Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

Judd Legum‬ ‪@juddlegum.bsky.social‬

This is grossly irresponsible reporting by the AP. What’s being offered is not a buyout. The deal is if you agree to resign in September you can continue working remotely until then. There is no buyout or severance.

[ashkor87]

I feel he'll overreach and 2026 will be a great election for Democrats again. That's in two years, though.

Can't be too sure .the rules seem to have changed..

[ti-amie]

Ken Klippenstein
‪@kenklippenstein.bsky.social‬

Follow
Intelligence officials are starting to leak to me now too. Here’s a memo Defense Intelligence Agency personnel received instructing them to suspend observances including:
- Holocaust Remembrance Day
- MLK Day
- Juneteenth

[ti-amie]

The Denver Post
‪@denverpost.com‬

NBC News reported in a follow-up story Wednesday that ICE’s planned Aurora operation, which had been set for Thursday, “was called off temporarily due to media leaks” that prompted security concerns for officers.

https://www.denverpost.com/2025/01/28/i ... ald-trump/

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Senior FBI leaders ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday
By Evan Perez and Zachary Cohen, CNN

Updated 7:52 PM EST, Thu January 30, 2025

At least six senior FBI leaders have been ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday, according to sources briefed on the matter, extending a purge that began last week at the Justice Department across the street from the FBI headquarters.

The senior officials are at the executive assistant director level or special agent in charge level and include those who oversee cyber, national security and criminal investigations, the sources told CNN. Some were notified while Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, sat answering questions from senators for his confirmation hearing Thursday.

Trump transition officials in recent months have signaled plans to push aside leaders promoted by former FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The leadership changes have drawn internal consternation, in part because these officials didn’t have anything to do with prosecutions of Donald Trump, which have been the focus of the president’s ire.

The personnel moves come as hundreds of FBI agents who were assigned to investigate the January 6 US Capitol attack and Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents are bracing for the possibility that they could be forced out or punished, similar to what has happened to dozens of career Justice Department lawyers.

The changes highlight how the new administration has moved quickly to deliver on Trump’s vow to strike back at so-called weaponization at the FBI. Trump has falsely accused agents of abuse in their court-ordered search of his Mar-a-Lago home and of their treatment of Capitol rioters.

Some agents say the criticism belies the fact that FBI agents and supervisors can’t choose which assignments they are given as part of their job. The FBI workforce is broadly conservative, and many agents initially had qualms about being assigned to the Capitol attack and Trump cases, viewing the prosecutions as heavy-handed, people familiar with the matter say. Some Justice Department lawyers leading January 6 cases complained that they believed agents sometimes slow-walked some of their work.

The FBI declined to comment.

The FBI Agents Association officials met with FBI director nominee Kash Patel in recent weeks to raise those concerns, urging him to protect agents who did their work investigating violent crimes with oversight from judges, FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to people briefed on the meeting. Patel listened but offered no reassurances, the people briefed on the meeting said.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday on his nomination, Patel said he doesn’t know of any upcoming personnel plans.

“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” asked Democratic Sen. Cory Booker.

“I am not aware of that, senator,” Patel replied.

Patel, at his hearing, has rejected accusations from Democrats that he would exact retribution against political enemies as he has suggested in media appearances in recent years. He said he would make sure the FBI is “de-weaponized.”

“Every FBI employee will be held to the absolute same standard, and no one will be terminated for case assignments,” he said in response to a question by Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

Agents who carried out the Mar-a-Lago search in the Trump classified documents case have already faced threats after their names were made public by Trump supporters on social media, the Justice Department has said.

The anxiety inside the FBI is fueled by some of the early moves inside the bureau that began even before Trump’s inauguration.

Paul Abbate, the deputy FBI director then serving as acting director, retired on Inauguration Day, a day of high national security vulnerabilities, after the Trump transition appointed two senior agents from Newark and New York city to take over as acting director and deputy director. Wray, appointed by Trump, resigned nearly three years ahead of the end of his term, after Trump vowed to fire him.

Shortly after Trump took office, Tom Ferguson, a former agent and aide to Rep. Jim Jordan, arrived at the FBI headquarters as a policy adviser. Jordan has been a staunch FBI critic and led a subcommittee on purported weaponization of government agencies, including the FBI.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/30/poli ... index.html

[ashkor87]

I always wondered why bigtech was aligned with Trump...Andreesen sheds some light .listen from 28:50 for 10 mins..
Without agreeing, one can see a different perspective...

[ti-amie]

Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say
By Tim Reid
January 31, 2025 5:20 PM EST Updated 3 min ago

Summary

Musk aides restrict access to federal employee data systems
Musk's team works around the clock, installs sofa beds at OPM
Concerns include cybersecurity and lack of oversight

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.

The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems.

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."

Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.
Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

OPM has sent out memos that eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a "dream destination."
Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy.

"This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on," Moynihan said.

MUSK INFLUENCE

A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.

