Trump's Buyouts Flame Out

Trump's and Musk's buyout offers are a bigger fail than anyone is telling you

Feb. 7: Judge pushes back buyout-offer deadline … Number of buyout offers accepted is way short of goal … More deadly plane crashes … Arab Americans second-guess voting Biden out …

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Here’s why everything seems so terrible and hopeless. Everyone seems to have heard that Steve Bannon, one of the earliest Donald Trump whisperers, advocated flooding the zone — doing so much so fast there’s simply no time to react to all of it. That’s what they’re doing, so of course it feels so scary and all-encompassing. But it’s a lie. A show.

As far as I’m aware, not even the teeny-tiniest boutique news outlet has an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) correspondent or an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) correspondent. But there are tons of congressional correspondents. There’s a whole-ass newspaper called The Hill. And there are even more White House correspondents (I made that up, but probably).

What do White House correspondents correspond about? The White House. Does that correspond with reality? No. It corresponds with what the White House is doing.

Which is why all the corporate news media you’re seeing focuses on Trump and Elon Musk. The correspondents know presidential and political norms. But they’re not aviation or charity correspondents.

So implications that would be obvious to those rare obscure-subject correspondents aren’t as obvious. And they don’t get the same attention.

It’s not fair to expect a White House correspondent to even think of many of the possible questions. They don’t have aviation or charity experts in their phones. So the initial reporting doesn’t bake in as much of that kind of thing.

Your issue-harping TFN has written about this before: When Trump first proposed ethnically cleansing Gaza, the reporters didn’t even ask him about it being a crime against humanity.

Also serving to obscure the impediments in Trmumpsk’s way is the simple fact that the lawsuits and other challenges come later. If you’re lucky, the story about Trmumpsk’s latest illegal federal action includes a line in the fourth graf about “...is expected to draw legal challenges.”

But when those challenges do come, they come in different venues, not from the institutions (White House and Congress) that have their own dedicated correspondents.

So maybe a court reporter (if they have one) or the labor reporter (if they ever had one) is the correspondent who finds out about the lawsuit. But those reporters aren’t the star reporters. And that story isn’t about Trump or Musk so it’s not sexy. (:::shudder:::)

In short, the stories about Trmumpsk get more oxygen than stories about the opposition or the consequences. Which makes Trmumpsk seem ubiquitous, and the opposition outnumbered.

They’re not. And it’s not.

Flood the zone is a lie. The real plan is to make it look like they’re flooding the zone. But we are the zone. And we are legion.

Newsfuckers: Trmumpsk is outnumbered. Think of all the unions out there. Think of all the non-governmental organizations, the charities. Think of all the advocacy groups — for any cause you can imagine.

What do they have in common? Democracy. Which means marshaling their response takes time. But it’s happening. And in case after case it’s working.

If the History Channel™ teaches us anything, it’s that fascism strikes fast. Democracy gears up. It takes time for something as vast and multitudinous as democracy to get moving. But it’s already happening.

Even Republican-appointed judges are recognizing the illegal aberration represented by the Trump administration and now they’re handing down rulings and injunctions to stop Trmumpsk.

Yes, it’s messy. Yes, Trmumpsk will break things along the way. But don’t dare let corporate media erase the armies of democracy or their victories.

Forget the drama. Amplify the opposition. Focus on the consequences. Don’t spread hysteria, spread education and illumination about what’s at stake, whether it’s starving kids or privacy of tax records. Because that’s where America’s united.

Elon Musk and Pres. Donald Trump are dominating media coverage even though they’re just one side of a battle with many sides, and despite their record of failures. (Screengrab / NBC video.)

Trump’s Buyouts Flame Out

Here’s what the media aren’t telling you about the buyout offers from Pres. Donald Trump and untrustworthy trusty deputy Elon Musk. No, wait. I’m gonna clickbait this one and save the payoff…

FIRST, let’s talk about what all the media are telling us about the buyouts.

Senior District Judge George O’Toole last night extended last night’s deadline for workers to respond. He wanted to give the involved parties more time to file legal briefs about the issue before the hearing he’s scheduled for Monday afternoon about all this.

Which means there’s a good chance the deadline will get extended again.

Anyway, the Trump administration’s argument against O’Toole’s order included this hilarious reasoning:

“Extending the deadline for the acceptance of deferred resignation on its very last day will markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty…”

What’s that, my fragile Trmumpsk? You don’t like getting disrupted? Because I was told that you love disruption, my tech bro dude!

