How Long Has This Been Going On? And Other Severance Questions.

 

 

 

By Brian Grubb,

 

There are roughly 600 more important issues to cover from the ORTBO, but the TV on the cliff is breaking me a little. .

Seven Severance Questions is a weekly attempt to digest the events of one of television’s twistiest shows by highlighting the weirdest, most confusing, and most important unresolved issues after each episode. There will be theories. Many will be unhinged.

Severance is just under halfway through its second season, and the show has flipped itself on its head no fewer than three times. Maybe four? First, it was the MDR team returning after the Waffle Party Rebellion of season one. Then, it was the Outie reveal from the second episode that showed how everything in the premiere came to be. Mark underwent the reintegration procedure. Helly’s Outie has been — surprise! — traipsing around as her Innie, possibly as a mole and possibly on a hunt for love and probably a little of both. Milchick drives a motorcycle. Cobel listens to the Stone Roses. You can be forgiven if you’re swimming a little bit here.

At some point, hopefully sooner than later, the show will have to pay off a few of the mysteries it takes great pleasure in introducing. It probably will. Again, we’re still in the front half of this season and everyone is still trying to grapple with what unfolded in the season-one finale. But for right now, it’s fun to zoom out and look at this from a satellite in space. Severance is the kind of show where the characters can be transported to the wilderness for an Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence — ORTBO, which sounds like something Ricken would name a dog — where all sorts of supernatural things happen and a child operates an open-flame grill and … it feels normal? That’s still pretty cool. The answers can wait, at least a little bit longer. For now, it’s more fun to ask the questions.

Speaking of which …

How long has Helly been an impostor?

There was a school of thought back at the beginning of this season that Helly R. had gone back to the severed floor as her Outie, Helena Eagan, and was down there to spy on the rebellious MDR team on behalf of Lumon. I considered it at the time but pushed it aside both because I did not want to come in too hot after the first episode in a few years (“WELCOME BACK EVERYONE IS FAKE AND/OR ROBOTS”) and because I figured the whole undertaking would require too many leaps. It would mean Helena — an heiress and executive, not a seasoned undercover operative, as far as we know — would need to study closely everything Helly did and knew so as not to trigger the suspicions of the already suspicious co-workers who knew her Innie self better than she did. It would mean that the look in her eyes when she saw Helly R. kiss Mark was not just jealousy that her Innie had discovered a personal connection she couldn’t grasp in her tightly wound real life but also, possibly, the flickers of an infatuation that could smash the severed and non-severed worlds together in a way that gets progressively yuckier as you think about it. It seemed like, frankly, a lot.

What I did not consider, though, and this is admittedly on me, is that maybe she’d just do it and be bad at it and blow her cover a few episodes later by being mean to Irv at a spooky wilderness retreat and get herself almost drowned in an icy creek after having sex in a tent with Mark. Let’s go ahead and call that an oopsie on my end.

The implications for this going forward make my head hurt a little, in more of a good way than a “just had an experimental brain procedure done on me in a makeshift lab” way. A lot of it depends on how the Glasgow Block works. Is it something that has been flipped on and off before? Is it something they can keep flipping on and off going forward? How do Dylan and Mark — especially Mark, holy heck — explain any of this to Helly’s Innie? Can they ever trust her Innie going forward? Does the Glasgow Block work with other severed employees, or was that an Eagan special? I could go on. I probably will on my own.

The bigger issue is that this makes two episodes in a row that ended with series-altering twists. I genuinely have no clue where things go from this point. It’s kind of exciting.

 

On a scale of 1–10, how messed up is Mark going to be after this?

I’m tempted to say 10. It’s hard to imagine things getting weirder than “the wife he thought was dead could be alive as part of a wide-ranging conspiracy led by the company he allowed to perform a weird brain procedure on him that he just had a possibly disgraced scientist reverse in a creaky lab before learning that the work crush he just hooked up with in a tent was actually a high-level executive at the same company who was doing subterfuge and also might be obsessed with him.” But I also didn’t see any of that coming when I started watching this show. Let’s go ahead and put him at an 8 just to leave ourselves room to go up from here.

There’s also the question of how much the reintegration procedure complicates things. We haven’t gotten much clarification on that beyond Mark glitching out in the tent for a second. Does his Innie know what his Outie knows? Or does his Outie know what his Innie knows, or both or neither? There is so much up in the air right now.

The only thing I know for certain is that I would like to watch a soapy Good Wife–style network procedural that exists inside the world of Severance and follows a team of attractive employment lawyers just filing lawsuits as fast as they can over all of this.

This was all probably pretty weird for Milchick, too, right?

I don’t know why I’m going soft on Milchick all of a sudden. He really hasn’t given me a great reason to. All he’s done this season is manipulate people and do that ominous look he does and waste some marshmallows. But still, there I was, thinking back on this season and feeling kind of bad for him.

The events of the first season were weird enough, having to “supervise” the Eagan heiress after she was severed. But then in this episode, he knew it was really her and still had to keep up appearances as she laughed at his campfire story and make Miss Huang heave those perfectly good marshmallows into the flames. Just once I would like to see him drink a bottle or two of wine and tell someone what he really thinks about any of this.

I would also like to see the rest of the clothes he owns. Between the turtlenecks and leather jacket from earlier in the season and this week’s incredible white parka, the man has really stepped his game up from short-sleeve dress shirts and neckties. Show me that closet and get him a little drunk. These feel like reasonable requests.

Have we seen the last of Irv?

