Yea, this is a coup.

Fascist foreign billionaire Elon Musk and his goon squad of young dorks, including a 19-year-old who calls himself "Bigballs," have seized control of the government.

Hi guys. *dead-eyed smile*

I promised two newsletters ago that I was going to cover RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing this week. Then a plane crashed into a helicopter, which Trump blamed on Black people; an air ambulance crashed in Philly the following day, killing 7 and injuring 19; and as aircrafts were literally tumbling out of the sky, Elon Musk and a handful of tech babies without security clearances seized control of the United States government, shut civil servants out of their emails/offices, and gained full access to and control over the U.S. Treasury and Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including the “dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers.”

Per a WIRED report today, Elon’s goon squad—who are literally marching into federal buildings and demanding access to all of our sensitive data and money—includes six men ranging in age from 19 to 24, the youngest being a Canadian teen who calls himself “bigballs” and looks like this:

Elon made clear that he wanted access to all of the government’s payment systems because he wants to stop the flow of money to programs that don’t personally benefit him—including USAID, which he and Trump essentially shut down entirely over the weekend. “USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk tweeted. “Time for it to die.”

In fact, USAID is critical to our national security and global standing, and millions of people around the globe rely on it to stay alive. Some of the immediate consequences of this (frankly evil) shutdown, per NYT:

USAID Director of Security John Voorhees, at least, tried to resist Musk’s physical invasion of his department today. Musk’s cronies reportedly threatened to call in the U.S. Marshals and seize the classified data and personnel information at gunpoint (!!!), and Voorhees tried to stand his ground and say no, before ultimately getting dismissed.

But the Treasury Secretary appears to have been fine with these babyfaced dorks from a fake department gaining access to the purse strings of the entire federal government.

In case there’s still any question as to whether this was an actual coup by a hostile foreign power, consider Musk’s admission that he planned to do this on a weekend because the “opposing team”—literally employees of the U.S. government—left themselves vulnerable to takeover on the two days they don’t work. Keep in mind that Musk was denied a top secret security clearance because of his drug use and sketchy foreign contacts.

Trump appears to have greenlit this whole operation, giving Musk free rein to seize the Treasury and take a sledgehammer to entire departments while he purges the FBI of officers who aren’t blindly loyal to him and starts an extremely ill-advised trade war with Mexico and Canada. Trump claims we’re getting “ripped off” by our friendly neighbors, but imposing tariffs on those countries is going to do exactly the opposite of what Trump promised voters. Per AP: “The tariffs, if sustained, could cause inflation to significantly worsen, threatening the trust that many voters placed in Trump to lower the prices of groceries, gasoline, housing, autos and other goods as he promised. They also risked throwing the global economy and Trump’s political mandate into turmoil just two weeks into his second term.”

Trump appears to think that crippling Canada economically is going to further his goal of absorbing Canada into the United States, which is unhinged and ridiculous. Trudeau responded by slapping retaliatory tariffs on $107 billion of U.S. goods. Ontario and Nova Scotia said that they’d pull American beer, wine and spirits from their state-owned liquor stores, and British Columbia announced that it would stop sales of alcohol produced in “red states” specifically, making clear that it intends to punish those Americans who voted for Trump.

In short: What happened this weekend is a constitutional crisis and flagrantly illegal power grab on top of absolutely incompetent and dangerous governing. Anyone who’s taken a basic civics class—hi Mrs. Aucoin, and thank you for subscribing—knows that Congress is supposed to control the purse strings of the government, and only Congress should have the power to fund or eliminate entire federal departments. Musk and Trump appear to be circumventing an entire branch of government to try and crash the U.S. economy on purpose and create disorder and chaos.

Now let’s get to the “why” of all this: Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa laid out a pretty compelling argument in her newsletter today, which I happen to agree with. Musk has already made clear that he wants X to replace the news media and for himself, the world’s richest Nazi, to control the entire flow of information to voters. But he’s also indicated that he wants X to take the place of the American banking system so that he also controls our money. X has been financially underwater since Musk bought it and ran it into the ground—so forcing Americans to rely on X for financial transactions is one way to for him to recoup the $44 billion he spent on Twitter and then some. From Rangappa:

A key hurdle in Musk achieving his vision of an “everything app” that allows payment services — now dubbed “X Money” — is obtaining the necessary permissions, which can vary from state to state. Well, the New York Times reported on January 28 of this year that Musk has overcome this hurdle by partnering with Visa to allow money to be transferred using Visa’s network, skipping the licensing and regulatory steps it would need otherwise. In other words, X Money is open for business; it just needs customers.

…

Imagine a world where X Money becomes the government’s payment platform. I am hard pressed to imagine anyone who could avoid using it — I know I receive electronic payments from the U.S. Treasury for my taxes, and others probably use it for even more than that. Requiring everyone to use X to receive payments from Treasury would, quite simply, solve Musk’s accounting problems. (I’m not sure if the fees would be skimmed from users or the U.S. Treasury but either way he’d make a mint, no pun intended.)

For billionaire autocrats like Musk and Trump, the more financially desperate and confused people become—and the less of a functional bureaucracy that exists running the country and holding them accountable for anything—the more power and control they can reap over every aspect of our lives.

So what can we do to resist this five-alarm fire situation? What are Democrats currently doing? A couple months ago, I wrote about South Koreans quashing their own fascist coup in the middle of the night by literally boosting lawmakers’ asses over a fence to shut down their wannabe dictator. I am desperate to launch AOC’s ass over a fence right now, but as of me writing this post, protesters have descended on the Office of Personnel Management to physically block Elon’s goons from getting in—and zero members of Congress to join them in the fight.

All I’m seeing so far from Democrats are some half-assed posts from elected lawmakers essentially narrating what is happening to democracy and pointing out that it is illegal. Democrat we elected, please, I beg you: Grow a spine and do something. Right now. It’s you vs. a skinny 19-year-old who calls himself Bigballs. You can do this. Please, for the love of god, give the people something to believe in.