DOGE2025 Is Getting the Catastrophic De-Ba’athification They Demanded
There are two stories that attracted a lot of attention last week that offer the same lesson.
The first story is the report that after firing a bunch of people in charge of securing nuclear weapons, Trump’s minions have tried to rehire them, which was first reported by CNN.
Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.
An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”
The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning.
The other is that the USAID is trying to prevent anyone still at the now-shuttered agency from telling the press that the life-saving grants for which Marco Rubio issued waivers have not actually been reauthorized to operate, which Greg Sargent focused on after John Hudson disclosed a memo making the order.
A new internal memo circulating inside the U.S. Agency for International Development neatly captures this split. The Washington Post reports that the memo warns USAID employees not to communicate with the press about the shocking disruptions in humanitarian assistance that are being caused by the Trump-Musk attack on the agency, which are already producing horrific consequences. The memo said this transgression might be met with “dismissal.”
The memo claims to be correcting a “false narrative in the press” about the disruptions to that assistance. It notes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month issued a waiver to “lifesaving humanitarian assistance,” allowing it to continue despite the Trump-Musk freeze in agency spending. This has meant that this assistance has “continued uninterrupted and has never paused,” the memo claims, while warning recipients against any “unauthorized external engagement with the press.”
Now, at one level, this chaos is happening because many of the people enacting these cuts are DOGE boys with no idea what they’re looking at. Don Moynihan (who is an indispensable source on the policy issues of all this) uses the nukes case as one example to make the same point: because ignorant people were making the firing decisions, they eliminated a slew of critical positions.
Musk’s management style when it comes to downsizing has been to cut to the bone, and then hire back if he fired too many. This philosophy might make sense if you are running a social media company where its not a big deal if Twitter goes down for a couple of hours. It makes less sense where the a) failure of government systems has big and sometimes irrevocable costs, and b) it is not easy to replace expertise once you have eliminated it. On the latter point, many public jobs take time to develop knowledge of the policy domain, organizational practice and tasks. Those are not qualities that are easy to rebuild if you just spent a year training a new employee who has now been fired.
[snip]
Let me note that I feel like this lesson should not be necessary. We should not need to spell this one out. One measure of the collapse of the Soviet Union was that they could no longer afford to keep staff to secure nuclear warheads. Why would the US voluntarily downgrade it’s own capacity to manage its nuclear arsenal? And yet, DOGE fired 1 in 5 federal staff that manage the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
Have you heard about the National Nuclear Security Administration before? Probably not. It’s one of those jobs that we hopefully never need to think about, because if we do that means something has gone badly wrong. But it’s also one of those jobs that someone needs to ensure is staffed appropriately to make sure something does not go badly wrong. As a citizen, its fine if you are not aware of NNSA, but bear in mind that when the right attacks wasteful bureaucracy, these sort of invisible agencies performing important tasks are some of what they are talking about.
Apparently DOGE does not know much about the NNSA either. To be fair, when you have zero experience of government, why should you? But if you have zero experience of government, you should also probably not be in the position of firing 300 of the guys who take care of the nukes. CNN reported that the fired staffers included “staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons.”
After enough members of Congress got upset, the firings were rescinded. Just one problem. DOGE made the firings effective the day they were received (no notice, not severance), immediately shutting down access to government emails. And they did not have contact information to tell NNSA employees they were unfired.
[snip]
Under Biden, the IRS had received long-awaited and much needed funds that allowed it to rebuild after a period of sustained downsizing, and was becoming more effective.
The IRS represented a very simple test for the credibility of DOGE. Was it really interested in efficiency and state capacity? If so, you support the tax enforcement, the biggest return on investment in government, generating somewhere between $5-9 for every additional $1 spent on enforcement.Or did DOGE want to minimize parts of the state that bothered billionaires?
We have our answer. In the middle of tax season, the IRS was told to lay off thousands of workers hired as part of the rebuilding project.
Part of the DOGE hype is that after they fire everyone, they will figure out better ways to do the job using, uh, AI and such. But there is no second act where it gets better. They don’t have a plan to fix what they are breaking because they don’t understand or care about the damage they are doing. Breaking government is the point. It is not as if DOGE has some magical IRS plan up their sleeve. There is no plan.
