You Won't Have a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

Trump lays off 880 weather staffers who do things like warn us of imminent death

Feb. 28: Meteorologists and forecasters blown away by Category 5 asshole … Judge takes a hit of OPM … DOGE bros ordered to testify under broath … Musk re-hiring air-traffic controllers he previously navigated into retirement …

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The Trump administration yesterday fired a reported 880 people whose work involves weather forecasting.

The cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reportedly included hurricane hunters, forecasters, meteorologists, radar-system maintenance workers, satellite-data analysts, and fishery monitors.

Termination notices told workers that their “ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs,” the Washington Post reported.

These were probationary employees — who are easy to fire — but the termination notices suggested they were being let go for performance issues. In some cases, the probationary employees weren’t new to the agency at all, they were contractors who’d done similar work for the agencies for years, and simply jumped onto the payroll as a full staffer. Until yesterday.

The news of the firings comes, and the workers go, as the NWS is predicting strong storms for much of the southeast next week. The forecast includes possible tornadoes and hailstones larger than golf balls, the only objects to which hail is legally allowed to be compared.

The Trump administration staffing cuts mean the forecast could be downgraded to a three- or even twocast just as residents will be in desperate need of accurate tornado tracking and warnings.

Affected states could include Alabama, Arkansas, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Guess we’ll find out after!

And remember, the forecast since Election Day has always been that some people are gonna get hurt and a lot people are gonna get pissed. So far, that forecast is holding.

Judge Tries to Cure Musk’s OPM Addiction

Semi-President Elon Musk’s compulsive abuse of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to rid the government of people who do things for us is literally illegal, a federal judge said yesterday.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said — clearly enough for even Musk to understand — that, “OPM does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees within another agency.” (Unlike some judges appointed by Republican presidents, Alsup understands that the history of the universe is almost 14 billion years long.)

OPM is estimated to have canned or attempted canned more than 16,000 federal workers. And Alsup also determined that OPM had advised agencies to tell perfectly good laid-off workers that they sucked.

“That’s just not right in our country, is it, that we would run our agencies with lies like that and stain somebody’s record for the rest of their life?” Alsup said. “Who’s going to want to work in a government that would do that?” he added, coming so close to getting it.

Alsup said he lacks the authority to order agencies to rehire terminated employees — or to stop today’s expected wholesale Pentagon layoffs. But he did order OPM to rescind its firings directive.

The Trump Justice Department, meanwhile, said OPM didn’t tell agencies to fire anyone; it merely suggested that it might be a good idea, if the agencies were in the mood to fire people, that they could maybe just go ahead and trust their gut on that.

Alsup called the administration’s stinky-pants liars a bunch of stinky-pants liars: “Each agency decided on its own to do something so aberrational? I don’t believe it. I believe they were ordered to do so. That’s the way the evidence points.”

So cynical, your honor!

Get Your DOGE Ass Up On the Stand, Bros

U.S. District Judge William Alsup — whom you may remember from judicial lines like “I don’t believe it” and “any statute in the history of the universe” — ordered acting OPM Director Charles Ezell to testify at a hearing next month in the lawsuit over OPM’s firings. Given the Trump administration’s frantic churn, however, by the time of next month’s hearing, Alsup may be taking testimony from acting OPM Director Hulk Hogan.

But Alsup’s not alone ordering the DOGE bro-gade to start talking.

U.S. District Judge John Bates yesterday approved a request to depose four Trump administration officials involved in or adjacent to DOGE’s flailing.

Bates is hearing a suit challenging DOGE’s illegal access to sensitive government information that’s illegal for them to access. The unions and advocacy groups suing will be allowed to question four Trump administration officials. The administration will get to choose them, but Bates said they have to know what they’re talking about and it’s not clear whether anyone matches that description.

Musk Now Hiring FAA Workers He Gave Buyouts To

You Newsfuckers who get TFN’s Bonus Stories saw the stunning news last night that Jeff Bezos had claimed from Elon Musk the crown of world’s stupidest person. Well, Bezos’s reign was short-lived.

Here’s what Musk posted online yesterday:

“There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so.”

While Transportation Secretary Sean “So Far So Good!” Duffy claimed that “Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go,” Musk seems to imply that workers who took him up on his retirement offer did include air-traffic controllers.

