DOGE staffers flew to California to try and release water themselves during LA fires
DOGE staffers flew to California to try and release water themselves during LA fires
The pair traveled to California after reportedly trying to pressure a top government official to open the water pump
Summary
DOGE staffers Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang tried pressuring the Bureau of Reclamation to open a California water pump to aid Los Angeles during January’s wildfires, though the system couldn’t reach the city.
When denied, they flew there to do it themselves but failed due to maintenance and access restrictions.
Critics called DOGE a “slapstick operation of 20-somethings they’re seeing as whiz kids but have zero knowledge.”
Trump later ordered dam releases, flooding farmland. Critics called DOGE’s actions reckless and uninformed.
I wish I had the confidence of a DOGE tech bro even for a week.
First, the power was off due to planned maintenance. Second, Shang wasn’t an official federal employee yet, meaning he couldn’t access the pump. Hassen couldn’t do it either, CNN reports, because he had to fly back before the power would be restored.
“They didn’t get their photo op,” an unnamed source with knowledge of the incident told CNN, adding it represented “what DOGE has been this entire time — this slapstick operation of 20-somethings they’re seeing as whiz kids but have zero knowledge.”
lol that's amazing levels of incompetence.
Anyihing where Trump or Musk are involved there's incompetence.
I wish someone would put me in a room with these losers
No shit. Little boys would be crying for their mamas.
Yelling at various department managers and threatening to call Musk might work for the agencies they’ve gutted, but yeah fucking with any fire department during an active wildfire…I don’t care who you are, you’re gonna have a bad time. Possibly shovel related.
They weren’t fucking with the fire department. They were trying to open massive water pumps (incapable of delivering water anywhere near the fires mind you) that have the capacity to flood entire towns. If you or I did that we’d be facing terrorism charges.
Reminder: pronounce DOGE as “doggy” to deny them legitimacy
Or just DGE like it would be if it were an actual bureau, DOGE is what they want because it minimizes legitimacy of government itself.
Always have been
I've been pronouncing it "doogie" because it makes it seem as silly as it is
I like your approach. It certainly makes me think of how all the people involved are like way too young.
I’m going to keep going with “doggy” because it reinforces to me how the decision making is on par with toddler logic
These Doggy stooges are sooooo freaking annoying.
If DOGE was a movie, it would be Sausage Party.
A couple of terms that need to be resurrected and put into common use during this MAGA Occupation:
Ya know when you're a teenager and you have these delusions of grandure, and think the world would work just fine if you were allowed to run it, because these "Stupid Adults don't know ANYTHING!"
That's DOGE
They look like my dad after he finds a new jacket at Costco.
Fucking morons.
Bout sums it up.
this whole organization runs exactly like a Seth Rogen / Michael Cera / Jonah Hill movie, except no one is likeable.
Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang are fascist toadies.
Imagine Bryton and Tyler showing up at your workplace in the middle of a crisis to take selfies and tweet about how they fixed your problems.
Remember how Musk talked about some absurd submarine design to safe the schoolkids that got trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, like 7 years ago?
Should have been warning sign for everyone who supported any of his businesses and political positions after that.
It feels like the plot of an episode of Parks and Rec, but like, stupider, and not funny at all
These idiots actually thought the only reason the fires were still burning is because someone hasn't opened up a faucet yet, and that no one else but them have thought of it.
failed PR attempt
Elon Musk needs to be tried and sentenced to death given the level of his crimes committed in and to the US.
There needs to be more articles like this that calls them out by name. It’s easy to name Trump and Musk, but call out the cronies too!
Too much credit is given to Trump, which means that if Trump leaves office people will think everything is fixed despite all the other people who steer Trump towards his worst impulses will still be around wreaking havoc.
Trump is 90% a figurehead for the shitty conservatives who wrote Project 2025. He didn't come up with most of this stuff, he is just going along with it. The 10% of the time things are his idea are fucking terrible too, but he definitely doesn't deserve most of the credit.
Yeah but it's MAGA's weird adoration of Trump that makes this all possible. Also Trump did say he wasn't going to do Project 2025 during the campaign. People either believed this (despite him being convicted of 34 counts of fraud) or actually wanted Project 2025.
There will always be ghouls that will want to do these kinds of things. But what needs to happen is for voters to learn that bad things happen when you vote for someone like Trump who enables this kind of thing.
The fucking idiots were not just wasting water, they were depleting the reservoirs. That water will be sorely missed in the dry season.
I would reiterate a point I have made several times that Trump has taken actions a number of times that seem to me to not be a great idea for agriculture. That's a little surprising, since agriculture is normally a Republican stronghold.
This was all by design. It’s meant to fuck over this year’s harvest and drive food prices up.
You get it.
Smart people thinking they know everything. I know plenty of preteens that are the same way. They don't seem to understand there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom.
Flying across states for a photo op? Taxpayer money well spent—if you're making satire.
🐱
F*cking idiots.
I'm telling mom
Most of us, raised by Hollywood, imagine critical infrastructure has guards and ID checks. Keys. Guys with machine guns. The last 10 years, it's pretty clear the major controls are just that no one tries. "I'm from DOGE" is going to be the penetration tester's go-to social engineering hack for the next four years. Just walk in, press the Big Red Button, and leave.
This instance shows that it is, in fact, how that works, at least in part:
Shang wasn’t an official federal employee yet, meaning he couldn’t access the pump.
