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Which Federal Agencies Are Laying Off Employees?

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2025 //
5

The website Government Executive reports on the draconian cuts that Trump imposed on federal agencies. These cuts were made without regard to the contribution, experience, or value of employees. Some agencies were destroyed, such as foreign aid. Foreign aid always had bipartisan support, yet Republicans in Congress remained silent as Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk cancelled programs that saved lives.

The devastating cuts in highly qualified career civil servants will be felt for many years. Their loss will not make the federal government more efficient. Understaffing will make it less effective. You will notice that a particular target of job cuts was any office engaged in civil rights protections.

In his confirmation hearings to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of the most powerful jobs in the federal government, Russell Vought made clear that he wanted to cripple the workforce.

He said:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work … because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.” 

“We want to put them in trauma.” 

Russell Vought organized Project 2025 while working at the rightwing Heritage Foundaion. He is not only a libertarian who wants to disembowel the “deep state,” he describes himself as a Christian nationalist. Vought’s goal–and Trump’s as well–is not to streamline the federal government but to gut it.

Government Executive reports:

The Supreme Court earlier this year has allowed the Trump administration to resume mass reductions in force, though large swaths of the federal government are once again blocked from issuing layoffs under a new court order. 

Many agencies have sent out RIF notices in the previous 10 months, with a new wave commencing during the government shutdown. These layoffs are separate from the mass firings of probationary employees in the early months of the administration, which led to the removal of at least 25,000 workers. See our tracker of those firings here.

An executive order and subsequent guidance in February from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management called for the “maximum elimination” of federal agency functions not required by law. As a starting point for the cuts, OMB and OPM said, agencies should focus on employees whose jobs are not required in statute and who face furloughs in government shutdowns—typically around one-third of the federal workforce, or 700,000 employees.

Several agencies have eliminated offices wholesale and slashed their regional offices across the country. The administration laid off around 4,000 people on Oct. 10 across seven agencies. The cuts followed through on a threat from President Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to inflict pain on the federal workforce as a consequence of the government shutdown. 

Those RIFs, and forthcoming cuts Trump and Vought have promised, are now largely paused under a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge in California. Her order now extends to agency components with employees in the American Federation of Government Employees; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers; the National Federation of Federal Employees; the National Association of Government Employees; the National Treasury Employees Union; and the Service Employees International Union.

Here are the departments and agencies where Government Executive has confirmed RIFs have taken place or are about to occur. In some cases, the plans are in flux and subject to change. We will update as we learn more. More in-depth reporting is linked where available.

Agriculture Department: USDA is planning to dramatically slash its headquarters workforce through relocations into new regional hubs and, potentially, layoffs. Most employees will be given the option to either take a reassignment to one of the new hubs the department is standing up or separate from federal service. As the department cuts leases and functions across the country, regional staff will also be impacted, though some will have the opportunity to relocate to the new hubs. USDA will offload one of its two Washington headquarters buildings and consolidate dozens of additional sites. All told, 2,600 Washington-based are expected to be relocated. The department has shed 15,000 employees through its separation incentives.

Commerce Department: Commerce was originally seeking to cut its workforce by 20%, or nearly 10,000 employees, by using attrition, incentives and other measures to get to that level without RIFs. In October, however, Commerce sent RIF notices to 600 employees, including those at the Patent and Trademark Office, Census Bureau and Minority Business Development Agency. Those cuts are currently paused pending the temporary restraining order. 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: CFPB first issued RIFs for approximately 1,500 personnel, roughly 88% of its workforce on April 17, while announcing 50% cuts to its inspection operations of financial services companies. Employees were told they would be locked out by 6 p.m. on April 18 and would be separated from federal service by June 16, barring qualifications for other available positions. A federal judge on April 18 paused the RIFs at CFPB, which led to the layoff notices being officially rescinded. An appeals court subsequently ruled that the RIFs could proceed, but paused their implementation while a union sought an en banc hearing before the entire appellate panel. 

Defense Department: Defense said it would use RIFs or use other incentives to drive 5% to 8% of its civilian workforce, or as many as 61,000 employees, out of government. The department announced in September it successfully hit that target using various incentives. 

Education Department: Education has laid off one-thirds of its workforce, or about 1,300 employees. The notices went out on March 11 and the department closed its offices on March 12 for the day. Education previously offered buyouts of up to $25,000 to most of its employees, who had until March 3 at 11:59 p.m. to accept the offer. About 300 employees accepted those and combined with other voluntary separations, Education’s total workforce was set to be about half the size it was before Trump took office. In October, Education sent layoff notices to an additional 465 employees, which are currently paused pending the temporary restraining order.  

Environmental Protection Agency: Staff in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and Regional Environmental Justice Divisions on April 21 were informed that a RIF will take effect on July 31.

The RIFs began to take shape in March when Administrator Lee Zeldin moved to eliminate the environmental justice office and divisions as well as the Office of Inclusive Excellence. Prior to their shutterings, EPA said it had put about 170 employees in those offices on administrative leave.

