Americans
are still in the dark about the scope and scale of what Elon Musk is
doing with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is
working to drastically shrink the size of government by aiming to cut $1 trillion or more in government spending.
But
there’s some insight into what’s driving Musk — namely, an effort to
combat what he referred to as “civilizational suicidal empathy.”
[. . .]
“The
fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy
exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western
civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”
It’s
an important thing to remember as Musk turns his crusade toward the US
government. While President Donald Trump has said cuts will not touch
safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,
except to root out fraud, Musk made clear during the interview that he
believes that the concept of Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”
Musk’s
lack of empathy is a theme in the recent biography for which the writer
Walter Isaacson was given access to the billionaire throughout his
takeover of Twitter.
Alien has no empathy. He is soul-less. He is an emotional vampire.
Tech
billionaire Elon Musk is in an unprecedented position to divert funding
to rebuild the nation's aging air traffic control systems into his own
pocket, columnist Thomas Black warned in a Bloomberg Opinion analysis published on Wednesday.
Musk,
who has been given massive authority over government contracts and
personnel through President Donald Trump's Department of Government
Efficiency (DOGE) task force, has already faced furious accusations of
conflicts of interest, most recently in a mysterious $400 million State Department contract for "armored Teslas" that was swiftly paused after it gained public attention.
But
Musk's influence over the Federal Aviation Administration, coming at a
time when air traffic control is under a hiring strain and America is
reeling from multiple deadly plane crashes, is something on an entirely new level, wrote Black.
"A
conflict too blatant to ignore has surfaced between Space Exploration
Technologies Corp., Musk’s startup known as SpaceX, and the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates SpaceX," wrote Black. "Musk is pushing SpaceX’s satellite broadband product, Starlink, as a quick solution to the FAA’s antiquated air-traffic-control systems and is muscling in on a $2.4 billion contract already awarded to Verizon Communications Inc. to upgrade FAA’s operations, as chronicled in detail by Bloomberg News."
He is out of control. Where's Frances Fox Piven to talk about the fox guarding the hen house?
Once upon a time, advertisers were fleeing the social media company. Internal documents reviewed by the New York Times back in 2023 revealed companies such as Airbnb, Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft had considered pausing or halted their ads on X. This was when Musk endorsed an
anti-Semitic post, but some were already pulling back after his $44
billion Twitter takeover in fear of looser content moderation. However,
earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon jacked up its ad spending on X—and Apple, which previously stopped all ad spending on X, is in discussions to come back.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi viewed byWSJ, five
Democratic senators asked the Justice Department to look into whether
Musk is using his insider status within the Trump administration to
pressure advertisers back to X. President
Donald Trump chose Bondi after his initial pick, Matt Gaetz, dropped
out amid sex trafficking allegations that he denied.
If
Musk uses his position to hurt those who don’t do business with him,
“he risks running afoul of criminal ethics laws,” Sens. Elizabeth
Warren, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff, and Chris Van
Hollen wrote, per the Journal. The senators said they’re concerned X is using Musk’s influential role to “extract revenue from advertisers,” the Journal reported.
[. . .]
This comes less than a month after the WSJreported X pressured advertising company Interpublic Group to
spend more on its platform in a conversation between attorneys for both
parties, according to people with knowledge of the conversation. X
chief executive Linda Yaccarino appeared to have made similar remarks in
other conversations with Interpublic, the publication reported, citing
people with knowledge of those talks.
In
February 2025, Musk made an announcement that likely shocked many
people, even those who follow his moves closely. Accompanied by other
group members, he submitted an offer to acquire OpenAI, the artificial
intelligence (AI) research organization responsible for creating
ChatGPT.
One
of OpenAI’s original founders and investors, Musk has a well-documented
feud with CEO Sam Altman dating back to his exit in 2018. Altman
quickly rejected Musk’s offer and jokingly chided him for his purchase
of Twitter (now X), which has plummeted in value since Musk purchased it
in 2022.
