Letters from an American - June 6, 2025

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

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June 6, 2025. Last night, billionaire Elon Musk indicated he would be willing to paper over his fight with President Donald J. Trump, perhaps remembering, as Paresh Dave of Wired noted, that his companies stand to lose $48 billion over the next 10 years if they lose their government contracts. Trump spent this morning calling news anchors and telling them he's not bothered by the fight. According to Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone, Trump today called CNN's Dana Bash,

the Fox News Channel's Brett Baier, ABC News' Jonathan Karl, and CBS News' Robert Costa to claim he's not even thinking about Elon before bashing him as the man who has lost his mind. Yesterday, Lauren Good of Wired reported that big tech investors and executives were trying to walk a fine line between the two men, trying not to take a stand for or against either. J.V. Last of the Bulwark noted that no one was more hesitant to take a side than Vice President J.D. Vance, who wants to keep the favor of his Silicon Valley patrons, but also

needs Trump's backing. At 1028 last night, after Musk was already retreating, Vance posted on social media, "'President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I'm proud to stand beside him.'" As last notes, this was a pretty weak statement, and Trump is smart enough to understand that this is a confession. Do not doubt, don't second-guess, and do not challenge the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, warned Republican lawmakers. He is the leader of the party. He's the most consequential political figure of our time. After Russian officials said they were prepared to offer Musk political asylum, Musk spent the day posting or reposting material that boosted his businesses and complaints about Trump's one big beautiful bill. This evening he announced, a new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle. How the fallout from this fight will affect the country remains unclear, but the announcement that the Pentagon is investigating whether

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's aides were asked to delete signal messages may well be related to Musk's fall from favor. In April, Hegseth arranged for Musk to have a top-secret briefing on U.S. military plans in case of war with China. According to Mark Caputo of Axios, Trump himself stepped in to stop the briefing from going forward. Now, Hegseth is under investigation. It does seem likely that the administration will try to pin blame on Musk for the chaos that the Department of Government Efficiency launched against the United States government. Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman of ProPublica reported today on the AI prompts the Department of Government Efficiency used to munch the

word DOGE employee Saheel Lavengia used for cancel contracts related to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Lavengia, who worked for two months for DOGE, said the idea was to go after anything that wasn't directly supporting patient care. But the code was deeply flawed, resulting in wildly off-base contract values and a deep misunderstanding of what contracts actually did. Mistakes were made, Lavengia said. Mistakes are always made. Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Merrill Cornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance of the Washington

Post took a broader view. They reported that across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under Dozier's staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process. They outlined how the administration is trying to patch the holes Doge ripped in agencies, trying to rehire employees who were fired or left voluntarily, and if that doesn't

work, offering overtime, asking for volunteers, and asking employees to serve in new roles. Some new job offerings look a lot like the positions of people agencies just fired. A White House official told the reporters, if by chance mistakes were made and critical employees were dismissed, each individual agency is working diligently to bring these people back to work to continue the adequate functions of the federal government. But morale is terrible, one worker at the Food and Drug Administration told the reporters. Everyone is stressed and feels the absence of our colleagues. I'm looking for another job.

Still, Doge is not the only group in the administration that has made poor decisions. Hannah Allam of ProPublica reported on Wednesday that the White House has put a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no experience in national security in charge of overseeing the government's main center for preventing terrorism. Thomas Fugate's main credentials for his position in the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, which includes overseeing $18 million in grants to local authorities to combat violent extremism, appear to be his time spent as an intern at the Right Wing Heritage Foundation and his loyalty to Trump.

Fugate's appointment appears to reflect that the administration is downplaying domestic terrorism to shift resources to immigration. In its budget proposal, DHS has called for eliminating the threat prevention grant program Fugate oversees, saying it does not align with DHS priorities. One former Homeland Security official told Allam, the shift means that the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States. Today, after months of maintaining, it could not bring back Maryland man Kilmara Brago Garcia, who was wrongfully rendered to the notorious Seacot Terrorist Prison in El Salvador,

the Trump administration returned him to the U.S. A grand jury in Tennessee has charged Brago Garcia with participating in a 10-year conspiracy to carry undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country. The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia participated in more than 100 trips that moved children as well as members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang. The indictment has issues. Abrego Garcia is the only person named in the conspiracy, and the investigation into it began only in April after the courts ordered the administration

to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US. The indictment is based on a 2022 incident in which Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee for speeding with eight passengers in his vehicle. He told police they were construction workers and was neither ticketed nor charged. While the indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia lied to the officer by not revealing he was coming from Texas, the referral report says he told the officer he was coming from Houston, Texas. Phil Williams of News Channel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee noted that the chief of the Criminal

Division for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nashville, Ben Schrader, resigned on May 21st, saying, "...it has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons." Williams notes that May 21 is the same day as Abrego Garcia's indictment. ABC News reported that Schrader resigned out of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons. Meanwhile, government raids against immigrants are escalating and seem designed to provoke

conflict. Today, masked officials in tactical gear, apparently from the Department of Homeland Security, carried out a number of raids in Los Angeles. Agents pepper sprayed and arrested David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union, California, or SEIU. In a statement, the union called for an end to the cruel, destructive, and indiscriminate ICE raids

that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy, and hurting all working people," adding, Immigrant workers are essential to our society, feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces, and building our homes. Andy Craig, who studies election law and policy, noted today that mass deportation and immigration enforcement in the interior requires a police state, and the more of that you want, the more obviously it will look and act like a police state. Aaron Reichlin Melnick of the American Immigration Council agreed. He wrote, in order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire

goddamn population, you must first build the police state. state. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Thanks for watching!