The Musk-Trump assault on the federal government has already created chaos. Employees have already been fired or are not sure if they will be fired. New hires are frozen as no one knows what the policies are. And people are unlikely to look for jobs in the government sector knowing that they will be treated like dirt. The AssociatedPress estimates that about 300,000 workers have been cut so far.
In normal times, the turnover in the government workforce of 2.4 million employees is about 6% or around 150,000 people. Apparently about 75,000 people accepted the Musk offer to leave, and I suspect that many of these were people who had been on the verge of leaving anyway so had little to lose by accepting the vaguely worded offer. But others may be unplanned and leave their agencies in the lurch.
Federal service rules prevent the firing of employees other than for cause such as misconduct. However, those on probationary status may not be covered by those protections which is why Musk has ordered the firing of all probationary staffers. There are about 220,000 such people.. But the label ‘probationary’ is misleading. It may give the impression that these were new employees who are young and/or inexperienced and so their loss is relatively inconsequential. But that is not the case. Anyone who was shifting from one position to another within the government or getting promoted to a higher level is also classified as probationary for a year. So among the probationers who have been fired are very senior and experienced people who just had the misfortune to shift their jobs at this time.
The people who are being fired are being given identical causal reasons for their dismissals, which seems unlikely.
Alex Jay Berman, the executive vice president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 71, told NBC10 on Thursday that 250 to 300 Philadelphia probationary IRS workers received their layoff letters during the day and the rest of the employees who work the night shift will receive them Thursday evening.
Berman expects a total of 400 employees in all to be laid off by the end of the day. He said the employees are probationary workers with roughly one year or less of service at the agency.
“The letters are willfully incorrect and to our belief in NTEU unlawful,” Berman told NBC10. “They say essentially ‘your ability, skills and performance do not make you a fit for federal employment. In addition, your performance is not up to par.’ This is patently untrue. These are being all issued with the exact same wording to every single one of these probationary employees, whether they have just gotten out of training and had no performance metrics. Whether they have been here for almost their entire year and had very good performance appraisals.”
Of course, some of those let go are MAGA people, who now feel aggrieved.
One of the laid off IRS employees, Robert McCabe, told NBC10 he went into work on Thursday and had issues logging in. He and his coworker sat around and waited for instructions. He then received the layoff letter shortly before 11:30 a.m. McCabe said he had been a supporter of President Trump prior to the layoff.
“You know when he talks about government waste and all that, yes, I’m behind it,” McCabe said. “I believe there is a lot of stuff in the government that needs fixing. And that’s part of the reason why I actually wanted to work for the government, actually. To help change. Help change the things that are wrong in the world, you know? I thought that someone with his business acumen would have come in with a fine-tooth comb and actually found it instead of coming in with a wrecking ball and destroying people’s lives for no reason.”
Such people always seem to think that they are special and that the ax will fall on someone else and they are quite happy with that. You poor deluded sap. You really expected Trump to care about anyone who is not a white, rich, heterosexual man?
But that is not all. Given the current climate, existing employees are hardly likely to be motivated to give of their best if they feel that their future is uncertain. They are more likely to tread water and do the minimum necessary, keep their heads low, not take any initiatives, and avoid doing anything that will draw attention to themselves. Why would anyone do anything that risks making them even inadvertently cross the ideological barriers that have been thrown up? In other words, they will behave like the most unproductive and inefficient workers. So Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) will end up producing a more inefficient workforce consisting of the very kinds of people he claims to despise.
But this has serious consequences for many areas, not the least of which is public health. Currently we are seeing a spike in avian flu cases and the transmission of the virus to cows. This is the time when you would expect the FDA and the CDC and the Department of Agriculture to go into overdrive to try and prevent the contagion before it spreads further. But that is not going to happen, especially since the US has cut off all communication with the WHO
A newer variant of H5N1 bird flu has spilled over into dairy cows separately in Nevada and Arizona, prompting new theories about how the virus is spread and leading to questions about containing the ongoing outbreaks.
The news comes amid a purge of experts at federal agencies, including employees who were responding to the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Agriculture.
…The current outbreak is unlikely to end without intervention and needs close attention from the Trump administration to prevent the virus from wreaking more havoc.
…At the same time, the CDC’s seasonal flu vaccination campaigns were halted on Thursday as the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, reportedly called for “informed consent” advertisements instead. A meeting for the independent vaccine advisers was also postponed on Thursday.
The US has also halted communication with the World Health Organization on influenza data.
This graphic indicates how the virus can spread to humans. While some humans have been infected so far, there have been no cases reported as yet of human-to-human transmission.
Then there are the reported outbreaks of measles, with the worst outbreak in Texas in 30 years.
The measles outbreak in Texas has grown to at least 90 cases, reaching historic levels, according to officials.
Since late January, 90 cases of measles have been identified in the South Plains region, the state’s department of state health services (DSHS) reported Friday. At least 16 patients have been hospitalized as a result.
