The goal is supposedly 10% reduction. I doubt they'll hit the target with the offer but really a no offer deal. IMO they really should offer targeted, real buyout packages based on years of service, level etc.

Don't know the legalese with any unions or contracts, but I'm thinking this is a setup to do mass reorganizations, terminations after Sep 30.

I think the ultimate goal is to put this out there with all of the noise about purging liberals and overall reduction in the federal workforce and see if they can scare enough people into taking the deal. Like you, I don't have any knowledge of the union/contract aspect of actually firing a bunch of rank-and-file federal employees who are not political appointees. I assume, like most everything else Trump is testing the waters on right now, we'll be finding out.

With Trump just golfing all the time, who is actually issuing these Executive Orders? It's obviously someone at the Heritage Foundation but it would be interesting to see who the aspiring king of America is at this point.

The architects of P2025 that Trump said wouldn't be involved in his administration. Plus some form of AI writing assistance, it appears.

If a federal job starts to become a 4 year position, you're going to struggle finding top people to work these jobs.

Imagine you're working a desk job, and you have to "bend the knee" to the current president or get fired. That's so weird.

I think that's the long-term intent. Of course, given that we've got GOP legislators floating amendment scenarios so Trump can stay in office (or at least run again) perpetually, the idea is to purge the liberals and reset what's left of the government with right-wingers who would have some manner of job stability (especially since the Dems have shown no inclination to throw out norms like the GOP, so even if they win in 2028, they'd probably leave all of the right-wingers in their positions).

/waves to Postmaster General

Haven't seen this in MSM but ... FAFO. Didn't want to compromise with Joe as lesser of 2 evils? You'll figure it out pretty quick. Looking forward to your TikTok posts decrying this fascism.

Trump launches anti-Semitism crackdown as he orders deportation of pro-Hamas students who terrorized campuses | Daily Mail Online

Elon clarifying some on the buyout. If true, great deal for someone who wants & is able to leave before Sep 30. But I really did not read this in the memo so I'd stay put unless there is a formal FAQ or clarification ...

I'd say the delta between what the letter says and what Musk/others are saying is their lack of attention to detail/competency.

This is insane. No one elected Elon musk to shitcsn a bunch of civil servants.

You're too nice. I think its strategic ambiguity (aka has X paid Twitter executives their severance yet or still hung up in courts?).

But if true, then a pretty sweet deal for some with the right timetable.

My wife is in a virtual meeting now for the VA federal employees. Whooo boy, folks are HEATED!

The General for our agency put an email out this morning and it's clear she isn't happy but is trying to walk a fine line.

None of my employees seem to be taking it seriously. They mostly see it as a joke.

Have you listened to Jon in this thread?

Ok, we are about 20 minutes in and three people have mentioned that they voted for the President before going on a diatribe and/or asking questions about the current situation. Is this some sort of code to save their jobs? They do understand that once we reach the RIF stage, supporters of the current administration will lose their jobs as well, right?

EDIT: To be clear, I don't mean this in a FAFO sort of way. I just don't understand throwing out your voting bonifides in a Q/A session where there are still very little answers.

It's because Trump's goons are asking when people had their "MAGA Conversion" moment to judge who's sufficiently loyal.

Seems to be par for the course. Some Florida Man's Guatemalan wife got nabbed as an illegal and he posted an open plea on social media for Trump to contact him so they can work out a deal to let her stay since he voted for him.

The federal aid freeze trial balloon has been pulled back.

Dems didn't even get around to their emergency meeting either.

He handed them such an easy layup and I think the only person who really made a stink was JB Pritzker. Enormous missed opportunity.

State jobs generally are better anyway. The only reason I've stayed federal is so that my 9 years active duty goes toward my retirement. Better pay, better benefits, far less bullshit, and at least in Washington they support full time telework and remote work if it fits your job. Our hospital has bled a lot of our best employees, whether it's provider, nurse, or admin to the state over the years.

And I really hate to break the news to people but I'm a moderate compared to many of the true believers.

The simplest example is that I recognize the need for some sort of FBI-like organization, under some sort of rebranding/refined mission, etc. I have to be ... judicious ... in saying that aloud in some circles, lest I be drawn into an argument I simply lack the energy to bother having.

Maybe? The Press Secretary is saying the funding freeze is still in place.

Who knows with these charlatans?

