Latest news with #Doge
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Republicans toe Trump line even in aftermath of deadly Texas floods
The US is reeling after catastrophic floods killed more than 100 people in Texas, including 27 children and counsellors from an all-girls Christian camp. On Monday, Democrats asked a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS) affected the forecasting agency's performance. But Republicans' default response has been to express fealty to Donald Trump. They lavished praise on the president for providing federal assistance while studiously avoiding questions around the effect of his 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) or threats to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). 'It is a sign of the sickness and dysfunction of what was the Republican party that they have almost no thoughts about their constituents,' said Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. 'Their thoughts are, how do I avoid making sure that Donald Trump doesn't look at me as an enemy or a critic? 'Despite the fact that the Doge cuts and the reductions in force and the early buyouts have savaged the workforce of the National Weather Service, they can't even utter the slightest vague, elliptical critique of the administration that is now engaged in these cuts that have cost the lives of the people they supposedly represent.' Related: Ted Cruz ensured Trump spending bill slashed weather forecasting funding The raging flash floods – among the US's worst in decades – slammed into riverside camps and homes in central Texas before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. Authorities say the death toll is sure to rise as crews look for the many who are still missing. Republicans have long been criticised for responding to mass shootings with 'thoughts and prayers', as if the tragedy transcends politics. Similarly, party leaders have sought to blame a freak act of nature rather than contemplating a potential association with Trump's policies – or with the broader threat of the climate crisis, seemingly a taboo subject under the current administration. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, praised Trump for approving a major disaster declaration that ensured state and local government have more resources to deal with the emergency. 'The swift and very robust action by President Trump is an extraordinary help to our response,' he said. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, tweeted: 'Thank you @POTUS Trump' for the declaration and told Fox News: 'The National Weather Service under President Trump has been working to put in new technology and a new system because it's been neglected for years. It's an ancient system that needed to be upgraded and so President Trump recognised that right away and got to work on it when he came into office in January.' Senator Ted Cruz wrote on the X social media platform that 'President Trump committed ANYTHING Texas needs', while telling a press conference: 'There's a time to have political fights, there's a time to disagree. This is not that time.' Trump himself has struck a similar tone, deflecting questions about whether he is still planning to phase out Fema. He said he does not plan to re-hire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending cuts. The president told reporters on Sunday: 'That water situation, that all is, and that was really the Biden setup. But I wouldn't blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe.' But scrutiny of whether more could have been done to avoid the tragedy is already under way. Texas officials criticised the NWS, arguing that it failed to warn the public about impending danger. The NWS defended its forecasting and emergency management, stating that it assigned extra forecasters to the San Antonio and San Angelo offices over the holiday weekend. But a top leadership role at the NWS's San Antonio office has been vacant since earlier this year after Paul Yura accepted an offer from the Trump administration to retire. Doge, formerly led by the billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, has been pushing the NWS to cut jobs and gave hundreds of employees the option to retire early rather than face potential dismissal. Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, asked the commerce department's acting inspector general to investigate whether staffing vacancies at the NWS's San Antonio office contributed to 'delays, gaps, or diminished accuracy' in forecasting the flooding. Republicans accused Democrats of seeking to politicise the tragedy. Wilson, a political consultant who has worked on numerous campaigns, said: 'It is an ongoing family psychodrama inside the Republican party, where everyone is desperately, deeply afraid that they will put a foot wrong with Donald Trump and that's why there's absolutely no candour with these folks about what has happened to the people they represent.' Some commentators suggest that Republicans will ultimately pay a political price for their blind devotion and for last week passing Trump's cost-cutting Big, Beautiful Act. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: 'It's a vision of the future because every time there is something tragic that happens, not just a natural disaster but a mass shooting or you fill in the blank, somebody is going to find a connection to these deep cuts in government engineered by Trump and Musk. 'I think Trump and the Republicans need to get used to this. It may not hurt Trump, but it could potentially and should hurt some of the members of Congress from competitive states and districts that voted for the BBB.'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Doge wants to replace our institutions with a tech utopia. It won't work
