Steve Diamond
LightNews LightNews
banner
stevediamond.bsky.social
Steve Diamond
@stevediamond.bsky.social
1.3K followers 480 following 160 posts
Anti-fascist. Don't obey in advance. No dictators! Love, not hate.
Former Democratic candidate for Pima County Supervisor.
Author of The Relaxation Solution.
stephendiamond.me
Posts Replies Media Videos
stevediamond.bsky.social
Arizona AG Kris Mayes has launched a webpage where residents can report any disruptions to their Social Security service.

www.azag.gov/socialsecurity
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes launches webpage to report social security disruptions.
April 1, 2025 at 1:09 AM
stevediamond.bsky.social
So much worse!
From Maggie Haberman of The New York Times: "NEW: Starlink is now operating as a WiFi service across the WH campus, per people briefed. Musk is said to have donated the service to the government. It is said to be working through existing fiber cables at a data center miles away from the WH." Comment from @SundaeDivine (Sundae_Gurl): "This seems so much worse than the server in Hillary's basement."
March 18, 2025 at 11:03 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
March 10, 2025 at 7:41 AM
stevediamond.bsky.social
March 9, 2025 at 1:12 AM
stevediamond.bsky.social
March 5, 2025 at 9:18 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
March 5, 2025 at 9:17 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
Department Of Grift & Extortion
March 1, 2025 at 6:41 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
It would be impossible to overstate how irresponsible and potentially catastrophic this is.
I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance, which the staff appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible — “damage” in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government. Phrases like “freaking out” are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changes are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., a not-live environment) but have already been pushed into production. This is code that appears to be mainly the work of Elez, who was first introduced to the system probably roughly a week ago and certainly not before the second Trump inauguration.
February 4, 2025 at 5:24 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
Cartoon by Jorge Penné for The New Yorker.
Cartoon shows Lady Liberty nervously looking up at a sword-like object suspended above her head, point downward, on a thread. The sword resembles a long, red necktie and has a gold hilt.
February 3, 2025 at 7:53 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
Context:

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-2...
Billionaire Elon Musk’s team yesterday took control of the Treasury’s payment system, thus essentially gaining access to the checkbook with which the United States handles about $6 trillion annually and to all the financial information of Americans and American businesses with it. Apparently, it did not stop there. Today Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press reported that yesterday two top security officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) tried to stop people associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing classified information they did not have security clearance to see. The Trump administration put the officials on leave, and the DOGE team gained access to the information. Vittoria Elliott of Wired has identified those associated with Musk’s takeover as six “engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college.” They are connected either to Musk or to his long-time associate Peter Thiel, who backed J.D. Vance’s Senate run eighteen months before he became Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Their names are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran, and they have little to no experience in government.
February 3, 2025 at 3:50 PM
stevediamond.bsky.social
Are you guys listening? Oppose! Obstruct! Throw sand in the gears! This is beyond a constitutional crisis. This is a coup against the American people, a hostile takeover.

@schumer.senate.gov @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social
February 3, 2025 at 12:18 AM
stevediamond.bsky.social
Here's a comment worth reading from the Substack.
Ex-Treasury person checking in. Mr. Musk took over the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. If the Internal Revenue Service is Accounts Receivable then Bureau of the Fiscal Service is Accounts Payable. If you get a tax refund, IRS itself does not send you a check. IRS sends an electronic request to BFS for them to either mail a check or send an Electronic Funds Transfer. BFS handles all checks and EFTs for the federal government. BFS also manages the government’s bonds program including marketing and retail sales. If he wanted to nuke our economy on a whim, Mr. Musk could do so now. There is no charitable interpretation of him taking over BFS. Having a drug-addled Nazi-sympathizer in effective control of the treasury outside any effective constraints of law is a situation where remedies are lacking. Either there is a mass march of millions in DC demanding this end or people start doubling down on their safety plans.
February 2, 2025 at 5:35 PM