Josh Marshall posted this a few minutes ago:
There are probationary employees who are new in government service and those who are labeled as probationary because of a job switch but who have continuous government service prior to their current job. If you are in that latter category and are fired as a probationary employee in these category terminations taking place now there is a good chance your termination was illegal. And it is illegal in a way that courts will vindicate. Obviously there are details and nuances about how this works. But if this applies to you you should at least speak with an attorney who knows this area of law. There’s a good chance you have a case and can receive compensation and/or reinstatement.
When I heard that “probationary employees” are being fired, I assumed that King Elon’s incel army had figured a way to legally fire a good number of employees, but I didn’t know that the Federal Government had such a broad definition of “probationary”. (My experience is at a state university, where once you got past your first probationary period, that was it.)
Josh also reports that 300 are out at the National Cancer Institute. It’s clear that the Muskrats aren’t really abiding by the spirit of the court orders enjoining them from firing everyone in sight, and I’m sure they aren’t really abiding by the letter when they think they can get away with it. And, of course, they can.
One of the many, many pressure points where the unpopularity of these firings/non-hirings is going to be manifest to anyone looking is National Parks, where the hiring of camp hosts was frozen, and National Forests, where 3,400 probationary employees (10% of all employees) are getting the axe. The Muskovite claim is that those employees aren’t in public safety (including firefighting), but those jobs also include people who maintain roads and trails, and maintain watersheds, that are critical to fire fighting. Here’s someone on reddit who works in the Forest Service and says that he’s fought fires with employees not classified as firefighters.
Every bad thing that happens later came from something King Elon and his vassal Trump did now. We just need a functional opposition party to keep hammering that home.
Speaking of home, that’s where the Senate went this weekend, after no fewer than 3 unanimous consent votes yesterday that let 3 Trump appointees move forward. Remember, all that needs to stop unanimous consent is one Senator objecting. The Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, was confirmed with zero Democratic votes. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, was confirmed with a bunch of Democratic votes. (Click the link to see the roll call.) The National Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture (National Parks are under Interior), so members of our “team” were voting for Trump’s nominee while King Elon was firing 10% of his department. Kelly Loeffler’s nomination to become SBA administration also made it through cloture with zero Democratic votes. Then they unanimously consented to leave town, since one thing all Senators can reach bipartisan agreement on is that they don’t like to work on Fridays. And, as we all know, the best kind of agreements are bipartisan.
Open thread.
Bill Arnold
Also the Department of Energy:
Sweeping US energy department layoffs hit offices of loans, nuclear security, sources say (Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici, February 14, 2025)
People have been noting this:
Sounds like a bit of a scramble among those who ordered that part, without realizing how very very bad it looked, with some outside observers using stronger language.
Ohio Mom
We need an economist who can tell us how many newly unemployed people it takes to make the economy hiccup, or worse.
SiubhanDuinne
I feel sicker with every new headline.
Steve LaBonne
Marshall, with his skeleton staff, has been putting major media outlets to shame. If you are not a TPM member please consider becoming one. It’s well worth your support.
Suzanne
Patrick Deneen is such a lunatic.
PATRICK!! I disdain you! Not the entire demos!
TBone
@Ohio Mom: I know one who can bite my ass for eternity, and his name is Francis.
Francis Fuckhead Fukuyama. *shudders
The Other Bob
I find the media coverage of this pathetic considering I have read multiple outlets describe this as a “shrinking of government”, when we know it is actually an effort to hire Trump loyalist to backfill these positions.
TBone
@Suzanne: whosis fucking guy, now? Am unfamiliar…prolly happily so?
Ok, a cursory glance confirms that he and Francis can both fuck all the way off.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Other Bob: I’m not sure that’s true. They want to eliminate a large part of government, especially the regulatory part. This is all about funding tax cuts and removing oversite. That way they can loot and pillage at will.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1731960403495897&id=155328717825748&set=a.237223479636271
Tim C
Serious question. How much money is actually saved from all these layoffs? I keep playing with numbers here:
https://us.abalancingact.com/federal-budget-simulator
All these cuts in workers seem like a tiny drop in the bucket in terms of overall costs. All it will do is create a nightmare of lack of services and higher unemployment.
