DAILY TRIFECTA: DOGE's Replacement Theory In Practice
It's not a presidency ... it's a revolution
THE SET-UP: Today’s TRIFECTA tallies the cost of DOGE’s layoffs—both to Federal employees and to Americans who probably don’t know how much they depend upon the unique skills and under-the-radar services Federal workers provide … or should I say “provided”? The Wall Street Journal, WIRED and South Carolina’s The State newspaper all filed reports highlighting individual workers with specific skills who’ve lost their gigs. Some of them are waiting for a resolution to one of the two pending lawsuits challenging DOGE’s “chainsaw for bureaucracy” approach to mass firings. Even today an appeals court refused a Trump Administration attempt to reverse one of the reversals (a.k.a. “reinstatements”) … thus moving that case a little closer to the Supreme Court.
Upon reflection, though, I wonder if it’s wise or even accurate to call Trump’s White House an “administration”? Maybe ”government” or perhaps even “regime” is more appropriate than “administration”?
An administration is what we call the current office-holder elected to temporarily administer the duties of the Executive Branch. I see Trump’s current Presidency differently. I do not see a transient administration faithfully executing the various functions of the US Federal Government. He is not “administering” the office. He is refashioning it. We are not watching political appointees temporarily running the Federal government. This a political party superimposing itself onto the government.
Over time, the party will merge with the state and replace it. DOGE’s layoffs are making room for that to occur when, after a post-purge reassessment, pre-vetted loyalists are hired to replace the “deep state” recalcitrants Project 2025 was designed to eject.
No, this isn’t an “Administration” … this is a new form of government. We are way past a mere refusal to conform to norms. This government is moving fast and breaking things … including the law. The law and the Constitution are, it seems, optional.
Apparently, court orders are only suggestions.
- jp
TITLE: The Unintended Consequences of Trump’s Firing Spree
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/government-firings-service-cutbacks-865c2da2
EXCERPTS: Since Trump’s inauguration, the administration has gutted entire agencies, teams and categories of employees, only to add some back later. Early targets were the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Officials have tried to wind down the divisions’ work and lay off many staff.
The CFPB, created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, investigates complaints from Americans who say their banks charged them improper fees or falsely advertised interest rates.
Matthew Pfaff, chief of staff of the CFPB’s Office of Consumer Response, said in a court hearing that more than 16,000 complaints—unprecedented in his memory—piled up when the division was ordered to stop work for weeks.
Layoffs also cut into the work. Among the fired CFPB workers was Milo Chang, 22, who joined the CFPB in June through a program that recruited college graduates to the public sector who may have otherwise sought lucrative jobs in consulting, technology or finance. His team last year analyzed complaints from Missouri to Texas from Americans pressured to refinance their mortgages at higher interest rates after a divorce or the death of a spouse. He learned Sunday he would be rehired due to one of the Thursday rulings but said his future employment remains unclear.
+++
[T]he Department of Veterans Affairs, which plans to cut about 70,000 positions and has already laid off thousands. The agency employs about 470,000 people.
Fewer VA staff are handling veterans’ claims that will get them treatment for military-service injuries and mental health conditions, two current employees said. This has already resulted in veterans waiting longer to get treatment in North Texas, one said.
Fifteen homeless veterans getting services at a VA community resource center in Denver are now without their assigned housing advocate, Brett Taylor, who was laid off from his role finding apartments for clients and making sure they had deposits. Remaining staff, he said, are overworked already.
“You would think it would make sense to add more providers, add more people, to make sure the veterans were taken care of,” said Taylor, a 37-year-old Army veteran who served in Iraq.
One VA hospital in Detroit canceled programs meant to improve patients’ stability and range of motion after the firings of probationary workers, including Kara Oliver, a 33-year-old Navy veteran leading classes and monitoring participants’ health and progress.
Oliver, whose salary was about $48,650, realized she was laid off when she went into the office on Feb. 25 and couldn’t access her computer. She said she didn’t receive her termination letter—useful for filing for unemployment benefits—until March 5.
“I want to be there for my veterans,” she said. But the instability of federal work is making her unsure if she would take a federal job in the future. “It just doesn’t feel safe.”
+++
After facing years of bipartisan criticism from Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services late last year hired a transplant surgeon to help implement fixes to the system that regulates organ transplants.
Dr. Jayme Locke, who left her post at the University of Alabama Birmingham for the federal job, was recently fired as a probationary worker. Transplant experts had hoped she would preside over a new era of making improvements instead of just studying them. Dr. Locke declined to comment. HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
+++
Victoria DeLano, 52, worked as an equal-opportunity specialist for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Based in Birmingham, Ala., she processed discrimination allegations against Southeast U.S. schools.
About a month after she was fired, OCR offices in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas and New York were eliminated as the Education Department cut about half of its workforce.
Complaints have piled up, slowing efforts to ensure school access for disabled children in an office where staff were already overworked, she said. “A child is not able to go to school right now until something is in place,” said DeLano, who has advocated against the cuts through her union, the American Federation of Government Employees.