However,
Musk’s attempts to exert power over OpenAI go back even further. In
2024, he sued the nonprofit lab, alleging that it had betrayed its
principles and begun prioritizing profits over responsible AI research
as it transitioned to a for-profit model.
Yesterday,
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied Musk’s bid to pause
the OpenAI transition, citing a lack of “the high burden required for a
preliminary injunction” on his part.
Poor Alien Musk. Guess it's true: Get in bed with Chump and become a chump.
Thursday, March 6, 2025. Chump and his steady Alien Musk want to rip
the hard earned dollars out of the hands of American workers and give
them over to billionaires.
Last night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow gave an overview of the first six weeks in Chump Land.
Emily Prescott (KANSAS CITY STAR) reports,
"In a significant workforce reduction initiative, approximately 30,000
federal employees have received termination notices from Trump
administration officials. Among the affected agencies, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) has seen the termination of 4,200
probationary employees. A laid off USDA employee recently addressed
President Donald Trump in a viral message online, expressing
disappointment over being terminated for alleged performance issues."
And it's happening all around the country which is why, see Mike's ","
the GOP has decided no more townhalls. Though they can't take the heat
they are determined to hide in their DC kitchen.
With
Convicted Felon Donald Chump in the White House, the whole country
suffers. That's even true of members of the administration. For
example?
Last Friday
morning, former US Senator Marco Rubio woke up with the possibility of a
political future. That same afternoon, it all came crashing down in
the Oval Office as he realized he was working with a moron but he lacked
the guts to publicly break from Chump. With each day that passed, the
Secretary of State became more and more of a has-been on his way to The
Land of Forgotten. Tuesday night just drove that reality home as Chump
spoke to the nation and mocked Marco.
President Donald Trump made what seemed to be a joke to Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his address to Congress, but many observers interpreted it differently.
"Good
luck, Marco. Now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong. No, Marco
has been amazing and he's going to do a great job. Think of it. He got
100 votes (...) And I'm either very, very happy about that or I'm very
concerned about it. But he's already proven - I mean he's a great
gentleman, he's respected by everybody and we appreciate you voting for
Marco. He's going to do a fantastic job," Trump said during a passage of
his speech.
Trump's
message was received with laughter by Republicans in the chamber, but
others focused on Rubio's expression, claiming it mostly showed concern.
William Vaillancourt (DAILY BEAST) notes Marco's dour and sour puss as well.
He turns 54 in May and his political career has pretty much ended. Do
we get how sad that is? -- as Lou Grant tells Mary Richards In season
one, episode twenty-four of THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW "The 45-Year-Old
Man," Lou Grant (Ed Asner) tells Mary Richards (MTM), "I'm forty-five
years old. If I were in politics, they'd call me 'the kid'."
Yet,
although Marco's not even 54 yet, it appears his political career is
over, that it ends as a member of a corrupt and ignorant
administration.
Andrew
Wilson, deputy secretary-general of the International Chamber of
Commerce, is issuing a red alert about the trade wars sparked by
President Donald Trump in the last day.
The Wall Street Journal reports that
Wilson warned that Trump's tariffs against Canada and Mexico could be
putting the global economy on the path to an economic depression that
rivals the Great Depression of the 1930s.
"Our deep concern is that this could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory," he said.
In
an interview with the Journal, Wilson said that at the moment the
chances of such a catastrophic decision were a "coin flip" and said that
the determining factor in whether it would happen would be "whether the
U.S. administration is willing to rethink the utility of tariffs."
The Trump put is done. The stock market has erased all of its meteoric gains notched since Election Day.
Hopes for deregulation, tax cuts, and other fiscal stimulus from President Donald Trump have been replaced by fears that his tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China will ignite a full-blown trade war. That outcome would most certainly hurt consumers and corporate profits—and revive the economic threat of inflation.
That’s
why Wall Street is suddenly worried again, instead of excited about
Republicans controlling the White House and Congress. There is no sign
of the so-called Trump put—the expectation that he will do what he can
to keep the stock market happy.