Elon Musk has stepped away from Doge with very little 'efficiency' to show for it. While it may have been more of a showpiece than real policy, this brutal and short experiment in Silicon Valley governance reveals a long-simmering battle between digital utopians and the institutional infrastructures critical to functioning democracies. Doge's website dubiously claims $190bn in savings. The receipts show that they are less about efficiency than they are aimed at effective dissolution, a fate met by USAID, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign assistance. Don't be fooled. These brash new reductions are not just your garden-variety small-government crusades or culture-war skirmishes. This administration's war on institutions derives from the newfound power of Silicon Valley ideology – a techno-determinism that views each institution's function as potential raw material for capture by private digital platforms. All the while, Elon Musk sold the White House on an 'AI-first strategy' for the US government. The recent executive order Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence mandates that barely tested Silicon Valley AI be jammed into the government's work. It directs agencies to use AI to 'lessen the burden of bureaucratic restrictions'. This is a thinly veiled attempt not just to reduce institutional activities; it's also a degradation play. Doge makes plain an often misunderstood tension: Silicon Valley's final dream is a world without institutions. Since the rise of the internet, startups have long encouraged, and profited from, institutional decline. This anti-institutionalism goes back to the roots of computing. Charles Babbage's difference engine, central to modern computing, was built on technologies meant to control labor. It was a reflection of Babbage's belief that the highest intention of the factory manager was to reduce the skill and cognitive complexity of laborers' tasks. If the machine could manage production, humans – now smoothed-out automatons – would hardly need accompanying social protections, or even any governance at all. In 1948, Norbert Wiener founded the discipline of cybernetics, 'the science of control and communications in the animal and machine'. This automated governance was eventually brought into direct competition with public institutions. The revolt against the state took many forms in the history of computing thereafter, from the libertarian California ideology ('information wants to be free') to the very idea that a new 'cyberspace' would be liberated from governments. Here the individual is an entrepreneur of the mind, able to instantly improve their lot without the mediating hand of the institutional form. To get to the real heart of Doge's ideology, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond's manifesto on building open-source software. For Raymond, cathedrals are 'carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation'. This slow, deliberate work is no match for the networked and digitally enabled bazaar, where many software developers move fast by releasing early and often, delegate everything they can, and are open to the point of promiscuity. Something like scripture for computer engineers, Raymond's ideas soon jumped out of the network and into governance of the physical world, where all human organizations were scrutinized as the maligned 'cathedral'. Entrepreneurs loved this idea, too. The management method known as the 'lean startup' is a lightweight program of data-driven optimizations designed to quickly scale businesses. Instead of human labor and judgment, lean startups use data and algorithms to experiment their way toward governance. But there's a catch: a public institution is not supposed to be run like a digital startup. Silicon Valley may have carved out a niche in which its organizational philosophies mastered food delivery apps, AI girlfriends and money-laundering shitcoins, but the moment they take these methods to institutions entrusted with public welfare, they've lost the plot. Governments don't have customers – they care for citizens. If classical liberalism had the state and its many sovereign institutions, and neoliberalism had the divine hand of the free market, today's platform class elevates computation as the ultimate arbiter of truth. When presented with an institutional force, the platform class first asks: how could this be delivered by way of a digital platform? Digital technology doesn't have to be this way. Good software can augment institutions, not be the rationale for their deletion. Building this future requires undoing Silicon Valley's pernicious opposition to the institutional form. By giving into the digital utopian's anti-institutionalism, we allowed them to reshape government according to their growth-at-all-costs logic. If the newly empowered digital utopianism goes unchecked, we face a platform-archy where black-box AI makes decisions once adjudicated through democratic institutions. This isn't just a Silicon Valley efficiency fantasy; it's on the roadmap of every authoritarian who ever sniffed power. Thankfully, the anti-Doge backlash was swift. The abrupt layoffs backfired, leading many Americans to fully understand just how much research and resources for advancing science, medicine and culture are tied to federal support. In the private sector, since capital is no longer free after the federal government hiked interest rates in 2022, the growth of the big Silicon Valley platforms have almost completely stalled. In search of an answer, Silicon Valley is making a big bet on AI, overwhelming users with automated answers that hallucinate and mislead at every turn. It's becoming harder and harder for the average person to buy what the digital utopians are selling. The response to this assault on