onfocus

The cuts, which are said to affect between 560 and 1,830 workers at the agency, were planned for at least a week, contingent upon the confirmation of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees the agency. NOAA reported a permanent workforce of 11,758 in fiscal 2023, meaning the cuts could affect more than 10 percent of employees. One source who asked to speak on background told The Hill the firings began Thursday and will continue Friday.

I like getting a heads up on bad weather headed my way. It sure seems like Republicans don't want anyone to have a heads up on bad weather for some reason.

Good commentary on this from climate scientist Daniel Swain on Mastodon.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential pool, the small, rotating group of journalists who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.

Media outlets didn't stand with the AP as they were pushed out. And now they're being pushed out anyway. There's power in numbers and they're coming for you anyway, why not band together and refuse to cover these propaganda events?

“It should be done through layoffs rather than individual, performance-based firings," she said. "The government has processes to do, and we would have 60 days to look for a new job and, most importantly, acknowledgment that these terminations weren't our fault. Private companies have to do that, too.

This story is pretty rage-inducing. Part of how I process the rage is sharing it here on my weblog. I completely understand that it’s too much but the Republicans are too much right now.

Federal workers across the U.S. government received an email on Saturday afternoon asking them to account for what they did in the past week — and Elon Musk says they will be fired if they don't respond.

Federal workers don’t deserve this bullying and disrespect. At some point Republicans are going to find there aren’t enough sycophants or party loyalists to do the things they want to do.

Update (2/25): AP: Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

They warn that dismantling the behind-the-scenes scientific research programs that backstop American life could lead to long-lasting, perhaps irreparable damage to everything from the quality of health care to the public’s access to next-generation consumer technologies. The US took nearly a century to craft its rich scientific ecosystem; if the unraveling that has taken place over the past month continues, Americans will feel the effects for decades to come.

It's almost as if Republicans are trying to stop the American people. After all, their job has shifted from making their constituents happy to making a handful of billionaires happy. And those billionaires seem to feel like they'd be better off without the American people dragging them down.

It’s one thing to be reminded that “elections have consequences,” but quite another to insist that the best response to the abuse of authority is to be restrained, demure, neutral.

Defending democracy takes work. Silence subverts the mission of education.

The last portion of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's 2025 State of the State and budget address included Pritzker invoking Nazis when criticizing President Donald Trump.

This is what defending our liberty really looks like. Don't fall for the scam of blaming our friends and neighbors for our problems.

The President of the United States is aligning himself with the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to undermine the independence of Ukraine and its democracy.

The US Republican party is betraying our longtime allies and siding with the forces of oppression around the world. I don't think people voted for this.

"Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters," a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. "USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission."

[clown emoji]

“A lot of these diversity programs and multicultural centers on campuses were founded as retention tools to help students who had been shut out of higher education in some of these institutions for centuries,” Harris said. “To penalize institutions for taking those steps to help students, that is actually very much an echo of the segregation era.”

Not even trying to hide their racism.

“These reckless firings will slow down critical cleanup work and make workers less safe – trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts,” Murray said.

The federal government is not a social media company. Social media can go offline for a while, not a big deal. Nuclear accident, not reversible. This level of recklessness is distressing.

One disabled veteran who worked at Veterans Affairs overseeing patient care said he learned of his firing by email Thursday. He was one month shy of graduating from his probationary period, he said. The email cited “performance” as the reason. “This is ironic,” he said, “because my most recent — and granted, only — performance evaluation was the highest you could possibly achieve at my agency.”

The cruelty is the point. Horrible, horrible people. As I often say here, please vote for people who care about other people. There is a difference. (Linked to an archived version of this article because Bezos is the worst.)