In July, EPA announced it was eliminating its Office of Research and Development, leading to a RIF of potentially hundreds of employees. All told, the agency said it has slashed its workforce from 16,155 when Trump took office to 12,448. In October, the agency said it would lay off another 30 employees, which are currently paused pending the temporary restraining order. 

Federal Trade Commission: FTC dismissed around a dozen employees on Feb. 28, impacting its Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Office of Public Affairs and Office of Technology. 

General Services Administration: GSA has sent RIF notices to some employees in its Office of Human Resources Management and Office of Customer Experience and, initially, issued severe cuts to its Public Building Service.

  • GSA has also eliminated 18F, and laid off virtually all employees there. 
  • On March 3, GSA began widespread RIFs focused on its Public Buildings Service. Many regions across the country were impacted. The agency subsequently canceled most of those layoffs, however, and brought the employees back to work. 

Health and Human Services Department: HHS has eliminated 20,000 jobs from its workforce of 82,000, the department announced earlier this year. It sent RIF notices to 10,000 employees and used attrition for the remaining 10,000. As part of those initial layoffs, the Food and Drug Administration shed 3,500 employees, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut about 2,400 employees and NIH has sent RIF notices to more than 1,200 workers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services laid off 300 staff. 

Eliminated offices included those tracking cancer rates among firefighters, providing veterinary care caring for lab animals, managing the nation’s network of health centers that provide care to 31 million Americans, training new drug reviewers, collecting data on opioid on abuse and leading teams researching infectious diseases, among many others. Following the Supreme Court decision, HHS proceeded removing most of those impacted by RIFs on July 14. Employees at CDC, FDA’s tobacco office and Head Start remain on the rolls due to an injunction in a separate case brought by a group of states. 

HHS, primarily at CDC, has brought back some employees deemed essential to carry out mission-critical functions. 

The department’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization laid off at least 25 people at HHS headquarters and different components such as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on April 7. The cuts leave only executive director Shannon Jackson remaining in the office.

HHS shuttered six regional offices in its Office of General Counsel, bringing the agency from 10 OGC offices down to four. Those will be located in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Kansas City, Mo., and Denver. Impacted staff—about 200 of the 300 in the regional offices—were laid off, according to two employees affected by the changes and informed of the department’s plans.

In October, HHS laid off around another 1,000 employees. The haphazard nature of the RIFs led to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reverse more than half of the original 1,300 notices it originally sent. Additional cuts were made at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Health Resources and Services Administration, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health and Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. Those cuts are currently paused pending the temporary restraining order. 

Homeland Security Department: DHS officials issued RIF notices to all employees in its Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as its Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman on March 21. The roughly 150 people in the CRCL office have been placed on administrative leave, pending their terminations, as have the approximately 40 employees at CIS Ombudsman and more than 120 employees at OIDO. The department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis was planning to reduce its staffing by around 75%, cutting its workforce from some 1,000 full-time employees to 275, but as of July 10, those plans have been paused.

In October, DHS initiated RIFs for 176 employees at its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. A spokesperson said the cuts, currently paused by the TRO, would be “getting CISA back on mission” after the Biden administration led it astray.

Housing and Urban Development Department: HUD has issued RIF notices to all employees in the Office of Field Policy and Management at the General Schedule-13 level and below, according to a memo obtained by Government Executive. The employees were set to be terminated May 18. In October, HUD sent RIF notices to 442 employees in its Office of Community Planning and Development, the regional offices of its Office of Federal Housing and Equal Opportunity and its Public and Indian Housing office. Those cuts are currently paused pending the temporary restraining order. 

Interior Department: DOI is planning sweeping reductions to its administrative and support function workforce and has consolidated related offices away from component agencies. Interior has folded areas such as IT, communications, finance, human resources and contracting into the central part of the department, rather than components such as the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and others maintaining their own cadres of staff to provide those services. That will be followed by widespread and significant reductions in force to employees in those offices, leading in some cases to 50% cuts to the relevant workforces. The consolidations began in early May and RIFs were expected to follow in the coming weeks, but those actions were held up in federal court. Thousands of layoffs were expected. 

In October, Interior laid out with specificity where 2,000 RIFs were planned across its bureaus. Significantly more cuts were expected, though those details remained under wraps. Most of those cuts are currently paused pending the TRO, though Interior left the door open to proceeding with some of the cuts not impacted by the court’s order.

Labor Department: DOL had planned layoffs at the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, but on Aug. 12, it reversed those reduction in force notices. A department spokesperson said that DOL reduced its total workforce by 20% through voluntary separation initiatives and attrition.

NASA: NASA began sending RIF notices to employees on March 10. In an email to staff, acting Administrator Janet Petro told staff it was a “phased reduction in force,” meaning more layoffs are expected in the coming days and weeks. She called the cuts “difficult adjustments” impacting “valued members of our team,” but said the agency was viewing the changes as “an opportunity to reshape our workforce.” NASA has so far laid off only around 20 employees by closing the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy, the Office of the Chief Scientist and employees working on diversity issues. NASA’s RIF and reorganization plan is still forthcoming, Petro said, though senior officials have told employees they are hopeful to avoid additional layoffs even as they pursue significant workforce reductions. 