our institutions might be a kind of Digital New Deal – a public plan for institutions in the AI era. This 21st-century economics must go well beyond solving for mass unemployment. Reconstructing the institutional foundations of public goods such as journalism, libraries and higher education requires more than just restoring the public funds stripped by Doge. It will require forceful assertions about their regulatory value in the face of a fully automated slop state. Governments come and go, but free and open institutions are critical to the functioning of democracy. If we make the mistake of misrecognizing digital platforms for public institutions, we will not easily reverse Doge's mistakes. Mike Pepi is a technologist and author who has written widely about the intersection between culture and the Internet. His book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, was published by Melville House in 2025
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Doge wants to replace our institutions with a tech utopia. It won't work
Elon Musk has stepped away from Doge with very little 'efficiency' to show for it. While it may have been more of a showpiece than real policy, this brutal and short experiment in Silicon Valley governance reveals a long-simmering battle between digital utopians and the institutional infrastructures critical to functioning democracies. Doge's website dubiously claims $190bn in savings. The receipts show that they are less about efficiency than they are aimed at effective dissolution, a fate met by USAID, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign assistance. Don't be fooled. These brash new reductions are not just your garden-variety small-government crusades or culture-war skirmishes. This administration's war on institutions derives from the newfound power of Silicon Valley ideology – a techno-determinism that views each institution's function as potential raw material for capture by private digital platforms. All the while, Elon Musk sold the White House on an 'AI-first strategy' for the US government. The recent executive order Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence mandates that barely tested Silicon Valley AI be jammed into the government's work. It directs agencies to use AI to 'lessen the burden of bureaucratic restrictions'. This is a thinly veiled attempt not just to reduce institutional activities; it's also a degradation play. Doge makes plain an often misunderstood tension: Silicon Valley's final dream is a world without institutions. Since the rise of the internet, startups have long encouraged, and profited from, institutional decline. This anti-institutionalism goes back to the roots of computing. Charles Babbage's difference engine, central to modern computing, was built on technologies meant to control labor. It was a reflection of Babbage's belief that the highest intention of the factory manager was to reduce the skill and cognitive complexity of laborers' tasks. If the machine could manage production, humans – now smoothed-out automatons – would hardly need accompanying social protections, or even any governance at all. In 1948, Norbert Wiener founded the discipline of cybernetics, 'the science of control and communications in the animal and machine'. This automated governance was eventually brought into direct competition with public institutions. The revolt against the state took many forms in the history of computing thereafter, from the libertarian California ideology ('information wants to be free') to the very idea that a new 'cyberspace' would be liberated from governments. Here the individual is an entrepreneur of the mind, able to instantly improve their lot without the mediating hand of the institutional form. To get to the real heart of Doge's ideology, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond's manifesto on building open-source software. For Raymond, cathedrals are 'carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation'. This slow, deliberate work is no match for the networked and digitally enabled bazaar, where many software developers move fast by releasing early and often, delegate everything they can, and are open to the point of promiscuity. Something like scripture for computer engineers, Raymond's ideas soon jumped out of the network and into governance of the physical world, where all human organizations were scrutinized as the maligned 'cathedral'. Entrepreneurs loved this idea, too. The management method known as the 'lean startup' is a lightweight program of data-driven optimizations designed to quickly scale businesses. Instead of human labor and judgment, lean startups use data and algorithms to experiment their way toward governance. But there's a catch: a public institution is not supposed to be run like a digital startup. Silicon Valley may have carved out a niche in which its organizational philosophies mastered food delivery apps, AI girlfriends and money-laundering shitcoins, but the moment they take these methods to institutions entrusted with public welfare, they've lost the plot. Governments don't have customers – they care for citizens. If classical liberalism had the state and its many sovereign institutions, and neoliberalism had the divine hand of the free market, today's platform class elevates computation as the ultimate arbiter of truth. When presented with an institutional force, the platform class first asks: how could this be delivered by way of a digital platform? Digital technology doesn't have to be this way. Good software can augment institutions, not be the rationale for their deletion. Building this future requires undoing Silicon Valley's pernicious opposition to the institutional form. By giving into the digital utopian's anti-institutionalism, we allowed them to