On one hand: If you’re gonna go out, tough to go out harder than almost freezing to death in the woods, having a dream about spooky ghost brides working next to your crush, and exposing your co-worker as a secret Eagan who was sent to spy on you and/or seduce your colleague.

On the other hand: Outie Irv still has business to attend to. And Burt was snooping on him at that pay phone a while ago, so there’s more meat on that bone too. And it would make me sad if we lost Irv.

Here is my theory based on absolutely nothing: Reintegrated Mark finds Outie Irv and they work on the secret hallway thing together.

How did the TV on the cliff work?

There are roughly 600 more important issues to cover from the ORTBO. This doesn’t rank above something like Why does the MDR team have weird doppelgängers who pop up to point toward things ominously? Or even Do you think, inside the universe of Severance, that really is the world’s tallest waterfall?

This is the one that’s breaking me a little, though. I assume it’s one of those situations where your brain gets overwhelmed by more complicated matters so it zeroes in on something stupid. It’s not like this is the oddest technological conundrum we’ve seen on this show. It might not be the oddest one from this episode, actually. That honor might go to the working light on the wall of the Scissor Cave where they found the new appendix. But still: How did the TV work with no cords or outlets up there on that desolate cliff?

I swear to god, if any of you say “batteries,” I will heave your dessert into the fire.

Do you ever wonder if Kier was just some pompous bozo like Ricken and things kind of got out of control after a while?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Between Natalie talking with Ricken about editing his book to be more employee friendly for Lumon and the ridiculous Kier excerpts we heard this week, the parallels are fun to explore. Like, imagine the first group of people who read some of the things Kier wrote and tell me it’s that different from the people at Ricken’s reading.

I choose to believe there’s a world many generations out from the one we’re watching now where Ricken is regarded as a Kier-like god, complete with a series of oil paintings. I suspect Ricken chooses to believe this too.

Which of these phrases used in the episode would make the best band name?

Scissor Cave
Woe’s Hollow
The Night Gardeners
Luxury Meats
Chaos’ Whore
The Glasgow Block

The answer is the Night Gardeners. It’s not particularly close. I bet Cobel listens to them in her car.

• 
  

 

Artur Barrio, mestre na arte da contestação, faz 80 anos: 'Minha obra aí está, e o tempo dirá como fica'

 

 

 

 Por Nelson Gobbi

Após se mudar com a família da cidade do Porto, em Portugal, para o Rio de Janeiro, em 1955, Artur Barrio se dedicou ao desenho, ainda que não gostasse do resultado (“Fazia umas garatujas horríveis. Meu irmão mais velho é que desenhava imensamente bem, mas não quis seguir carreira artística.”) Dez anos depois, começou a produzir seus primeiros trabalhos e, em 1967, entrou para a Escola de Belas Artes (EBA) da UFRJ, tornando-se, nos anos seguintes, um dos nomes de referência da arte brasileira.

Aos 80 anos, completados neste sábado (1º), Barrio volta ao desenho como meio de expressão. É a obras em preto e branco em nanquim sobre papel que ele dedica seu tempo, seja em seu ateliê na Lapa, seja no barco ancorado na Marina da Glória onde mora desde 2022 com a mulher, a fotógrafa Cristina Motta.

‘É hora de desenhar’

Entre o início da carreira e o momento atual, Barrio desenvolveu uma das produções mais radicais e inclassificáveis da arte brasileira, com obras de natureza efêmera criadas a partir de materiais orgânicos, a exemplo de sua célebre série de “Trouxas ensanguentadas” — objetos de tecido embalando carnes, ossos, dejetos, cabelos, plástico — ou com trabalhos performáticos, em arte postal e instalações. 

Atualmente, obras suas podem ser vistas pelo público carioca na Casa Roberto Marinho, na exposição “Geometria inquieta”, do conterrâneo Ascanio MMM (o desenho em nanquim “Projeto 4 pedras”, de 1977), e na coletiva “Formas das águas”, recém-inaugurada no Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) do Rio, na qual apresenta a instalação o “Artur Barrio e a física enquanto arte” (2018-2024).

— Já há algum tempo me dedico aos desenhos, que são menos formais, trazendo alguns pensamentos escritos. Em termos de instalações, acho que cheguei a um limite, e tentar ultrapassá-lo é muito complexo para mim — conta Barrio. — Então sinto que é hora de desenhar, de algo mais íntimo. O desenho é o princípio de tudo, ao menos para mim, e a espontaneidade dele me permite essa reflexão. E tem um lado poético, que posso extravasar através da escrita.

Artur Barrio no MAM do Rio — Foto: Leo Martins

No mesmo MAM que agora expõe sua instalação, e onde frequentava junto a outros artistas nos anos 1960, Barrio participou do “Salão da Bússola” em 1969, marco da arte conceitual no Brasil, ao lado de nomes como Cildo Meireles, Antonio Manuel, Anna Bella Geiger, Guilherme Vaz, Luiz Alphonsus e Thereza Simões.

— Não consigo me ver como um artista conceitual, nem acho que no Brasil exista uma arte conceitual nos moldes da americana ou da inglesa. Há um conceito ligado ao contexto do trabalho, que depois se expande e vira outra coisa — avalia Barrio. — Sempre fiquei à parte, meu trabalho é muito contraditório, anárquico, até brutal. É um pouco da forma que compreendi o mundo por meio dos contrastes do Rio, entre a sua beleza e sua natureza humana.

