Can't See the Forest for the Treason
Trump lays off thousands of Forest Service workers three months before wildfire season
Feb. 14: Trump lays off Forest Service workers … Education nominee not sure if Black history courses will be allowed … Adams’s federal prosecutors quit pro quo … WSJ editorial board says Trump doesn’t understand money, which WSJ editorial board didn’t understand when it mattered …
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The Trump administration is firing at least 2,4001 employees of the U.S. Forest Service. The cuts are just part of a broad sweep of terminations throughout the federal government, targeting an estimated 200,000 recently hired workers still on probationary status, who are easier to let go.2
Agencies immediately affected reportedly include the departments of Veterans Affairs and Education, to ensure that no one ever again believes that we care about veterans or kids. The firings would represent roughly 10% of the federal government and at least some will likely be challenged in court.
The Forest Service cuts are coming three months before the start of wildfire season. That’s right, the Los Angeles fires were off-season.
Exempt from the Forest Service cuts are firefighters, bridge inspectors, meteorologists in charge of predicting avalanches, and law enforcement. The cuts instead focus on the people who make it possible for their colleagues to fight fires, inspect bridges, and predict avalanches.
Here’s a look at federally owned land, with Forest Service lands in dark green:
In response to past wildfires, Trump has said the key is proper forest management, specifically calling for raking the forests. Which, as I discovered doing some reading up on it last night, involves raking flammable leaves and shit away from the trees.
Sharp-eyed Newsfuckers may have noticed that forest-rakers were not on the list of Forest Service employees exempt from termination. Remember TFN characterized all these Trump dumbnesses as laying down rakes for him to step on? Well, come wildfire season, every death and destroyed home will be reported as a rake Trump stepped on.
The Forest Service termination notices went out last night and this morning. More are coming.
Veterans Affairs last night laid off 1,000 people — not those with union contracts, or those directly involved in providing care and benefits, just 1,000 people who help those who provide care and benefits.
“This was a tough decision, but ultimately it’s the right call to better support the Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors the department exists to serve,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins3 — an Air Force veteran and chaplain in the reserves who presumably peed himself laughing.
Collins kept the laughs coming with a press release claiming that the VA will “save” $98 million from the layoffs and “will redirect all of those resources back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.” Um, by hiring people?
The layoffs directive to agencies came from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which at least had the good taste to axe its own probationary workers, giving them less than an hour to get the fuck out and take their now-ironic “Hang In There!” posters with them.
OPM’s layoffs included what are classified as Schedule A employees: Veterans and others with severe disabilities.
GovExec obtained termination notices alleging poor performance or that “ability, knowledge and skills do not fit” the job’s needs. One terminated employee who was informed they weren’t up for the job hadn’t yet started doing the job.
American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley reportedly said the union will contest the firings. Employees can also challenge their termination if they can show it was for partisan political reasons.
Proving wrongful termination should be pretty easy, since the termination notices claimed they were for cause, but the OPM ordered them as part of Trump’s government-destroying agenda, according to a recently hired OPM spokesperson who presumably said that during the one hour they had until they had to leave the building.
It’s Not Just Forest Trees Trump Hates
A New Orleans nonprofit group has spent years trying to undo the damage done under the previous Republican president during Hurricane Katrina. Pres. Donald Trump’s funding freeze is now making sure that the group won’t totally reverse the legacy of Pres. George W. Bush.
The city lost an estimated 200,000 trees. Its tree canopy has diminished by almost 30%.
The nonprofit group Sustaining Our Urban Landscape (SOUL) was working to rectify that.
When Pres. Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act allocated $1.5 billion for forestry initiatives including urban communities, the Forest Service called it a “historic level of investment.”
SOUL got $3.5 million, 80% of its budget for the next five years, allowing it to dramatically accelerate its work planting new trees providing shade and cleaner air to the city.
Now, Grist reports, the funding has stopped. So SOUL rescinded a job offer. Canceled a delivery contract. Killed a $20,000 order. In a state represented by the speaker of the House.
Remember how Trump put his name on Covid checks? This is the opposite. He’s tipping dominoes of destruction, and every delivery company and non-hired employee sees his name on it. Because Trump is doing so much so fast that it’s all anyone’s talking about — which means awareness is high, so recognition of causation is high.
My big fear about Trump was that he’d hire skilled people this time, people who could wreak subtle havoc, delaying the epiphanies when people would recognize bottom. He’s not. Everyone sees it.
That’s because someone decide to flood the zone instead of boiling the frog. Y’know what happens when it floods? People band together. They talk and share resources. The waters recede and people rebuild.
These dipshits couldn’t even come up with a metaphor for themselves of actual, permanent success.
Education Must Be Locally Controlled and/or Federally Controlled
The Department of Education laid off 60 people yesterday. Sorry, 60 more people. Another 100 or so have been put on leave by the made-up Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) because they once attended a meeting about diversity or some bullshit reason.
Contractors paid to analyze federal education data had their contracts terminated yesterday effective immediately. (Another reason not to outsource, Democrats.)
