Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefully removed "

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/phyllis-fong-who-was-investigating-elon-musks-brain-implant-startup-neuralink-forcefully-removed-from-office-after-refusing-termination-order/articleshow/117800543.cms

by iancmceachern • 1 year ago

263 167 1 year ago

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

llamaimperative15• 1 year ago

The specific law that Trump is very obviously breaking is the Securing Inspector General Independence Act of 2022, which says Congress must be notified 30 days in advance and given "substantive" rationale for dismissing inspectors general.

This law was passed specifically in response to Trump breaking the antecedent law, Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, during his first term.

Will the "party of law and order" do anything? Nope.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11546

Good on Ms Fong for refusing to leave.

rokkamokka• 1 year ago

Ah yes, the little known legal loophole of "nobody is going to stop me".

In all seriousness, the situation is very dire. The future does not, currently, bode well for the common man.

rqtwteye• 1 year ago

The Trump people went extremely well prepared into this. They are spamming with a ton of things, often legally questionable. They know that Congress doesn't have a backbone and lawsuits will take a very long time. It's a brilliant strategy.

madhadron• 1 year ago

Lawsuits take a very long time, but a court injunction can control which way that time is spent.

nickff3• 1 year ago

A number of (especially recent) administrations have performed a large number of legally questionable acts which were often structured in such a way as to be difficult to challenge (the CFPB comes to mind). Trump’s innovation seems to be taking this tactic to an extreme, remarkably early in this administration.

Terr_7• 1 year ago

I'm tired of congressional Republicans being treated as unmentioned bystanders in this.

Reporters should be pushing microphones in their faces asking why they approve of the latest thing Trump did, or at least what they think of him breaking laws they passed.

llamaimperative15• 1 year ago

Absolutely agreed.

anigbrowl5• 1 year ago

Reporters are doing that. But politicians in general and Republicans in particular excel at using rhetorical fallacies and other tactics to avoid answering difficult questions. Here's an example from last year where a bunch of Republicans simply booed and abused a reporter whose question they disliked: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4274345-republican-tells-...

The media has many shortcomings, but how are reporters supposed to hold accountable people who simply do not care?

r0ckarong• 1 year ago

Nothing to see here. Just a massive conflict of interest from an unelected foreigner exacting power over your government.

bmitc4• 1 year ago

An illegal immigrant at that.

jazzyjackson2• 1 year ago

It’s not illegal for the rich to pay to skip the line. (For the uninitiated, at first glance it would appear Elon was in violation of his J-1 student visa as he didn’t attend classes at Stanford, but he was swiftly employed by way of an H1-B visa and had the paperwork fast tracked through his VC-DC connections. His brother did refer to himself and Elon as illegal immigrants tho, I would say no more illegal than our First Lady.)

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread

amazingamazing3• 1 year ago

i actually have no clue - but isnt musk a u.s. citizen? it would actually surprise me if he were not.

jazzyjackson2• 1 year ago

It’s a sketchy story, he was technically in violation of his J1 visa since he was skipping classes and picked up an H1B work visa for his own startup which J1 strictly requires prior authorization for. It would seem he had some strings pulled and got post-hoc pre-authorization, or otherwise took advantage of some grace period and applied for the new visa with a fib. It’s all water under the bridge now, from a brief googling Denaturalization is rare except for cases of concealing crimes committed during naturalization or sham marriages. Lying on your application should revoke it from you but if it’s merely an omission, I don’t know, comes down to political will to prosecute, maybe if he pisses trump off enough somebody will “look into it”

monocasa• 1 year ago

She was born in Philadelphia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Fong

CalRobert• 1 year ago

I think they mean Musk

Philpax• 1 year ago

Elon Musk, however, was not.

jmye• 1 year ago

While Republicans cheer.

gdilla• 1 year ago

Lots of bros here who support this for some reason. Wait till they come for your 500K salary.

smsm422• 1 year ago

Trump was elected, and he was born in the US, though he does have German ancestry. As an immigrant myself, I personally find it very worrying though that it becomes normal to use foreign descent as a slur in the American political debate. I thought at least the left is supportive of immigrants, but looks like it's conditional on political views and no person of foreign descent can feel safe from attack because of their origin.

bmitc4• 1 year ago

Our government is literally falling in a matter of weeks. It's being assaulted, and we're all just standing by.

khazhoux7• 1 year ago

The people spoke very clearly in November: they wanted this.

Loudergood• 1 year ago

Thanks to California's incredibly slow counting system it was a lot closer in popular vote than it initially appeared.

kevstev3• 1 year ago

This is my big struggle with all of this. His first term I felt America was duped by a con man so protested and made a fuss on social media. Americans saw the first four years and astonishingly decided they wanted more of it, by a decent margin.