Office of Personnel Management: OPM, which is spearheading the workforce reduction effort across government, has sent RIF notices to at least its Office of Procurement Operations and communications staff. Around 80 people were let go. In late February, OPM virtually eliminated its Human Capital Data Management and Modernization office. Several dozen employees received RIF notices and only 10 were spared. OPM has also laid off employees from its privacy and Freedom of Information Act office. OPM has also eliminated its Chief Technology Office. The agency also issued RIFs to the entirety of its Congressional, Legislative & Intergovernmental Affairs office staff on April 16.

Peace Corps: The Peace Corps is expected shed 50% of its domestic staff in mid-May, according to two employees briefed on the plans. Some offices will see as many as three-quarters of its staff laid off. The agency has around 900 U.S.-based direct hire positions, though given the existing vacancies around 300 cuts are expected to occur between RIFs and incentivized departures. Employees said recruiting efforts, training programs, support functions and security and health services for for deployed volunteers will also struggle to continue, employees said. 

Small Business Administration: SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler told employees in March the agency would shed 2,700 of its 6,500 employees. In April, it issued RIF notices to large number of employees in its COVID-19 loan servicing center. It subsequently laid off employees in the customer service center for disaster victims. One impacted employee said impacted communities will now either get rushed off the phone or not get assisted at all, while also facing longer wait times. “The ones being hurt by these cuts are the ones that truly do need assistance,” the employee said. 

Social Security Administration: SSA has shuttered two offices—its Office of Transformation and Office of Civil Rights—and initially placed those workers on administration leave. SSA’s former acting Administrator Leland Dudek has said he planned to lay off 7,000 employees in total, according to three employees familiar with the plans. 

State Department: After much delay, the State Department on July 11 laid off around 1,350 employees through a mass RIF. All told, State is expected to shed around 3,000 workers as part of its reorganization that will see more than 300 offices eliminated or consolidated. Around 1,100 civil service staff and 250 foreign service officers were be impacted. Impacted offices included the Bureau of Cyberspace and Policy, Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Bureau of Energy Resources, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Multilateral Trade Affairs office, Office of Agriculture Policy and others. All employees at the refugee resettlement office and the refugee processing center were subject to RIFs.

Transportation Department: Secretary Sean Duffy said in a department town hall that reductions in force would take place at the end of May, though that timeline was pushed back by original the court injunction. The number of employees who will be laid off depends on how many workers participate in the second round of the deferred resignation program. Those cuts have yet to materialize. 

Treasury Department:

  • The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reported on July 18 that the tax agency’s workforce has decreased by 25% with nearly 25,390 employees taking deferred resignation, another departure incentive or otherwise separating and 294 workers being terminated in RIFs. Layoffs affected the Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, Taxpayer Experience Office and Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Taxpayer Services. The Trump administration was expected to slash as many as 20,000 jobs from IRS.
  • Around April 8, the Bureau of Fiscal Service began notifying employees who service bonds for investors that they would be shuttering their offices and outsourcing that work. Hundreds of employees were part of the reductions.
  • In October, Treasury sent RIF notices to 1,446 employees. Much those were focused on the Internal Revenue Service and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, though the cuts are paused pending the resolution of the temporary restraining order. 

U.S. Agency for International Development: In the midst of a court battle, nearly all staffers at USAID were laid off under reduction in force procedures on either July 1 or Sept. 2. The Trump administration is seeking to largely fold the agency into the State Department, which will hire a few hundred of the thousands of affected employees. 

Veterans Affairs Department: VA initially suggested it would slash its workforce to fiscal 2019 levels, which would mark a reduction of more than 80,000 employees. RIFs were expected to begin this summer. VA Secretary Doug Collins announced in July, however, that the department would no longer pursue widespread layoffs and instead cut the department by 30,000 employeesthrough attrition and separation incentives. Since 2019, VA has gone on a hiring spree to accommodate the millions of veterans newly eligible for care and benefits. 

Small agencies set for elimination: Trump has signed an executive order to eliminate to the extent allowed by law seven small agencies. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has sent RIF notices to virtually all of its staff, as has much of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The Institute of Museum and Library Services subsequently followed suit, as did the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Commerce Department is preparing for RIFs within its Minority Business Development Agency. Trump’s order also called for the elimination of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. Many of those actions are currently being litigated in federal court. 

Categories Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, Extremism, Insane, Trump

Paul Offit: Is RFK Jr. an Alien?

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2025 //
6

Paul Offit, MD., is a doctor, a real one. His blog is titled “Beyond the Noise.” Its author is a pediatric infectious diseases physician, author, FDA advisor, grandfather, and co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.

“‘To Serve Man” was my favorite Twight Zone episode.

He writes:

The best explanation for the current public health nightmare is that we are reliving a Twilight Zone episode from March 2, 1962.

I’ve been trying to understand the recent inexplicable actions of our Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out. We are being forced to relive a Twilight Zone episode that originally aired on March 2, 1962. It was called “To Serve Man.”