Suzanne
@TBone: Patrick Deneen is one of the foremost “intellectuals” on the right. He wrote Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change. And he is a social conservative nutbar. Our VPOTUS is apparently a fan.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: LOL!
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Also about making sure billionaires can do whatever the fuck they want with impunity.
Steve LaBonne
@Tim C: Barely even rounding errors in the budget.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tim C: They’re not doing it for the savings. They’re doing it to break the government and gain control
TBone
@Suzanne: I looked him up and remembered why I ignored him in the first place. Thanks for the reminder & opportunity for obligatory 🎶 hahaha!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFVMMCwsss
I heard “PATRICK!” in Janey Godley’s voice!
A Ghost to Most
They are going to crash the metro DC economy and housing market.
Ksmiami
Musk will look good hanging upside down from a scaffold
Suzanne
@TBone: Deneen is considerably more problematic than Fukuyama.
I listened to an episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast in which he was the guest. It was incredibly obvious that nothing that the dude wants is any sort of social change that can be so.ved by government. H’s one of those guys who talks about “raising the social status of wives and mothers”, and if you respond by saying, “You mean give mothers some money so they aren’t in poverty?”…. He’s like, “NO NOT LIKE THAT!”.
pajaro
Remarkably, one way to point out the horrible things that Musk and Trump are doing is to visit the places where the bad things are happening, speak with the affected individuals and publicize what is happening. Our federal system, in its majesty, divides up the legislature not by party slates (as in Israel, for example) but by states. Legislators who are not spending time in DC waiting out a delay that they are causing, could be out assessing the damage, just as they would if the event were a fire or earthquake. MM’s implication that the Senators are going to their respective states to put their feet up is nonsense. They are trying to represent their constituents in a dire emergency.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: I had to look him up. He’s a college professor and he’s complaining about people claiming “authority based on their supposedly superior expertise”?
Rolling my eyes. Supposed to expertise is all he has going for him, it’s not critical thinking skills or ethics.
ETA: thank you for filling in the gaps with more info on him. Yeech
TBone
@Suzanne: ok but Reaganomics was fucked up too.
Now I hear Janey Godley shouting!
“FRANCIS PATRICK MALARKEY, GET YOUR ASS OFF THAT LOG!”
Steve LaBonne
@pajaro: Would it be a MM post without a gratuitous dig at Democrats?
Steve LaBonne
@Ksmiami: Gas station.
Martin
Bureaucracies can go through the FAFO cycle pretty quickly. I recall one meeting after the financial crash where I went from having to lay off ¼ of my staff to being tasked with reorganizing the our larger unit when they realized that the data our budgets were based on all went though my unit and we could literally fabricate funding out of thin air. Start to end on that one was like 45 minutes.
The Dept of Energy is the gift that keeps on giving. Republicans keep assuming it’s the folks that force us to build solar panels rather than the folks that keep the nukes from popping off in Nebraska. We’re like 10 years down that road and they still can’t figure that very simple thing out.
Sally
This really belongs in the previous thread – please forgive me. In case it hasn’t been said, or said often enough, where is the outrage about press groups like AP and Reuters, being shut out of press conferences?!!!
When the mendacious clowns at fox were closed out by Obama, every other member of the WHPC went out in solidarity. No one has shown any integrity to protest the barring of these highly credentialed press.
Capitulation. To a complete clown like trump! WTF.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom: He’s definitely someone y’all should be aware of in the spirit of knowing your enemy.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/BNODesk/status/1890507544650506470#m
Martin
@Ohio Mom: That’s hard. It’s 1.6 million workers per 1% unemployment rate, so these guys aren’t going to put much of a dent in that. That said, it takes like 10 people in Dept of Ag. to bankrupt 10% of the nations farms so there’s a BIG multiplicative effect here into the private sector.
Ohio Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, they are certainly NOT doing it for the savings. A lot of government workers’ jobs is monitoring how outsourced things are going. You want to save money, you monitor.
gene108
@Tim C:
It’s about making billionaires and businesses unaccountable. They haven’t been in power a month.
This is just the beginning.
Gloria DryGarden
@SiubhanDuinne: so much sicker, I end up taking breaks. Sometimes I glance here or on blue sky, or try to read Heather cox Richardson, and I just can’t absorb or process more. Can’t even read a whole sentence sometimes.
The nervous system, the adrenals, need some time noticing any good thing, making any good feelings, building something besides fear.