So while I absolutely hate what is going on right now this seems to be what the people wanted. I question each day whether that needs to be respected or we should resist.

I also wonder if his supporters have any idea of what is going on. I am sure fox news isn't covering any of this and if they are it's probably being spun in some horrific way.

Terr_7• 1 year ago

A minority spoke clearly. Many of "the people" didn't vote, and Trump got less than 50% of those that did.

watwut6• 1 year ago

Can we then openly call republican voters guilty then? Instead of pretending that people voting for that party are good people? I do agree that many wanted the harm and that is why they voted for Trump.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 year ago

I also spoke when I voted for my Senators and Congressmen/women. I voted for Congress to do their jobs.

Red_Comet_882• 1 year ago

Americans are desperate. May not be felt among the HN crowd, but standards of living in the US have been declining consistently for a long time [1]. Remember that Trump was not re-elected to a second term initially specifically because he failed to deliver on his promise of "MAGA". He instead did a Jeb Bush presidency, complete with Wall Street (Mnuchin) and the CIA (Pompeo) running the country exactly as would have occurred had Bush won. So Americans tried Biden, in the hopes of a return to Obama era America. This obviously didn't happen, as standard of living continued to decline. So they tried Trump again, in sheer desperation.

I don't see a positive future for the US, as it is so clearly a declining empire, exhibiting every textbook symptom. The startup/tech crowd loves talking about cheap phones and "services", but the reality is bleak outside of this narrow tech bubble.

1. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun24/negativity6-24.html

zardo• 1 year ago

If you look at everyone eligible to vote, the people spoke clearly in November with the same message they have for decades, "none of the above".

computerthings3• 1 year ago

Where did Trump promise to remove Phyllis Fong? Or something less specific that would translate to this? He promised to lower egg prices, and "the majority of the few people voted for Trump, so any random thing he now does is what THE AMERICAN PEOPLE wanted" is just not true.

And even if it was, to me the question isn't "did someone else want this at some point in the past, probably based on false or even no information" anyway, but how to judge it now. Sometimes people want wrong things for shitty reasons and a minority has to stand up to them standing on their principles.

TrackerFF• 1 year ago

The majority just wanted lower grocery / gas / rent.

Unfortunately they either didn't read the fine print, or concluded that it was a price they were willing to pay. I suspect it is more the former.

As Obama said, elections have consequences.

tzs2• 1 year ago

If 49.8% of the vote is the people speaking clearly, then what do you call the 50.2% of the vote that did not vote for this?

sebazzz• 1 year ago

Social media made them think that some problems were huge and these elected people would solve them, while at the same time demonizing all other media so all signals that these people are not right were effectively muted.

seanmcdirmid• 1 year ago

The people spoke very clearly in November: they wanted this.

49.8% of the people who voted wanted this.

50.2% wanted someone else to be president (but did not pass the threshold for someone other than Trump).

MrSkelter2• 1 year ago

Where do you get that from? Huge numbers didn’t vote. Of those who did Trump squeaked by with a small lead but significantly less than 50% of the populace voted for him.

He has no mandate.

zfg• 1 year ago

Hitler got rid of Germany's democracy in 53 days:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-ger...

Maybe Musk and Trump can beat his record.

Hikikomori3• 1 year ago

So a false flag and then martial law, maybe after taking over most law enforcement? The project 2025 leader did say that the next revolution remain bloodless if the left allows it to be. Maybe this is what the 2nd amendment was for.

sleazy_b• 1 year ago

One thing you can do is shun employees of associated companies (Amazon, Tesla, Facebook) and refuse to give them a job. That requires some sacrifice though.

agieocean2• 1 year ago

Not everyone's standing by I've been working on hardened long range communications for cheap so the people that need it can have it. But thats just me, there's tons of people fighting back but those stories don't tend to make the news because it spits in the face of the prevailing narrative that people want this.

mauflows• 1 year ago

Have any more details on this?

I_dream_of_Gen1• 1 year ago

I have to laugh at the trump administration idiocy with saying they are removing "these rogue, partisan bureaucrats", when, clearly, she's been there through 6 administrations... SMH.

llamaimperative15• 1 year ago

Propaganda. Propaganda is the term you're looking for. Nothing idiotic about it, except the hordes of people willingly buying into it (including "smart" people on this very forum!)

darkwater• 1 year ago

The US is starting to look like Berlusconi's Italy 30 years ago in this regard... The only difference is that Berlusconi was Italian and could be elected, when politicians were not obeying as he expected.

callamdelaney• 1 year ago

Uh what? If I got fired from a private company security would also remove me

llamaimperative15• 1 year ago

I guess one minor distinction is the piece of legislation Congress passed that outlines the specific process for firing Fong, which was not followed, whereas I assume you have no such protection on your job?