In “To Serve Man”, 9-foot-tall aliens come to earth and address congressional delegates and journalists. The aliens promise to solve the world’s food shortages with better agricultural techniques. They promise a cleaner environment, free from harmful chemicals. They promise a world free from war. These promises strangely mimic those made by today’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Led by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA has promised to connect public health to the environment, to modernize standards for the use of chemicals, to eliminate pesticides and artificial dyes and ultra-processed foods. By embracing the central tenets of MAHA, we can live longer, better lives.

The aliens kept their promises. Wars ended. Food was plentiful. Humans thrived. There was, however, one grotesque catch. “To Serve Man” wasn’t a treatise on better health, it was a cookbook on how to prepare and serve humans—as food. It was about fattening us up for when invaders transported us back to their planet.

In “To Serve Man”, the aliens were easy to spot. They were 9-feet tall and had mechanical voices. Today, the aliens among us are much harder to spot. For example, the man who leads the MAHA movement looks and talks like us. He appears to be one of us. Nonetheless, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offers several clues that he is not from this world. For example, he doesn’t believe in the germ theory—that bacteria or viruses cause specific diseases. He believes that no vaccine is beneficial, that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that unpasteurized milk is safe, that he and his family can swim safely in bacteria-infested creeks, and that natural measles infection prevents cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disease. Measles infections should be embraced, argues Kennedy, not feared. No one from this planet—or at least no one who has lived here within the past 150 years—could possibly believe these things to be true.

The price paid for the false promises made by aliens in “To Serve Man” was that people were taken to another planet and eaten. Today, on this planet, Robert F. Kennedy’s MAHA movement might help us to eat better and live longer. But, like the aliens in “To Serve Man,” there is a hideous catch. RFK Jr. is laser-focused on making vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. During the past year, for the first time in twenty years, two healthy children died from measles. Also, 266 children died from influenza, more than anything we’ve experienced since the 2009 swine flu pandemic. And ten children have died this year from pertussis; the previous year, two children died. This will only get worse.

In “To Serve Man,” Congress didn’t realize that we were dinner for aliens until it was too late. One can only hope that Congress will realize that Kennedy, the man behind the MAHA movement, is not one of us. The alien in “To Serve Man” was named Kanamit. Same first letter. Same number of letters and syllables. Do you see my point? It’s really the only explanation that makes sense.

I’ve been trying to understand the recent inexplicable actions of our Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out. We are being forced to relive a Twilight Zone episode that originally aired on March 2, 1962. It was called “To Serve Man.”

In “To Serve Man”, 9-foot-tall aliens come to earth and address congressional delegates and journalists. The aliens promise to solve the world’s food shortages with better agricultural techniques. They promise a cleaner environment, free from harmful chemicals. They promise a world free from war. These promises strangely mimic those made by today’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Led by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA has promised to connect public health to the environment, to modernize standards for the use of chemicals, to eliminate pesticides and artificial dyes and ultra-processed foods. By embracing the central tenets of MAHA, we can live longer, better lives.

The aliens kept their promises. Wars ended. Food was plentiful. Humans thrived. There was, however, one grotesque catch. “To Serve Man” wasn’t a treatise on better health, it was a cookbook on how to prepare and serve humans—as food. It was about fattening us up for when invaders transported us back to their planet.

In “To Serve Man”, the aliens were easy to spot. They were 9-feet tall and had mechanical voices. Today, the aliens among us are much harder to spot. For example, the man who leads the MAHA movement looks and talks like us. He appears to be one of us. Nonetheless, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offers several clues that he is not from this world. For example, he doesn’t believe in the germ theory—that bacteria or viruses cause specific diseases. He believes that no vaccine is beneficial, that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that unpasteurized milk is safe, that he and his family can swim safely in bacteria-infested creeks, and that natural measles infection prevents cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disease. Measles infections should be embraced, argues Kennedy, not feared. No one from this planet—or at least no one who has lived here within the past 150 years—could possibly believe these things to be true.

The price paid for the false promises made by aliens in “To Serve Man” was that people were taken to another planet and eaten. Today, on this planet, Robert F. Kennedy’s MAHA movement might help us to eat better and live longer. But, like the aliens in “To Serve Man,” there is a hideous catch. RFK Jr. is laser-focused on making vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. During the past year, for the first time in twenty years, two healthy children died from measles. Also, 266 children died from influenza, more than anything we’ve experienced since the 2009 swine flu pandemic. And ten children have died this year from pertussis; the previous year, two children died. This will only get worse.

In “To Serve Man,” Congress didn’t realize that we were dinner for aliens until it was too late. One can only hope that Congress will realize that Kennedy, the man behind the MAHA movement, is not one of us. The alien in “To Serve Man” was named Kanamit. Same first letter. Same number of letters and syllables. Do you see my point? It’s really the only explanation that makes sense.

Categories Health, Insane, Medicine, Science

Former Directors of the CDC: RFK Jr. Endangers Public Health!

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2025 //
0

Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control wrote a joint opinion piece for The New York Times. These are men and women devoted to public health who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. They agree that what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to the Department of Health and Human Services is outrageous and dangerous.

They write:

We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or an acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.

What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.

Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused onunproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.

We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security. Residents of rural communities and people with disabilities will have even more limited access to health care. Families with low incomes who rely most heavily on community health clinics and support from state and local health departments will have fewer resources available to them. Children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines because of the cost.

