOGE operatives were so eager to take control of the unified government payment system at the Treasury: they wanted to be able to shut off payments to USAID projects without going through USAID personnel. They say this is based on emails between Elon-backed Trump appointees now at Treasury. I assume this is accurate in itself but I wouldn’t be sure this is the only reason and perhaps not even the main reason. But it’s the only non-speculative explanation we have so far.
David Kurtz notes this morning that the judge overseeing a lawsuit aimed at halting the actions at Treasury is almost certainly being given false information about what’s actually happening, though as David notes we can’t say for certain the Justice Department lawyers representing the administration are affirmatively lying. (These may be weasel words; they may not themselves know; many possibilities.) Those lawyers continue to insist that the Musk operatives at Treasury only have ‘read-only’ access to the computers. As Wired and I have independently reported, that’s not true. They have full administrator privileges and as I have reported they’ve already altered the code.