TBone
@Martin: hoo boy, I’m getting speechless, not a good sign.
Jay
https://nitter.poast.org/jamesrbuk/status/1890475483906605238#m
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: look at the picture of Noah and hubby snuggling? It always brings my blood pressure back into range.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The David Schweikert video explains; effectively nothing, and Schweikert is a Republican. These people are pure unadulterated idiots who are doing these cuts because they painted themselves into a corner with their bullshit.
Ohio Mom
@Martin: Thanks. I guess I already know that in the grand scheme of things, there aren’t that many federal government employees.
But the multipliers will be something. If you cut into a university’s research departments, and that university is located in one of those places where the university is the biggest employer (or second biggest, after the hospital), that’s a lot of multiplying taken out in an economy that doesn’t have much slack.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom: There’s a lot of discourse right now on right wing Xhitter about how Vance and Musk are such great example of fathers, and that they are “normalizing children in public spaces”.
Guess how women are judged if they bring their children into the workplace.
VFX Lurker
President Obama was Black. The Great Idiot has white privilege, plus the adoration of the mostly-white press.
Martin
@Tim C: Yeah, the real numbers are in the interactions. Trump has increased the number of import inspections by at least an order of magnitude – at least 5 million more daily inspections. It’s that work which generates the tariff revenue because someone needs to tell the party importing to pay the tariff, and how much. That takes not just a LOT of staff, but space – which the ports don’t have. That’s a lot of spending. But they’re not going to do that part, so the revenue simply won’t happen.
The UK learned this the hard way when they did Brexit and realized they’d now need customs facilities on all ports of entry, and didn’t have the space or manpower to do it. The thing that had been convenient for consumers stopped being convenient and they withdrew their spending and the economy contracted.
Trump is trying to do that EVERYWHERE. Just because you don’t have regulators doesn’t mean it’s suddenly legal to ship or buy an uninspected good. All of those requirements are controlled by congress so you needs to strip a HUGE amount of stuff from the federal code, stuff that I’m willing to bet none of the GOP but guys like McConnell even know exists.
JoyceH
What might save us is that they’re doing such bad things so fast, but so clumsily! Which means the fallout from what they’re doing will also be fast. There are lots and lots of Trump supporters who are going to be severely impacted by these cuts – and the administration will be doing awful things to their supporters before they did anything for their benefit. And if they lose MAGA they’ve got nothing left.
TBone
I feel like Antifa should appropriate the Space Farce and take out Pooty with a laser beam, then move on to some other problem children. Or just ask to borrow those Jewish Space Lasers.
Ohio Mom
@Martin: Did McConnell mostly know that because he’s married into a Tawainese shipping company?
Martin
@Ohio Mom: The big federal workforce is the military. The VA is 20% of the federal workforce. After that it’s Navy, Army, Homeland, DOD, etc. They can strip the FBI down, etc. but the largest agency they’re even open to cutting is Justice at 5% of the workforce.
The regulatory folks have a lot of reach per worker. They’re extraordinarily productive (in economic terms).
Spanky
@JoyceH: “You voted for it! You fix it!” is going to be my mantra.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: McConnell knows because he’s a technocrat. He knows how the machine works better than most and his effectiveness came from knowing exactly which lever to pull. The number of GOP technocrats is pretty low, mostly replaced by social media bomb throwers.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
CDC firings now commencing:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/cdc-losing-tenth-of-workforce-in-purge-of-federal-employees/
The Fed unions are saying that they’ll “fight” mass firings. I know of a couple of lawsuits that have been filed but there’s nothing more than that at the moment.
Read thru this very informative piece to see just how all the rules and laws are being totally ignored:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/trump-to-lay-off-federal-workers-after-paralyzing-labor-panels
Time zones are funny things. It’s 10pm in Norway, 3pm in Mexico and 1930s Germany in the USofA.
Martin
@VFX Lurker: Nah, they’re just cowards. They knew Obama wasn’t going to burn them down, because Obama wasn’t like that. Trump will absolutely burn their shit down for the most trivial reasons and they aren’t willing to stand up to him.
Corporate media will reliably carry his water because they have no investment in societies well being, just profits.
gene108
@JoyceH:
They won’t stop voting for Republicans. If they really feel pain, they’ll lash out at any out group Republicans target.