I mean, the FBI basically (really boiled down) came about because of a) organized crime, b) rampant unlawfulness/cronyism/corruption at state/local levels (basically, organized crime with a badge or office; "murder? what murder we didn't see any murder...")

It's not a surprise some people don't like the idea of such an organization.

Yeah, someone from HS is a long-time Fed parole officer and was both a little freaked out by the email, but also annoyed with the media for not getting the story straight. Girl, when the gov't itself is shifting messages constantly, it's not completely the media's fault if they're not getting the story quite right.

No one knows what's going on right now. Our 3 star is trying to get answers for people.

The most straightforward of these EOs was the one on DEI and even that one's a mess. We're no longer an Army agency but we still work closely with them and most Army EEO offices had pulled DEI in under their umbrella for efficiency since they're closely related. Trying to define what falls under DEI and what falls under EEO is nearly impossible but they've been ordered to pull all DEI materials and related content.

reuters.com

I mean, I assume they want to get rid of EEO too.

EEO and SHARP offices are exempt and are sticking is the official word. So no one knows anything.

Good thing they got rid of DEI policies just as Tucker Carlson's son is hired as deputy press secretary for JD Vance!

Didn't we have anti-nepotism laws for the federal government?

So who are those people and how come none of them are here?

Is this a serious question? The sheer fact that he IS here makes him suspect/moderate in many circles. There's a good chunk of folks who regard anyone who has ANY civil online interaction with non-MAGA people (aka "the enemy") as being too soft.

I'm not sure how many gamers are included in that group off-hand. Definitely no sportsgamers that I can think of.

I mean, I know roughly a dozen people who were in DC for the inauguration, several who spent weeks on the "caravan tours" (whatever they call those), etc

I know a lot of the "ready for sainthood" supporters.

I have no doubt there is many. Just look at the most devoted religious fanatics and then apply that same fanatisicm to worshiping Trump.

This is a discussion I've had with one friend in particular. Her husband is basically that level of supporter, she's more like me, capable of seeing the occasional flaw on a specific point(s). And we know that we have to carefully pick & choose our moments to express any of that.

It's the largest cult in history. Is that even up for debate at this point?

Trump just announced a 30000 person internment camp at Guantanamo that would hold people for an indefinite length of time.

Calling them internment camps is the woke bullshit they claim to be fighting against. Call them what they are.

it was fascinating/sad to watch one particular person on FB flip-flop on Tik Tok. His first post on the matter…

“Everybody on here whining and crying about Tik Tok. Who cares! Yall need to go fishing, or get you a better hobby. Maybe you should do your research on why this app has been banned. Glad it's gone!”

And then of course, not even 48 hours later…

“I tell you what, Trump gets stuff DONE! Biden tried to kill Tik Tok but Trump saved it!”

If he received any pushback for the contradiction, he deleted it. There’s none there now. Just some likes, hearts, and approving comments on both posts….some from the same people.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Wonder what DOGE and Musk say about the cost...

Only for the sane people.

Not for the pathetic sacks of shit suffering from TDS

Mostly miserable people that get off and feel better when someone else suffers.

There seem to be three main causes for TDS, ironically the same as the three main causes for liberalism

Ignorance
mental/emotional illness or defect
plain old evil

I tend to avoid trying to parse the percentages because in the end the cause doesn't really change the amount of damage done by the disease but in the case of TDS, it does seem to skew heavily toward the mental illness and plain ol' evil roots.

And I cannot begin to describe just how much better my coffee tastes for the past week when I can make it with the tears of the TDS crowd. Sooooo fucking tasty.

I've hated Trump since he stiffed one of my dads best friends and almost bankrupted him building the Taj.

The man is human garbage and always has been.

Jesus Christ Jon, or some people just see him for what he is and this is coming from a 60/40 GOP voter at one point

I'm plain old evil.

Finding enjoyment in people suffering is mental illness. There's no way around that or to rationalize it another way.

It's also telling that the same people that speak about the bible and religion now find the teachings of Christ too woke. The same people now saying empathy is sin. If Christ returned tomorrow these people would send him to Guantanamo for not having his papers.

Facebook pays Trump 25 million to settle the suit relating to Trump being banned on Facebook. It's being reported that Trump said they had to pay if they wanted to be inside the tent.

We're already pretty damned close to being Hungary.