The story is not just that these DOGE boys have no idea what they’re looking at, being so incompetent that the word “nuclear” doesn’t even spark their interest.
It’s that after ideologues fire competent bureaucrats, they’re often left without a way to turn the bureaucracy back on again when they realize they actually needed it.
Take the first example, the people ensuring the security of America’s nuclear arsenal. As NBC followed up, after Congressional lobbying and a press campaign convinced someone to reverse the NNSA firings, the DOGE boys had no easy way to contact those who had been fired to order them to return to work.
National Nuclear Security Administration officials on Friday attempted to notify some employees who had been let go the day before that they are now due to be reinstated — but they struggled to find them because they didn’t have their new contact information.
In an email sent to employees at NNSA and obtained by NBC News, officials wrote, “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”
AP has a follow-up noting — among other things — that the key jobs were in Texas, Eastern Washington, South Carolina, and Tennessee. These are not just crucial jobs for national security, but many of them represent job losses in Republican areas.
Something similar has happened at USAID.
It shouldn’t have, because there, one key player shutting down the agency, Pete Marocco, actually worked at USAID in the first Trump term. The declaration he has submitted in multiple suits admitted he shut down already-committed funds on his own authority, without Marco Rubio’s involvement. He described that after he started firing administrators, administrators were unable to answer his questions, which he deemed insubordinate rather than just a natural consequence of firing the people who might be able to answer his questions. Nevertheless, his inability to get answers is what he used to justifying shutting everything down.
As a former USAID staffer, Marocco should have the competence to know better — but ProPublica describes why his own past insubordination may be a better explanation for his war against the agency.
The flood of USAID lawsuits has produced an associated flood of sworn declarations that describe, from the perspective of people involved, what is really happening.
For example, as part of a suit by the American Foreign Services Association, a program officer described that, even though she supervises 30 emergency food assistance programs, she had not (as of February 7) been able to get a waiver for any of them, resulting in food rotting in warehouses.
For example, while it was announced that most USAID funding would be frozen, a waiver is supposed to be available for life-saving humanitarian assistance, which would apply to the more than 30 emergency food assistance programs I support. Without my knowledge, the partners I manage, nearly all of which work on lifesaving, emergency food assistance, were sent email notices from their Agreement Officers directing them to fully or partially stop their work. As an Agreement Officer Representative for these awards, I am required to be copied on any communications, which never happened. While I tried to obtain a waiver for the programs I manage, there was no guidance on the process by which our patterns could obtain a waiver and none of the programs were ever formally approved to keep running. I am skeptical that the waiver actually exists. At this point, if a waiver does in fact exist, the implementation has been so chaotic with so many employees either furloughed or on administrative leave that as a practical matter it isn’t available to those who need it. While the programs I manage are under a stop work order, food commodities sit in warehouses rotting and scheduled food distributions to vulnerable populations do not happen and children miss follow-up appointments for treatment of severe malnutrition.
A contracting officer’s declaration in the same suit described the conflicting management orders, the lack of access to experts, and the technical access limits that made it impossible to implement the waiver program.
As a Contracting Officer, some of the awards on this list were perplexing and the sudden push to do this while nearly all of our counterparts with technical knowledge about where awards were in the waiver process and what the programmatic purpose of each award were locked out of the network and suspected to be on administrative leave.
There was an approved tab with one single PEPFAR award despite the fact that the Agency has many different PEPFAR awards and we were told a waiver had been granted for PEPFAR and Emergency Food Assistance. There were no Emergency Food Assistance awards on the approved tab. Concerns were raised by Contracting Officers and Regional Legal Officers alike who replied all to Matthew’s email with concerns. We asked for clarification on the reason for the contract terminations and for confirmation that OAA had consulted with OMB and made a determination consistent with the Executive Order on realigning foreign aid. If these awards had not received such a determination, the termination would be in violation of the executive order. We received no reply to those questions. A contracting officer replied all to the email asking if Congressional notification had been made on these terminations and noted that Congressional notification is required when a termination will involve reduction in employment of 100 or more contractor employees which these actions would likely result. It was also asked if USAID had taken steps to adhere to our Congressionally authorized and funded responsibilities on these terminations.
These emails received no reply from OAA leadership and our working level supervisors urged us to proceed with the terminations and meet the deadlines.