John S.
@Suzanne:
There is nothing appropriate about a 4 year old hanging out in the Oval Office while government business is being conducted. I can’t even believe that I have to type that, or that anyone would argue the point — yet here we are.
I mean, can anyone older than 40 even imagine a tech billionaire in jeans, T-shirt and a baseball cap hanging out with his kid while Reagan had a signing ceremony? The mind chokes on the word “decorum” at such a thought.
Government as reality television sucked the first time around. It’s not getting any better in reruns.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@pajaro: I’ll let you send me examples of Senators doing that in their districts and I promise I’ll post your examples. [email protected]
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
OT : @Martin, I’m hoping you might know (or know of someone appropriate) a bit about the Master of Enviro Data Sci (MEDS) program at UCSB/The Bren School. My kid has been accepted into it and I’d like to put them in touch with someone who can answer some questions (I don’t know what the questions are)…
If you’d be willing to chat — or know someone who might be better placed — WG can give you my email. And thanks, either way.
Suzanne
@John S.: The idea that people are praising Elon Musk’s parenting is just irrefutable proof that we are in the Upsode-Down.
ArchTeryx
Something about government probation that makes it totally different from private sector probation.
Because government jobs, up to now, were “sticky” – it was very difficult to fire anyone unless they had well documented cause – they had long probation periods. My last probation was 2 years. They can be up to 3 years. They can pay you less and fire you for any reason during probation. But once you achieve tenure, you are locked in. Whenever you change jobs or get promoted within the government, you have to go through probation all over again, but here’s the thing:
If you get fired from the second job, you automatically go back to your original job. They are required, by law, to hold it open during your new job’s probation.
That’s why Josh is pointing out the nuance that while your first probation is at-will, all promotional probations are not.
Every one of these firings is illegal and directly violates civil service law and contracts. And I, as a government worker for New York State, have been screaming into the void, “WHERE THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING CIVIL SERVICE?! WHERE ARE THEIR UNIONS?!”
They should be burying Muskrat in wrongful termination lawsuits right now. Or organizing wildcat strikes and shutting down the government themselves. Otherwise, what the hell good is either the CSO or the unions?
All I know is that if government employment suddenly became at-will and contracts weren’t worth the paper they were printed on, we in Albany would be staging mass walkouts and sickouts instantly, and the first thing on the agenda would be to get rid of these multiyear wage-theft probations. The second would be demanding raises to match private sector salaries.
Lapassionara
@Jay: what a nightmare. My hope is that Vance’s speech will have the opposite effect on the German voters from the one he intended.
TBone
I ducked into my supermarket today for a few essentials. In the cat food aisle was a lady, a bit older than me, taking her time and she tried to help me select the particular what I was searching for. I could tell she needed to talk so we started out with her 7 rescue cats. Photos followed. Finally, she admitted that her beloved husband had died 2 days ago and the tears started to flow. We hugged for quite a while, no longer complete strangers.
swiftfox
As an NPS worker bee, campground hosts are unpaid volunteer positions usually staffed by retirees. They might get a uniform stipend or something similar.
ArchTeryx
@TBone: It’s called compassion for your fellow human being. Not a completely lost art in this country, it seems.
Gretchen
Allison Gill, who was fired by the VA last Trump admin for doing a Mueller investigation podcast, is asking federal workers affected by this to contact her. She has heard that at least five agencies had their payment systems go down for about an hour when the DOGE people were there. She speculates that they are installing back doors to the payment systems so they can control ( or steal from) them later.
Even if all these employees sue, it can years, and meanwhile they don’t have a job.
Steve LaBonne
@Lapassionara: Trump’s effect on Canadian politics will hopefully be replicated.
TBone
@swiftfox: I met a very cool such a one last summer on his ebike, at the State Park lake. He shares my Dad’s name, so I’ll always remember who to call over & chat with when I see him again. Very, very cool dad type dude who bragged on his physician daughter with panache. He gets a free campsite there every summer.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: it was very helpful for me, I needed that hug as much as she did.
Gretchen
@ArchTeryx: I know a federal Union rep who was fielding tearful calls from his members when work from home was rescinded. Some don’t live anywhere near an office. He got with the Union lawyer, who wrote a letter saying WFH is in the contract, they can’t rescind it, and that was the end of that. At least for now.