That’s 89 contracts that were paying almost $900 million to companies that are now not being paid almost $900 million. Which will likely mean layoffs. Which will mean increased need for federal benefits. Which will now have work requirements. Which will disqualify laid-off workers.
The contract-killing order came not even from Dept. of Education officials but from members of DOGE, despite their obvious conflict of interest that they hate school because they were just in it.
Also, you remember how the whole rationale for killing the Dept. of Education is because local people should control schools? (Which they do except when feds have to step in every fucking decade to rein in benighted asshole parents who want to terrify the scapegoat du jour.)
Turns out, Trump’s Education secretary nominee, fake-wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, doesn’t believe in local control!
At her confirmation hearing yesterday, McMahon talked about all the ways the federal government should put its thumb on the scale to keep some kids under the collective thumb of ignorance, fear, and hate.
McMahon testified that she’s raring to go when it comes to cutting federal funds for locally-controlled schools that choose to teach about racism and transgender issues, including the existence of both. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) pointed out that this would be illegal.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) gave McMahon a pop quiz on her own plans and it turned out McMahon hadn’t studied.
Q: Could schools have Black History Month? A: Yes.
Q: Martin Luther King Jr. Day? A: Yes.
Q: Student clubs with racial or ethnic themes? A: Depends? Maybe? (McMahon would “want to know what the clubs are doing.”)
Q: A course on Black history? A: Uh, pass? (For the record, America’s next Education secretary was “not quite certain” whether Trump will let American public schools teach Black history courses.)
Y’know, this is the kind of fucked-up shit that gets taught in Black history courses.
New York U.S. Attorney and Others Quit to Protest Trump Corruption
Pres. Donald Trump’s openly corrupt order to dismiss federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams so that he could do stuff for Trump blew all the way up yesterday.
Trigger Warning: Your otherwise gentle TFN is about to use phrases and language that may cause intense responses and even trauma in some readers who are especially sensitive to anything nice being said about the New York Times.
The New York Times did amazing work yesterday chronicling almost in real time the stunning internal conflagration at Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Trump Justice Department. (Gift link = TFN ❤️ NY and TFN ❤️ U.)
As TFN told you Tuesday, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, literally a former Trump defense lawyer, ordered U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to drop the absolutely slam-dunk case against Adams. Bove said it had nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with Adams helping Trump out on immigration.
It’s worth noting that Trump appointed Sassoon as the city’s top acting federal prosecutor pending confirmation of his own nominee. She’s a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who’s now deceased but was a right-wing ghoul even before dying, and she belongs to the right-wing Federalist Society.
Sassoon quit yesterday rather than drop the case.
Her team also refused to drop the case, so Bove put them on administrative leave and ordered them investigated.
DOJ transferred the case to Washington prosecutors for them to drop the charges. So the two guys who led that unit also quit.
Then three more lawyers in the same unit quit.
It was the public integrity unit.
And Sassoon’s letter explicitly accused the Trump Justice Department of a lack of public integrity.
CHECKS AND BALANCES For some batshit reason, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has the legal power to remove New York City’s mayor for cause. I don’t recall it ever being done — and we had Rudy Giuliani — but I could be wrong.
Sassoon’s letter said she was also preparing to charge Adams with destruction of evidence. And on the same day Adams denied there was a quid pro quo with the feds, he found a loophole in the city’s sanctuary law so that he could justify letting federal immigration cops into Riker’s Island.
Adams explained that the deal had nothing to do with his charges being dropped and was merely a routine matter of providing federal officers with some quo in return for quids.
Last night, Hochul was asked whether she would remove Adams and didn’t say no.
Trump Unites America in Dumbfoundedness upon Finding His Dumbness
The Wall Street Journal and the American Prospect agree: When it comes to economic matters, Pres. Donald Trump is dumber than a bag of hammers on a hang glider.
Here’s the start of a condescending editorial from the right-wing editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal:
“Does President Trump understand money? Not money as in cash, but the supply of money, the price of money as measured by interest rates, and their impact on inflation? The answer would appear to be no after Mr. Trump called for lower interest rates on Wednesday—the same day the Labor Department reported an increase in inflation for the third straight month.”
In other words, when prices are rising, one doesn’t put more money in circulation by making borrowing cheaper. Which is what Trump wants to do. (See also: TFN’s almost-exhaustive census of the many many ways Trump is lighting metaphorical fires under inflation while laying off metaphorical Forest Service employees.)
Less shockingly, the left, too, sees peril for the economy in Trump’s “plans.”
As TFN wrote earlier this week, Trumpian deregulation will liberate brotrepreneurs to fix break prices by colluding with each other. But Wall Street deregulation also increases the odds of a repeat of 2007/2008. (That’d be a global economic meltdown.)
Well, now The American Prospect’s David Dayen raises one specific scenario that wasn’t on my TFN Doppler 3000 radar. DOGE frat president Elon Musk isn’t just firing people, he’s selling off federal office space. Like, tons of it.