reshape government according to their growth-at-all-costs logic. If the newly empowered digital utopianism goes unchecked, we face a platform-archy where black-box AI makes decisions once adjudicated through democratic institutions. This isn't just a Silicon Valley efficiency fantasy; it's on the roadmap of every authoritarian who ever sniffed power. Thankfully, the anti-Doge backlash was swift. The abrupt layoffs backfired, leading many Americans to fully understand just how much research and resources for advancing science, medicine and culture are tied to federal support. In the private sector, since capital is no longer free after the federal government hiked interest rates in 2022, the growth of the big Silicon Valley platforms have almost completely stalled. In search of an answer, Silicon Valley is making a big bet on AI, overwhelming users with automated answers that hallucinate and mislead at every turn. It's becoming harder and harder for the average person to buy what the digital utopians are selling. The response to this assault on our institutions might be a kind of Digital New Deal – a public plan for institutions in the AI era. This 21st-century economics must go well beyond solving for mass unemployment. Reconstructing the institutional foundations of public goods such as journalism, libraries and higher education requires more than just restoring the public funds stripped by Doge. It will require forceful assertions about their regulatory value in the face of a fully automated slop state. Governments come and go, but free and open institutions are critical to the functioning of democracy. If we make the mistake of misrecognizing digital platforms for public institutions, we will not easily reverse Doge's mistakes. Mike Pepi is a technologist and author who has written widely about the intersection between culture and the Internet. His book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, was published by Melville House in 2025
South Wales Guardian
5 days ago
- Business
- South Wales Guardian
Reform-led council to announce ‘first big savings' after Farage visit
Earlier this week, Reform party leader Nigel Farage visited Kent County Council (KCC) headquarters in Maidstone and promised announcements at the full council meeting on Thursday. Last month, Reform UK launched a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) initiative to cut council spending after taking 677 seats at the local elections on May 1. The party said it plans to use artificial intelligence, advanced data analysis tools and forensic auditing techniques to 'identify wasteful spending and recommend actionable solutions'. It follows the US Doge which was launched during Donald Trump's presidency to cut federal spending which billionaire Elon Musk spearheaded before his departure. On Monday, speaking to the PA news agency in Kent, Mr Farage said: 'We've established a cabinet, we've got a first big full council meeting this Thursday at which our first big savings will be announced.' However, KCC opposition leader Liberal Democrat Antony Hook said that 'no key decisions have been taken' by Reform and that most committees are yet to meet. The Conservatives have called for an information watchdog to regulate Reform's cost-cutting drive due to the data protection risks involved. Shadow communities secretary Kevin Hollinrake warned that handing the data to Reform is a 'cyber-security disaster waiting to happen' as he wrote to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) calling for an investigation. KCC's Reform leader Linden Kemkaran said that a 'legal framework' is being drawn up to ensure the Doge project works within data protection rules. 'The councillors have been elected to be here in Kent County Council, we have jurisdiction to do stuff, we can pull data, we can look at figures, we can go through everything – head office doesn't,' she said. She added: 'They're ready and waiting, they're just waiting for our call saying 'we're ready come in' but until that legal framework is drawn up to everyone's satisfaction we're just carrying on with our own internal work.' Despite the absence of the head-office Doge project, Ms Kemkaran maintained that she will be announcing savings on Thursday including a vote on a cut to councillors' allowances. By population, KCC is the largest local authority in England and Mr Farage's Reform party took 57 of the 81 seats in the elections on May 1. Prior to their victory the council had been controlled by the Conservatives for 28 years. Critics of the Reform-led authority have pointed to a lack of council meetings and conflicting announcements made via social media. Last week, Ms Kemkaran and a member of her cabinet announced on social media that transgender-related books were to be removed from libraries across the county after receiving a report from a member of the public. It was later revealed that no such books were in the children's section of Kent libraries, but instead one related book was on a welcome stand in Herne Bay. KCC then issued a statement that the announcements were not a change of policy, but rather reiterating an instruction to the 99 libraries under their control. Labour MP for Chatham and Aylesford Tristian Osbourne told the BBC the alleged removal of the books was 'unedifying gender-baiting of the LGBT community'. On Monday, Ms Kemkaran defended the announcements, saying: 'It was a completely valid point to make, it was a completely valid question to ask because I think we've seen a lack of child safeguarding,' Mr Hook said: 'The committee that would deal with library issues met on Tuesday. No mention of this issue but instead they hit up social media on Thursday. It's such poor governance.' The council meeting begins at Sessions House in Maidstone at 10am on Thursday.