You’ve got a problem with a court moving fast on your ass and breaking your things? Cry me a polluted river, manchilds.

Everett Kelley, who heads the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the plaintiffs, said, “We continue to believe this program violates the law, and we will continue to aggressively defend our members’ rights.” That’s according to a story by Politico labor reporter Nick Niedzwiadek. (Ya see what I’m sayin’, Newsfuckers?)

It gets better.

O’Toole ordered the administration to notify all those two million employees that the deadline had been moved back. Last night, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Chief Information Officer Greg Hogan informed the judge that they’re trying to comply but some notices wouldn’t go out until later:

“OPM’s system does not support sending more than two million emails simultaneously and if OPM tried to send all the emails at the exact same time, they might simply be blocked by the receiving limits.”

Translation: Please ask the grandkids to help me do my electronic mailings.

So who is this Hogan guy? Here’s the first thing that none of the current reporting is telling you, but TFN will because that’s why we’re here. None of the reporting that I saw explained who Hogan is or where he came from. Your thing-up-looking TFN had to look up who Hogan is. And the answer? Nobody knows.

Here’s FedScoop, from Jan. 22:

“Details about Hogan’s background or experience weren’t immediately clear. The agency spokesperson didn’t provide further information.”

That’s right: Trump hired a guy without even a LinkedIn page as the chief tech guru at the epicenter of his workforce-reduction goals. Seems like that should be a story!

Trmumpsk put in a guy known to nobody and then Musk’s team of tech wizards couldn’t figure out how to hit reply-all on their buyout offer.

It gets more better.

Politico’s headline portrays the judge’s deadline extension as a win for Trmumpsk:

Yes, the judge “gave” them more time. But… they didn’t want more time! Judges also give out death sentences: Again, unwanted.

Trmumpsk didn’t get anything, they lost the deadline they wanted precisely to prevent opposition and to maintain their illusion of mastery.

The subhed¹ is similarly, misleadingly impressive: More than 60,000 accepted the buyout! Wow.

But as TFN — and only TFN — told you yesterday, in any given year, more than five percent of the federal workforce leaves.

Five percent was Trmumpsk’s goal for all this flurry of activity — meaning, they were making this huge effort, promising billions of dollars, to achieve the same thing that happens every year regardless.

In fact, more than five percent retire:

Okay, so what about that 60,000? That’s just three percent of the federal workforce.

Musk’s bullying. His nasty tactics. His performative energy and sad office-sleeping succeeded in generating media coverage suggesting success.

But in real-world land, 3% < 5%. They got fewer people to retire than would have retired this year anyway if Trmumpsk had done nothing.

It’s an abject failure, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Moving Fast and Breaking Things in the Sky

Another day, another two more aviation disasters.

An Alaskan regional airline’s Cessna with ten people on board is missing. The Bering Air flight was flying to Nome over Alaska’s Norton Sound.

Now rescuers are looking for it in Norton Sound. It disappeared from flight-tracking radar about 12 miles offshore.

Also, a plane contracted by the U.S. military — with one service member and three Pentagon contractors on board — is not missing, today, because it conveniently crashed into a town in the Philippines called Ampatuan. Everyone on board died. Witnesses reported seeing smoke and an explosion before the crash.

This is at least the second military air crash that we know of under the military leadership of former Fox weekend co-host Pete Hegseth. Since Trump made aviation great again we’ve also lost the passenger jet that Hegseth’s helicopter flew into and a medevac flight that medevaced its patient and her mom onto the city of Philadelphia.

Here Come the Judges Flooding the Zone

A second judge just took the bench to take a hot squat on Pres. Donald Trump’s attempt to rewrite/erase the Constitution. Trump’s executive order negating birthright citizenship got negated for a second time yesterday.

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, an appointee of Pres. Ronald Reagan, issued an injunction that covers the entire country and blocks Trump’s order. This is the same judge who earlier called it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Coughenour yesterday added:

“It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain … Nevertheless, in this courtroom, and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.”

We don’t have cameras in most courts, but a computer simulation generated this image of Coughenour addressing Trump from the bench yesterday:

Here Comes Letitia James Flooding the Zone

Remember just two days ago, your thing-predicting TFN alerted you to incoming Letitia James-iness? Newsfuckers, it took 24 hours. James and 11 other state attorneys general yesterday filed suit to shut down unauthorized access to federal records.

You may recall that self-styled DOGE leader Elon Musk lacks the proper documentation to access federal records, let alone to illegally obtain private information and eliminate jobs. Doing so anyway, of course, would make him an actual undocumented worker stealing jobs and committing crimes.

