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Daily Archives: February 4, 2025

Personal Discretion Over the Treasury’s Payments System Means the End of Democracy

Liberal Currents – Elizabeth Popp Berman: “On Friday night [January 31, 2025], Elon Musk’s team gained access to the Department of Treasury’s payments system, which processes the federal spending that makes up more than a fifth of the U.S. economy. Social Security, Medicare, agricultural supports, the National Parks—a large majority of government spending flows through this spigot. Musk’s team not only has the ability to see every government payment, but can make changes to the system—which could mean having the capacity to turn that spigot off. What Musk appears to be attempting is using the payments system to decide what congressionally approved spending will actually occur. If that happens, it will take our unfolding constitutional crisis to a whole new level. Normally, the federal payments system is apolitical plumbing managed by nonpartisan bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats simply process funds; they don’t make decisions about whether spending is justified. But they have immense unused power, because controlling the federal spigot means they have the capacity to stop any government payment with the push of a button, even if they have never done so. With Musk at the reins, that power shifts to an unelected billionaire who intends to use it. Don’t like “woke” research? Turn it off. Hate USAID? Cut off the money. Think payments to Lutheran Family Services are illegal? Shut them down. Giving a single individual, let alone one with no official position, such control over the federal government would be extraordinarily authoritarian. the use of such power, but they are only one check. Apolitical employees, whose only obligation is to the law, are another safeguard. We also rely on the technical infrastructure itself to ensure that payments happen without disruption. Mucking about with systems that are built on sixty-year-old code could be deeply disruptive to vital government functions, shutting down the Social Security payments many rely on or cutting off payments to small businesses that depend on government contracts for survival. Trump has already demonstrated his intent to gut parts of government that threaten him or depart from his political allies’ interests or ideology. He has moved toward purging the FBI of independent voices, tried to prohibit funding for whole fields of study, and temporarily halted congressionally approved spending on clean energy…”

What Is OpenAI’s Powerful New Deep Research Tool Capable Of?

LawSites: I Use It to Analyze the Legality of President Trump’s Pause of Federal Grants – “Over the weekend, OpenAI released Deep Research, an AI agent capable of completing multi-step research tasks and synthesizing large amounts of online information. OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil said it can complete complex research tasks in minutes that… Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries

Parsons, Patrick and Niedringhaus, Kristina L. and Zhang, Alex, Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries (December 01, 2024). Georgia State University College of Law, Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5118446 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5118446  – “The Southeast Roundtable Report summarizes the discussions from a day-long conference held on March 1, 2024, at… Continue Reading

As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders

Ars Technica: “Two years ago, a Canadian writer named Cory Doctorow coined the phrase “enshittification” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word immediately set the Internet ablaze, as it captured the growing malaise regarding how almost everything about the web seemed to be getting worse. “It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was… Continue Reading

Bookshop.org enters the e-book arena, giving indie stores a new way to compete with Amazon

Salon: “Bookshop.org founder and CEO Andy Hunter joked that the e-books question has been the bane of his business’ social media manager’s existence for a while now. “Every day she has people ask her, ‘When are e-books coming? When are e-books coming?’” Now Bookshop has an answer. On Tuesday, it launched a new digital platform… Continue Reading

Workers at NASA Told to ‘Drop Everything’ to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites

404 Media: “NASA personnel were told to “drop everything” to scrub public sites of mentions of DEI, indigenous people, environmental justice, and women in leadership, according to a directive obtained by 404 Media. The directive, sent on January 22 and obtained by 404 Media, states:“Per NASA HQ direction, we are required to scrub mentions of… Continue Reading

New OPM Memo – Legality of Deferred Resignation Program

New OPM Memorandum – RE: Legality of Deferred Resignation Program – To Heads and Acting Heads of Departments and Agencies, FROM: Charles Ezell, Acting Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Andrew Kloster, General Counsel, U.S. Office of Personnel Management. DATE: February 4, 2025.  “On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”)… Continue Reading