No “Salão da Bússola”, Barrio expôs pela primeira vez suas “Trouxas ensanguentadas”, que se relacionavam diretamente com a situação de sequestros, mortes e torturas dos presos políticos durante a ditadura militar. Em outras coletivas importantes para a arte conceitual brasileira, em 1970, ele deu sequência à série: em “Do corpo à Terra”, em Belo Horizonte (MG), 14 obras foram deixadas no leito do Rio Arrudas, que corta a capital mineira, onde foram confundidas com “desovas” reais de corpos; já na “Information”, realizada no MoMA de Nova York meses depois, foram apresentados registros da ação.

— Tinha, obviamente, uma abordagem política ali, tive amigos da Belas Artes que desapareceram. Mas eram obras que também falavam de um contexto da História da Arte, como o corpo insepulto em “Antígona”, de Sófocles, os fuzilamentos do “Três de maio de 1808”, do Goya, os “Os cantos de Maldoror”, do Conde de Lautréamont — detalha o artista.

Apresentadas no Salão da Bússula, em 1969, as 'Trouxas ensanguentadas' eram relacionadas à tortura e à morte de presos políticos — Foto: Divulgação

Outra série icônica de Barrio a utilizar material orgânico foi seu “Livro de carne” — pedaços de carne cortados em sequência, no formato de páginas, que tinham de ser substituídos a cada três dias, quando começavam a apodrecer. Apresentado em 1978, em Paris, onde o artista residia na época, e exibido na 24ª Bienal de São Paulo, em 1998, o trabalho antecede em décadas a experiência conceitual de Maurizio Cattelan de levar para o ambiente expositivo um alimento real, com sua putrefação sendo parte da obra. No caso do italiano, uma banana foi escolhida como base de “Comedian”, que teve um de seus múltiplos arrematado por US$ 6,2 milhões (R$ 36,4 milhões) num leilão da Sotheby’s em novembro do ano passado.

— Isso aí é o mundo hoje, não ligo para isso. Vivi o meu momento lá atrás, quando estava em Paris e tive que explicar com detalhes ao açougueiro como cortar a carne como páginas — recorda Barrio. — Se pensasse em dinheiro, teria seguido o trajeto da família, que era de industriais em Portugal. Poderia ter sido um empresário de médio ou pequeno porte, não sei, e ganharia a vida de forma mais fácil. Mas faltaria esse lado anárquico, poético, dos que arriscaram tudo.

Dedicação na montagem

Diretor artístico do MAM e curador de “Formas das águas”, ao lado de Raquel Barreto, curadora do museu, Pablo Lafuente conheceu o projeto de “Artur Barrio e a física enquanto arte” em 2023, quando expôs alguns dos cadernos do artista por conta dos 75 anos da instituição. Ao pensar em uma exposição relacionada à Baía de Guanabara, o curador lembrou da instalação, que cria um sistema onde a água do mar é purificada, passando por uma sequência de recipientes, com inspiração vinda da experiência de Barrio em viver numa casa sobre as águas.

— A obra do Barrio, como ele próprio, se opõe às estruturas de poder, questiona os processos, inclusive dos ambientes institucionais que ele ocupa. É um trabalho com visceralidade, urgência, mas, ao mesmo tempo, não se apresenta da maneira que as pessoas esperam de uma obra de arte. Não é uma obra que se abre de cara, é preciso se engajar com ela — analisa Lafuente. — E o mais lindo era vê-lo vários dias durante a montagem, mexendo na instalação, ajustando detalhes, com uma atenção muito grande à materialidade da peça. Isso é raro num artista canônico como ele.

‘Livro de carne’: criada nos anos 1970, obra foi mostrada na 24ª Bienal de SP — Foto: Divulgação/Galeria Millan

Enquanto trabalha em seus desenhos, Barrio aguarda a confirmação de possíveis individuais no exterior, em Espanha, Portugal e Bélgica, para 2026. Sem olhar para trás, garante, o artista se diz feliz por seguir produzindo.

— Cá estamos aos 80 anos, nunca pensei em chegar a essa idade. Muitos amigos já se foram, muita gente da família, mas há sempre mais algo a fazer antes de ir embora. Quero velejar, mergulhar, quero criar, jogar xadrez todos os dias para a cabeça ainda se manter. Não tenho receio do amanhã. Minha obra aí está, e o tempo dirá como fica. O maior problema mesmo é apagar 80 velas — diverte-se. 

GLOBO 

Crumbling down

 

HEATHER COX

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

 

A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System

 

 

By Vittoria Elliott Dhruv Mehrotra Leah Feiger Tim Marchman

WIRED

 

A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.

Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.

Despite reporting that suggests that Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has access to these Treasury systems on a “read-only” level, sources say Elez, who has visited a Kansas City office housing BFS systems, has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.

“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.

"Technically I don't see why this couldn't happen," a federal IT worker tells WIRED in a phone call late on Monday night, referring to the possibility of a DOGE employee being granted elevated access to a government server. "If you would have asked me a week ago, I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the fuck knows."

A source says they are concerned that data could be passed from secure systems to DOGE operatives within the General Services Administration. WIRED reporting has shown that Elon Musk’s associates—including Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter’s offices as Musk acquired the company, and Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who now runs a GSA agency, along with a host of extremely young and inexperienced engineers—have infiltrated the GSA and have attempted to use White House security credentials to gain access to GSA tech, something experts have said is highly unusual and poses a huge security risk.

Elez, according to public databases and other records reviewed by WIRED, is a 25-year-old who graduated Rutgers University in 2021 and subsequently worked at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, where he focused on vehicle telemetry, starship software, and satellite software. Elez then joined X, Musk’s social media company, where he worked on search AI. Public Github repositories show years of software development, with a particular interest in distributed systems, recommendation engines, and machine learning. He does not appear to have prior government experience.