Subsequently at approximately 6PM that same day, Nadeem Shah, Deputy Director of Washington Operations for OAA, sent around an email entitled “PLEASE PAUSE ALL AWARD TERMINATIONS” asking staff to hold off on all award terminations in Matthew’s previous email.
[snip]
When my technical bureau’s access was supposedly restored yesterday, we quickly discovered that they do not have access to our Agency File system called ‘ASIST’ nor do they have access to our financial system in direct violation of the TRO issued the night of February 7, 2025. This makes it incredibly hard for them to provide programmatic information to help with the program review process. To date, the technical bureaus have not had any opportunity to provide any inputs or relevant information for the programmatic review. I am extremely concerned that Agency and State Dept leadership do not have the relevant information needed to thoroughly evaluate programming
Importantly, this seems to suggest that PEPFAR — one of the programs that Republicans have vociferously championed — was only partly restored because someone didn’t understand the multiple programs it involves.
Another staffer in the same AFSA lawsuit, a controller, described how bureaucratic and technical problems have prevented people from disbursing funds even for the programs that have gotten waivers.
9. On February 3, the situation changed yet again. As of that date, every time I tried to hit the “certify” button to begin a disbursement, I received an error message stating that I did not have authority to proceed. I contacted Phoenix Security to inquire if there was a technical problem in the system and was told “on Friday January 31, we were instructed to remove the ability to certify payments.” They did not indicate who instructed them, only stating “Unfortunately I am unable to reverse this decision.”
10. On February 5, all USAID controllers received another diplomatic cable indicating that USAID personnel could no longer process payments themselves but must request approval from a Senior Bureau Officer before forwarding the payment packages for processing. However, as of February 11, nobody can agree on who is the appropriate SBO for USAID payments and the State Department hasn’t processed a single payment based on the new procedure.
11. As of February 9, when I try to log into Phoenix, I receive a new error message stating that my sign-in attempt has failed. I have even less access to Phoenix after the February 7 court order than I did before that date.
12. I have been in touch with many colleagues and all report the same experience. To my knowledge, worldwide there are no USAID financial management personnel, including controllers, that can access Phoenix.
13. I have not been able to process payments under any of the waivers included in the January 24 cable, including legitimate expenses incurred prior to January 24 under existing awards or those for employee operating expenses. Though the waivers exist on paper, in reality all USAID funds have remained frozen because of technological barriers added to the system, I don’t know by whom. Phoenix will not let us disburse anything.
In a different USAID-related lawsuit by contract recipients, the head of a faith-based non-profit, Mark Hetfield, described how attempts to get waivers looked in practice.
11. On February 3, 2025, HIAS also received a revised “Notice of Suspension” for its work in Chad from PRM via email stating that HIAS should stop all work under the grant unless exempted from suspension as “existing life-saving humanitarian assistance” defined by the Department as “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.” See February 3, 2025, Letter from Philip Denino, PRM Grants Officer, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit F. In his cover email, Mr. Denino stated that “PRM will follow up shortly to set up a meeting to discuss the specific HIAS programming in Chad that falls under the exemption for life-saving humanitarian assistance.” See February 3, 2025, Email from Philip Denino, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit G. That meeting with PRM took place the next day, February 4, during which HIAS and PRM staff discussed what activities would qualify as “lifesaving humanitarian assistance.” PRM asked HIAS to provide an overview of HIAS’ activities conducted in Chad pursuant to the award that HIAS deemed exempt from the 90-day suspension. HIAS prepared and sent the requested overview. See February 7, 2025, Email from Guillermo Birmingham to Philip Denino, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit H. However, after the meeting, Mr. Denino sent a follow up email indicating they he had been “given guidance that PRM will not be providing any additional information regarding the application of the waivers/exemptions to activities” and that he could only refer us to the revised Suspension Memo to guide us in resuming activities. See February 4, 2025, Email from Philip Denino to Guillermo Birmingham, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit I. Nor would we be able to receive funds to continue work under a waiver/exemption since all federal government payment portals were and are not functioning, making the purported waiver/exemption process cited in PRM’s revised Notice of Suspension useless.