Instead, Tuesday offered a broad-based, though volatile, selloff after Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico went into effect.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all ended
Tuesday’s trading session in the red. The Nasdaq was up more than 1% at
one point Tuesday before giving up all its gains, while the Dow Jones
Industrial Average and S&P 500 closed 1.6% and 1.2% lower,
respectively.
He's
destroying the country. As Senator Elizabeth Warren notes, that is the
plan -- to destroy the country for working Americans and to take all
their hard earned money and turn it over to billionaires:
Senator Warren joined Boston
Mayor Michelle Wu, Massachusetts Congressional Delegation ahead of
President Trump’s joint address to Congress
Warren: “The whole Republican plan fits on a bumper sticker: Billionaires win; families lose.”
Washington, D.C. – At a press conference today, U.S.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined Boston Mayor Michelle Wu,
Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and the Massachusetts Congressional
Delegation in delivering remarks on Trump’s agenda to benefit
billionaires while hurting working people ahead of Trump’s Joint Address
to Congress.
Senator Warren called the first six weeks of the new administration a
“sandstorm of chaos” meant to distract from President Trump’s goal of
jamming through trillions in tax cuts to billionaires at the expense of
health care, Social Security, and programs that benefit working
people.
Senator Warren was joined by her guest Doug Kowalewski, a former
National Science Foundation employee from Wellesley who, after six years
of service, was fired unexpectedly in Elon Musk’s and the Department of
Government Efficiency’s gutting of the federal workforce. Doug shared
his story at Senator Warren’s recent town hall in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Transcript: Press Conference with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Massachusetts Congressional Delegation U.S. Senate March 4, 2025
Senator Elizabeth Warren: We are all here today as
the federal representatives of the seven million people of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And we stand proudly with the Mayor of
Boston, who has been “invited” – I think that’s still a word – she has
been invited by the Republicans to come and defend Boston and to defend
the values that we fight for every day in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. So we want to be here, in part, to talk about what this
fight is about.
Over the last six weeks, Donald Trump has created a sandstorm of
chaos to try to distract us from his real agenda: Tax cuts for
billionaires, paid for by cuts to health care and Social Security. These
are programs that mommas and daddies and babies and seniors rely on
every single day.
Trump and his unelected co-president Elon Musk are dismantling our
government, piece by piece, so that it works better for those same
billionaires and worse for everyone else. The whole Republican plan fits
on a bumper sticker: Billionaires win; families lose.
Trump promised, you may remember, to lower costs “on day one.”
Instead, he and co-President Musk have tried to fire the financial cops
that keep Americans from getting cheated. They have slashed funding that
supports research for cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s. And they have
fired thousands of hardworking public servants, including the people who
keep us safe when we fly on airplanes, the people who make sure that
nuclear materials are safely stored, and people who inspect our food.
One of those hardworking public servants is Doug. Up until two weeks
ago, Doug worked at the National Science Foundation — until out of
nowhere, he was fired along with over one hundred of his colleagues. And
I’ve invited Doug here to share his story. Doug, come on over.
Doug Kowalewski, Senator Warren’s Guest for Trump’s Joint Address to Congress: So,
after six years of service at the National Science Foundation, I was
fired two weeks ago from today. And me, along with 167 of my colleagues
were called into a Zoom meeting to get a mass termination firing with no
cause. And this doesn’t just impact me — this impacts all of
Massachusetts. A limited workforce at NSF or NST or NIH jeopardizes the
billions of federal investments that directly fund our top-notch
research and researchers in Massachusetts and powers our local economy.
So, I’m scared for our country. Millions of Americans who have
dedicated their lives and dedicated their careers to this country are
suffering because of unelected billionaires. I’m here with Senator
Warren to fight back against these illegal terminations and to stand up
for hardworking civil servants. Thank you.
Senator Warren: Thank you very much, Doug. And I
appreciate Doug being here. I just want to say, this is what happens
when you go to town halls. I had a town hall in Framingham a week ago
and Doug stood up and told his story, as have lots of other people in
Massachusetts.