Elez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Got a Tip?

Are you a current or former employee at the Treasury or Bureau of the Fiscal Service? Or other government tech worker? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporters securely on Signal at velliott88.18, dmehro.89, leahfeiger.86, and timmarchman.01.

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Broadly speaking, the US government pays out money in one of two ways. Agencies like the Department of Defense and the US Postal Service are legally authorized to originate, certify, and issue payments on their own. The vast majority of payments, though—including federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veteran’s pay—flow through the Federal Disbursement Services, which according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service, a nonpartisan body, is charged with directing this money appropriately, moving it from government accounts to recipients. The Payment Automation Manager and the Secure Payment System are the mechanisms through which the money is paid out.

Control of those mechanisms could allow someone to choke off money to specific federal agencies or even individuals, a fear that Democrats have expressed about DOGE. On Monday, Senate Democrats warned of DOGE’s encroachment into the payment system. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

The fight over whether DOGE could access Treasury systems led to a previously reported standoff between acting Treasury secretary David Lebryk and Musk’s associates. Lebryk was placed on administrative leave last week and subsequently resigned.

“Lebryk’s resignation set an example,” a source tells WIRED. “Any idea of resistance or noncompliance seems to be fading in the wake of that, and everything I have heard from leadership suggests they intend to give the ‘DOGE’ operatives what they are asking for.”

WIRED

 

Unleash your masculine energy the Mark Zuckerberg way!

 

 

By Arwa Mahdawi

 The Guardian

 

How to be a manly man, according to Zuck

Please excuse my “feminine energy” for a moment while I give a dainty little shudder. My delicate constitution, you see, has been terribly disturbed by the overpowering masculine energy of two very manly men: Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Rogan. The Meta CEO appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast recently for a very long chat and there was so much testosterone in that studio it’s a wonder the walls didn’t explode.

If you are in a masochistic sort of mood and have almost three hours that you’d like to never get back, then feel free to go and listen to the podcast yourself. But the too-long-didn’t-listen highlight is that the Meta CEO reckons that the business world has got a little bit too feminine. Zuckerberg, who built his media empire by making a website to rank women’s looks and called his first users “dumb fucks” for trusting him, thinks corporations should celebrate “aggression” more. Corporations, according to Zuck, have been “neutered” and need more “masculine energy”. He then went on to say that while “feminine energy” is good, corporate culture had swung too far that way and should reclaim its masculinity.

What exactly is “masculine energy” anyway? Other than a woo-woo way to talk about old-fashioned ideas about gender roles, I mean? The Meta CEO didn’t define its parameters, but I have helpfully done some digging and compiled a quick guide to boosting your masculine energy in five Zuck-approved steps.

1. Thicken your neck. At one point during their conversation Rogan stops to admire Zuck’s neck which, apparently, is a lot bigger than it used to be. (I can’t say I’ve noticed but that’s probably because I’ve been distracted by the tech guru’s more general street-chic metamorphosis.) The pair went on to talk about how important a strong neck is for martial arts, which is one of the billionaire’s passions, and Zuckerberg says he’s worked hard on his neck so he doesn’t hurt his brain while fighting. “I’m going to be running [Meta] for a while,” Zuck explains, “and the number one thing you need to do in addition to having great partners is have a strong neck.” OK.

2. Fawn over thin-skinned presidents. Thick necks are important for fighting, but they’re also a must-have when you’ve made a habit of bowing down to Donald Trump the way that Zuckerberg has. Otherwise you’re liable to get a nasty crick in your neck from bending over to kiss the ring so much! While Zuck was once in Trump’s bad books, he’s now rejigged Meta’s structure to be more Trump-friendly, and flattered the incoming president so extensively that the pair seem to be on their way to becoming BFFs. I didn’t realize masculine energy involved quite so much sucking up but I guess the manly Mr Mark is the expert here, isn’t he?

3. Kill some wild pigs. Zuckerberg likes to kill the feral pigs in Hawaii with a bow and arrow while Rogan likes to use a rifle. The pair had a riveting conversation about the merits of each method.

4. Throw your former female colleagues under the bus. Last September, Zuckerberg said one of the biggest regrets of his career was apologizing too much and taking responsibility for things he didn’t think he was responsible for. Now he seems to be living by the ethos that a real man never accepts responsibility. The New York Times recently reported that during a meeting between Zuckerberg and top Trump advisers – including Stephen Miller – “Mr Zuckerberg blamed his former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, for an inclusivity initiative at Facebook that encouraged employees’ self-expression in the workplace.” Zuck said he would undo all that rubbish and, according to the Times, made clear “he would do nothing to obstruct the Trump agenda”.

5. Find a posse of other manly men to hang out with. Rumour has it that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg might all sit together at Trump’s inauguration. Which would be very cute, wouldn’t it? The Three Musk-eteers, all exuding masculine energy together. Maybe Musk and Zuck can finally have that cage-fighting competition they keep talking about. Bezos can referee.

While the tips above will help you up your masculine energy, the most important component of Zuck’s real-man-rulebook appears to be ignoring any facts that contradict your worldview. After all, do you know what didn’t come up in Zuckerberg’s lament about the corporate world being too feminine? The fact that, for several years, there were more men called “John” leading major companies than female S&P 500 CEOs. The fact that, as of August 2024, women ran 5.6% of businesses on the Global 500 – down from 5.8% a year before. In the Fortune 500, which measures the largest US-based companies by revenue, things are a bit better, but (as of June last year) only 10.4% of CEOs were women. The facts would seem to suggest that there is still plenty of masculine energy in corporate America. But, as Zuckerberg has made very clear recently, factchecking is very last season.