ArchTeryx
@Gretchen: Which is why the Civil Service Office exists. Normally, all terminations for cause have to go straight through the CSO and they have to sign off on it, or the termination is refused. They can lay off people without CSO approval, but there’s a bunch of conditions associated with that that are all spelled out in civil service and union contracts.
The Muskrats are just outright ignoring CSO. It should be civil service that files that lawsuit, and get an expedited decision. That wouldn’t take years. It could only take a few days. But so far, CSO is utterly silent.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: “The kindness of strangers.”
Blessings on you and your House.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: and right back atcha!
ArchTeryx
@TBone: I just bet you did. Living in a horror movie is not half as much fun as watching one.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: my hugs go to you too, I remember where you said you live.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@John S.: Imagine if a woman employee had brought her 4 yo into the Oval Office
ArchTeryx
@Gretchen: Thus why they’ve moved to just firing everyone and daring them to sue. If CSO and the union lawyers do not get on the ball, and soon, the coup will be a fiat accompli. Right now, they are all that are standing between us and a government staffed top to bottom with fascists, just like Project 2025 planned.
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: if I could do that, I’d bring a baby along too, and breastfeed.
ArchTeryx
@TBone: So far, the MAGAts have been eerily quiet around here. I haven’t even heard the usual gunshots at the range, nor seen more than the occasional bumper sticker – their giant rollin’ coal flag trucks are mysteriously absent. We’re all wondering just what is going on.
Martin
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: Unfortunately, I don’t know much about that program, but I’ll poke around.
Poe Larity
This is all too depressing.
When will Kid Rock start residency at the Kennedy Center?
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@Martin: Many thanks — that’s very kind of you!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@ArchTeryx:
In a federal context, you’re referring to the Merit Systems Protection Board:
https://www.mspb.gov/
Employees can appeal but the onus is on each individual employee to appeal.
MSPB wasn’t setup to deal with what we’re dealing with now. Oh wait, nothing was setup to deal with what we’re dealing with now…except that pesky ‘separation of powers’ thingie in that quaint document known as The Constitution.
If that other ‘check and balance’ decides to abrogate its powers under that rapidly irrelevant governing document, then, well, we’re fucked.
Federal unions have always been a very mixed bag. In my 38+ years in Club Fed, I *never* had interaction with them despite lotsa reaching out during the Dubya years as that bastard was trying to outsource everything, including my position.
I hope they see the existential threat that’s in their face and do everything they possibly can.
Jay
@Poe Larity:
The Kennedy Center runs off events and donations. Most of the donations are from wealthy people, who donate for the quid pro quo of getting invited to Kennedy Center events and perks like front row seating , tables, red carpet treatment.
Dolt 47 is so toxic in New York that few artists that Donors want to see will perform there and Kid Rock and Ye will not attract much funding.
The Corporations will of course continue to sponsor the Center, to try to curry favour with Dolt 47, but the events will suck salted dicks.
ArchTeryx
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It was civil service when I was working for the NCI, but they’re a bit of a different animal. I literally cannot believe there is no enforcement from the MSPB. They aren’t union lawyers, but at least here, Civil Service takes their prerogatives deadly seriously. Some fruitcake trying to tear up Civil Service job descriptions and rules would get sent straight to the top court in NYS. They don’t defend worker contracts, no. But job descriptions, qualifications, salary schedules, promotions, tests (yes, we have civil service exams for many positions) are their wheelhouse. Terminations are handled by both them and HRM and both have to sign off on them.
Someone doing what the Muskrats are doing in NYS government would set off bells like a five-alarm fire in Civil Service. That goes way beyond just unlawful terminations. It’s basically rewriting civil service law on the fly.
ArchTeryx
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: ETA: And that’s the point where you start calling wildcat strikes. That’s risky. PATCO was essentially a wildcat strike. But if you have nothing else to lose, that’s what you do.
Our unions are very much a mixed bag too. They were useless as teats on a bull when I was a temp (even though I paid union dues) and they wouldn’t lift a finger when NYSED was destroying my hands. I had to sue myself. But they DID suggest a very good law firm, and though the state appealed all the way up to the state Supreme Court to try and make an example out of me, they failed, and I won my case.
I left the job in the middle of that suit and promoted to a better one. But the damage to my hands was permanent.
