Editors Note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MMAPressRoom.com or its affiliates.

“What is going on here? And why is this such a threat to the American people? Why are thousands of people calling us? It’s because of the size and significance of these payments, because it is an invasion of the privacy and security of the American people,” explains Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) during a House Oversight Committee hearing on government efficiency according to a February 18, 2025 Forbes Breaking News video titled, “Stansbury: ‘The Treasury Folks Are Saying This Is The Biggest Insider Threat They’ve Ever Seen’.”

“So (to) my colleagues across the aisle who are asking us to get out of the way and stop trying to block things in the courts, let me tell you, we do not work for an unelected billionaire like apparently this guy does,” explains Stansbury as she holds up a picture of President Donald Trump for everyone to see. “We work for the American people! So if an unelected, unvetted individual private citizen is hacking our government systems, breaking the law, firing federal employees, dismantling statutorily created agencies, withholding funds, we are going to fight you in the courts.”

“For the last several weeks I’ve been talking to Treasury and OMB officials to try to get to the bottom of why Elon Musk and his team are trying to hack the treasury payment system,” explains Stansbury. “Because this is a completely nonpartisan system that literally just pays the bills of the federal government, so why are they so eager to hack this system?

"And I have to say, over the last several weeks we have literally received thousands of calls in every single congressional office. In fact, we know that our friends across the aisle are also receiving these calls because this system pays the bills of the U.S. government. It pays our soldiers, it pays for the work that we do overseas, it pays your social security benefits, it pays your tax refunds. So why is Elon Musk and his hackers trying to access that system?”

“What is going on here?” asks Stansbury. “And why is this such a threat to the American people? Why are thousands of people calling us? It’s because of the size and significance of these payments, because it is an invasion of the privacy and security of the American people. Because it could threaten our ability as a country if there was a default in the debt ceiling; and because it contains highly classified information that our foreign adversaries are trying to cyber attack us regularly for. So why is a private citizen being given access to this system?”

All very serious questions and legitimate concerns; particularly in light of the troubling news to come out of Washington recently surrounding the disclosure of some of our nation’s most closely guarded military secrets.

“This is the New York Times report, this insane story (that broke) late last night, that the Trump administration was planning this morning, Friday morning, to give Trump’s top campaign donor the U.S. military’s detailed, highly classified operational plans that we as a country would follow if we ever went to war with China,” explains MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in a March 22, 2025 YouTube video titled, “Media reports prompt Trump to end plan to brief Musk on secret potential war plans for China.”

“Now, Elon Musk, the president’s top campaign donor is of course deeply involved with the Chinese government. He has multi-billion dollar outstanding loans with China, he not that long ago wrote a pro-China essay for the Chinese government’s censorship agency. The majority of Tesla cars now are manufactured in China,” reveals Maddow. “That is where he has his largest factory and he built that factory with direct involvement from the Chinese government.”

“It was unclear what the impetus was for providing Mr. Musk such a sensitive briefing,” continues Maddow as she reads excerpts from the New York Times report. “He is not in the military chain of command, nor is he an official advisor to Trump on military matters involving China. ... Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets.

“And here is where they switch to crayon,” explains Maddow. “’If a foreign country were to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, that country could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed against that foreign adversary.’

“If you have a war plan with a foreign country, don’t show that plan to the foreign country just in case you ever have to go to war with them,” explains Maddow as she breaks it down Barney style for the Trump administration. “Because it will mean your war plan won’t work. Get it? Do you guys get it? Do you want me to say it more slowly? I mean ‘The Times’ might as well have put it in all caps on the single page with a picture menu, right? Elon Musk is arguably more thoroughly and uncritically in bed with the Chinese government than any other business person who calls him or herself an American.

“But as of last night, according to the New York Times, Donald Trump is planning on giving him America’s most detailed military plans on how exactly we would wage war against China if we ever had to, despite his deep involvement with the Chinese government.”

Reviewing what we’ve learned thus far, the Trump administration has not only installed an unelected, unvetted de facto-president with close ties to communist China to a government position where he exercises significant, unconstitutional authority; but has also attempted to have him sit in on some of our most closely guarded military secrets in the event we go to war with China. And if that news wasn’t disturbing enough for you, there is also a simultaneous effort by those in the Trump administration to strip the very things that separate us from said authoritarian regime.

“I don’t know when it was signed because I didn’t sign it,” explains President Trump when asked about the peculiar circumstances surrounding the signing of the Alien Enemies Act in the middle of the night according to a March 25, 2025 MSNBC video titled, “’It’s really unbelievable’: Trump deportation flights takes a turn from insane to surreal.”

“So, here’s the proclamation that was sent out from the White House last weekend,” explains host Rachel Maddow as a copy of the proclamation is displayed for the viewers at home. “‘Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act by the President of the United States of America;’ this is the proclamation in which Donald Trump invoked a law from the 1700’s that says when we are at war the president can immediately deport and jail anyone his administration picks. In this case, picks as belonging to a Venezuelan criminal gang – which is something that has nothing to do with wartime.

“But regardless, they put this out and there’s Donald Trump’s signature on the proclamation. Within hours of that proclamation the Trump administration put hundreds of people on planes bound for a prison in El Salvador. And they had no legal process at all; people were just grabbed, chained and sent to a foreign prison.”

“This proclamation, that question, is ostensibly the legal underpinning for this whole deportation operation," explains Maddow. "This sending flight full’s of people to a prison in a foreign country. Trump’s denial that he ever signed it is now obviously part of the ongoing legal fight. The ACLU telling the judge in this case in its latest filing today, ‘There is now confusion as to when the proclamation was issued and whether the president signed it at all.’”

Proclamations, like executive orders, are powers which are not specifically enumerated to the president in the United States Constitution. They exist in a world where theory, actuality and reality intersect to create a legal gray zone of sorts where the executive branch exercises unilateral authority outside the bounds of our traditional system of government. When the actual President of the United States claims that he didn’t sign a highly controversial proclamation at an unprecedented time in our nations history when an unelected, de facto-president is running roughshod over Washington, D.C.; that is an “Olympus Has Fallen” moment worthy of further consideration and review.

With the Trump administrations continued disregard for the courts described by MSNBC as a declaration of war against the American people; reverse engineering many of the policies to come out of this administration in the past two-months alone paints an ugly picture which many on the right simply refuse to acknowledge. There is a significant percentage of conservative Americans loyal not to the U.S. Constitution and rule of law, but to the cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump and his mounting authoritarian regime. The government’s move to strip the right to due process of anyone it deems as a threat to national security potentially leading to a dangerous slippery slope; which is only further compounded by the outrageous proposal to field mercenaries inside the continental U.S. and an economy which increasingly appears to be purposely scuttled. All of which begs the question, “what (exactly) is going on here and why is this such a threat to the American people?”