GUARDIAN

 

 

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

 

 Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

 

 

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

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“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman.

WIRED 

 

 

“A sociedade está tensionando do conservadorismo para o radicalismo da extrema direita”

 

 Fernanda Otero 

O pastor progressista Sergio Dusilek,
uma das lideranças da Igreja Batista Marapendi, no Rio de Janeiro,
levanta questões importantes sobre os debates do Congresso do
Legado Cristão. O evento, realizado
no Memorial da América Latina,
em São Paulo, abordou temas
como “o papel da família, a essência
da educação e o significado da
liberdade sob a perspectiva cristã”.
Durante dois dias, centenas
de participantes, entre autoridades,
empreendedores e cidadãos,
discutiram como essas questões
moldam a atuação do cristianismo
na sociedade.

Organizado com o propósito de
“avançar o reino” e com entrada gratuita,
o congresso contou com o apoio
de parceiros como a Câmara Municipal
de São Paulo, Faedusp (Famílias
Educadoras do Estado de São Paulo),
SIMEDUC (Homeschooling Sem
Medo) e o Ministério Ler.

Para Dusilek, o avanço de pautas
como o homeschooling e a introdução
de uma “literatura cristã” nas escolas
são os maiores motivos de preocupação.
“O papel da mãe no homeschooling
e a ideia de impor uma literatura
cristã nas escolas são questões que
precisam ser amplamente debatidas”,
afirma o pastor, que é pós-graduado
em História da Filosofia e possui

Mestrado e Doutorado em Ciência da
Religião. Apesar das preocupações, Dusilek
mantém uma mensagem de esperança.
Para ele, “na narrativa bíblica,
sempre há um remanescente que faz
florescer um novo tempo”.

Confira a entrevista completa do
Pastor Sergio Dusilek à Focus, onde o
entrevistado aborda suas perspectivas
sobre os desafios e possibilidades
do cristianismo.

- Vimos uma comitiva de deputados,
comparecendo à posse de Donald
Trump, gostaria de iniciar essa
conversa pela “representação da Bíblia
na Câmara” e em outros espaços
de poder, porque essa contaminação
da extrema-direita?

- Bom, eu acho que isso é fruto de
um projeto de poder. O que estamos
vendo é a expansão de um ideário e
de uma ideologia que alguns chamam
de nacionalismo cristão, outros resgatam
a ideia de fascismo, outros de
populismo cristão. Seja qual for a nomenclatura
usada, esse formato ideológico
está fazendo uma semeadura
e, ao mesmo tempo, tendo algum tipo
de colheita. Eles surfam numa espécie
de desencanto com a democracia,
que (Gilles) Lipovetsky já havia mencionado,
oferecendo soluções simplistas
para problemas macro, o que
sabemos que não se aplica. Mas essa
tentativa de colocar soluções simplistas
tem um grande apelo e, ao mesmo
tempo, um grau de radicalização,
deslocando os problemas para aquilo
que não é problema. Então, se há uma
questão de empregabilidade nos Estados
Unidos, por exemplo, isso não se
deve aos imigrantes, que normalmente
estão em subempregos. Quando
Trump diz que aqueles que migram
são criminosos, os Estados Unidos
não vão ser a grande cadeia dos presidiários
da América Latina; ao jogar
o foco nisso, desvia uma questão de
um problema estrutural na economia
americana, atribuindo esse problema
a quem não tem culpa. Mas a extrema
direita faz isso porque tem um
certo apelo e, logicamente, quando
você localiza um inimigo, sociologicamente,
regimenta uma turba para
lutar contra esse inimigo. Essa ideia
de fulanizar os inimigos é uma forma
de ganhar apoio e também fomenta
esse tipo de luta. E aí, o que acontece?

No Brasil, temos esse eco americano,
especialmente pela vinculação dos

evangélicos do Brasil com os Estados
Unidos. Boa parte do que aconteceu
e acontece aqui no meio evangélico
é um eco dos Estados Unidos. Por
exemplo, temos algo chamado Vento
de Doutrina, que é uma prática sem
lastro na Bíblia, mas feita em algum
lugar. Não sei se você sabia disso, mas
no início dos anos 90, no Brasil, teve
o vento de doutrina chamado Dente
de Ouro, onde nos cultos, o pastor
orava e dizia para abrir a boca e ver
se aparece um dente de ouro. É nesse
nível de ridículo, porque o Vento
de Doutrina é ridículo. E as pessoas
seguiam isso. Onde começa isso? Nos
Estados Unidos. A teologia da prosperidade,
onde começa? Nos Estados
Unidos e ecoa aqui. Essa caixa de eco
e ressonância do movimento evangélico
brasileiro em relação aos Estados
Unidos faz com que iniciativas de lá
acabem refletindo aqui. A diferença
é que, por conta de outros interesses,
como vimos na Bolívia com a ação
do Elon Musk, essa abrangência ganhou
mais espaço em outros países
da América Latina. Notadamente, são
países onde também está crescendo o
número de evangélicos. Então, novamente,
é a forma ideal para a entrada.

E, além de ser eco, tem um investimento
estadunidense, investimento
financeiro, nessa promoção de uma
pregação fundamentalista. Então,
isso também é um reforço a esse processo
todo. Por isso que a sociedade
está tensionando do conservadorismo
para o radicalismo da extrema
direita, ou do conservadorismo para
o fundamentalismo. Todo fundamentalista
é conservador, mas nem todo
conservador é fundamentalista. Sim.