The majority of reported measles cases were in children and teenagers; minors between the ages of five and 17 accounted for 51 cases. Children under four made up 26 cases. Most patients’ parents either had chosen to not immunize them against the highly contagious illness through vaccines meant to prevent the potentially deadly illness and its spread, or their vaccination status was unknown.
…A DSHS spokesperson told ABC News that the latest outbreak is the worst officials have seen in 30 years.
…In 2024, the US had 285 measles cases, the highest number since 2019, when nearly 1,300 cases were reported. Children under age five accounted for 120 cases, or 42%.
Measles is highly contagious. Having an anti-vaccine nutcase like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the HHS is not going to help matters.
Kennedy has already taken aim at several vaccine-related initiatives, including ordering the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop several campaigns promoting vaccination.
Also, a CDC vaccine-safety meeting, comprising a panel of experts, was postponed.
Is a polio outbreak next?
We are now going to see an even greater proliferation of so-called ‘influencers’ and profiteers and scammers promoting various quack cures for infectious diseases, with health professionals unable to adequately combat them without full government backing since Trump and Kennedy are sympathetic to such dangerous alternatives.
With those numbers of measles cases you’re also going to see children with damaged eye sight and permanent hearing loss. Some of the kids will be mentally scarred by the hallucinations the high fever causes. And of course they will all be more vulnerable to infections in the coming months as measles suppresses immune memory.
I have no sympathy for such an incredible idiot.
ah, i’m do glad this article came with cold comfort, just a lil leopard-eaten face, as a treat. it makes it sooo much easier to read this kind of stuff.
@Jazzlet #1
I had measles when I was 14, despite getting the MMR vaccine when I was 2. (Vaccines occasionally don’t take or don’t last.) Don’t really remember the experience while I was in the worst of it, because I wasn’t really lucid at the time, but I do remember two things -- crying something like “this is a nightmare, I’m going to wake up, I’m going to wake up!”, and waiting for the school bus at 2am. In the latter case I became temporarily lucid again, remembered I was sick, and returned home… probably because I wasn’t properly dressed for the freezing cold weather (it was January) and that would have brought my body temperature down to normal. My parents did say after that I behaved erratically and was scared of them. Wasn’t really traumatized because I don’t remember any of it, but I never stopped to think how much worse things could get if a kid had a similar experience and *did* remember it, especially if they were younger than I was.
“Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) will end up producing a more inefficient workforce consisting of the very kinds of people he claims to despise”
Er… that’s the point. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Make people think of the government as entirely useless. Lots already do, but they were wrong. But if you fire everyone competent, then say “the government can’t help you”, you’re right.
It reminds me a bit of the whole “reality-based community” comment from back in W’s day (remember him? A beacon of intellectual accomplishment and rigour compared to the current incumbent, oh for those happy days again, eh?). If reality refuses to conform to your ideological story about it -- change the reality.
Isn’t one of the US Gov’t departments responsible for food safety? I wonder what’s happening to them?
If the Pretoria pud-puller were to die in a mid-air collision, I might start believing in a God.
Just a suggestion for you, YHWH.
more on #5 sonofblakejr
The Unitedkingdomese NHS was starved of funding, then they pointed at it saying how it doesn’t work, then the starved it of more funding. It’s tried and true.
Mano commented on how he thinks Trump thinks only of straight white men. This is an error of degree and not kind. He only thinks of ONE straight white man.
To douche à l’orange and elongated muskrat, the government is nothing but a a competitor. So what do you do when you’re fuckwads with power over a competitor? Sabotage them.
I would call it a soft form of coup d’ etat, with no violence yet but quite comprehensive. Mind you, I am not a political scientist, but I don’t recall seeing or reading about anything similar. Governments do melt down during civil wars or invasions from outside, but I wonder how many precedents there are for something like this -- even Weimar Germany was ticking along better, and in Berlin they had some bitchin’ jazz going on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin
Meanwhile, the science establishment is being dismantled, for example:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/23/trump-nih-health-medical-research
this obviously can have really serious consequences, particularly for public health. And Mr Brainworm Kennedy just declared that “there’s too much research in infective diseases”, something that makes my own brain explode.
Anyway, things are moving quite fast, so we are going to see some of those serious consequences pretty soon, I bet.
Here’s hoping for a soft landing.
BTW, probationary employees also include long time employees that were promoted to new positions in the past year. How encouraging
@2, holms: The “someone with his business acumen” was what got me, too. Firstly, most people with that level of acumen are deceased or brain dead. Second, impressed that someone as dumb as this McCabe knows the word acumen.
outis, @ #11:
The terms I’m seeing thrown around are “autogolpe”, or “self-coup.
Noted cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier has also described it as “a national cyberattack“.
@10: that’s an interesting perspective, I hadn’t thought of it in those terms but it does make sense.
Google “Brexit self-harm”, and it becomes apparent that people the world over marvelled for years at what a bunch of moronic fuck-heads the British electorate were, and how comprehensively they fucked themselves over in 2016.
And the American electorate said “hold my beer”. Thank goodness the UK is now only the second stupidest most self-sabotaging nation on the planet. We were embarrassed there for a while. (Hint for American readers: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/embarrassment )