This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, Ignorance, Insane, Medicine, Trump

A Day in the White House: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2025 //
10

Jeff Tiedrich, graphic designer, writes a blog called “Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion.” It’s hilarious, it’s filled with obscenities that I never post, and it captures the essence of whatever he’s writing about.

Please consider subscribing.

I disclaim all of Jeff Tiedrich’s four-letter words and urge you to read this post.

Jeff Tiedrich writes:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flanked by European leaders, visited the White House yesterday. they did Statesmanship Kabuki, where everyone tiptoes around and pretends that Donny Convict’s hand is firmly guiding his ship of state — when in reality, America’s Mad King is a semi-sentient drool-bucket who’s only a handful of frayed synapses away from wearing his diaper on his head.

can we just talk about how totally fucking insane Dear Leader is?

I mean, who in the hallowed name of Mentally Unbalanced Jesus does this?

Donny has a huge-ass painting of his Miracle Ear Nicking hanging in the White House — and he makes sure everyone sees it by pointing and whining “this was not a good day.”

if it wasn’t a good day, then why are you forever reminding yourself of it by commissioning a wall-size painting so you can relive it daily?

normal people don’t act like this.

let’s gif that shit, because you would never believe it if you didn’t see it with your own eyes.

everyone in attendance — Zelenskyy, Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen, Keir Starmer, Alexander Stubb, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, and Giorgia Meloni — these are serious people who run countries, and this is what they have to endure when they come to Donny’s White House: a lunatic wants them to admire his assassination painting. 

what must be going through their minds?

Donny has literally devolved into the insane dictator General Garcia from the film The In-Laws, proudly showing off his crazypants art collection.

but Donny’s outdone General Garcia — because not even the general thought to sell merch at his presidential palace.

that’s right, the White House Gift Shop has now become your one-stop destination for all merchandise MAGA. I’ll bet Zelenskyy was thrilled with his new hat. I’ll bet it’s sitting in a treasured wastebin in Ukraine right now.

tell me, does Dear Leader’s inability to read simple words — or even recognize someone sitting right across from him — make his ass seem demented?

Donny: “President Stubb of… Finland and he’s… uh… he’s somebody that where are we here, huh? where? where?”
Stubb: “I’m right here.”
Donny: “oh.”

Stubb was, in fact, sitting directly across from Donny.

hey Jake Tapper, are you watching this?

again, these are serious people dealing with serious issues — and Donny reacts to them like a bored child who can’t wait for the other person to stop talking, so he can start.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “every single child has to go back to its family. this should be one of our main priorities in negotiations is to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine, to their families.”

Donny: “thank you, and we did. I was just thinking, we’re hear for a different reason, but we uh just a couple of weeks ago made the largest trade deal in history. that’s a big, that’s a big thing, and congratulations, that’s great. thank you very much.”

shut the fuck up with your children, lady, whoever you are. Donny wants to brag about his trade deals.

everyone was there to talk about ending Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but Donny was more interested in playing ever-more-outlandish rounds of Things That Never Happened The Most.

“we’re gonna stop mail-in ballots because it’s corrupt. you know, when you go to a voting booth and you do it the right way, you go to a state that runs it properly, you go in, they even ask me, they ask me for my license plate for identify, I said ‘I don’t know if I have it,’ they said ‘sir, you have to have it.’ I was very impressed, actually. but it’s very hard to cheat.”

what the fuck? okay, let’s just give Sundowning President Chucklefuck the benefit of the doubt here, and presume he meant to say drivers license, not license plate. Donny has lived in two states: Florida and New York. granted, Donny also lives in a Perpetual State of Confusion, but you can’t vote there. so let’s talk about New York and Florida. neither of those states require a drivers license to vote, so what the fuck is Donny talking about? oh wait, it’s a sir story. big strong election workers, their faces wet with tears of gratitude, were going ‘sir! sir! we need your license plate, sir! go pry that sucker off the presidential limousine, sir, and fork it over.’

so Donny’s just making shit up, but wait a minute. that clip is from Donny’s one-on-one morning meeting with Zelenskyy, ostensibly about bringing an end to the war in Ukraine — so why is Donny prattling on about whatever nonsensical ‘sir story’ pops into his empty head?

it’s because Donny has lost his fucking marbles — and we’ve all become numb to it. presidents aren’t supposed to act this way. Joe Biden didn’t wander into the tall weeds in the middle of a meeting and start blithering incoherently about whatever he’d seen on TV that morning. neither did Obama. neither did the Bushes.

Reagan did, but he was almost as demented as Donny is — so what does that tell you?

by the way, my What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge is now in its 1,967th day.

would any of the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media care to take me up on it?

oh wait, I think President Scramblebrains wants to talk about some more shit that never happened the most. lay it on us, hotshot.