Então, a sociedade tende a estar sendo
tensionada e tracionada para o radicalismo
por conta desse tipo de investimento
que aumentou muito aqui
no país, no Brasil especificamente,
a partir dos anos 2000. Sempre teve,
mas a partir dos anos 2000 foi uma
coisa mais avassaladora. E hoje está
espraiado. E essa turma aí incorpora
o discurso, mas eles não incorporam
a prática. Sim. Não passariam no teste
como um evangélico clássico, porque
o modo de vida deles desdiz o que
é um evangélico. Por exemplo, o senador
Flávio Bolsonaro, ele é um cara
que frequenta o Sambódromo no carnaval.
Um evangélico clássico, uma
igreja evangélica, uma Assembleia de
Deus, por exemplo, uma igreja mais
tradicional, não aceita isso. Então, ele
está lá com aquele cigarro eletrônico,
dando baforada em pleno carnaval
carioca. As pessoas, os evangélicos,
não aceitam isso. Então, veja, mas ele
incorpora o discurso, ele batiza, mostra
o batismo, publiciza o batismo, assim
como os demais para criar um elo
de identificação, ainda que não seja
um elo de alma, é só um elo estético
ou um elo da foto, um elo instangramável,
vamos dizer assim.

- Sobre o Congresso do Legado
Cristão que aconteceu no Memorial
da América Latina, um encontro de
evangélicos sem taxa de inscrição,
chama a atenção os temas do congresso
“família, educação e liberdade”.
Qual é o paralelo que a gente
poderia fazer do com o “tradição,
família e propriedade”? Como o senhor
vê esse evento, e principalmente
as ideias que eles estão trazendo
com relação ao homeschooling?

- Esse evento é assustador, não é?
Mas ele não é o pior deles, dentro do
que está acontecendo. O nosso problema
hoje, eu tenho falado isso e vou
repetir, não se trata de um cupinzeiro,
é de um cupinzal. Eles se conectam
entre si. Então, você tem, por exemplo,
ali, entre os preletores, gente que
faz parte da Coalizão Conservadora
Evangélica, que é uma organização
que procura articular a propagação
do fundamentalismo evangélico no
Brasil. Você tem ali gente que participa
de eventos e coordena eventos da
chamada Editora Fiel, que só publica
tradução e autores nacionais, poucos,
mas a maior parte é tradução de autores
fundamentalistas, e que realiza
congressos para pastores que vão aos
seus encontros para ouvir doutrinação
fundamentalista. Então, assim,
você tem ali, por exemplo, uma preletora
nesse Legado Cristão que é
esse congresso de São Paulo, que ela
tem uma ligação com um movimento
muito grande entre os jovens chamado
Descende, que reúne, veja, eles
fizeram três encontros, um em São
Paulo, se não me engano, no Morumbi,
no estádio de futebol, lotado. Outro
encontro foi feito, acho que aqui
no Rio de Janeiro, me parece que foi
no Maracanã, e o terceiro no Mané
Garrincha, em Brasília. E quem são
as pessoas que falam desses encontros?

Quem falou, quem tem a palavra
foram esses pregadores fundamentalistas,
os líderes do encontro, Bolsonaro,
Silas Malafaia e mais alguns
outros. Nós temos aí nesse encontro
do Legado, um procurador da república.

Nós tivemos um encontro em
2022, que é uma associação de empresários
evangélicos, de evangelização
de empresários evangélicos. Em
2022, o tema era domínio do sistema.

E entre os pregadores estava o procurador-
geral da república, Augusto
Aras, estava a senadora Damares, ou
a candidata ao senado Damares, a ministra
Damares, no caso, e mais algumas
figuras da república. Então, veja,
eles transitam, eles estão articulado

o existe o legado cristão, é um segmento,
é uma reta sozinha, para uma
linha. Aí você tem a Fiel fazendo uma
outra reta para outra linha, e todas as
vezes apontando para o fundamentalismo.
Eles estão articulados. Então, é
o cumpisal, não o cumpiseiro, que é o
mais grave.

- Quando falamos de educação
oferecida pelos pais, estamos falando
de sobrecarregar as mães, né?

- Pelo menos duas das organizações
que apoiam o congresso são de
homeschooling. E um dos temas que
eles trouxeram de 2018 para cá foi o
homeschooling, o papel da mãe do
homeschooling. Meu Deus, são movimentos
que são preocupantes. A segunda coisa 

que preocupa é a ideia
de literatura cristã nas escolas. Eles
querem colocar uma literatura cristã…
E veja, tem autores cristãos que
são muito bons. Mas não é porque ele
é cristão que tem que ser lido. Ele tem
que ser bom para ser lido. Se tiver um
autor cristão na qualidade de Machado
de Assis, merece ser lido. Mas não
é porque ele é cristão que tem que ser
lido.

- É aquela história, não é por que
é mulher que precisa ocupar um espaço.
Eu preferia não ter a Damares
como senadora, por exemplo.

- É mais ou menos isso, entendeu?
Eles estão forçando esse tipo de coisa
através de pressão nos conselhos
de educação dos municípios. A ideia
é articular os pais crentes para poder
fazer com que as escolas adotem literatura
cristã, reconhecidamente cristã.