Leader Live
5 days ago
- Business
- Leader Live
Reform-led council to announce ‘first big savings' after Farage visit
Earlier this week, Reform party leader Nigel Farage visited Kent County Council (KCC) headquarters in Maidstone and promised announcements at the full council meeting on Thursday. Last month, Reform UK launched a Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) initiative to cut council spending after taking 677 seats at the local elections on May 1. The party said it plans to use artificial intelligence, advanced data analysis tools and forensic auditing techniques to 'identify wasteful spending and recommend actionable solutions'. It follows the US Doge which was launched during Donald Trump's presidency to cut federal spending which billionaire Elon Musk spearheaded before his departure. On Monday, speaking to the PA news agency in Kent, Mr Farage said: 'We've established a cabinet, we've got a first big full council meeting this Thursday at which our first big savings will be announced.' However, KCC opposition leader Liberal Democrat Antony Hook said that 'no key decisions have been taken' by Reform and that most committees are yet to meet. The Conservatives have called for an information watchdog to regulate Reform's cost-cutting drive due to the data protection risks involved. Shadow communities secretary Kevin Hollinrake warned that handing the data to Reform is a 'cyber-security disaster waiting to happen' as he wrote to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) calling for an investigation. KCC's Reform leader Linden Kemkaran said that a 'legal framework' is being drawn up to ensure the Doge project works within data protection rules. 'The councillors have been elected to be here in Kent County Council, we have jurisdiction to do stuff, we can pull data, we can look at figures, we can go through everything – head office doesn't,' she said. She added: 'They're ready and waiting, they're just waiting for our call saying 'we're ready come in' but until that legal framework is drawn up to everyone's satisfaction we're just carrying on with our own internal work.' Despite the absence of the head-office Doge project, Ms Kemkaran maintained that she will be announcing savings on Thursday including a vote on a cut to councillors' allowances. By population, KCC is the largest local authority in England and Mr Farage's Reform party took 57 of the 81 seats in the elections on May 1. Prior to their victory the council had been controlled by the Conservatives for 28 years. Critics of the Reform-led authority have pointed to a lack of council meetings and conflicting announcements made via social media. Last week, Ms Kemkaran and a member of her cabinet announced on social media that transgender-related books were to be removed from libraries across the county after receiving a report from a member of the public. It was later revealed that no such books were in the children's section of Kent libraries, but instead one related book was on a welcome stand in Herne Bay. KCC then issued a statement that the announcements were not a change of policy, but rather reiterating an instruction to the 99 libraries under their control. Labour MP for Chatham and Aylesford Tristian Osbourne told the BBC the alleged removal of the books was 'unedifying gender-baiting of the LGBT community'. On Monday, Ms Kemkaran defended the announcements, saying: 'It was a completely valid point to make, it was a completely valid question to ask because I think we've seen a lack of child safeguarding,' Mr Hook said: 'The committee that would deal with library issues met on Tuesday. No mention of this issue but instead they hit up social media on Thursday. It's such poor governance.' The council meeting begins at Sessions House in Maidstone at 10am on Thursday.