No credentials, no access. Most infrastructure like this has physical security like fencing, padlocks, steel doors, and so on. I don't know if there's a break-in alarm, but even if not, they'd still have to figure out how to access the pumps and turn them on. They're probably computer-controlled, so you'd have to get access to the computer system. I'm sure you could override it on the PLC, or just plain hotwire it, but that takes a whole new set of skills.
Uncensor your fucking shit for the love of fuck
Fucking idiots
Fixed it for you
Domestic terrorist, got it
it's not about the water, it's about OBEYING them. If Trump, his oligarchs or their puppets tell you to jump you jump or ask 'how high' but don't question them and surely don't disobey them
And that's the problem. If everyone replied "fuck you, no" when ordered to jump, MAGA would be powerless. It's obedience that empowers them. Resist at every step, force them to expend all their effort on small victories. There are more of us than them and we can grind them down. They're soft.
No need to grind when they have soft, very-white underbellies.
if everyone replied 'of course sir right this way' and bagged these fuckers up or led them to fake controls not connected to anything every time they tried to pull shit shit, they would also be a lot less willing. you aren't even limited to being rude.
subtle sabotage or open athletic engagement are totally on the menu, and even the worst backlash is likely to have a much smaller body count than obeying these fucks.
as a reminder: dysfunctional decision making at this scale can and will get people killed. people are going to go hungry over this water shit. people have already died from the USAID cuts. if you obey, you are likely to be killing vulnerable people.
if you obey honestly, you are killing people. if you have been complicit in DOGE fuckery, you are guilty of manslaughter, possibly at scale, even if no court will ever convict you. your hands will never again be clean. make sure you're okay with that before you protect your job.
agree completely. I've been thinking a lot lately about why this simple defiance is so difficult for some people. I figure it's because they fear social consequences (what will people think of me as a rule breaker?!) or they fear economic consequences (I could lose my job and ability to support my family!).
what's interesting is that the solution to both reasons/excuses is having a strong social support network and solidarity with others who would help you when you stumble. modern individualism and desperation has made people so isolated and fearful of being mis-perceived and has made us less powerful to stand up for what we (collectively) know is the right thing to do.
if someone in my circle gets fired or shamed because they said "No" to a fascist, theyre going to get a lot of help if they need it. and i make sure to tell them that.
It is extremely important for people to stand up to Trump. Everyone from European nations to US federal workers to media outlets to members of congress should be opposing Trump's bullying to the maximum extent.
It's fortunate that they're so incompetent that they couldn't do any damage.
The damage was ultimately done anyways: They ordered a shitload of water released with no benefit, now the state no longer has that reserve for later, when it is actually needed.
They were never out to help anyone, this was sabotage all along. They knew it wouldn't help and they didn't care because that was never their goal.
A full department staffed by people who haven’t heard of unknown unknowns.
The problem is the effects of their actions are absolutely known, and quite predictable, as long as you can think more than 1 layer deep.
Too much fire? Easy, release all the water now!... Except we were clearly holding that water for a reason, otherwise the fucking dam wouldn't be there in the first place...
Summer is coming.... Too much fire? Thanks DODGE, Elon, Trump, Republicans.... Just murdering Americans away to make way for beautiful resorts and perfect republican white people.
They don't care. They're just out to wreck things.
I'm not clear on why they doubled down on this, when it was apparently clear that the water was not going to go where they wanted it to go?
Because they are idiots. They assume that because they might be good at one thing that they're good at everything.
It's like:
Everyone sane: "This kills the patient. Flat out."
Them: "We're willing to take that risk! Do it!"
Because the water would go where they want it to go. You just don't understand where they want it to go or why.
You think they want it to go to where the fires are. That's wrong.
They want it to go into the central valley to refill the giant lake and swamp ecosystem that used to be there.
They don't care about the short-term needs of people who need to drink or put out fires or grow crops. They are making decisions entirely from the perspective of longtermism. They see restoring the central valley's swamp ecosystem as the overwhelming long-term good, regardless of any short-term consequences.
Right idea, reckless implementation. It's also not clear that just dumping as much water as possible into the central valley is the best way to restore the swamp ecosystem. So much of the valley's hydrology and ability to retain water have been damaged since the cotton farmers drained the lake after the civil war. This is a restoration that needs to be done slowly and deliberately, both to not kill people who currently rely on that water and to manage the environmental impacts on the basin of suddenly reintroducing water that it's spent 150 years adapting to live without.
- Fly across the country to save LA from wildfires like daddy musk saving the Thai kids with an invention
- Accomplish nothing except adding to emissions with a useless flight
- L.A. is a paedo?
Assuming the justice system can function again, in theory, how much jail time could they get for tampering with infrastructure and public endangerment?
A people's justice system can be put together quickly, and can render summary judgements faster than the existing one. If the courts can't or won't clean up their act, we'll have to do it for them.
Idk, but guillotines are pretty fast and efficient.
Flooded farmland, provided 0 help to the wildfires, and now there's less water reserve for the actual agricultural season...
Genius.
Just one more thing Trump did to bring up food prices. Why did people vote for him again?
Because a sizeable chunk of our population are morons.
As revenge for having to deal with the indignity of having a Blah president, and later, his VP having one term.
Seriously, I think Obama being President broke so very many brains.
Genius.
Deliberate, treasonous sabotage.
Everyone take a look at these jeanuses.
They're not even old enough to rent a car. Wtf
Cadillac Desert should be required reading for anyone involved with California water.