Há não muito tempo atrás, mais ou
menos um ano, um ano e meio atrás,
um cartunista chamado Guilherme
Infante, ele faz O Capirotinho, um rapaz
muito talentoso e o cartoon dele é
muito engraçado, muito bem feito. E
o Capirotinho foi chamado para uma
prefeitura de Minas Gerais, no interior
de Minas, para ensinar, dar uma
oficina de HQs, de como fazer os desenhos,
como é que ele faz, como as
crianças podiam desenvolver isso. Os
pais souberam que era o cartoonista
do Capirotinho que tem uma mensagem
cristã, porque O Capirotinho se
revolta. Não é contra as pautas... O
Capirotinho, por vezes, tem a fala de
Jesus espelhada. Mas sim, os pais se
revoltaram porque era o Capirotinho,
porque iria satanizar as crianças. Fizeram
um movimento, pressionaram
a Secretaria da Educação daquela cidade,
no interior de Minas, e o cara
estava em um ônibus indo para a cidade
e veio o recado dizendo que eles
não iam mais contar com ele.
Sim. Então, essa pressão e articulação
já estão acontecendo, inclusive
em relação à literatura cristã. Outra
questão é a ideia de abrir escolas.

Aqui no Rio de Janeiro, por exemplo,
há uma profusão de Christian Schools
com ensino bilíngue. As escolas surgem
do nada, aparecem com nomes
em inglês e começam a funcionar. A
grande pergunta que se coloca é que a
propaganda afirma: “Nós vamos proporcionar
um ensino cristão e não vamos
deixar que seu filho seja atraído
pela ideologia esquerdista.” Aqui, seu
filho não será cooptado. Esses movimentos
estão agora criando escolas
nesse formato, em parceria com igrejas.

Muitas igrejas evangélicas têm
uma estrutura educacional, com salas
de apoio para a escola dominical,
entre outras atividades. Estão agora
abrindo escolas nas igrejas e cobrando
por isso. Talvez caiba uma ação
governamental, porque a isenção de
IPTU é concedida para fins religiosos,
não comerciais. É importante verificar
se há possibilidade de ação nesse
aspecto. A ideia da teologia do domínio
é usar a democracia enquanto
preparam o campo, para que a próxima
geração se acostume com a ideia

de teocracia. Quando forem maioria,
elegerão um governante teocrático e
mudarão a situação, instaurando uma
ditadura teocrática.

- Como o senhor avalia a disseminação
das fake news nas bases da
igreja, citando como exemplo o caso
do deputado Nícolas Ferreira, que é
um evangélico fervoroso.

- Veja, hoje em dia, muitos pastores
têm grupos da igreja no WhatsApp
ou Telegram, permitindo acesso direto
às pessoas da congregação. Isso
facilita, por exemplo, que um pastor
envie uma fake news aos membros
da igreja, que pode ser rapidamente
disseminada. As mensagens podem
vir com pedidos para repassá-las a
mais pessoas, incluindo familiares e
amigos, espalhando-se sem controle.
Nesse cenário, existe outra organização,
a Global Kingdom Partnership
Network (GKPN), que tem uma atuação
influente no Brasil. Essa organização
promoveu reuniões em 2018 e
2022, nas quais decidiu apoiar Bolsonaro.

A GKPN reúne líderes de megachurches,
cada um com um grande
número de membros, que podem
variar de 3 mil a até 50 mil pessoas.
Esses líderes coordenam ações conjuntas.
Por exemplo, mesmo se apenas
considerássemos os seguidores
dessas figuras, facilmente alcançaremos
entre 25 e 30 milhões de pessoas.
Essas pessoas se reúnem e coordenam
ações de forma organizada.

Um líder de um segmento específico
do movimento evangélico planeja
uma ação e a dissemina para outros
líderes do seu grupo. Esses líderes,
por sua vez, passam a informação
para seus subordinados, até chegar
ao pastor da igreja, que repassa aos
membros. Parece evidente que este
movimento facilita a propagação de
fake news. Também parece claro que
qualquer ação do governo sofre uma
espécie de “batismo” prévio, impedindo
que receba o devido crédito. É
comum que um pastor diga: “Olha,
que coisa interessante. Temos um governante
ligado ao diabo, mas Deus,
que é maior, faz com que ele abençoe
o povo de Deus.” Assim, quem recebe
o crédito? Não é o governante, não é
o Lula, mas sim uma intervenção divina.
Pode chover dinheiro, porque é
batizado. Se chover dinheiro, falam
assim, olha, Deus está fazendo chover
dinheiro. Não tem jeito. Então, eu
acho que o sistema de propagação das
fake news é só mais um elemento que
compõe esse processo, logicamente,
um elemento que faz, que provoca a
septicemia no sistema todo. Olha só,
eu gostaria de destacar alguns pontos
importantes sobre o que está por trás
do Legado Cristão. Eles dizem lá que
tem algumas esferas da soberania de
Deus que agem na sociedade. O Estado,
a família. Mas, pela primeira vez,
eu vejo a figura do mercado. Isso é
gravíssimo. Quem é o mercado? O que
é o mercado? Essa visão de que há um
espírito mercado que se autorregula,
essa visão ingênua, quase que uma
reprodução, a crítica de Adam Smith,
isso não se sustenta. Nem como algo
que tem uma participação a partir da
soberania de Deus. Então, qualquer
coisa que atinja o mercado atinge a
Deus e o desejo de Deus. Então, se um
governo de esquerda, ele automaticamente
implica em uma ação maior do
Estado e um envolvimento maior do
Estado nas políticas públicas, o que
acontece? Esse governo, ele é demonizado
na sua raiz. Porque ele atenta
contra a vontade de Deus que quer
que o mercado se regule. Outra coisa
que é impressionante: os compromissos
que eles têm e que eles leram duas
vezes, nas duas manhãs, cantando o
hino e lendo o compromisso. E aí, lê
o compromisso: Irmão, votar irmão.
Formar lideranças. Ocupar postos-
-chave, destaquei só quatro, mas acho
que são 10 ou 12. E manter alianças
nacionais e internacionais pela liberdade.