Public unions are far from perfect. But they sure as hell beat at-will. However, in a completely lawless environment, you’re left with little more than wildcat strikes and direct job actions. CSEA (the blue collar union) isn’t afraid to get militant like that. I hope that PEF (white collar) gets equally militant, but I also hope that’s never tested.
trollhattan
From the laboratories of democracy that are California, we have a wingnut ‘splosion!
She seems nice. “Detransitioner activist?” That even fit on a bidnez card?
Leto
Smokey the Bear has a new message/slogan out as of today.
Leto
Also, apparently, Trumpov is barring federal funding from schools that have COVID vaccine mandates.
Whelp.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: that Pacific Ocean!
yikes
RaflW
Josh has a new (5pm EST) Backchannel post up, saying that he’s getting quite a bit of confidential info via encrypted messages, and he is now reporting that “the broad picture is bad. It’s nothing less than a very concerted attempt to shut down medical research across the United States.” (free link to full piece). This really stands out from that:
I don’t know exactly how to operationalize this, but I am hoping that we as deeply concerned and informed citizens can crank up the klaxons on this. Sure, lots of stuff is flying, the shock-and-awe is everywhere.
But normies who don’t have a ton of time for news can still understand “Trump is shutting down all medical research. We are abandoning a lifetime of health advances, and you – yes you – could miss out on the cancer cure that could save you, the Alzheimer treatment that spares your parent a tragic decline. All of it is being crashed and trashed and no one can say why! Help us stop this deadly nonsense.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Leto:
The Alt National Park Service FB page is full of such sad, sad gems:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1025909976245861&set=pb.100064806036542.-2207520000
TBone
@TBone: had to do it 🎈
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i5hA_WigcTk
Neunundneunzig luftballons
ArchTeryx
@RaflW: We’re getting frighteningly close to Khmer Rouge territory there.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: like the PREVIOUS pm of NZ…
i can’t spell her name
TBone
@ArchTeryx: uh oh…quiet isn’t a good thing when ya need to keep an eye and both ears on ’em!
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: Jacinda Aherne! Oops! Ardern!
John S.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Of course there wouldn’t have been any “What a great example!” from the same dweebs praising Musk.
But like Suzanne said above, all of this behavior being normalized is proof of the bizarre world we now occupy.
ArchTeryx
@TBone: In this case, I think there’s a non-sinister reason: The winter here has been brutal. They all retired to indoor gun ranges and they keep their stupid Trumpmobiles at home because they do quite poorly on snow. Despite all their bragging about 4 wheel drive, they turn over REAL nicely if they hit a patch of black ice.
When it finally turns to spring, they’ll probably be out again making their obnoxious, evil asses known once more.
trollhattan
@TBone: Heh, it’s Ardern. :-)
Big crush on her, and not just the adorable Kiwi accent.
RaflW
One thing that I’ve been wanting to see, and maybe its out there but g** search is just garbage now, is some sort of rolling total of government employees shit-canned. Tabulating this cuts both ways (since a bunch of MAGA choads would gruesomely cheer), but the cuts are — besides devastating to things like medical research, consumer protection, and even things like clean bathrooms in National Parks — likely to start pushing up the unemployment in this country (not that we’ll be able to trust the reported data), and unemployed people slash consumer spending.
We’ve also got countless thousands of people who’ve lost jobs due to (illegal) grant freezes and ‘overhead’ slashes.
Unless the goal is to just wreck America — and that can’t be ruled out given the dark money and other influence ops running through GOP-land — it’s hard to see how this first phase doesn’t very soon redound in a lot of second-wave effects on retail sales, debt & loan impacts, even real estate sales. Trump is forcing a recession. Which is insane, but I think these guys have huffed their own “government is inefficient and US debt stifling” farts so long they can’t detect the crash that is coming. Yikes.
RaflW
@ArchTeryx:
I’ve also been reflecting on the horrors of watching the Taliban blow up ancient historic sites like the Bamiyan Buddahs. We’re careening towards that sort of cultural destruction, too.
Ksmiami
@ArchTeryx: slash their tires and walk away.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Schweikert (AZ01) represents northwest Maricopa County and is one of the most vulnerable House Republicans. He won last November by 17,000 votes (2.9%), but in 2022 he won by only 3200 votes (.8%). So he’s tapdancing, like other purple district Republicans.