I would say the biggest question at that town hall is: What can we
do? And Doug is living proof of what we can do. We can tell our stories
because they matter. We build a grassroots movement across this story by
not using big words and abstract terms, but by telling the story person
by person by person about what kind of work you do and what it means
when you just get called in and told, “You’re fired,” because it fits in
someone else’s political agendas, so thank you for being here, Doug. I
appreciate it.
Alright, I just want to say: Doug is standing up, he’s pushing back and that’s what we’ve all got to do.
Here’s the story: last month hackers looted Ethereum coins
worth $1.5 billion from Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange —
apparently the most money anyone has ever stolen in a single caper. The
FBI believes that the North Korean regime was behind the hack. Most of
the coins have already been laundered into Bitcoin, and will eventually
be turned into real money that will be used to sustain Kim Jong Un’s
brutal dictatorship.
It’s quite a story, yet it has only
recently begun to get major coverage. The likeliest explanation of this
lag is that crypto-related fraud and theft is so rife that reporters and
editors have grown blasé.
But small investors continue to lose
large sums in crypto scams, like “rug-pulls.” And the biggest rug-pull
yet is underway: Donald Trump’s plan for a “strategic crypto reserve.”
What’s
a rug-pull? A textbook example just happened in Argentina, where Javier
Milei, the president, touted a new cryptocurrency called $Libra.
The currency’s price soared as thousands of small players bought in,
while insiders sold their holdings for huge profits. Then the price
collapsed, leaving small players owning worthless bits of code.
Does
this sound familiar? It should: the $Trump coin, introduced with great
fanfare by Trump in January, attracted billions in dollars from MAGA
fans, then quickly lost more than 80 percent
of its value. The great bulk of $Trump coins were initially bought by a
handful of “whales,” large investors, although it’s not clear whether
their intent was to scam small buyers or simply to bribe the president.
While
both Milei and Donald Trump deny that they personally profited from the
rug-pulls they enabled, I seriously doubt that anyone believes them.
And if Trump manages to establish a federal “strategic crypto reserve,”
paid for by US tax dollars, the scams associated with $Libra and $Trump
will look like chump change.
We're
being robbed. And that's why Chump is seeing the country turn on him
so quickly and his honeymoon ended before he even got in all the slap
and tickle he wanted with Alien Musk. Alex Kirshner (SLATE) observes the cratering of Chump's mастера секса Alien Musk:
Musk
has garnered lots of attention for this power move. Some is positive.
Most is not. Tesla, his biggest company, has become the subject of
widespread boycotting calls by his and Trump’s opponents. There are
frequent protests outside of Tesla showrooms. Barely a day passes
without the viral egging of a Cybertruck. Tesla owners are getting
international press attention for flipping their cars at a loss just to
get rid of them. “I’m selling the Nazi mobile,” one dissatisfied driver says.
The social internet might create an outsized impression of how common
those acts of resistance are, but they still seem at least reflective of
a shift. Public approval of Musk’s government obliteration really is low, and disapproval of Tesla itself is higher than ever.
Meanwhile,
Tesla’s stock price is declining rapidly. Musk’s largest company lost
24 percent of its value in February. It was the stock’s second worst month ever,
and then it fell another 3 percent on Monday, the first trading day of
March. What a coincidence it would be if none of that had anything to do
with the ever-growing, controversial public persona of its very famous
chief executive. Big left-of-center social media accounts are
celebrating their work: “Congrats, everyone—the Elon boycott is
working!” a Bluesky post from a mysterious account with 800,000 followers reads.
Public perception of the automaker and its billionaire owner seem to be
at an all-time low. One person even claims to have lost $70,000 in
business contracts because customers didn't like that he drives a Tesla
Cybertruck.
"I have a dilemma. I
started to lose customers because I have [a] Cybertruck," Yoni Menaker
wrote in what appears to be a now-deleted Facebook post, as cited by Torque News. "I got some bad reviews, and I am not sure what to do."