De 2018 pra cá, chegou a Capital
Ministres, que é uma organização
fundamentalista. A ação dela é lobby
no Congresso Nacional. Ela reúne os
deputados evangélicos e outros pressionando
para votar nas pautas que
eles acham importantes. Dentre essas
pautas, logicamente, aquelas contra
o aborto, contra o reconhecimento
de diferentes tipos de gênero, no seu
masculino e feminino, e por aí vai.

Chegou a GKPN com força, que nós
já falamos. Aumentou a incidência
dos congressos fundamentais que
são mais da infiel, vamos dizer assim,
clínicas de pregação expositiva. Há
missionários, que estão indo no interior,
no rincão do país, oferecendo
aos pastores “olha, nós estamos aqui
pra atualizar, dar uma oficina, um
workshop de atualização de homilética,
para você pregar melhor”. E,
na verdade, o que eles estão fazendo
é uma doutrinação fundamentalista.

Recentemente um missionário norte-
americano foi dar essa clínica para
pastores do Pará e Amapá. Há cinco
anos atrás, um missionário foi dar
essa clínica, um norte-americano, no
interior da Bahia. Nós temos aí outro
problema, que são os cursos de teologia,
que os cursos de teologia confessionais,
ou seja, que estão debaixo
de uma denominação evangélica, invariavelmente,
com uma exceção de
um, os demais estão todos debaixo de

uma teologia fundamentalista. Isso
quer dizer, que daqui a 10, 12 anos,
não vai ter Sérgio, nem José Barbosa
Júnior, nem Ariovaldo Ramos, não vai
ter Uziel, não vai ter Edivar Gimenez,
não vai ter Antônio Carlos Costa, não
vai ter um pastor de centro-esquerda,
quanto mais esquerda. E sabe o que
acontece? Os cursos estão tendo reconhecimento
pelo MEC. E ampliando
as vagas. E não só isso. O MEC está
autorizando outros cursos nesses
centros confessionais, como o curso
de História. Então, eu quero dizer
para vocês, da seriedade desse tema,
o que é que ele provoca essas muitas
ações, esse cupinzeiro, ou melhor,
esse cupinzal? São vários cupinzeiros,
vários, o que eles estão promovendo
no meio evangélico? Uma blindagem
mental, uma promoção de uma nova
narrativa que criminaliza e demoniza
o pensamento de esquerda. Eles estão
corroendo os fundamentos da democracia
por dentro. Estão promovendo
uma semeadura, porque eles querem
um dia ser maioria, não para o bem
da democracia, não para fazer uma
influência positiva no país, mas para
implantar uma teocracia, uma teocracia
da teologia do domínio, fruto
da teologia do domínio. Nem Tarcísio,
nem Bolsonaro, nem Ricardo
Nunes, nem Caiado, nenhum desses
caras, eles vão ser banidos. Eles estão
achando que vão ocupar, eles vão
ser banidos. Até hoje o domínio nos
Estados Unidos, um dos seus propagadores,
que era genro do idealista, o
propagador foi o Gary North, ele e outros
colegas dele fazem uma crítica ao
Jerry Fowle, que era um pastor batista
fundamentalista, que movimentou os
evangélicos pela criação da maioria
moral nos Estados Unidos, para votar
em Reagan e vencer a eleição contra
o Jimmy Carter. Esses caras, o que
eles estão falando é o seguinte: o Jerry
Fowle não foi suficiente, ele não foi
até onde ele tinha que ir. Eles atacam
o Jerry Fowle, que era a coisa mais
extremista que existia. Então, não vai
sobrar ninguém. Essa é a questão.

- Para a gente não acabar muito
para baixo, será que o medo está tomando
conta do mundo hoje?

- Bom, a única coisa que eu posso
dizer é que normalmente sempre há
um remanescente, pelo menos essa
história, da narrativa bíblica, sempre
há um remanescente que faz florescer
um novo tempo. Eu só acho que
a gente não precisava chegar no remanescente,
não é? Eu acho que nós
temos hoje os instrumentos, ou devíamos
buscar ter os instrumentos, para
evitar que chegássemos ao ponto de
ser o remanescente e começar um
processo lento de reconstrução. Eu
acredito que a coisa tem que começar
agora, nós temos tudo para fazer e
evitar essa ação, esse, vamos dizer assim,
esse prognóstico aterrador. Nós
temos tudo. O governo está com o PT,
nós temos tudo para poder evitar isso,
usar os mecanismos legais para evitar
chegar nesse ponto. A questão toda é
que precisa enfrentar isso de frente,
assim, de peito aberto, e criar, talvez,
usando um pouco o Vladimir Safatle,
a ideia de polarizar. Nós estamos condescendendo
demais. Vamos polarizar,

para que haja uma polarização.
Talvez esse seja um caminho para a
gente. Eu acredito que, em termos de
debate, logicamente que o Henrique
Vieira sozinho, por exemplo, engole
todos esses deputados de direita,
uma Erika Hilton engole todos eles
também, então, eu acredito que na
capacidade de articulação de ideias,
de oratória, e também de sustentação
daquilo que é digno, do que é
verdadeiro, não tem espaço para essa
turma toda que está aí. Agora, falta
encarar isso com um pouco mais de
propriedade, para que não seja necessário
haver um remanescente para
recomeçar tudo de novo. ■

FOCUS