I need to check up on Rep. Jen Kiggans (VA02). Kiggans represents a swing district in southeast Virginia. I wonder how she’ll explain the cuts in VA funding to her district full of active and retired military. It also has a lot civilian federal workers, and a lot of them are Independents.
Kiggans won by ~4% last year. I’m hoping Elaine Luria is ready to get back in the fight. Luria flipped the 2nd CD in 2018, then Kiggans flipped it back in 2022. Luria could take Kiggans, I think. Both women are 40-something retired Navy officers.
RaflW
@Geminid: Josh Marshall posted the other day that some Repubs are sending emails to their district constituents that sing a subtly different tune than what they say (or more often fail to say at all) in D.C.
Which suggests they are starting to know that what Mump are doing (it’s one monster, two heads) is unpopular, and they’re beginning to wonder if there will be blowback (there will be!).
pajaro
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
I live in the DMV (District Maryland and Virginia). They have been taking information from people, have shown up at some of the locations where government offices have been shuttered, (you could see that on TV) and have met with constituents in their district offices (I was in one). (sorry, I didn’t take a picture)
Geminid
@RaflW: Those purple district Republicans will have to pick their poison. If they help pass this budget, district voters will punish them in next year’s general election. If they cross Johnson and Trump, they’ll either lose their primaries or the more feral Republicans will stay home in November and they’ll lose that way.
frosty
That sum up how I feel too.
YY_Sima Qian
It’s long past time for Senate Dems, especially the leaders, to understand that MAGA is waging unrestricted warfare against everything & everyone deemed not of MAGA, & that they need to use every lever at their disposal to delay & obstruct, no holds barred. If that means some inconvenience by having to stay in DC over the weekend, so be it. If the answer is the nominees will go through on party line votes anyway, then why do we need the Dems in Congress, at all?!
Here are the holds? Where are the scalps that Dems are taking from Trump nominees, like the ones the Repubs took among Obama nominees early in his 1st term
This isn’t just to rag on the Congressional Dems, but any effort at resistance needs them to slow the onslaught down as much as possible to provide space to form & coalesce, lest the reactionaries quickly consolidate their counterrevolution.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: It’s true that people brought their babies into the Oval Office when Obama was president. He went cochee-cochee-coo, crawled around the floor and had a little fun with them (you could tell he was thinking he missed his daughters being little), smiled for some photos, and that was it.
He had a few authentic moments of interaction with them, and then it was back to all grown-ups at work. Such a different image than what we saw with Trump, Musk and Musk Jr.
Martin
@RaflW: This is what I saw during Covid from the outside.
George
@Ksmiami:
Word. It may come down to that–the ol’ Mussolini treatment. Not that I support that personally, of course.
pajaro
@YY_Sima Qian:
There are no scalps to take. Republicans are happy to trash the government using acting secretaries of agencies, or just having people who haven’t been confirmed giving orders, as Kash Patel did last week, or using Elmo, who was operating when he was still a private citizen. If you are asking me whether the Senate is useless, it pretty much is right now, as Republicans have given up their responsibility for advice and consent and are agreeing to seat the most pathetic group of nominees imaginable.
If you are talking about the great power of a hold or unanimous consent, you should talk to your Senator, or the most liberal Senator you can think of and ask why they aren’t doing it. Where the hell is Bernie? He could do it, if it only takes one Senator. Why isn’t he?
Gvg
@ArchTeryx: government employees can’t strike. If court orders get ignored, and some already are, then what? If they strike or are otherwise provoked, Trump probably can fire them, ala Regan and the air traffic controllers. I have a feeling his planners are trying to provoke something like that, and I don’t think the public has yet caught up enough to be on the workers side.
There is a propaganda based long term cultivated popular dislike of government workers and unions. Some recent successes have not been complete and don’t show the whole public has seen through the propaganda yet. If Trump can provoke them soon enough he can win a firing in public opinion. So I hope the delay is to figure out a strategy and it’s a good one.
Infact, we are all going to have to figure out ways to enforce court orders in the days to come.