“we have a thing going on right now in DC. we went from the most unsafe place anywhere to a place that now, people, friends are calling me up, Democrats are calling me up and they’re saying, ‘sir, I want to thank you. my wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years, and Washington, DC is safe, and you did that in four days.’ I’ll tell you it’s safe. I had another friend of mine, he has a son who’s a great golfer, he’s on tour, and he came in fourth yesterday in the big tournament where Scott Scheffler made the great shot and uh he said his son is going to dinner in Washington DC tonight. I said would you have allowed that to happen a year ago? he said no way, no way. he said ‘what you’ve done is incredible’ and I think the people realize it. but the press says ‘he’s a dictator, he’s trying to take over.’ no, all I want is security for our people. but people that haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington DC in two years are going out to dinner, and the restaurants in the last two days were busier than they’ve been in a long time.”

oh. Donny’s bragging that the police state he’s inflicted on the nation’s capitol has brought untold prosperity to its nightspots. 

fact check: fuck straight off.

Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.

people would rather stay home in DC than risk being hassled by Donny’s gestapo thugs — yet here’s Donny spinning farcical nonsense about Democrats and golfer-dads phoning him with the tears in their eyes. poor Zelenkyy has to sit there and try keep a straight face while this complete fucking insanity happens right next to him.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Humor, Ignorance, Insane, Stupid, Trump

RFK Jr. Fires Every Member of CDC Expert Advisory Panel on Vaccines

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
3

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the Center for Disease Control’s expert advisory panel on vaccines. This clears the way for him to appoint people who share his wacko views about vaccines. When asked why he fired them, he lied and said they had conflicts of interest. This was not true.

Apoorva Mandavilli of The New York Times reported:

The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Monday retired all 17 members of an advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arguing that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.

He made the announcement on Monday in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal.

The C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers wield enormous influence. They carefully review data on vaccines, debate the evidence and vote on who should get the shots and when. Insurance companies are required to cover the vaccines recommended by the panel.

This is the latest in a series of moves Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has made to drastically reshape policy on immunizations. A vaccine panel more closely aligned with Mr. Kennedy’s views has the potential to significantly alter the immunizations recommended to Americans, including childhood vaccinations.

Mr. Kennedy said the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest….”

In fact, ACIP members are carefully screened for major conflicts of interest, and they cannot hold stocks or serve on advisory boards or speaker bureaus affiliated with vaccine manufacturers.

On the rare occasion that members have indirect conflicts of interest — for example, if an institution at which they work receives money from a drug manufacturer — they disclose the conflict and recuse themselves from related votes.

Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and former member of the panel, expressed concern that Kennedy wants to replace members of the panel with people who share his antagonism towards vaccines.

How many Americans will die because of this extremist who has strong opinions but limited knowledge of science or medicine?

Categories Disruption, Extremism, Fraud, Health, Insane, Lies, Science, Stupid

LA Times: Trump Claims Harris Campaign Paid Celebrities to Endorse Her

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2025 //
9

Trump ranted against the celebrities who endorsed Kamala Harris in her failed Presidential campaign, singling out Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen. He said they had been paid by the Harris campaign, and he threatened to investigate them. He insisted that Harris paid Beyoncé $11 million for her endorsement.

Trump is a sore winner.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

President Trump is very much still hung up on the star power that boosted former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ultimately unsuccessful campaign.

In a pair of posts shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday night and Monday morning, Trump criticized several celebrities who publicly endorsed Harris in her months-long bid. Among the stars fueling the former “Apprentice” host’s ire were Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono. In his caps-lock-laden tirades, Trump accused the Harris camp of illegally paying Springsteen, Beyoncé and other stars to appear at campaign events and throw their support behind the Biden-era VP.

“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump wrote on Sunday, before accusing Harris and her team of paying for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”

Springsteen attacked Trump again as he performs in England.

The Boss did not back down on his fiery rhetoric against Trump on the second night of his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, on Saturday — a day after Trump lashed out against the legendary singer on Truth Social, calling him an “obnoxious jerk,” a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker,” and writing that he should “keep his mouth shut.”

Springsteen didn’t oblige. In a resolute three-minute speech from the Co-op Live venue, Springsteen thanked his cheering audience for indulging him in a speech about the state of America: “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore.”

He then repeated many of the lines that he used during his first Manchester show — the same words that upset Trump to begin with, including the administration defunding American universities, the rolling back of civil rights legislation and siding with dictators, “against those who are struggling for their freedoms…”

“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.”
In a steady voice, he listed the many concerns of those who oppose Trump, his enablers and his policies.

“They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government,” Springsteen said as the crowd applauded and yelled its support. “They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
He finished on a positive note.

“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ ”

Categories Education Reform, Harris, Kamala, Insane, Politics, Trump

RFK Jr. Takes the Family Swimming on Mother’s Day—in a Toxic Creek

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2025 //
7

The New York Daily News reported on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unusual Mother’s Day outing.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. celebrated Mother’s Day with his family by swimming in a contaminated Washington, D.C. creekused for sewer runoff.

“Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson, and a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek,” Kennedy captioned an online photo putting him at the scene of the grime.

The National Park Service explicitly warns that Rock Creek is not safe for humans or animals.

“Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health,” the park’s department states on its website.

Swimming in D.C.’s rivers and streams has been banned since 1971 due to “high amounts of fecal bacteria from combined sewer overflows.” Signs at Rock Creek Park specifically tell visitors to stay out of the water to prevent illness.