The 12 attorneys general said in a statement that the access Pres. Donald Trump has given DOGE to individuals’ Social Security information and banking data is “unlawful,” explaining to Trump and Musk and DOGE that “unlawful” means they cannot fucking do it.

“The president does not have the power to give away our private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,” the statement said.

James has already been targeted by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who created a Justice Department team to investigate prosecutors and law enforcement who dared hold Trump and his buddies accountable to the law. James sued Trump for civil fraud and won a judgment of more than $450 million, which would suggest that either it wasn’t just James but the entire legal system out to get Trump, or that Trump was guilty as Trump.

News You Can Use (to Fuck Trump)

Here’s an easy way to tell the world at large that Pres. Donald Trump’s data breaches are not only bad, but have people terrified about possible identity theft.

You can freeze your credit. If you’re not currently pursuing a loan, obviously.

If you freeze your credit, then banks and credit-card companies can’t access your credit report, and won’t let anyone — like Elon Musk’s racist minions — open an account using your info and then stealing your money.

Apparently, it’s pretty easy. According to Market Watch’s Brett Arends, it took him about ten minutes. You just tell the three credit bureaus. Two of them let you do it online (but don’t let them sign you up for spam bullshit) and one of them’s by phone, but apparently even quicker.

If enough people do it, it’ll draw attention to the fact that we do not trust Musk’s minions with our personal data. So spread the word! (The column is behind a paywall, but TFN loves you and found somewhere you can read it free. Here.)

Seven Quickies

• TFN’s to-do list includes all the tsuris around foreign aid. I’m planning on writing about it. So if any Newsfuckers do not want any TFN stories other than the weekday morning newsletter, please make sure you adjust your notification settings accordingly here.

• TFN prefers systemic stories over “look at this crazy thing” stories. But look at this crazy thing: Petersburgh, NY, Justice Richard Snyder resigned in December, we’re now learning, because a disciplinary panel found out that he tried to get out of grand-jury duty by saying he couldn’t be impartial because every defendant is guilty. “I know they are guilty … [or] they would not be in front of me.” This is also a systemic story because tons of officials think this way, which is why unchecked local control is Satan’s playground.

• Pres. Donald Trump yesterday told House Republicans he wants their tax plan to include raising taxes on private-equity managers. Right now the so-called carried-interest loophole lets private-equity bros get away with a 20% tax rate on the money they get thanks to other laws that let them get away with destroying the country. Trump wants them to pay 27% like people who work.

• Senate Republicans took up a collection yesterday and donated their dicks, spines, sand, mettle, grit, right stuff, and integrity² to the permanent collection of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library. Every single one voted to confirm Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought after he literally testified to their faces that they don’t get to decide budget things — which must have come as news to the Budget and Allocation committees — and also that the Constitution gives the OMB the power to allocate to the Senate unlimited swirlies, noogies, and wedgies, as the Supreme Court will affirm if it knows what’s good for it.

• Pres. Joe Biden is looking a bit better to some folks who didn’t vote for him. An organization (it’s just one dude, for all I know) called Arab Americans for Trump has now changed its name to Arab Americans for Peace. An Arab American leader in Dearborn, MI, told Politico that some in the community “think we screwed up but we’re not going to admit it.” Vice Pres. Kamala Harris lost Dearborn to Donald Trump by six points. Across the country, 53% of Arab-Americans voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, while 21% voted for Trump and 20% for Harris. Oh, well. No harm done!

• Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) — who voted to confirm Pres. Donald Trump nominees including new Attorney General Pam Bondi and the wildly overlooked (except by TFN) Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner — has found some Trump nominees he can vote against. After intensive study and extended, somber consideration, Fetterman has finally managed to weigh all the considerations, assess all the pros and cons, and reach the tough-call conclusion that former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and former Kennedy Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are not fit — when you take everything into account — to serve as director of national intelligence or run the Health and Human Services Department, which they will because Republicans will back them.

• Newsfuckers, there is so much that came out of yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast I’m gonna have to handle it all in (a) separate post(s) — this weekend, I hope — over on the Jonathan Larsen Substack where I do my original reporting (which, yes, is even originaler than looking up average annual federal retirement rates). Pray for me and/or upgrade your subscription to become a paid Newsfucker.

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids. Remember, they want you to spend your weekend stressing. So be good to yourself…

1. Literally, the smaller headline beneath the big one.

2. I strive to avoid ableist analogies for ethical qualities, so I hope the exception I’m making here will be forgiven in context.