And as for critical safety personnel, a lot of them are very critical these days. And Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration’s 400 layoffs last week did include what the AP described as “radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance” personnel.

I dunno about the rest of you Newsfuckers, but I tend to classify “landing” as a critical part of safety.

Duffy yesterday said the FAA will shorten (!) training for air-traffic controllers. And he said the FAA needs to pay trainees more, the way Republicans always prevent Democrats from doing.

Anyway, the point is that however many air-traffic controllers Musk I mean Duffy rehires won’t make a dent against the godawful unemployment numbers that are circling the airport and preparing to land on Pres. Donald Trump.

Kash Down

Kash Patel is rolling up his sleeves and getting to work doing what Commies, Nazis, Al Capone, the Weathermen, John Dillinger, and Osama bin Laden only dreamed of: Taking apart the FBI.

Patel held his first weekly (maybe) meeting Wednesday with the special agents in charge who lead the bureau’s field offices, warning against leaks, which then immediately happened. Some highlights of the meeting and Patel’s first week in no particular order:

• Launching plans for the UFC to train FBI agents. This is presumably connected to Patel’s desire to improve agent fitness, and would arm agents with maneuvers such as the Overhead Slam, Stockton Slap, Ground and Pound, and Dan Handerson’s H-Bomb. It wasn’t immediately clear how often FBI agents engage in hand-to-hand combat inside cages.

• Moving 1,500 agents from Washington to high-crime cities.

• Ignoring the fact that moving those agents will cost $100 million. And, when informed that the bureau doesn’t have the money, telling an FBI official to find the money, which is something you should never, ever tell someone at the FBI.

• Finding money for new decor for his office. And getting clearance for his personal trainer to enter FBI headquarters along with any personal “training” equipment they might need such as satellite transponders and decryption devices.

Patel informed the meeting that he didn’t like meetings. And left that one to take a phone call, which he apparently prefers, even though it’s kind of like a meeting.

Patel also let everyone know he’ll do much of his not-meeting-having remotely, from Las Vegas, where he lives and plans to continue spending much of his time because Vegas Baby! That’s right, the director of the FBI lives not in Washington, where the bureau was founded, but in Las Vegas, which was founded by the Mafia.

The UFC — headed by Trump booster Dana White — is headquartered in Las Vegas.

Oh, and then there’s the issue of who owns the home from which Patel will be running the FBI and any other law-enforcement agencies he might be in charge of (foreshadowing!) According to the Nevada Independent, Patel’s Vegas address is the same as the home address for GOP megadonor Michael Muldoon.

Muldoon is known as absolutely upstanding with no trace of wrongdoing for receiving dozens of complaints about his timeshare business, but never being investigated by the law enforcement officials to whom he donates.

Other Patel wackiness includes this fun bit of trivia. While Patel is running the FBI, any guesses who’s running the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives? Hint: He’s very close to Patel and also is him. Never been done before but should work great.

Two people from Patel’s group of outside advisors have already bailed on him in order not to get any of his inevitable consequences on their nice suits. And several “senior” FBI officials, according to the Wall Street Journal, resigned when Patel broke his promise to make an agent his deputy and instead went with Pres. Donald Trump’s choice, podcaster and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, who believes things despite those things being not.

As Patel himself put it in his first remarks after being sworn in, “Man, this is effing crazy.” Fact-check: Effing true.

Trump Vows Tariffs to Hit Next Week

Pres. Donald Trump said yesterday that on Tuesday, the U.S. will slap new tariffs on goods coming in from Mexico and Canada, raising prices that consumers will pay in the states.

So after you’re done not buying crap today, this weekend might be a good time to buy that crap you’ve been meaning to buy that comes from Mexico and/or Canada. Incoming tariffs include:

• 25% on Canadian and Mexican goods.

• Another 10% on Chinese goods on top of the previous 10% tariff earlier this month which was on top of pre-existing tariffs under Trump and Pres. Joe Biden, upping tariffs on some products from China to a total of 45%.

• Steel and aluminum tariffs March 12.

• Other shit from Europe and potentially other places if, for instance, Trump remembers that there’s an Australia.

While Trump has a record of brilliant negotiating dropping threats last-minute lying, “This is locked in,” said an official who works in the White House and therefore might also be lying.