12. On February 10, HIAS’ Chief Financial Officer again asked PRM for guidance on what would qualify as an emergency exemption from the indefinite suspension of PRM funds. In response, PRM’s Grants Officer stated, “I can’t provide guidance. It was determined much higher than me.” HIAS’ CFO then expressed concern to PRM that the lack of guidance coupled with the inability of aid organizations to access payments is making it impossible for organizations to provide the lifesaving humanitarian services identified by PRM as exempt in their revised Suspension Notice. See February 10, 2025, Email exchange between Guillermo Birmingham and Philip Denino, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit J.
He included a stack of backup, including the email instructing that Comptrollers were instructed not to provide any guidance on what was considered life-saving programming covered by the waivers.
Ultimately, USAID simply refused to tell grant recipients whether they had received a waiver or not, and if so for which parts of their programming. And it wouldn’t matter anyway because the computer systems on which it all runs are not functioning. State doesn’t want employees telling the press that life-saving grants haven’t been resumed, because Marco Rubio doesn’t want to confess to Republicans that he failed to deliver what he promised them.
Whether intentional at USAID or the inevitable outcome of arbitrary ignorance, the effect is the same.
It’s not just that the DOGE2025 attack on government has destroyed critical expertise. But absent that expertise, Trump’s minions are finding it difficult to reverse the ill effects of their initial assault, because the initial damage they do to both systems and expertise makes it far harder to reverse their initial failures.
Last July, JD Vance envisioned this process as a de-Ba’athification, which he imagined was targeted at a caricature of liberal culture, but which in reality targeted the civil service. Someone who served in Iraq really did set out to recreate the same insanely stupid policy decision that made Iraq a decade-long clusterfuck — he really did set out to launch that same kind of attack on his own government.
We’ve seen this movie before. It was, perhaps, Americas biggest failure ever.
Thank you for highlighting this. Moynihan’s piece was as fantastic read and mirrors what I’ve been reading on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/?
Moynihan quoted the illegally fired Forest Service worker. I sent that particular post to our son, on Saturday.
” I know I’ll bounce back and land another job. Im grateful that im young and that I have support and I’ll be OK. The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing. I make $50k a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”
So heartbreaking.
Looks like they are in the IRS now also
https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1ir9rov/dogeaffiliated_employee_has_accessed_irs_system/
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In the IRS, where they can ensure that enforcement remains a thing for the little people. Not for billionaires with important nation-destroying to do. And certainly not for the once-faux-billionaire who persuaded enough voters that proof of his genius was the fact that he paid no taxes.
TPM has a great read on the “Taxonomy” Of Doge
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/understanding-the-taxonomy-of-doge
I have been a consultant to just about every Federal Agency for 35 years and in the past 5 – 7 years there has been a historic turnover of personnel in most of entities I provided my expertise. The younger cohort taking over for the baby boomers really did not get any mentoring in and my work involved helping the new kids on the block understand the history of environmental, health and safety regulations including drinking water compliance.
Due to my disgust with the DOD, DOE, DOT and America’s meddling in the Middle East, I focused my consulting on America’s Land Management Agencies, primarily the US Forest Service for the past 24 years. The DOGE Boys have wrecked the transition process and it will ultimately lessen the hold the US taxpayer has on its Public Lands. The US taxpayer let its investment in the railroads get siphoned off and now just like merry old England, the selling of the taxpayer’s investments in America will go to the well connected for pennies on the dollar.
In fact the decimation may be so complete inside the USFS that the remaining workforce will not have the expertise to know what or how to get the mission critical work completed.
With that said I will not cry if Booze, Allen Hamilton, SAIC and all the so called patriotic government contractors go down with the ship, but it will be galling to watch Xanterra take over our Parks from the NPS.
“it will ultimately lessen the hold the US taxpayer has on its Public Lands”
This is the entire point. They want the lands to be private, not public, because they don’t believe in an administrative state and they’re thieves.
This is where I go full Ed Abby.
Indeed!
What the Republican Party is doing now is executing a hybrid combination of leverage buyout (LBO) and organized crime mafia bust out of the Federal Government whereby all the Federal Government’s assets are either stolen or sold to their partners in crime.
Trump and Musk believe in this plan, but neither one thought of or conceived this plan.
This plan was conceived by members and financial supporters of the Nixon Administration.
The Watergate crimes and Nixon’s resignation stopped the plan from being implemented in the 1970s.