+++
The Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday told agencies that collective-bargaining agreement provisions that “excessively interfere with management’s rights” to lay off employees aren’t enforceable. It urged agencies not to respond to every request for information from unions.
TITLE: DOGE’s Cuts at the USDA Could Cause US Grocery Prices to Rise and Invasive Species to Spread
https://www.wired.com/story/usda-food-supply-chains/
EXCERPTS: Before he was abruptly fired last month, Derek Copeland worked as a trainer at the US Department of Agriculture’s National Dog Detection Training Center, preparing beagles and Labrador retrievers to sniff out plants and animals that are invasive or vectors for zoonotic diseases, like swine flu. Copeland estimates the NDDTC lost about a fifth of its trainers and a number of other support staff when 6,000 employees were let go at the USDA in February as part of a government-wide purge orchestrated by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Before he received his termination notice, he says, Copeland had just spent several months training the only dog stationed in Florida capable of detecting the Giant African land snail, an invasive mollusk that poses a significant threat to Florida agriculture. “We have dogs for spotted and lantern flies, Asian longhorn beetles,” he says, referring to two other non-native species. “I don’t think the American people realize how much crap that people bring into the United States.”
Dog trainers are just one example of the kind of highly specialized USDA staff that have been removed from their stations in recent weeks. Teams devoted to inspecting plant and food imports have been hit especially hard by the recent cuts, including the Plant Protection and Quarantine program, which has lost hundreds of staffers alone.
“These aren’t your average people,” says Mike Lahar, the regulatory affairs manager at US customs broker behemoth Deringer. “These were highly trained individuals—inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”
Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species getting into the country. These dangers are especially acute at a moment when US grocery supply chains are already reeling from other business disruptions such as bird flu and President Trump’s new tariffs.
“If we're inspecting less food, the first basic thing that happens is some amount of that food we don't inspect is likely to go bad. We're going to end up losing resources,” says supply chain industry veteran and software CEO Joe Hudicka.
The USDA cuts are being felt especially in coastal states home to major shipping ports. USDA sources who spoke to WIRED estimate that the Port of Los Angeles, one of the busiest in the US, lost around 35 percent of its total Plant Protection and Quarantine staff and 60 percent of its “smuggling and interdiction” employees, who are tasked with stopping illegal pests and goods from entering the country. The Port of Miami, which handles high volumes of US plant imports, lost about 35 percent of its plant inspectors.
Navigating the workforce cuts has “been absolute chaos,” says Armando Rosario-Lebrón, a vice president of the National Association of Agriculture Employees, which represents workers in Plant Protection and Quarantine program.
“These ports were already strained in how they process cargo, and now some of them have been completely decimated,” Rosario-Lebrón says. "We could be back to pandemic-level issues for some goods if we don't fix this."
As the fired USDA workers wait to hear whether their reinstatements will actually take place, ports are beginning to feel their absence. “There aren’t as many inspections being done, and it doesn’t just put us at risk,” says Lahar. “It puts our farmers and our food chains at risk.”
TITLE: Trump’s purge of federal workers threatens environmental, scientific studies in SC
https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article302061599.html
EXCERPTS: [Phil] Tanabe, who grew up on Long Island in New York, said efforts to eliminate his job at NOAA in Charleston are a disappointing twist to the career he had mapped out, and to what he considers important research for South Carolina and the country.
“Devastated,’’ Tanabe, 29, said. “That’s the word a lot of people use to sum this up. It is a combination of every emotion possible.’’
As an undergraduate at the University of Miami (Fla.) eight years ago, he worked a summer internship at NOAA in Charleston, where he researched the effects of toxic pollution on marine life.
After getting his degree from Miami, he began work in a doctoral program at the University of California-Riverside, where Tanabe researched crude oil toxicity and how that affected marine life. Upon gaining his Ph.D, Tanabe talked with the U.S. Geological Survey about a full-time job in a Pacific Northwest office.
Then, last fall, he landed a full-time job with NOAA. Among the research projects he launched from the Charleston County lab was a look at forever chemicals, the emerging class of contaminants being found in virtually every waterway scientists check. Multiple forever chemicals have been shown to degrade the health of people and wildlife exposed over time.
In examining these chemicals, Tanabe made a surprising discovery. While the chemicals, also known as PFAS, have sparked national health warnings because of their toxicity, Tanabe found in one study that a mixture of two types of the chemicals present in certain types of minnows actually had less toxicity than he expected.
“The toxicity actually decreased when mixed together,’’ he said. “This was the first study to my knowledge to show this kind of interaction with these chemicals in saltwater fish.’’
It was a significant finding that he believes was the starting point for other studies to determine if certain PFAS, when mixed, could collectively be less harmful than expected. In this case, it could help guide federal departments like the EPA on how strictly to set limits on certain types of forever chemicals.