The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.
Musk, a major donor to a famously demanding boss, installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
"It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said.

The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said.
Malague did not respond to a request for comment.

The moves by Musk's aides at OPM, and upheaval inside the Treasury building caused by other Musk aides that was reported on Friday, underscore the sweeping influence Musk is having across government.
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser.

The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday's offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay.

"No-one here knew that the memos were coming out. We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world," one of the officials said.

Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM's chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.

Another senior adviser is Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and most recently a director at The Boring Company, Musk's tunnel-building operation in Las Vegas.

Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-a ... 025-01-31/

[ti-amie]

Officials consider mass purge of FBI agents involved in Trump cases
Leaders appointed by the Trump administration are identifying potentially hundreds of FBI agents for possible termination, said people familiar with the plan.

Updated
January 31, 2025 at 7:13 p.m. EST 56 minutes ago

By Jeremy Roebuck, Carol D. Leonnig and Perry Stein

President Donald Trump’s administration has begun a sweeping effort to potentially fire a large number of FBI agents across the country who worked on investigations targeting the president and his supporters, three people familiar with the plan said Friday.

It was not clear how many agents could be affected, but officials are working to identify potentially hundreds for possible termination, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private personnel plans.

Of specific interest in their review were agents who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents, the people said.

One person said agents involved in building cases against rioters in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol also were being considered for termination.

A former law enforcement official familiar with the situation said FBI employees at the bureau’s downtown Washington headquarters have been asked to turn over internal files of the investigations into election interference and the Mar-a-Lago documents. The Trump administration is reviewing those files for the names of FBI case agents and supervisors who were involved, to make lists of personnel they could consider firing, this person said.

The FBI’s acting director, Brian Driscoll, a longtime agent who Trump appointed to run the bureau until a permanent director is confirmed, refused to endorse the effort, two people familiar with the matter said. The effort appears to be orchestrated through the Justice Department and the Trump administration, though the specifics were not clear.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment, and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked Friday in the Oval Office whether he had ordered the firings of FBI agents, Trump said: “No, but we have some very bad people there … I wasn’t involved in that. But if they want to fire some people, it is fine with me.”

A purge of scores of agents from field offices across the country could significantly deplete the bureau’s staffing levels, affect ongoing cases unrelated to Trump or Jan. 6 and create a vacuum that would be difficult to quickly fill. New agents undergo intensive screening and a specialized 18-week training program before they can be deployed in the field.

While FBI agents can be terminated for cause, there is typically an extensive disciplinary process before any such decision.

Mark Zaid, a veteran attorney specializing in federal employment law, said FBI employees are entitled to receive a proposed punishment or discipline action in writing, and also a written justification outlining the security rules or standards of employee conduct they are accused of violating. The employee would then have a two-stage opportunity to appeal a recommended firing or other punishment.

Zaid said any mass dismissal of agents would be legally risky for the Trump administration, which has already fired prosecutors involved in the Trump cases and told multiple senior leaders at the FBI to retire or resign by Monday or face firing.

“What this administration is doing is, they are acting so recklessly and with disregard to any laws or norms, they are making a ton of errors in order to satisfy their outspoken base that seek retribution,” Zaid said. “And they are creating a lot of legal claims.”

The ranks of those told this week to leave the FBI or be fired included several executive assistant directors as well as special agents in charge of some of the bureau’s field offices across the country. It is highly unusual for senior staffing changes to be made while there is interim leadership in place at the FBI, a law enforcement agency that is supposed to be insulated from politics.

But a mass purge of field agents, the front line investigators in FBI cases, would signal an even greater escalation — and would contradict recent pledges to avoid such action by Trump’s nominees to lead the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The agents assigned to the Trump election interference investigation did not volunteer to be put on the case, but were assigned by top FBI officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a sensitive matter. The person said this assignment process was intended to ensure the investigative team was not politically biased.

During his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, FBI director nominee Kash Patel vowed not to take action against bureau employees simply because they’d worked on investigations tied to the president.

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” said Patel, who before being nominated had been an outspoken critic of the FBI and the Trump investigations.

Under questioning from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Patel committed to following standard bureau review processes before disciplining or dismissing any agent. Booker also pressed Patel for a promise to reverse any dismissals that might occur before he could become FBI director, to ensure those procedures were followed. Patel did not explicitly make that commitment in his response.

“I don’t know what’s going on right now over there,” Patel told him. “But I’m committing to you, senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.”

Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, gave similar assurances regarding Justice Department employees during her hearing earlier this month.

“There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice,” she told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I will not politicize that office. I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation.”

Last week, however, interim leadership installed at the Justice Department while Bondi awaits confirmation fired more than a dozen officials and prosecutors who had worked on Smith’s cases. And The Washington Post reported Friday that interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin has dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on cases against participants in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol over the past four years.

The FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents FBI personnel, said the plan for firings, if true, would be “fundamentally at odds” with Trump’s law enforcement objectives.