It wasn’t until Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981 and the Federalist Society was formed in the Spring of 1982 and eventually funded by high wealth individuals in the Fall of 1982 that the plan was resurrected and initially implemented, first mostly in private sector LBOs.
Forty-four years later in 2025, several of the original financial backers of the Federalist Society, e.g., Robert Mercer, along with new high wealth individuals, e.g., Musk, Thiel, Sacks, and Ackman, etc., have begun their LBO/mafia bust out of the Federal Government.
Minerals, minerals, who’s got the minerals:
Public lands, Ukraine, Greenland, Moon,…
Forage GUMP (Greenland, Ukraine, Moon, Public lands)
isnt this a reprise of the firesale privatisation plan for the national patrimony of the former soviet union, conceived and put in place by americans? jeffrey sachs, marshall what’s his name, et al?
Trump’s Agenda 47/Republican Party Platform calls for the building of 10 “Freedom Cities” on Federal Land, complete with flying cars. My bet is that all minerals will be extracted beforehand in only the most beautiful settings.
Short of burning something like a Tesla dealership down…and I am not advocating nor planning that it’s just a setup for…
There are rich D/liberals – Mark Cuban looking at you – that can (try to) buy time of Fox News, OANN, etc and air this to the MAGATt followers with EMPHASIS on how this is hurting THEM.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz went on Jesse Watters and was agreeing about certain DOGE cuts but Watters kept calling him “Moskovitz” (with a “v”). Jesse Watters is contemptible.
Watters may one day find himself the target of MAGA ire. No one is immune from it. A fool and an idiot…
DOGE25 is an implementation of Thiel’s RAGE, Retire All Government Employees. As you and others point out, it is not about waste, it’s about capturing the USG.
https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/
Thanks for sharing the link but for author Darvin to not mention Curtis Yarvin and The Dark Enlightenment in this article seems like a miss – particularly when 8 days later he wrote about Vance’s compliments about Yarvin: “J.D. Vance calls Curtis Yarvin a ‘reactionary fascist'”
#NerdReich is spot on!
“the inevitable outcome of arbitrary ignorance” is a phrase that will live in infamy.
I’m assuming that many of the people involved in handling nuclear weapons have (or at least had) very high-level security clearances. Firing them 300 of them with no notice, by e-mail, has got to create a counterintelligence nightmare.
My thought too.
The Q security clearance for nuclear weapons is considered the most difficult to get.
From my father’s experience, they check your siblings’ backgrounds also. (He had to call home to get their birthdates.)
Thank you, EW for this and for the link to the Moynihan piece. I’m finally (and admittedly slowly) realizing that DOGE is essentially running illegal RIFs at multiple federal agencies and (falsely) characterizing them as if they’re performance based removals of people.
Title 5 and the RIF regulations at 5 CFR have elaborate guidance for how positions are eliminated in a reduction in force, and it don’t look a thing like this cockup. OPM has guidance as well:
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/reductions-in-force/
So there is a legal, statutory, and regulatory based method for “downsizing” federal agencies, and you don’t get to just ignore it and do your own thing by lying to your employees and the public about what you’re doing.
Glad to see that NTEU is way quicker lol. Violation of RIF law and protocols are paragraphs 28-39 of the complaint in NTEU v. Trump, filed 2/12.
President Musk had to rehire a bunch of people at the bird hellsite, after he fired them because they were necessary to the place. He’s definitely a FAFO guy, and he doesn’t learn from previous mistakes.
ETA The first ones he fired there were moderation and security. There’s a pattern.
Clarification: they had to be rehired because they were necessary.
President Musk is woefully ignorant about good business practices and why regulations exist. Perfect boss for TFG.
He also fired hundreds of FAA workers. Pay no attention to those recent plane crashes. Make America Safe Again!
and lucky me gets to decide whether to step on that plane in a few days…
The firings aren’t tangible yet so it’s easy to spin as cutting fat. At some point, however, there will be preventable tragedies as a result of these firings and the public will lose confidence. Hard to guess where (air travel, food safety, environmental …), but there will be consequences and lives will be impacted. The lost lives and human suffering won’t really matter to the GOP, but the economic impact of lost confidence might.
i don’t think we know enough about the firings to gauge tangible effects. i do feel the chaos Musk has inflicted on the FAA has to have an immediate effect, on morale if nothing else which can impact the work being done.
just back from my walk where i decided to cancel my trip. FAA uncertainty coupled with our one hospital town inundated with flu/rsv/covid. 30 people awaiting beds at last report. if there is this much sickness out in the community, i am certain to be flying with very sick people, and just ain’t gonna risk it.
