Good morning. It is February 4th. It is a sunny morning in New York City where the endlessly yo-yoing temperature is starting another swing from mild to cold. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Wired is reporting that a 25-year-old engineer working for Elon Musk, who has worked for Elon Musk's companies before, has administrator access to the government's payment automation manager and secure payment system. The New York Times last night in trying to catch up to Wired's coverage of Team Musk's rampage through the federal government cited White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt as saying that the access Musk's team had was “read only.” Wired's reporting has exactly the opposite. “You could do anything with these privileges, says one source with knowledge of the system,” who adds that they cannot conceive of a reason that anyone would need them for purposes of simply hunting down fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow. So, somebody's wrong here. Is it the people who've been iteratively reporting on the beat, as Elon Musk sets out to demolish government operations in which Musk has made it clear that his goal is to choke off federal payments through these systems? Or is it the people who wrote down what Donald Trump's White House press secretary told them, and then moved on to the next topic. It could be the latter. It's not as if Elon Musk has never lied about his access to technology and his capability of carrying out a plan. But it would be a little strange if he'd forced out everyone who stands between him and these systems and then settled for a read-only access. I guess we'll figure it out years from now from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, or in a few days, if social security checks stop showing up.

Speaking of writing down what the Trump administration says, the lead story on the print edition of the New York Times this morning is, “ALLIES STEP BACK FROM THE BRINK OF A TRADE WAR / TRUMP DELAYS TARIFFS / Mexico and Canada Vow to Stem Flow of Drugs and Migrants.”

“President Trump,” the Times writes, “on Monday delayed his planned tariffs on Canada and Mexico for 30 days after winning concessions from both countries to stem the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States, postponing, at least temporarily, a painful and potentially destabilizing trade war.” Note the direct cause and effect declaration that the steps being taken by Canada and Mexico are going to stem the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States, which bakes in the premise that our northern and southern neighbors could have done this already, but needed Donald Trump to stir them to action, but then go back one more step to the part where the Times describes Donald Trump as winning concessions. After the jump, the Times writes of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “‘I just had a good call with President Trump,’ Mr. Trudeau said in a social media post. He said Canada would push ahead with its $1 billion border reinforcement plan, which had been previously announced, deploy additional technology and personnel and appoint a fentanyl czar.” At least one of these concessions then was to go ahead and do something that they were doing before Trump announced the tariffs to make into it. Likewise, when it comes to Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum, the Times writes, “Mexico agreed to deploy 10,000 additional troops who would be designated to stop the flow of migrants and illegal drugs across the US-Mexico border. Ms. Scheinbaum said the United States would help to stanch the movement of guns over the border to Mexico.” So instead of Trump threatening tariffs and exacting concessions from Mexico, Trump threatened tariffs, Mexico threatened counter tariffs and each side gave the other side concessions, including concessions on the wildly under reported and underrated problem of the United States gun industry providing the essential supply of lethal power to Mexican cartels that allows the United States to complain that violence is out of control there. 

Next to that is a news analysis piece. “U.S. Economy May Pay Price Under Tariffs / Powerful Weapon Has a Formidable Recoil.” This one repeats the one-sided account of Trump exacting concessions from Canada and Mexico, but then also notes that the China tariffs did go into effect on schedule. 

Next to that comes a peculiar use of framing. “Guantánamo Bay Braces for a Surge of Migrants.” Most of the time when people write about a surge of migrants, they're referring to people migrating into a particular place in large numbers. Whereas here, what the Times is talking about is the forcible transfer of migrants from where they were trying to migrate to, to the concentration camp that Trump is constructing at Guantanamo Bay, where he plans to imprison up to 30,000 people, in tents, in an outpost outside the reach of the law. Again, that's the number three story on the page. 

Next to it is, “C.D.C. BRINGS BACK FILES FROM PURGE / Material Deleted in a Ban on ‘Gender Ideology’” 

“On Friday,” the Times writes, “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention purged from its website thousands of pages that included terms such as transgender, LGBT, and pregnant person to comply with an executive order barring any material that promoted gender ideology. By Monday, some of the pages had reappeared, in part in response to intense media coverage, backlash from the scientific community, and concern for the public's health, according to a senior official with knowledge of the matter.” Well, that's relief. 

And then you take the jump to page A-19, and next to that is the story, “Thousands of federal web pages taken down following Trump orders targeting diversity.”

“More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites,” the Times writes, “have been taken down since Friday afternoon. A New York Times analysis is found as federal agencies rushed to heed President Trump's orders targeting diversity initiatives and ‘gender ideology.’” Partly, this is another problem with the Times not caring to reconcile stories in the print edition with one another. As the first example in this story is the CDC material. But then there are 3000 pages from the Census Bureau, more than 1000 pages from the Office of Justice Programs, more than 200 pages from Head Start, 180 from the Department of Justice, 150 pages from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 100 pages from the FDA, on and on down to two pages from the Marshall's service, one linking to a revision of correctional facility standards and another linking to the department's fitness readiness program. 

Down at the bottom of the page is a story about New York Attorney General Letitia James pointing out to the hospitals that have cut off trans healthcare to young people up to and including legally adult 18 year olds that just because the president of the United States has put out a blatantly discriminatory executive order that doesn't convey any power to violate New York State's anti-discrimination laws, as NYU Langone appears to have done when it started canceling appointments. 

Elsewhere in the annals of presidential overreach, on page A20, the headline is, “Judge Says She Will Further Block Federal Spending Freeze.” How do you “further block” something when a block is by nature a binary sort of action? Well, what the Times is describing is more of a reiteration by the judge that Trump's spending freeze is legally not in effect, even as the administration continues to ignore the law and withhold funds. 

On page A21, the headline is “Top FBI Agent in New York Defiant After Removals.” 

“The top agent at the FBI's New York field office, the Times writes, vowed in a defiant email to his staff to ‘dig in’ after the Trump administration targeted officials involved in the investigations into the January 6th attack and praised the Bureau's interim leaders for defending its independence. ‘Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy,’ wrote James E. Dennehy, a veteran and highly respected agent who has run the largest and arguably the most important field office in the bureau since September.

“At least nine high-ranking officials,” The Times writes, “been forced out since Mr. Trump's inauguration, plunging the Bureau into confusion. Mr. Dennehy wrote, those removals had spread “fear and angst within the FBI ranks.” 

“That sense of dread,” the Times continues, “was stoked by a remarkable questionnaire sent to Bureau employees, asking them to describe what, if any, role they had in investigating and prosecuting January 6th rioters. The form requires the employees to say if they collected evidence, provided support services, interviewed witnesses, executed search warrants or testified at trial. Basic activities of FBI employees during the normal and lawful course of their duties. They had until 3 p.m. Monday to complete the forms, Trump's acting FBI director wrote to employees. ‘We do not view anyone's identification on the list as an indicator of any misconduct,’ adding” the Times writes that “we are still working with DOJ to better understand the purpose for which the list is being sought.’” An extremely diplomatic use of “understand,” there.

And, on the next page the Times takes a whack at the problem of open unapologetic racism from the highest officials of the Trump administration “Racist undertones surface in Trump's attacks on diversity.” A surfacing undertone would not be under anything anymore, which just makes it a tone. 

That is the news Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep our podcasting going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Please keep those coming. And if nothing too logistically unexpected happens, we'll talk again tomorrow.