The same official said that Mexico and Canada had made “insufficient progress” fighting fentanyl. Trump began his post by saying, “Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.”

Here’s a look at some of the latest overdose-fatality stats, courtesy of the last person at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to turn out the lights:

A less-recent map — from before Trump started firing people who do stuff like make maps — shows that, as of last September, overdose deaths were headed in the right direction almost everywhere in the country. Blue shades mean the percentages are dropping. Only in the, ahem, orange states were deaths going up:

Let the record show, while there’s still a record, that of the five states with overdose deaths increasing, only two (2) border either Mexico or Canada. (And one of them so barely counts that I’m feeling grumpy about including it since it’s mostly moose and reindeer crossing that border.)

DOGE Cuts

I’ve been meaning to share this screengrab I took from the list of alleged DOGE cuts. These cuts sever the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from the data and information it used to get by subscribing to various news outlets and financial-data providers:

The CFTC is supposed to be ensuring that Wall Street traders gambling on commodity-based derivates don’t blow up the world. Depriving the CFTC of the essential data they need to function is like cutting off the Justice Department’s LexisNexis account or Elon Musk’s Ketamine dealer.

At Last, a Republican Stands Up to Trump

Quick kudos to Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI), the leading congressional Republican by far to call out Pres. Donald Trump for his disastrous fiscal policies that are crushing Americans’ livelihoods and way of life. Here’s a screengrab of his website from just yesterday:

I’m not sure whether we should contact Bergman to thank him for taking such a brave stand…or just mobilize to draw attention to this on social media. But I did archive it so history will always know Bergman was still saying this as of yesterday! (And thanks to the sharp-eyed Newsfucker who newsfucked this and brought it to my attention!)

Three Quickies

• Infant deaths are on the rise in states that imposed abortion bans after Republican Supreme Court judges ruled that only Jesus gets to kill fetuses. That’s primarily because a number of abortions are caused — when they’re allowed — by fetal medical conditions that make survival unlikely. One study estimated about 500 additional infant deaths correlated with local abortion bans.

• Congressional Republicans are already blaming Pres. Donald Trump for the future economic woes they see coming. As do CEOs. And consumers. And Newsfuckers.

• Pres. Donald Trump is gutting faith-based initiatives, specifically, religious organizations and initiatives that feed and otherwise help people, with or without side-helpings of Jesus. Catholic groups, in particular, have focused on helping immigrants and refugees. Catholic Vice Pres. JD Vance said that Catholic groups are in it for the money, which in a weird way makes sense because as TFN unearthed exclusively last year, Vance was pretty open about becoming a Catholic for the money. Not exaggerating. TFN would never exaggerate in a hundred trillion years.

TCB

NEWSFUCKER DU JOUR A new paid Newsfucker shared this message about why they upgraded their subscription — and even threw in a bonus!

Hugs! Thank you, KNHL. The hugs are a perfect touch because humanity and compassion — especially for people we’ll never meet — are a big part of TFN’s mission. Including virtual hugs.

I suspect most Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid do so because TFN has become a part of their day, and they want it to keep going. If that’s you, and if you can afford it, I hope you’ll consider making a donation or upgrading to paid so we can make sure TFN’s around for the long haul, especially when it feels like a 14-billion-year haul.

TAKING ACTION Didja forget that today is The People’s Union USA’s first economic blackout? (And, to my understanding, that does not prohibit supporting TFN since you’re not buying anything except your sanity, which you already owned!) Other days listed for action/inaction:

• March 7-14: Amazon Blackout — No Amazon, no Whole Foods, no Prime orders, and TFN is gonna throw in the Washington Post, too.

• March 14: National Strike and march on Washington.

• March 21-28: Nestlé Blackout (water wars, child labor)

• March 28: Economic Blackout #2

• April 7-13: Walmart Blackout (‘nuff said)

• April 18: Economic Blackout #3

• April 21-27: General Mills Blackout (no idea why, but sign me up on general principles)

Resources

• Chop Wood, Carry Water

• Sister District Project (h/t)

• Postcards to Voters (h/t)

• How to pursue change at home with your local officials (h/t)

CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!

Go get ‘em, kids! And remember, what you don’t buy today, you can always buy tomorrow…at a small business…in your community! Hugs!

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TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.