The money would go, obvi, to rich people in the form of tax breaks. But the office space itself would flood a commercial real estate market that’s already under water. Landlords are already struggling to refinance.
And Wall Street bets on commercial real estate because it bets on everything. So, for instance, some stupid Wall Street bro might have created some financial vehicle that, like, rises in value if commercial mortgages are paid off in timely fashion or who the fuck knows. In other words, a derivative, one of those things that’s somehow still legal even though it keeps fucking us.
As Dayen points out, the sudden dropping of tons of office inventory into the market could cause a lot of losses on Wall Street. Enough to cause widespread defaults on derivatives, a panic that could spread and bring down the, yes, global economy.
Does President Trump understand money?
Trump Makes Series of Cuts to Alphabe
The National Park Service, under orders from the White House, yesterday erased transgender people from the … Stonewall National Monument. They literally took the “T” out of LGBT, so it now says only “LGB” on the webpage for what I guess we’re now calling the Sonewall Naional Monumen.
In fact, your page-checking TFN (FN?) just checked the page and it looks like it’s even worse than the Washington Post reported. Presiden Donald Rump is also on the warpath against letters other than T. Here’s a time-lapse of the incredible disappearing federal Stonewall website:
Wednesday — “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+)”:
Yesterday — “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (LGB)”:
Today — “lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB)”:
Jesus Christ I wouldn’t wanna be Trump when the drag queens see this.
Four Quickies
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just flew a metaphorical military helicopter into the metaphorical passenger jet of Russia-Ukraine diplomacy. The former Fox weekend co-host yesterday called “takebacks!” after accidentally giving away massive negotiating points in talks to end the war. Hegseth promised Russia not to let Ukraine into NATO or have its old border back — without getting anything in return, because he wasn’t even in talks to end the war. He was giving a speech! Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said, “I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool."
Anti-government right-wing Republicans got their way with Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) budget bill last night, adding bigger targets for spending cuts. So now Politico reports that swing-district Republicans are terrified their voters will revolt if they really actually vote to cut government assistance for poor food-eaters and roof-under-livers. If you missed last night’s TFN Bonus Story about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) targeting swing-district Republicans with appearances in their districts on exactly this issue, one of them is already showing signs of caving. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Politico that he and Trump are “reluctant to see cuts in Medicaid that will impact the most needy.”
Pres. Donald Trump yesterday said that his tariffs might cause more inflation. I guess now he understands money.
Sweet Newsfuckers, I know how depressing and scary this all is. Try to think of it as something else we recently survived (not counting the one million who didn’t, obvi). The second Trump presidency is like Covid, but without an actual pandemic. (So far.) Society will shut down for a while. We’ll wander around in a daze and appreciate clear skies free of passenger jets — which can’t fly because there’s no air-traffic control — and the silence of roads on which no one’s driving to work. And then we’ll fix it.
TCB
FEDERAL HOLIDAY! Monday is President’s Day, a federal holiday, meaning federal employees don’t have to work that day or possibly any day afterward and I’m considering taking a day off for myself, too. (Y’know, uh, in solidarity!)
I jokingly suggested to my wife that I tell you Newsfuckers that I would take Monday off only if TFN got 25 new paid subscribers before Monday, but that would be emotionally manipulative and wrong.
BONUS STORIES I’ve got a crazy list of stuff I still want to publish, so if you only want the weekday morning newsletter, adjust your TFN settings accordingly here. And should I be thinking about a weekly best-of for folks who find once a day too much? LMK! Like, here…
CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!
Go get ‘em, kids. And give yourselves some off-time, too, if you can. This is why Jesus and labor unions gave us weekends.
Editor’s Note: The caption of the picture illustrating today’s lead story originally misidentified Gavin Newsom as governor (he wasn’t yet) and neglected to identify then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA). I saw Newsom in the picture and didn’t bother to check whether he was governor yet and, embarrassingly, didn’t even recognize Jerry freaking Brown. Thanks to the detail-oriented Newsfucker who spotted and alerted me about my error.
Some reports said 3,400.
The headline for this story is, of course, meant as a joke. Real treason involves things like, uh, betraying your country. Or, well, um, overthrowing the government. Come to think of it, at this rate, Trump and Elon Musk are gonna reduce the government workforce more than Osama bin Laden did. At least he knows someone’s carrying on his legacy. The point of 9/11, after all, being to make us so fearful that we turned on each other. Which we did.
Here are the non-Republican senators who voted to confirm Collins:
Michael Bennett (D-CO)
Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NE)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
John Fetterman (D-PA)
Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)
Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY)
Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
John Hickenlooper (D-CO)
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Mark Kelly (D-AZ)
Angus King (I-ME)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM)
Jon Ossoff (D-GA)
Gary Peters (D-MI)
Jacky Rosen (D-NE)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Elissa Slotkin (D-MI)
Raphael Warnock (D-GA)
Peter Welch (D-VT)
Happy Black History Month!
With all of these layoffs, I'm assuming we'll see an uptick in the unemployment rate next month?? Or will that data now be suppressed?