We Can Do Hard Things
What is Elon Musk Doing to America Today & What Can You Do About it? Calm News with Jessica Yellin
Wed, 19 Feb 2025
What is Elon Musk Doing to America Today & What Can You Do About It? Calm News with Jessica Yellin Award-winning journalist, Jessica Yellien, is back to walk us through what's going on right now in our country, and call our attention to very serious developments. We also discuss two things you can do to protect democracy and one thing you can do to protect yourself. -The three main theories on why DOGE and Elon Musk are ruthlessly breaking down our government organizations -The reason why all the people on the left (from moderates to the most liberal) must come together right now -Two actionable ways to protect our country and the one way to protect yourself financially today -The government officials who are standing up for Democracy and how to best support them On Jessica: Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand. Over 1M+ subscribers and followers across Instagram and other digital media rely on Jessica and News Not Noise to understand what matters, which experts to trust, and to manage their “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent for ABC, MSNBC and CNN. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @JessicaYellin. You can also find the News Not Noise Newsletter on Substack. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is this calm news episode different?
Hi, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we have a conversation, an episode of calm news, but I will tell you right off the bat that I'm not feeling super calm this morning. We have some really, really serious, important things to talk to you about today.
As you well know, our dear friend Jessica Yellen is here with us to talk us through what's going on right now in this moment in our country, which is very difficult. serious. We are going to get through this together. We are going to, as my sister told me this morning, we're going to not turn away from this, but we're also not going to leave you with it, with nothing to do.
We are going to take in what's happening in the country. We are going to metabolize it, process it, and give us all something to do so we do not feel helpless because we are not helpless. And if we believe we are, then we are. If we believe we aren't, then we aren't. So we will give you something to do after you take in this news.
Jessica and Amanda and I had a plan yesterday of what to talk about today. And then Jessica texted us this morning and said what we have to talk about today, what's happening right now. ist of maximum importance and we have to change course and talk about the breaking news.
Chapter 2: What urgent news does Jessica Yellin bring today?
I'm going to have us do one breath before we go into the news. Jessica tells us four in, five hold, eight out. Okay. Hold. Exhale.
So, Jessica. Amanda, is there anything you want to say before we start?
Okay. Let's go to Jessica. Okay. Go ahead, Jessica. May I just say hi? Oh, hi. You look fantastic today. I dig your straight hair. I just need one human moment before we jump into all this.
Is that okay? Jessica, the worse the news gets, the more straight You'll see my hair because I like to wake up and control what I can control. Right? I completely get it.
Chapter 3: What is DOGE and what are its implications?
My hair is curly right now and I'm like, oh, it's too out of control. I need to go deal with that. That's a whole thing we can discuss. That should help us get through. Okay, so we are at a very strange juncture in American history. We've certainly never seen anything like what we're about to talk about in the modern era.
And because what we're talking about is so centered around tech, I don't think we've ever seen anything like this. Right now, a team of essentially hackers is inside the pipes of government, accessing some of the most sensitive data we have.
They work for DOGE, that's the government efficiency body Trump set up under Elon Musk, although the White House now says that Musk isn't really in charge of DOGE, and I'll come back to that in just a minute.
So, I think today we should talk about what DOGE is reportedly accessing, what DOGE seems to be doing with this information, how little transparency there is, and the chilling implications of all this, frankly for the country, for federal workers, and for each one of us personally. So before we get into the big topics, I just want to do a quick aside.
In the last 24, 36 hours, the White House has gone to court and told a judge that Elon Musk doesn't run Doge. They claim that he might not even be an employee of Doge, which is wild because Trump originally said he was setting up Doge under Musk. Musk spricht von Doge, als ob es sein Fieftum ist. Es wird von Musk-Alliieren gestafft.
Ich meine, die Ebenen von Bizarro gehen weiter, aber sie sind im Gericht, um diese Vorstellung von Distanz für legalen Gründen zu kreieren. Und deshalb möchte ich das einfach anerkennen. Und wir erneuern das in dieser Konversation, indem wir das hier bezeichnen. Okay, also hier ist, was wir von DOGE wissen.