Right: despite widespread public fear, and discounting the DCA crash (a disaster waiting to happen), the rate of air accidents, including fatalities, has pretty exactly tracked the equivalent weeks in 2021 to 2024 (and before). Between Jan 20 and Feb 16 2024 there were 13 FATAL air accidents in the US. There were an additional 9 where the highest injury level was “Serious”. And most fatalities, even those few with paying passengers aboard, cannot be laid at the feet of ATC, although morale is no doubt low now. Most fatalities are in private (incorrectly “uncontrolled”) flying. Source, the NTSB Aviation Investigation Search tool.
It’s shark attacks redux.
Everyone in aviation is scared of the future, of course, but the statistics don’t show anything yet.
Those fired FAA workers were DEI. The skies are much safer now.
/end Fox News segment
https://cagle.com/cartoonist/r-j-matson/2025/02/14/292828/musk-and-son-in-the-oval-office
Elon’s 14th kid.
“Wow, daddy, the view is great from up here!”
I think Leon is interested in using AI to fix FAA systems. After all, Tesla users allowed him to test his auto drive programming on them and there was no problems there. I can’t imagine any problems testing AI on FAA systsms.
So at any point does gop congress say enough is enough?
They’re afraid.
They’re afraid for their lives. And the lives of their children. At least that’s what recent reporting indicates.
I’m not justifying their paralysis. I’m just saying we live in a terrorist state.
And it needs to be said. It cannot be just that they’re afraid of Musk’s money used to primary them; they could all go off and be lobbyists.
The Congressional GOP is not afraid – they don’t care, because this chaos is exactly what they have wanted for the last 40 years.
My mind works parallel to Greg Hunter’s here – because I’ve been away from things for a couple of decades! It was rewarding work, but in my experience, large, “connected” contractors knew exactly where the money was, and had no qualms about the cost (to taxpayers) of making it theirs.
Speaking strictly about US citizens here, these pieces of the puzzle highlight to what extent our federal bureaucracy is involved in managing contracts, and that the contractors are the ones completing the work.
This is something that republicans have wanted and pushed for forever (and why the recently circulated David Sacks ex-twitter post about defense spending was so comical/misinforming – Silicon Valley itself is a direct outcome of increased defense spending, via contracts/contractors in the western US, post-WWII.)
USAID might have been started by JFK, but since the Bush years it has been a vehicle for missionaries to do what they like to do overseas with the backing of the US government. Since one of the most wonderful people I have ever met (_very DEI_) worked for/with World Vision, I’m on the fence about the FAFO here.
Republican who ran USAID under Bush calls dismantling it “madness”
Christian aid groups receive millions in USAID funds
Much of that defense spending got moved to red states under St Ronny. Even before that, under Nixon, it was being cut back in California.
P J Evans – I don’t have any reason to doubt your knowledge/history, and when I go to look into things even currently, I’m seeing a lot of corporate consolidation bringing stuff eastward. Just to caveat, though, for me (here in the midwest) the west includes states like Utah, Arizona & Colorado (and TBH even Texas? sometimes?) and that I’m focused on contracts rather than defense spending generally.
Here’s a current data source, if anyone is interested: Budget Agreement Continues to Drive Overall Increase in Defense Dollars to States (Pew)
My father spent his entire career in defense companies.
His advice was to stay out of them, because there’s no security there. [Meaning job security, he’d been afraid of being laid off in 1974. I have a copy of his resume from that episode. A lot of his work is in “can’t talk about it” areas.]
The USAID demolition is also destroying a local nonprofit where I briefly worked & friends of mine still work (but will probably be laid off any day). This org manages grants via USAID & other funders for things like small independent radio stations & other journalistic & media projects in places like Ukraine, Afghanistan, & Myanmar. Elon Musk retweeted ppl saying the org is corrupt, WikiLeaks spun it into a CT about “a secretive US government financed NGO” supposedly pocketing 100s of $millions from the feds, & likely as a result the local office here was vandalized about 10 days ago & staff told to stay away. There are legitimate concerns about the feds using contractors for everything, but this BS has people in my very liberal town thinking massive corruption is afoot at an org that has been a source of stable, very middle-income work for many in our community, & one that is *constantly* undergoing routine audits bc they manage federal dollars. Meanwhile *actual* corruption is happening at the very top while locals here are shouting at each other about this made-up story without even questioning its source. (–Rayne, idk what username I used the other 2ish times I’ve commented, but I’ll use this one going forward.)