Jon is nothing but a class act folks. A class act and perfect example of how Christ is in everyone. He's building a house for Jon right now. A heavenly house for lovers of trump and christ and Jon. Where they can all bond together in the shared love of humanity and the great, big wonderful world of straight, white, homophobic, xenophobic, you better get out of town before nightfall, America that we've been missing!

How is it not a cult then?

It is fully a cult.

*Loyalty Tests
*Own language and key words that are used.
*High control
*Full devotion to a single individual.
*Anyone who leaves is an enemy.
*Only one person can 'save' the group.

Trump's cult would happily accept getting a leg cut off if they got to see someone else get both chopped off.

Just as long as it's not attached to whoever's boots they're licking today.

Totally a cult

The story on some of the J6ers that were pardoned is wild. We have one killed by police after trying to pull a gun during a traffic stop, one arrested on gun charges that already has 3 felony convictions (not including J6) 1 was pardoned despite having charges pending for soliciting a minor, and 2 others are wanted on child porn charges.

Gotta get those migrants to GITMO though.

Lost in the rescinded memo fiasco (at least to me) was the reason why they rescinded the memo - they actually thought that because one of the courts had issued a TRO against enforcement of the memo, that if the memo didn't exist, the case was moot. A government attorney tried to make that argument, at which point the press secretary's tweet saying the freeze was still in place was raised in court.

Not surprisingly, the childish attempt to pretend that the memo, and not the freeze, was the lynchpin of the case against the freeze, failed horribly.

You couldn't pay me enough to embarrass myself daily in front of courts like Trump lawyers do.

His lawyers are like everyone else around him, completely unqualified and incompetent because anyone with a brain knows not to go near him.

So like I thought DEI was about the hiring process and hiring diverse people. Not about protecting people from being fired. I mean you can't just fire someone for no reason. THey can still sue for wrongful termination. Just firing people from important departments isn't smart either.

In the commercial, non-union world, pretty much for any reason.

It's an interesting state of affairs in which we concern ourselves with people being fired for no reason, but not with them quitting for no reason.

What, can we force them somehow not to quit?

**Points gun at employee** "You'd best get back to work, son."

Feels like having no head of the FAA and a guy from the Real World who voted to increase air traffic in charge of Transportation should be a bigger part of this story.

Theres been executive orders related to attemps to pull funding from schools that teach content Trump finds objectionable (which is illegal but not sure that will stop them) along with one that pertains to prosecuting school personell who support trans or non binary students.

Project 2025 is definitely in full force trying to be put into place.

North Korea style shit....

I saw this last night. This was my favorite.


I'm not sure how this is even possible. You can't be honest and accurate about our founding while always being inspiring and ennobling.

I wonder what would happen if a President issued an executive order and most people just quietly agreed to ignore it?

Also, why does the EO linked above read like it was *written* by a high school student?

I'd like to see an EO more focused on fixing that problem in people who work for the government writing EOs.

Because they're using chatgpt to write them. Not a joke. The formatting and grammar issues in these EOs are clear signs of AI.

So does that mean we finally get to welcome our computer overlords? I've been waiting practically since the internet started and/or The Matrix came out.

Trump on the crash. Can we talk about Trump's mental state?

He's talking about people who didn't get air traffic controller jobs, probably. You know, the true victims.

Just the white ones.

I thought that went without saying. The is the Trump Presidency thread, after all!

Think I’ll top off the gas tank tomorrow and stock up on some bananas & avocado.

"Concepts of a plan"

I was reading how the government is only funded until mid-March so any promise to pay employees until the end of the fiscal year is being made on faith. I wonder if the plan is to get people to accept deferred resignation and then refuse to fund it past mid-March. There's no way I would trust these fuckers.

I'm not looking forward to the 25% tariffs for Canada which apparently start tomorrow, but no one knows what they'll actually be yet. I guess ChatGPT "what tariffs should I charge Canada?" will give the answer.

Well, this guy's a downer.

Bluesky

(I mean, not for the fascists here, but for all the rest of us.)

So, when some president blames the guys before him doing stuff the wrong way, and he himself had a term in between, doesn't that basically mean he's blaming himself as well?

The wife kicked off the talks with the Trump supporters in our circle last night in a conversation with her brother. They got into an argument and she told him if he didn't reevaluate his views she would be reevaluating their relationship. He tried spitting out MAGA talking points and she swatted each one away with facts. He ended the conversation admitting that he's not educated enough on these issues. The talk with my mom will be this weekend. The big one will be the rest of her Texas family. Specifically her mom and stepdad. I don't see that one going well at all.