Kennedy’s decision-making skills have been called into question, even by members of his own family.

“When RFK Jr decided to run [for president in 2024], he didn’t call me to ask for help because he knew I would oppose his candidacy due to his misguided stands on issues, his poor judgement and tenuous relationship with the truth,” said his nephew Stephen Kennedy Smith, according to NBC News.

RFK Jr. quickly dropped out of the race and teamed up with Trump, who then tapped him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in November.

Dozens of Nobel Prize winners and thousands of medical professionals warned that the political scion, who has no medical training, wasn’t fit to run the nation’s health programs. His conspiracy theory-based skepticism on vaccines has repeatedly raised red flags.

Kennedy’s own health has also raised concerns.

In April 2024, the New York Times reported that he once testified a parasitic worm ate part of his brainand died inside his head. He also said he’s been diagnosed with mercury poisoning, likely caused by eating fish carrying the dangerous metal.

Doctors with experience treating such ailments reportedly said patients can suffer permanent damage from those afflictions. Kennedy told the Times that wasn’t his experience.

He has not addressed his decision to swim in Rock Creek.

This guy is in charge of public health?

Categories Extremism, Insane

Trump Posts an Angry, Bitter Easter Message on “Truth Social”

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2025 //
56

Donald Trump showed his vicious, vengeful character in his Easter message, where his hatred was on full display. He posted it on his social media platform TRUTH SOCIAL. Does he know what Easter is about?

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing — But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!

Categories Character, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Ignorance, Insane, Stupid, Trump

Why Does Trump Want to Destroy America’s Biomedical Research Institutions?

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2025 //
30

Jeff Nesbit, who worked at both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, wrote this article for The Contrarian. The question is one that I keep asking about many federal government programs that are being eliminated by Trump and Musk, like USAID.

Why? It makes no sense.

The fact that Trump chose Robert F.Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services should have been an alarm bell; Kennedy is not only unqualified, he is stridently hostile to science.

The only beneficiary of this insane and reckless slashing of our most successful programs would be our international enemies, Russia and China. They want us to fail. Trump and Musk are making their dreams come true.

Nesbit wrote:

A siren call is cascading wildly through the corridors of every major academic center in America right now with a huge question firmly at its epicenter: Why are Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, and President Donald Trump’s White House team hellbent on destroying the National Institutes of Health, the world’s gold standard of biomedical research?

There isn’t an easy answer to the question, unfortunately.

What is true and known is that Kennedy’s HHS team has halted communications activities about NIH grants; throttled necessary peer-reviewed grant-review meetings; ordered the federal agency staff to review dozens of keywords in thousands of existing grants and issue termination letters based on what it finds; threatened to fire hundreds of expert reviewers and core staff at the agency; placed a cap on indirect costs that underpin basic scientific and medical research; and put woefully unprepared, lower-level career staff in charge of key functions at the agency.

The actions have ground NIH to a halt and sent shockwaves through academia and the biomedical research institutions that have created nearly all our life-saving breakthroughs in the past quarter century. Higher education leaders have halted Ph. D. programs in response. Major research labs are being shuttered or told to stop most of their research.

An American biomedical research enterprise that has been the envy of the world’s science and medical community for decades has been surprised and shocked by the careless destruction of core staff functions and almost mindless efforts to purge NIH of hundreds or thousands of grants for reasons that seem ideological at best and irrational and dangerous at worst.

The question, again, is why? Why are Kennedy, Musk and Trump determined to eviscerate the most successful biomedical research system the world has ever known—a scientific enterprise that produces life-saving medicines and leads to breakthroughs (via basic scientific and medical research) that the private sector would never support?

There was a time, once, that NIH was supported by majorities of Republican and Democratic politicians. NIH’s budget, which supports the entire biomedical research field, has grown year after year with large, non-controversial, bipartisan majorities in Congress.

Until now. Trump and Musk have clearly determined that NIH and the National Science Foundation (NIH’s companion in the world of basic scientific research funding) need to be eviscerated and then reoriented away from life-saving scientific and medical research toward some destination not yet revealed. And while this effort has been racing forward, there has been almost no pushback from politicians—at least not yet.

One reason for this is that scientists are historically apolitical and, to be blunt, quite bad at the political game that dominates Washington, D.C. Scientists aren’t nearly as adept as others at advocating for themselves or their priorities to politicians who make funding decisions…

Trump, Musk and Kennedy don’t trust scientists or academia—and clearly don’t hear or recognize the immense value that the biomedical research enterprise brings to American progress.

NSF funding built and then supported the internet and led to nearly every modern computer and basic scientific advancement we recognize in the hard sciences. NIH medical and scientific research led directly to the creation of nearly all the life-saving drugs developed in the past quarter century that Americans rely on today.

The economic impact to states with large bioscience research centers would be enormous. Tennessee, for instance, would be devastated by the NIH cuts. Vanderbilt University Medical Center is one of the top research hospitals in America. It received nearly half a billion dollars in 2024 for medical research, the second most in the country. Its budget would be cut by more than 10 percent. Nearly 50,000 jobs and 4,000 businesses in Tennessee are dependent on the biosciences research enterprise in the state and would be severely impacted by the NIH cuts.