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Hi Rayne, please know that I am not a sock puppeter, I simply comment very very rarely and don’t have great memory. I’m happy to use nameoftherain & will write it down in my password notebook, bc I tried to find my past comments before posting & couldn’t. I appreciate all you do, & I’m not here to deceive anyone. I will do my best to create less work for you if & when I comment again.
The Saudis want nukes bad. Assuming they don’t have them already. I supposes these fired guys might know. At any rate they might never get them even with the short pants boys in charge but there are untold billions to be made stringing them along.
wouldnt working for saudis be a big temptation for some fired guys — unless the are genuinely, truly, patriotic americans?
I went to the dentist last Friday here in DC. She got tears in her eyes when we briefly talked about DOGE — said she had > a dozen patients who had been “terminated.” We’ve been here since 1996 — never seen anything like this –past furloughs were nothing like this. It’s all-out destruction — of govt, societal structure, careers, people’s lives and those of their children. The entire Dept of Ag (minus the terminated) is ordered to relocate to Ames (Jone Ernst as a RE holder is thrilled). That isn’t so bad in itself — but getting out of DC real estate is going to be difficult. NAHB is really sweating this pointing to a housing crash. There isn’t a single person here who will not be affected (except the doge bunch).
Thank you, posaune, for opening that window into your local experience. I don’t doubt that behind those sad surfaces, countless individual tragedies are occurring, stories of loss we will never hear because the general tumult is too loud and all-consuming.
BTW, great job, Musk & Co.! Tanking the DC real estate market just to make the misery you’re inflicting worse…I really don’t know if a calculating villain could have done better.
JD Vacuous seems to have it backwards (a perennially useful description). De-Baathification of Iraq’s govt and society by an American occupying army was attempted by the CheneyBush regime’s Coalition [of the Billing] Provisional Authority. No one could caricaturize them as liberals.
De-Baathification didn’t work out well, and seemed as incomplete as post-WWII attempts to de-Nazify Germany. But JD Vance blaming liberals for it is as effective as anything else he’s ever done.
He’s a miseducated racist immigrant whose only guiding principle is “how much can I get away with.”
And a name that begs for anagrams:
Loneskum Doge.
…with apologies to the late Larry McMurtry, my Russian Lit professor.
That would make Larry laugh, I can guarantee you!
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McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has been posting timely satirical essays regarding the past few weeks. For example, here’s an excellent one on the hypocrisy of Emperor Elon and sub-President Trump claims that waste and fraud are being exposed:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/finally-my-tax-dollars-are-being-used-to-uncover-publicly-available-government-information
In any event, such satire has a place in resisting this plunge toward US autocracy.
It is amazing that this is happening in what is supposed to be a democracy. It boggles the mind that Republicans ignored what was going on. Those senators just sat around and let Musk/Trump do what they wanted.
There is an expression, “if they do it with you, they’ll do it to you”. Don’t Americans understand that what the cabal is doing to people in other countries, they will do to American citizens?
The dismantling of departments which safe guard nuclear weapons, etc simply boggles the mind. No one can be that stupid. As Musk/Trump’s actions continue, if a large foreign power arrived to take over the country, they might be able to do it. Who is exactly left to deal with it? Its almost as if some one planed on how to dismember the U.S.A. None of it makes sense.
Firing people in a forestry or park service dept. is just crazy. North America has continued to have vast forest fires for the past decade and have burnt into cities and towns.
If some one had decided to destroy the U.S.A. the plan Musk and Trump are using would work nicely. Children are going to die because of Musk and his crew’s actions. To bad no one has arrested Musk and Trump and crew for destruction of country.
It should be noted that the bandits currently setting up the plundering are, by virtue of their wealth, immune to the downfall of America. After all, once they have stripped all the value, who cares?
They may think they are immune. But the forces of chaos they are unleashing now might also overwhelm them. (Which they will deserve.)