The group said it had received assurances from Patel that agents would not face retribution based on the cases to which they were assigned.

“Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the association said in a statement.

Bureau employees traded information throughout much of the day Friday and some sought legal advice, as news of the possible filings circulated.

One person who works at the FBI’s Washington Field Office relayed to a colleague that supervisors had told agents to prepare for the White House to publicly release the names of the agents who worked on the two Trump criminal cases on Monday, and that those agents would to be terminated that same day.

Managers were telling employees to take their personnel files with them over the weekend, another person who was contacted by someone who works for the FBI said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) — the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee which provides oversight to the Justice Department and the FBI — described the recent upheaval at both agencies as “a wrecking ball swinging at the rule of law.”

“These unprecedented purges of hundreds of prosecutors, staff and experienced law enforcement agents will undermine the government’s power to protect our country against national security, cyber, and criminal threats,” he said in a statement. “If allowed to proceed, Trump’s purge of our federal law enforcement workforce will expose America to authoritarianism and dictatorship.”

Lisa Rein, Derek Hawkins and Mark Berman contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... tigations/

[ponchi101]

Not totally related.
There is a very good Spanish film called BYCICLES ARE FOR THE SUMMER. I will not go into the details, but it is about the Spanish Civil War. By the end of the movie, the father takes the son (a small kid at the beginning of the war) to a bar. The father starts explaining that, well, some things may change, and that he (the father) may be detained by the official forces. He was, after all, in the opposite band, and the new regime may arrest him.
"But dad, " the no longer a teenager says, naively. "The war is over. There is peace now!".
The father explains.
"No son. Peace did not arrive. What arrived," the father says "is victory".

It sounds familiar to me.

[Owendonovan]

Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say
By Tim Reid
January 31, 2025 5:20 PM EST Updated 3 min ago

Summary

Musk aides restrict access to federal employee data systems
Musk's team works around the clock, installs sofa beds at OPM
Concerns include cybersecurity and lack of oversight

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.

The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems.

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."

Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.
Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

OPM has sent out memos that eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a "dream destination."
Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy.

"This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on," Moynihan said.

MUSK INFLUENCE

A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.

The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.
Musk, a major donor to a famously demanding boss, installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
"It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said.

The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said.
Malague did not respond to a request for comment.

The moves by Musk's aides at OPM, and upheaval inside the Treasury building caused by other Musk aides that was reported on Friday, underscore the sweeping influence Musk is having across government.
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser.

The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday's offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay.

"No-one here knew that the memos were coming out. We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world," one of the officials said.

Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM's chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.

Another senior adviser is Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and most recently a director at The Boring Company, Musk's tunnel-building operation in Las Vegas.

Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-a ... 025-01-31/

I'm not entirely sure how Musk's aides have any authority to do this.
I fully expect the felon to be the president with the most attempts on his life.
It's going to be hard for me to vote for a Democrat again if this kind of muted response is all I get. (granted I'm not a registered democrat, I'm unaffiliated)
I've been calling and emailing my rep. Hakeem Jeffries daily as well as Schumer and Gillibrand. (I have no chance of challenging, let alone beating them in an election, but I will try if no one else steps up)
The Dems, apparently our only hope, have until the midterms to keep my vote.
There's a sense of desperation I can't quite escape.
At my school, if I'm frustrated or annoyed, I grab one of my rackets and play the wall in the gym. My knee hasn't allowed me to do that yet and I'm getting a little pent up.

[ti-amie]

Hakeem Jeffries‬ ‪@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social‬
·
15m



My statement on the FBI Purge that puts at risk the safety, well-being and national security of the American people.

[dryrunguy]

Owen. I feel thoroughly defeated. I have no fight left. I am tired, discouraged, and hopeless. I know I have to fight, but I don't even know HOW to fight anymore. Truth, in this day and age, is arbitrary and selective. I simply don't know how to fight THAT.

The United States is a lost cause. I honestly don't think we will ever get it back.

If that turns out to not be the case, I invite everyone to quote this post accusing me of being an ignorant idiot (don't delete them mods, I will deserve them--and welcome them.)

[Suliso]

It seems to me US is in some danger of becoming a pseudo democracy like Erdogan's Turkey or Orban's Hungary with dispirited and irrelevant opposition. I do not think abandoning the ONLY viable opposition party is a solution, though.

[ashkor87]

It seems to me US is in some danger of becoming a pseudo democracy like Erdogan's Turkey or Orban's Hungary with dispirited and irrelevant opposition. I do not think abandoning the ONLY viable opposition party is a solution, though.

You may be living in one of the few actual democracies left now.. there is only a handful of them.. the US certainly hasnt been, for a while now - look at how far apart people's views on any important topic and the positions of the leading parties - whether it is abortion, wars, Israel/Palestine, or anything else..what the people think and want, are hardly ever reflected in the positions of the political parties... so it has only been a facade of democracy all these years. My own position is that politics doesnt really matter, let us focus on the things that do.