Die Lieutenanten, die es runten, sind in verschiedenen Organisationen und sie verfügen über einige der am stärksten geschützten, sensiblen Daten, die es gibt. Das betrifft persönliche, identifizierte Informationen über Amerikaner. Das könnte unsere Social Security-Nummern, Geburtstagen, Einkommen, Gesundheitsbedingungen, Adressen, all the things identity thieves need to get to us.
It also gives them visibility into the money flows that undergird our financial system, information flows, who's talking to whom. They have real visibility into the guts of our infrastructure that keep us functioning. And they say they're rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. But to be real, their decisions to date are so careless and arbitrary.
Sources I talk to say that it's wise for all of us to be deeply concerned about what they're doing with this data and to what end they're gathering it.
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Chapter 4: How are government workers being affected by DOGE?
They've demanded access to the most sensitive systems in all three entities that undergird our payment system, right? If you don't get your Social Security checks, if information at the IRS is exposed, you know, if our payment system at Treasury goes offline,
Und um klar zu sein, war das ganze Mandat Effizienz innerhalb der Agentur. Und wenn du versucht hast, herauszufinden, wie man die Systeme effizienter machen kann, in Bezug auf die Arbeitnehmer und was sie tun, dann brauchst du nicht Zugang zu jeder amerikanischen persönlichen Information, um das zu tun.
I've talked to software programmers who say these are not the ways, there are simpler ways to go at doing these things, right? So it's a level of access they're demanding that defies comprehension given their mandate. Is it possible that what they're trying to do is look for social security checks that are going out in duplicate? Yes.
Is it possible that they're looking for excessive payments and trying to map things against each other? It is possible. It's that they're going in at it in a way that's so sloppy. And so, as far as we know, they're just not using the normal protocols you use to ensure that everything's kept safe. And it's unclear why they need this much access. So that's why it's raising alarms.
We don't know what they're doing with that. What they have done so far with it is make these lists of people to fire, disseminated those lists to agencies and ordered people to fire this list of people regardless of how effective they are, how valuable they are. It's indiscriminate it seems. And so that's the first action we actually know they're taking based on the information they're gleaning.
So a bunch of 20-jährige Hacker haben jetzt gefordert und benutzen die Macht, wer auch immer sie wollen, um Informationen über individuelle Amerikaner oder Bereiche der Regierung zu erzeugen. Und hat es jemals einen Zeitpunkt in der Geschichte gegeben, als ein privater Bürger so viel Zugang oder Macht hat?
I think about the Gilded Age. Did, you know, the robber barons of the Gilded Age have a level of power and knowledge and access? Yes, that was undemocratic, un-American, yes. But they didn't have the power of technology that gives you this far-reaching visual into everything.
So in any case, this is a level of, I mean, I think what they're doing is it's an assault on our government from within and by private individuals. I think we should talk about what they're doing, like who they're firing or how this might affect us and then why they might be doing this. Darf ich nur eine Sache beurteilen, die du gesagt hast, Glennon? Ja, bitte.
An dieser Stelle wissen wir, dass sie Visibilität in riesige Pools von Daten haben, die die persönliche Information der Menschen enthalten. Wir haben so weit keine Beweise, dass sie eine Info von einer Person geschaut haben oder versucht haben, sie herauszufinden, oder dass sie es benutzen, um Menschen zu beurteilen oder zu beurteilen.
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Chapter 5: What theories explain the actions of DOGE?
zu Leuten, die 25 Jahre Veteranen ihrer Departement, die sie als vital bezeichnen, aber die nur eine Promo bekommen haben. Und seit du eine Promo bekommen hast, bist du als Präventionär in dieser neuen Rolle für ein bis zwei Jahre. Und das war ein wertvoller Wildland-Fahrer.
Zwischen den Leuten, die sie gefeuert haben, sind Wildland-Fahrer, die wir in der Westen relying on, um rauszukommen und die Feuerzeuge in dieser Saison zu kämpfen. Wir sind apparell bereits kurzstafft und ich habe zu vielen Managern gesprochen, die panikiert sind über die Feuerzeuge. They've also let go of an incoming class of disease detectives at the CDC.
