Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 02, 2025
By Tony Wikrent
Greg Sargent, March 1, 2025 [The New Republic]
It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”
Now the Trump administration has officially terminated a number of current contracts struck by USAID for this lifesaving nutrition, contracts that had called for the paste to be delivered to hundreds of thousands of children, most in Africa, according to the Georgia-based nonprofit set to deliver them, Mana Nutrition….
The full extent of the damage from these cuts—originally set in motion by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—is not yet known. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives, has established, via communications with partners that work with USAID, a list of contracts that were terminated. Among them are programs that offer natal care for mothers and children, that provide netting and other equipment to prevent the spread of malaria, that work to thwart the spread of Ebola and bird flu in dozens of countries, and much more. The cancellations will nix programs that helped tens of millions of people, Gawande notes.
“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” Gawande told me in an interview. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times has developed a long list of other terminated contracts, which include programs preventing the spread of polio, treating HIV and tuberculosis, ensuring clean drinking water in war-torn regions, and buttressing public health in many other ways. Tens of milions of people benefited; now they will not.
Hegseth Clears the Way for More War Crimes
[Daniel Larison, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]
The Secretary of Defense admitted that the reason for removing the JAGs was so that they wouldn’t be “roadblocks to anything that happens.” If top military lawyers don’t serve as roadblocks more often than not, they aren’t doing their jobs properly.
Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted
[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]
White House point man at Homeland Security shared ‘martial law option’ post to keep Trump in office
[CNN, via Naked
Capitalism Water Cooler 02-26-2025]
“The Trump administration’s new point man for dealings with the Department of Homeland Security is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for ‘martial law’ to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election. Paul Ingrassia and the Twitter account for a podcast he co-hosted posted the remark and similar sentiments on social media in December 2020 and January 2021, according to a CNN KFile review of deleted and still-active posts by Ingrassia himself and the account of the podcast. The 29-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer now serves as the second Trump administration’s White House liaison to the DHS, a key role that has historically involved managing the administration’s relationship with the department and overseeing the placement of political appointees.”
STATE OF NEW YORK, et al., v. DONALD J. TRUMP (PDF)
[United States District Court, Southern District of New York, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]
Judge extends block on DOGE’s access to federal payment systems
[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025] The opinion.
Bombshell. More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from Elon Musk’s DOGE.
smokey545 [DailyKos]
Trump and Elon’s ‘Pointless Bloodbath’ at the FAA Is Even Worse Than You Think
[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]
While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but the latter role is important, too, given the nation’s ongoing pilot shortage.
Musk has inside track to take over contract to fix air traffic communications system
BYRON TAU and BERNARD CONDON, February 25, 2025 [AP]
A satellite company owned by Elon Musk has the inside track to potentially take over a large federal contract to modernize the nation’s air traffic communications system.
Equipment from Musk’s Starlink has been installed in Federal Aviation Administration facilities as a prelude to a takeover of a $2 billion contract held by Verizon, according to government employees, contractors and people familiar with the work.
Musk’s Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns
Chris Isidore, February 25, 2025 [CNN]
FAA targeting Verizon contract in favor of Musk’s Starlink, sources say
WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 02-28-2025]
Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding
[Washington Post, via The Big Picture February 28, 2025]
Despite the hype, DOGE hasn’t found a shred of fraud
[Public Notice, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-24-2025]
“DOGE has claimed it’s rooted out $55 billion worth of spending, a dollar amount that appears to be wildly inaccurate: As of Sunday, DOGE’s website claims it has saved or cancelled $55 billion worth of government contracts. But that same website only accounts for $16 billion in contracts. Half of that comes from an $8 million government contract that DOGE incorrectly identified as being worth $8 billion. Additionally, DOGE has been in some cases simply cancelling contracts that the government has already paid for. Some $325 million in supposed savings are simply contracts that have been repeated in DOGE’s reporting, Politico found. But actual fraud? DOGE has found nothing. None of this has stopped Trump, Musk, congressional Republicans, and their allies in rightwing media from breathlessly highlighting millions of dollars’ worth of spending as examples of fraudulent government programs. Nowhere in those lists of programs — like the USAID initiatives that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been lambasting for weeks, including the tortured and incorrect claim that US taxpayers funded ‘condoms for Gaza’ — is anything that even Musk or Trump themselves have identified as ‘fraud.’ Instead, the goalposts for DOGE have silently moved from finding fraud and corruption to simply pointing out and cancelling government programs that Trump and Republicans simply don’t support.”