They'll probably get delayed. If they were really going into effect tomorrow, the markets would be down like 3%+. Guessing they realize it's just another PR stunt.

My conspiracy theory is that Musk has some really bad financial positions. Tesla is a walking timebomb. Company is regressing and he's running out of things to make up that they'll never do. They're even now starting to go Enron by marking unrealized gains as profits from fucking crypto of all things.

Twitter is still a huge financial drain. Billion a year in just interest on loans.

So my conspiracy is this is all to just gut what he can from the government and he'll do some fucked up things to make it happen.

Well the real conspiracy theory I thought was that they were going to destroy the dollar and make crypto the basis for everything. I don't know the details of how that works exactly, but that's what I'd heard Thiel, etc. wanted to do.

I agree that he probably has bad financial positions.

I think there are people who are overly leveraged and others like Tether that are straight ponzi schemes that desperately need that crypto bailout they've been talking about.

I mean, I never quite get market caps, either. Tesla had $25.7B in revenue, has a $1.3T market cap. GM on the other hand made $180B, has a market cap of $49B. Huh? Just how many cars is Tesla expected to sell?

It's a meme stock. You can't compare it to how traditional companies operate in the market.

I don't think that's a conspiracy theory at all. It's clear that most of Musk's wealth is on paper and he's likely leveraged himself to the hilt* (like Trump, ironically) so he's more sensitive to most to market changes.


*generally, not just to buy twitter

I refuse to do this. It's simply not worth my mental health and the drama, plus my parents are nearing their 80s and my dad has a TBI. What is my ultimatum - enjoy the rest of your lives? Not gonna happen. So I just ignore it all and don't engage on any of it.

Now, my wife's family, outside of her parents (who are Trumpers but low-key about it and not really political) ... I'd be happy to tell each one of them what I think and never see any of them again. But they don't visit anyway. It's been 3.5 years since her parents moved FROM Florida TO Kentucky to live near us due to lack of family support, and her sister still hasn't visited once. Fuck 'em all. Out of sight, out of mind.

Especially when Tesla's owner has been going out of his way to alienate the very people who would be most likely to buy his cars.

Even if you accept the absurd notion that the tariffs are national security related, how is Canada possibly a greater threat than China?

This is just Trump trying to get kickbacks from local businesses that he thinks he can strongarm. There's a lot less of available graft for him with Chinese companies. The message has gone out that if you pay him off before tomorrow he'll cut your tariff.

I refuse to have anything to do with people that support and cheer on someone that's threatening my job. I brought it up to the wife a couple of nights ago and was honestly surprised that she was all in agreement. Her brother just kicked things off early by calling her last night to rant about "illegals".

My mom doesn't follow politics and just gets caught up in all the facebook posts from her circle in WV. The wife's mom and step dad, however, are hardcore Fox News watching Trumpers as is the rest of her family in Texas.

Sounds like Elon is single-handedly in control of the country's payment system.

He's going to tie it into X, isn't he?

We're going the 90's Russia route which I guess we sort of deserve.

So I guess it's official on the tariffs if the press conference is correct. Kind of surprised no one spoke up to tell him what's up.

Just sort of feels like America is out of ideas. China crushing us, biggest growth sectors are scams, institutions crumbling, and falling for economic ideas that were discredited 100 years ago. No real economic plan to make lives better, no foreign policy plans, just hyperfocus on removing pronouns from e-mails or whatever people are worked up about that doesn't matter. A few rich guys completely raiding the coffers and no one has the energy to care anymore (nor can I blame them). And there is no longer even a sniff of an opposition party.

Like I said, it feels a lot like we're going the 1990's Russia route. Except our Yeltsin isn't a drunk, he's just really dumb. I guess the annoying part of this is the uncertainty. One minute there's 25% tariffs on a country, the next it's delayed, then it's back on, then it's going to encompass Europe, then who fucking knows. People are just winging it.

WaPo has the blueprint for the GOP reconciliation bill.

315 billion in cuts over ten years and over 5.8 trillion in tax cuts and new spending. But they plan on saying tax cuts largely pay for themselves so it fits reconciliation rules.

Hard to know what to believe, but it appears Trump ordered a couple dams to release water to get it flowing to LA and all thats happening if farmers fields are getting flooded.