They're all over in all our states and help monitor incidents of new diseases, for example, bird flu. And they're our first alert when bird flu is spreading, right? And we need to do something. Es gibt unendliche Beispiele von verschiedenen Kategorien von Leuten in unseren vitalen Services, Power-Planten, die Energie bieten.
Der Nationalpark-Service hat gerade ein Massaker, wo die Zahl der Leute, die gefeuert wurden, und das ist dein erstaunlicher Parkranger, der in der Wälder lebt und der einzige EMT in einem Nationalpark ist. Und sie zählen oft als Feuerwehrleute in der Feuerzeit.
Die andere Brutalität ist, dass wenn sie verlassen wurden, ihre Managern sagen, es sei eine schlechte Leistung, auch wenn ihre letzte Review exzeptionell war. Und für viele Menschen in einigen Staaten bedeutet das, dass sie Unabhängigkeit nicht sammeln können. Oh mein Gott. Und dann für die Menschen im Nationalpark-Service, die auch im Park leben.
Also verlieren sie ihren Salar, können Unabhängigkeit nicht sammeln und sie sind unabhängig.
Oh mein Gott.
They sacked them. Then after the fact realized, oh shit, nuclear stockpiles might be an important thing to have people working for. And we're trying to get it back, but can't even like get the people back quickly enough. So they're breaking it before they know if it's important or not.
Ja, es gibt eine Methode für diese Verrücktheit. Ich werde noch zwei mehr, nur eine weitere Kategorie hinzufügen und dann können wir über das Warum sprechen. Sie haben auch alle Art von Konsumenten-Wachhundern im Konsumenten-Finanz-Verteidigungsbüro gefeuert, die es wichtig sind, Konsumenten gegen Corporate Overreach zu verteidigen.
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Chapter 6: What resistance is there against DOGE?
It's sort of catching people off guard because it's so bizarre, un-American and also silly.
But it's a loyalty test. It's a smart way. That sounds silly, but it's actually not. It's saying, whose side are you on?
Whose truth are you going to accept? Yeah.
And are you going to accept the idea that there will be loyalty? That is a very slippery slope. Even the idea of saying you can go to hell with any kind of loyalty test, even if I do follow you. This is an un-American thing and I'm not going about it. Even that is because the firing stuff is not only arbitrary and reckless and making us less safe.
It also has a real flavor of personal revenge and retribution. The FBI was forced to hand over a list of every single person who had ever touched the January 6th cases. So this is the biggest DOJ investigation in history. Down to like the lowest level filing clerk who had to upload a piece of evidence are on a list that was handed to the Trump administration.
And one can only surmise for the purpose of trying... um zu identifizieren, wer diese Leute sind und ob sie weiterhin eine Rolle in der Regierung haben werden.
Ja, ich habe von Leuten gehört, die sich auch gefragt haben, weißt du, glaubst du, dass Trump die 2020-Elektion gewonnen hat? Und sie müssen beurteilen, dass er das in ihrer Meinung gemacht hat, diese Art von Sache. Ich möchte auch sagen, eine Perspektive, es ist möglich, Trump ist jetzt am Apex seiner Macht.
Sie haben noch nicht zu dem Budget-Bill gekommen, wo er Republikansupport vermutlich verlieren wird. His coalition could fray. Right now, what we're discussing, this is on a path that can't be stopped. It's possible that the wheels could come off the bus. So I want to give people a sense like horror isn't inevitable. Right.
Jessica, du weißt, der alte Edmund Burke-Quote, die einzige Sache, die notwendig ist für den Triumph des Schicksals, ist, für gute Leute nichts zu tun. Wo ist der andere Seite? Wo sind unsere Steuern und Gegebenheiten? Wenn unser Zuhause überwacht wird, wo sind die Leute, die verantwortlich sind? Wo sind die Demokraten? Wo sind die Juden? Gibt es irgendeine Resistenz?
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