TV News LIES

Russell Vought, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ordered staffers at the agency to stop all work in an email Saturday night.

"I am committed to implementing the President's policies, consistent with the law, and acting as a faithful steward of the Bureau's resources," Vought wrote in the email reviewed by USA TODAY. "Effective immediately, unless expressly approved by the Acting Director or required by law, all employees, contractors and other personnel of the bureau shall … cease all supervision and examination activity."

Employees were also directed not to start or continue investigations, to stop existing investigations, not to approve or issue any proposed rules or guidance and not to issue any public communications.

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Way back in 2019, Steve Bannon, then a Trump consigliere, outlined in a TV interview a strategy for managing information. “The opposition party is the media,” he said, “And because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time… All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang.”

Since his re-election, Donald Trump has been following this script to the letter, and the media, not to mention the entire world, are feeling punch-drunk. Which is, as Bannon pointed out, enabling other members of the Trump crew to get their stuff done. Really bad stuff too, to which the world has not been paying enough attention.

A federal judge in an overnight ruling Saturday blocked Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems used to dole out trillions of dollars each year.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer’s ruling is more extensive than the agreement the administration reached earlier in the week to temporarily limit access to two DOGE personnel.

Engelmayer blocked the Treasury Department from providing access to anyone “other than civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.” It explicitly prohibits special government employees and those detailed from outside the department.

He also ordered anyone who is now blocked to immediately destroy any material they’ve already downloaded.

The ruling is only temporary. It will last until at least Friday, when another judge, who is permanently overseeing the case brought by 19 Democratic state attorneys general, will hold a hearing in New York about whether to grant a longer pause.

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