Corruption and list-making

There is growing evidence that Musk and Trump are using their newfound data trove to engage in list-making. Political enemies beware.

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Now, on to the news…

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An AI-generated fake of Elon Musk helping a blind child restore his sight, which has been making the rounds on Facebook.

While all the madness of the first 100 days of the Trump administration has been swirling — illegal deportation flights, unconstitutional shuttering of entire government agencies, and more unconstitutional acts each day in the form of executive orders — the fundamental corruption that lies at the heart of all this turmoil has taken a backseat to more obvious matters like our ongoing constitutional crisis.

There is more to the massive data gathering operation being undertaken by Donald Trump, his allies, and Elon Musk, but it starts with pulling off a bank heist. I’ll get to the second part in a minute.

To milk the systems that have weathered the scourge of corruption since our founding, Trump and his people need two important things: access and information.

By giving Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to government agencies, the super-rich among Trump’s allies — and those who are simply taking advantage of Trump in his increasing senility — now have this access. They have infiltrated every major government agency with the stated purpose of reducing “fraud, waste and abuse.” Instead, they’ve simply cut spending they don’t agree with and are angling toward ensuring they get the lucrative government contracts they seek. Access: granted.

With that access, they have undertaken a massive data gathering operation that will give them even more power — information that will be used to enrich themselves and punish everyone else. The Trump administration is fighting myriad court battles to maintain access to this trove of data, which includes some of your most sensitive personal information.

The Trump administration and DOGE — through government lawyers — have claimed they need this data as part of their efforts to modernize government IT systems and make government agencies more efficient. At least one federal judge has called bullshit on this, saying that having access to the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans is not necessary for making government more efficient, as DOGE and the administration claim they’re doing. In another case, a panel of judges at a federal appeals court have said that a DOGE staffer at the Office of Personnel Management should be granted access to the personal information of millions of past and current government employees to carry out DOGE’s supposed mission of eliminating “fraud, waste and abuse.”

Gee, I wonder why Trump and Musk would want the personal information of millions of people who work for the government.

Insiders tell me for a story I wrote for Rolling Stone that the Trump administration is ignoring privacy laws in its data-gathering partnership with DOGE. But that’s just part of the story. The other part — the part that requires us to continue to pay attention despite all the swirling madness — is exactly why Trump and Musk are gathering data from one of the largest and most important databases in human history: the U.S. government.

It starts with money: What few things in American life weren’t entirely profit-driven are headed that way if Trump and his super-rich allies continue to succeed in undoing governmental and societal systems. That’s what’s at stake here and what we can’t lose sight of: a country that, for all its faults, still guarantees a decently-high standard of living even for the poor, is transforming into a new model based even more on greed, corruption and, most importantly, access.

People like Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene have that access, which is likely why she bought up $750,000 worth of Treasury bonds just before Trump’s tariffs hit. In a stock market juke that reeks of insider trading, Greene made a brilliant financial move that even some of the most knowledgeable and skilled traders didn’t conceive of. Do you think Greene is just that smart, or did she probably know that Trump’s tariffs would sink the market?

Wealthy, politically-connected Americans like those in the administration and Congress will be immune to the effects of a government that cannot or will not do things like ensure a safe food supply, reduce pollution, monitor working conditions at factories and farms, provide Social Security and other benefits to poor, elderly and disabled Americans, and any number of things that the non-political army of government workers do to keep the trains running on time — literally and figuratively.

With their money and their connections — giving them access to top tier private healthcare, clean food, good jobs and a high standard of living — the people at the top of this Trumpian food chain will be relatively unscathed by the collapse of government services. It’s all the rest of us who will pay the price.

And even if they are right — if none of this comes to fruition and we don’t see a complete breakdown in systems that help to keep us safe, healthy and free — that will only be because private companies have filled the gap, exacerbating wealth inequality and making everything we do cost more. This will further enrich people at the top.

But there is something that is even more concerning than the naked corruption we’re witnessing. There is growing evidence that Musk and Trump are using their newfound data trove to engage in list-making. Anyone who paid attention in their high school history class or has read a yellow-backed spy novel knows where list-making eventually ends up: blacklisting, stifling of speech, political prosecutions, arrests and confinement, and worse.

What was initially a deal to use IRS data to find about 700,000 undocumented immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security has expanded their dragnet to use IRS data to find 7 million immigrants. These are people who, despite not being a citizen, have paid their taxes in the hopes that it would help them gain citizenship one day. Now, the government is punishing them for their honesty, using IRS data to go after them.

This is likely just the beginning of the list-making. First they’ll go after the expendables: undocumented immigrants, alleged criminal immigrants now sitting in a Salvadoran hellhole even though most of them have no criminal histories, students here on visas who say things the administration doesn’t like — people who aren’t like the rest of us. But with all the information Trump and Musk have, the list-making will only grow — and so will the categories of people included therein.

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