George
@Steve LaBonne:
Yeah, MM is a one-trick pony at this point. I started watching a Jon Stewart interview with Jen Psaki, and like MM, he led off with a whinge criticizing Democrats. Always nice to know that some things never change, I guess.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: There are acting administrators in these agencies who are wrecking them without the nominated Cabinet Secretaries, so I don’t see how Democratic Senators would have delayed anything by fighting the nominations all weekend.
Gloria DryGarden
Unanimous confirmations!
dad gum it.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: I have not checked, but I think these confirmations were by 52-48 votes.There was unanimous consent to let them proceed without further debate, after which they would have been confirmed anyway by 52-48 votes.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: this is an area I know nothing about. Acting administrators, appointed during previous presidency?
I m just aware if the layers of incompetent nominees getting confirmed.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: oh, i thought he was saying unanimous everyone. You think he means just the sweet republicans voted all together, but not the dems?
perhaps I’ve misunderstood. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Hey, btw, you’re giving some of us ideas of who to follow on blue sky. All your reps and elected s that you follow across the nation, your Syria and Turkiye news sources..
YY_Sima Qian
@pajaro:
@Geminid:
Hold the Trump nomination hostages. Leave leaderships at Treasury & Commerce empty & force Wall Street & big corps (who I think are increasingly uncomfortable with/ the chaos & the lawlessness) to pressure the Trump Administration.
None of it is guaranteed to work, but not trying guarantees nothing will work
& yes, my comment applies to all Senate Dems (or those who caucus w/ Dems), but leaders have additional responsibility by virtue of being leaders
I don’t think it’s because Senate Dems to a person are cowards or weak, but I think that they have not wrapped their minds around what the new reality is, & what is required of them in this new reality.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: These acting administrators were appointed by Trump. Or rather, by whomever is pulling Trump’s strings. He’s too lazy to take a direct interest in these matters.
Urza
@Tim C: The layoffs arent the savings, its the cutting of services.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Democrats can’t hold these nominees hostage. They can only delay them a day each. We saw this only two months ago when Republicans tried to delay Biden’s last federal court nominees. Schumer and company just powered through because they had the majority.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I am talking about holds on all nominees. Gum up the works, slow things up.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: we wished. The new reality has been super obvious to most of us here, I think. It’s deeply disturbing, including that nominees couldn’t be held up, way longer, to slow it all down.
I do wonder what congress and senate critters are thinking…
Jinchi
Serious answer, no money will be saved from these layoffs.
Even assuming the reckless gutting of agencies doesn’t cause catastrophic harm, firing experts in critical positions will cost more money in the best of circumstances.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, you talked about Senators staying this weekend and that made think you were talking about the three nominees the poster was griping about that were just approved. And you also talked about holding the Treasury nomination hostage in order to pressure Wall Street, and those Wall Street people know that Democrats cannot delay a given nominee more than 24 hours if Republicans want to go all night.
This will be a protracted battle that will play out over months. If Democratic Senators aren’t fighting over every ditch right now, I think it’s because they know the battlefield better than amateur political tacticians like you and me and the poster. I’ll judge their performance six months from now, not this Friday.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: We’ll see.
You offered the same advise wrt the background negotiations toward a ceasefire in Gaza. That ended up taking over a year, & even then it took Trump surprising Bibi a bit by not giving the latter total carte blanche, & Bibi believing he can play Trump, anyway.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Not sure how my reporting last year on what I Iearned by following the ceasefire negotiations mediated by US, Egypt and Qatar has anything whatsoever to do with my opinion on current behavior of Senate Democrats
Ed. If you have criticisms of my reporting on those negotiations, make them; don’t use them to take a shot at what I say on an unrelated matter.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I am not trying to taking a shot, my apologies for leaving that impression. It’s more that you seem to be more willing to give benefit of doubt to people in positions of power & responsibility than I am, when the situation clearly demands urgency.
I absolutely value your reporting (or aggregation) of the developments in the ME (the best among commenters here, up there w/ Adam) as well as local politics in the US. My skepticism is w/ your willingness (correctly me if I have the wrong impression) to trust elected Dems (& self-interested countries in the ME) to do their thing. Their “hearts” & interests may be in the right place, but their sense of urgency may not be.
At the very least it should be trust but verify w/ most of the elected Dems. I am not sure we can trust any government of nation states.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I appreciate the compliments. But I think it would be better not to get into discussion about intellectual tendendencies here. I’ll just say I have no particular conflict with yours.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Fair enough.