Just a minor distinction though!

mindslight• 1 year ago

This mistaken belief that government works like a corporation is the essence of fascism. Corporations are inherently authoritarian, government should not be. The entire point of bureaucracy is that supreme power should not vest into one person, but rather be divided amongst many people and mediated by a system of rules.

anigbrowl5• 1 year ago

If you were at a private company there would probably not be a rule that the board (qua Congress) had to be given 30 days notice of your termination, with documentation of cause.

JumpCrisscross• 1 year ago

US is starting to look like Berlusconi's Italy 30 years ago

Call a spade a spade. It’s looking like South Africa. Our government has been coöpted by South African patronage politics.

Terr_7• 1 year ago

The US is starting to look like Berlusconi's Italy 30 years ago in this regard...

Ever since 2016, I've been offering these small apologies to the people of Italy when the subject comes up online.

Before, I wondered what was wrong with them for such a blatant crook stay in power, confident that It Couldn't Happen Here.

NicoJuicy• 1 year ago

US is becoming a banana republic

fuzztester9• 1 year ago

becoming? past tense is more like it. also Google your own term in Wikipedia to see the history of it.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 year ago

This extreme cynicism is part of what got us here. People have made this cynicism manifest. They're making the government of their imaginations real.

fuzztester9• 1 year ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42913081

apples_oranges• 1 year ago

I thought this was to be the American century, now I'm just fascinated and wonder what it will be instead.

projektfu2• 1 year ago

The Chinese century, if I had to bet.

drowsspa• 1 year ago

Brazilians were joking "welcome to CONMEBOL, South Korea" when their president tried that coup. I guess the US wants to join in as well

(CONMEBOL being South America's soccer/football association)

burgerrito• 1 year ago

Oh, Banana Co...

smitty1e6• 1 year ago

I gather that I'm further right than much of the HN crowd, having been on the edge of the Tea Party movement &c.

The presence of the Citrus Caesar and the billionaire boys is due to substantial, ongoing problems. The U.S. Government, like any code base, has accrued much cruft over the last century. Whether or not DJT has any lasting positive effect isn't knowable yet.

The risk of this current course being a cure worse than the disease is substantial. The two things to keep in mind in any case are:

- trust, but verify

- look for the substantive reform, not lipstick on the pig

llamaimperative15• 1 year ago

A third thing to keep in mind: law is law and must be followed.

smitty1e6• 1 year ago

That's an excellent going-in position. Given sufficient complexity and overlap, frictions arise. Hence all of the allegations and lawsuits and appeals and so forth.

The voters are the ultimate judge, and typically end up with a government that reflects them, warts and all.

projektfu2• 1 year ago

Sure, fine, whatever. However, when you fire all the inspectors general, without any evidence that they're being bribed, you're basically saying that you're planning corruption. The whole purpose of the position is to make sure the government is doing its job and firing them sends a signal that you are putting the watchdog role in a political light.

malfist• 1 year ago

What part of the cure is illegally firing someone who was investigating you for a valid, non political reason?

There's no cure in that, just corruption.

arctek• 1 year ago

Except that nothing is illegal now, Biden showed that with blanket pardons. So for all intents and purposes they will do what they like and Trump can just wipe it clean at the end.

watwut6• 1 year ago

They are looking to kill the pig, eat the meat, blame women, trans and minorities for no one else being able to benefit from the pig anymore. And then their supporters will consider themselves primary victims and blame everyone except themselves and people they voted for for harm caused to them too.

dralley• 1 year ago

- look for the substantive reform, not lipstick on the pig

Mitch McConnell made it his personal mission to prevent "substantive reform" of any kind from being passed through the Senate.

fuzztester9• 1 year ago

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/phy...

hmmm. let's see ...

$ echo "Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Elon Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink, "forcefully removed from office" after refusing termination order" | ...

oh, never mind.

I'm too lazy to write the regex for getting this output from the above input:

Elon Musk's brain implant forcefully removed after termination order

shitter2• 1 year ago

  echo "Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Elon Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink, "forcefully removed from office" after refusing termination order" | sed -E "s/Phyllis Fong, who was investigating (.*) startup Neuralink,(.*) from office(.*) refusing/\1\2\3/"

fuzztester9• 1 year ago

there may be a bug in your sed

mellosouls• 1 year ago

Less annoying web page here, same story:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/29/usda-inspect...

sho_hn3• 1 year ago

Are there any good blogs that are chronicling the USA Federal gov's slow descent into facism and overt corruption, just collecting and archiving pieces like this with a classiciation/categorization etc.?

I think it's an unprecedented opportunity to record the history of a downfall using modern tools, and future generations might benefit enormously.

When I learned about the disruption of the Weimar Republic in highschool, a thing our teacher did was make copious use of newspaper clippings to explain the delta between ground truth and public sentiment, and how certain narratives increased in frequency, etc. He had personally spent quite some time in old archives and on microfilm readers to create his little library. Something like this, but with much more data.