His findings provided much needed information about PFAS in salt water, an environment in which forever chemicals have not been studied as extensively as freshwater. Some 95 percent of PFAS fish studies highlighted in an EPA database have been conducted in freshwater, he said.
That’s why Tanabe was excited to begin more research comparing the toxicity of PFAS in fish that live in brackish or salt water to those that live in freshwater. It’s an answer that could help enlighten agencies like the EPA – and the public – about where PFAS might be most dangerous. Such information could let people know how safe fish are to eat.
Tanabe has been looking for a job in a tight market as other laid off federal employees seek employment.”
+++
Nick Castillo was an ecotoxicologist hired last fall at NOAA’s Charleston area laboratory after completing his doctorate at Florida International University.
He had applied for 85 federal jobs while working on his Ph.D and was stunned last year to learn that NOAA wanted to hire him as deputy director of its National Mussel Watch Program, a 38-year-old research effort that monitors shellfish to gauge levels of toxins in coastal waters.
Castillo, who attended Duke University as an undergraduate, planned multiple studies with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and Coastal Carolina University on forever chemicals.
One of those was to look at forever chemicals in horseshoe crabs. That could help determine if PFAS was affecting their ability to breed, and also whether it was building up in crab eggs that other species eat. Birds, such as one type of the rare red knot, depend on horseshoe crab eggs for survival.
“We wanted to understand what’s going on,’’ he said. “Is there the capability of this transferring and affecting other organisms that feed on the eggs?’’
The work was so important to Castillo that he put extra effort into his job – beyond his normal long-work days – after hearing that the federal government was looking to fire employees.
As with Tanabe, Castillo was considered a probationary employee, or one who had not been on the job long enough to offer certain protections from dismissal. Those employees were targeted by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk because they can be more easily fired than workers who’ve been through their probationary periods.
“I worked harder than I ever have,’’ Castillo said. “I’d get in the office at 5 a.m., then I’d leave after 5 p.m. I figured the best thing I could do is just be awesome, an irrefutably good worker. I didn’t really expect this to happen because they (Trump administration officials) gave the false sense of opportunity for supervisors and agencies to advocate for people.’’
When it finally became obvious that he remained vulnerable to being laid off, Castillo began saving files and data from his computer, and he prepared a rebuttal that he emailed to Washington quickly after word came down that he was out of a job.
Castillo, who earned $95,000 at NOAA, said he was told that his skills did not meet the needs of the agency in the future. He also said the government officials who put him out of work were, at one point, demeaning in their emails to him and others at NOAA in Charleston.
One communication he received indicated he and other federal workers were lazy, Castillo said.
+++
Caroline Causey, 50, is an expert on endangered species, including birds and mammals found in the interior of the Carolinas.
A Virginia native and former Columbia resident, Causey worked for 10 years as a government biologist, first at the state Department of Natural Resources and later at Shaw Air Force Base. Among her duties was trying to save what had been dwindling populations of rare red-cockaded woodpeckers.
That included the unusual responsibility of protecting woodpecker nests in an area where Shaw Air Force Base fighter jets conducted target practice.
The government maintains a bombing range in Sumter County, and it must sometimes clear trees so jets can practice on open areas. In her job with the Department of Defense, she helped pinpoint wooded areas where the unusual birds lived so that trees would not be cut down in those places.
But Causey also worked diligently on other efforts to protect red-cockaded woodpeckers in South Carolina. Before taking a post with the Department of Defense in 2020, Causey worked for the state DNR on woodpecker recovery.
Today, thanks to her efforts – and those of many biologists nationally – red-cockaded woodpeckers are making a comeback. They are no longer listed as an endangered species, but are a threatened species under the law.
Causey, who has a biology degree from James Madison University, ran into trouble because she left Shaw Air Force base for a new job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year.
She moved to North Carolina, where she began endangered species work in the eastern part of the state. One of her main tasks was commenting on proposals to fill wetlands for development projects along the coast.
Now, she’s looking for work, as the government sorts out whether she can return to her former job.
“I’m pretty terrified,’’ she said. “My job security is gone and I’m also demoralized. I really like the agency I worked for. I really liked the team members.’’
The layoff also affected her ability to help other family members take care of her 88-year-old father, who lives not far away from Raleigh in southeastern Virginia.
From a public standpoint, Causey’s departure from the wildlife service means one less person is examining the relative threats to endangered species of filling wetlands in North Carolina.
It means one less set of eyes available to make sure development projects don’t destroy rare plants and animals.
Developers, like environmentalists, should be aware of that. With fewer people available to examine wetlands permits, it could slow down decisions on when the permits are issued so developers can get to work, she said.
For now, Causey said she hopes an appeal she has made of her firing works out and she can return to her job. The recent court decision restoring probationary workers in some agencies also gives her some hope.
Short of getting her job back, she’s now seeking unemployment benefits.
“To lose all that … It was pretty discouraging,’’ she said.
SEE ALSO:
DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/federal-job-cuts-nuclear-bomb-engineers-scientists.html’