Other states, such as Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, would be similarly devastated by the cuts. Washington University in St. Louis received $717 million from NIH last year and would lose an estimated $108 million. The University of Michigan received $708 million and stands to see a cut of $119 million. Two Pennsylvania universities – the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh – received nearly $1.3 billion and could lose $244 million. All of those add up to massive job losses and devastating impacts to each state’s economies.

But Trump, Musk and Kennedy don’t trust the scientific and medical research enterprise. They don’t hear the entreaties by scientists who merely want to do great work that benefits the greater good. And they don’t listen to those calls of bewilderment from scientific and medical research leaders that are falling on deaf ears. This could be happening because scientists are particularly bad at politics.

But it also could be that Trump, Musk and Kennedy are willing to destroy the most successful biomedical research enterprise the world has ever known simply because it is a direct way to harm elite academic institutions that they believe harbor leaders and academics who are ideologically opposed to their aims and politics.

And that is a dangerous story that every American needs to hear and fully take to heart right now—before the Trump administration capriciously destroys a hundred years of scientific and medical progress in a matter of weeks or months.

Jeff Nesbit was the assistant secretary for public affairs at Health and Human Services (which includes NIH) in the Biden administration, and the director of legislative and public affairs at NSF during the Bush and Obama administrations.

After I put this article in the queue, I came across this article about John’s Hopkins University:

More than 2,000 positions related to global health are being cut from the Johns Hopkins University after the Baltimore institution saw $800 million in federal grants disappear, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday.

Hopkins’ medical school; the Bloomberg School of Public Health, including its Center for Communication Programs; and JHPIEGO, the university’s health initiative that focuses on global public health, will be affected by the cuts. USAID was the main funder for both JHPIEGO and CCP.

“This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work here in Baltimore and internationally,” Hopkins’ spokesperson said in a statement.

The Trump administration, through advisor Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, is slashing federal spending across agencies in an effort to end wasteful spending. Such cuts have an outsized effect on Hopkins, which comes in first of all universities in federally funded research. By extension, those cuts affect Baltimore and Maryland, where Hopkins is the city and state’s largest largest private employer. Hopkins says it accounts for more than $15 billion in economic output in the state.

The funding cuts for research institutions are hurting universities in multiple states.

Who determines that basic research in science and medicine are unimportant?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, Insane, Musk, Elon, Science, Trump, Tyranny

Trump and Musk Rescind List of Federal Properties for Sale

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2025 //
15

If your head is spinning, you are not alone. Trump issues an executive order, one court overturns it, another restores, another court overturns it. Musk sends a mass email to hundreds of thousands of civil servants, telling them they must respond with a list of five things they did in the past week; their failure to respond will be treated as a resignation. The heads of some agencies tell their employees to ignore Elon’s email. The email is withdrawn. Then the email is distributed again.

If you work for the federal government, this is madness, not good for morale.

Russell Vought, primary author of Project 2025, is now director of the Office of Management and Budget, the nerve center of the federal government. He is a Christian nationalist. He said recently:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”

What’s going on? Chaos. Disruption. A calculated effort to make the government less efficient. Why? I don’t know but I have suspicions.

In recent days, the Trump administration issued a list of more than 400 properties that were for sale. The list included the headquarters of several Departments in D.C.

Then the list was withdrawn.

Madeline Ngo of The New York Times reported:

On Tuesday, the Trump administration identified more than 440 federal properties that could be sold off, a list that included high-profile buildings like the headquarters of the F.B.I., Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

By Wednesday morning, the entire inventory had been taken down, replaced by an agency web page that said the list of properties was “coming soon.”

The General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal real estate portfolio, had already revised the list at least once. In the hours after it was published, about 100 properties, including many in the Washington, D.C., area, were removed.

The changes stirred up confusion over the Trump administration’s plan to offload a vast amount of federal property. Officials at the General Services Administration said the “disposal” of the buildings could help save hundreds of millions of dollars and ensure that taxpayers do not have to pay for “underutilized federal office space.” But the list swiftly came under criticism by Democratic lawmakers and some former federal officials who worried about the potential impact on government services across the country.

A spokeswoman for the agency said on Wednesday that officials have received an “overwhelming amount of interest” since releasing the list, and they expect to republish it in the near future after they evaluate initial input. The spokeswoman stressed that it will be continuously reviewed and updated. 

The original version of the list included offices of several cabinet-level departments and other large spaces used by the Agriculture Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Those were among the buildings removed when the list was whittled down to 320 properties. Still included for possible sale in that version: buildings used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as field offices for the Social Security Administration in areas like western Pennsylvania and Saginaw, Mich.

Federal buildings that were about a million square feet were marked for possible sale in Los Angeles, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, Memphis and Kansas City, Mo. In New York City, the properties included offices for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, along with two downtown buildings that house offices for federal prosecutors with the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service.

Though the properties are not formally listed on the market, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration said Tuesday that the agency would consider and evaluate all serious offers.

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Injustice, Insane, Musk, Elon, Trump
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