A friend of mine did her master's in political science on crawling data in Islamic extremist social media cycles and trying to correlate activity there with a dataset on terrorist events, trying to find out if you could anticipate them somehow.

This is a loose collection of thoughts, but I think there's something there in the signal.

anigbrowl5• 1 year ago

There's lots of them, but I respectfully submit that doing something about it in the present - whatever you determine that to be, given your skills and inclinations - is a far higher priority than the educational byproduct for future generations.

Using your Weimar example, I would not argue that Germany or humanity is/are better off for having gone through the cataclysm of WW2. In terms of building context, you might find it helpful to read this dry but very detailed examination of the nazi administrative state, and how it delivered economic resources to its political clients through a combination of reorganization, financial engineering, and striaght-up theft:

https://archive.org/details/hitlersbeneficia00alyg

On a more abstract level, try 'The logic of political survival' by Smith & Bueno de Mesquita. both books will give you a useful framework within which to assess the contextual significance of ongoing news events.

sho_hn3• 1 year ago

Thanks!

I also think this is a good summary for those who had never heard of Weimar before: https://archive.is/xh2Ci

But like most summaries, it suffers a bit from focusing on the key events, and not capturing this sort of ... change in the ambient noise floor, and what relationship the average citizen had to what was going on, and what perception of events. I think it's the "Would you have been able to tell that it'd get this bad?" is kind of the more interesting part. A political weather forecasting model, if you will.

meltyness• 1 year ago

On the contrary, there used to be "the spoils system." I'm just a sideline listener but I think that's an appropriate lens to look at this through rather than some severe negative, or dangerously harmful trend.

I think trying to bar such a system simply would make the same things covert.

izabera• 1 year ago

slow?

Modified3019• 1 year ago

When I learned about the disruption of the Weimar Republic in highschool, a thing our teacher did was make copious use of newspaper clippings to explain he delta between ground truth and public sentiment, and how certain narratives increased in frequency, etc. He had personally spent quite some time in old archives and on microfilm readeers to create his little library. Something like this, but with much more data.

That sounds interesting. Wish it had been converted into a blogpost or something for more permanence.

pbronez• 1 year ago

Check out KeepTrack

https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/

Also has a Patreon

sho_hn3• 1 year ago

Thanks!

plastic-enjoyer• 1 year ago

I think it's an unprecedented opportunity to record the history of a downfall using modern tools, and future generations might benefit enormously.

Well, the German atrocities of the Third Reich are well-documented and we are probably just a few years behind the U.S.

The best documentary won't help to prevent backsliding into superstition and barbarism if people don't believe them.

On the other hand, the history of downfall is basically self-documenting itself in real-time and people still don't believe it because people simply don't care about things that don't fit into their ideological borders or their perception of reality.

Truth doesn't exist anymore and thus anything that relies on truth.

anon84873628• 1 year ago

IMO the LegalEagle YouTube channel has done a fantastic job:

https://youtube.com/@legaleagle

They explain the laws in question (often with historical context of their creation), answer common procedural questions, separate the facts of the case from political rhetoric & misinformation, and give an objective analysis of possible outcomes. They are certainly not unbiased, but in the "we are biased against criminal behavior" way.

likeabatterycar• 1 year ago

Nice truncating the title and removing context.

If you got fired from literally any private sector company and refused to leave your office, security would escort you out immediately.

anigbrowl5• 1 year ago

Except that the rules about firing public officials and inspector generals in particular are different, by law. Accusing the headline writers of omitting context while ignoring that key difference makes your comment reek of hypocrisy.

iancmceachern• 1 year ago

Title was trimmed to fit into the character limits imposed by HN. I did my best to preserve meaning.

amazingamazing3• 1 year ago

I wonder about the purpose of many of these actions. Since they’re done via EOs they can easily be reversed.

nico2• 1 year ago

If this continues, it won’t be easy to track and revert 4 years of EOs. And it will be impossible to undo all the consequences

amazingamazing3• 1 year ago

They’re literally all on the White House site in order.

jacobjjacob2• 1 year ago

Maybe it will be an opportunity to “build back better”, like in 2021. However, that’s assuming he actually leaves office which is not a given.

therealcamino• 1 year ago

The purpose of firing Inspectors General en masse is so that there are no independent overseers to investigate illegal or corrupt actions within the executive branch during your term in office.

Reversing it four years later is just too late.

93po• 1 year ago

Title makes it sound like she was in an Neuralink office and physically shoved out the door. The non-clickbait version is that she is in the same agency that started a Neuralink investigation (due to perceive conflicts of interest in its board) and her dismissal has zero substantive connection to neuralink or elon.

Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Neuralink, "forcefully removed "

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