Menaker added he loves the vehicle and "it's the best truck" he's ever had.
The name Yoni Menaker is attached
to a company called Blue Angels Roofing, which operates in Alabama and
Georgia. A couple of negative online reviews scornfully mentioned the
company's use of a Cybertruck.
Blue Angels Roofing isn't alone. A medical spa owner in Massachusetts told
NBC Boston in February he's faced harassment and client cancellations
after purchasing a gold-wrapped Cybertruck to promote his business.
It's
not just small business owners facing backlash. Tesla's stock slide
from mid-December to late February wiped out more than $650 billion in
market value, according to a Barron's report.
While EV sales in the U.S. have grown
in volume — up 7.3% in 2024 — Tesla's sales fell more than any other
manufacturer, according to Cox Automotive. Sales figures in other
regions, including Europe and China, have also trended downward.
She
thinks she understands Chump. That's so cute. She doesn't. I don't.
Both of us can talk to where he's coming from but she actually thinks
she's got some skill -- that she shares with Clara -- on being able to
know what's important and what's not and when to ignore Chump's
statements and when not to.
She doesn't.
And
I say that because it's true and it also let's me answer a question for
people writing to the public e-mail account. I have not forgotten
_____. I'm just not interested in highlighting him. He also knew what
Chump was going to do and when Chump was serious and blah blah blah
When
Chump started his attacks on Canada, we called him out. We ended up
compling all the countries he'd verbally lashed out at. And while we
were doing that a YOUTUBER wanted the world to know tht was just Chump
bluster and those mentioning it were wasting time.
I
shrugged as someone who emphasized international relations for my
undergraduate and graduate work (along with campaign politics). There
were so many ways that could be wrong -- that person could be wrong.
But
we don't all have to agree. And though he was wrong on that, he was
right on other things so I continued to highlight him until I got the
angry e-mail about how he had covered this and Chump wasn't going to do
anything on this topic and this was a distraction and I needed to apply
my time better.
That's when we were done with him.
As
time has demonstrated, those of us educated in international relations
were right to raise flags immediately. But I could have been wrong
Wouldn't be the first time.
The difference is: I
don't ask anyone for money. Daily content here includes one piece of
writing a day by me. Except for when I went into my diabetic coma, I
have had something new that I wrote (most likely dictated) up here every
day for over 20 years. And never charged a cent. Never begged for a
cent.
So I don't really see where you can write
an angry e-mail to me telling me that I'm wasting people's time and
that I'm stupid because as soon as Chump's sworn in, he's going to stop
trashing other countries and he's going to this and to that.
At
any rate, that YOUTUBER is banned here by me. He could get honest. I
don't mean apologize to me. I do mean he could say on a new segment,
"Hey, when I told all of you to ignore the comments Chump was making
about other countries and the Panama Canal and all the rest, I was
wrong. It wasn't just distraction. It was the new foreign policy for
the US under Chump."
There are so many things each day that warrant and deserve coverage.
I
can't do it all and don't pretend to. I've noted that often on Mondays
when the snapshot includes a statement about how too much happened over
the weekend.
So I'm picking and choosing.
(And I'm aware that the community sites pick up many topics and I can
sometimes rule a topic because I know someone else in the community is
already covering it.)
And I'm not above
criticism -- though you'll never be able to criticize me more harshly
than I already do. But when I'm writing garbage here about how we need
to make Jon Stewart our party's presidential nominee in 2028? When I'm
doing that kind of political masturbation? Then I really need to be
slammed.
However, I'm not among the four
YOUTUBERS who did that. (And, yes, the one banned was one of the
four.) That is wasting time. And they didn't even know Jon's stances.
Which is why last month they were attacking him. Jon's a comedian and a
good one. He goes for the laugh. He's also overly concerned about
being seen as fair.
Monika's piece is worth
reading but it's also worth noting that she doesn't have a crystal ball
and it's really not for her to say what's important and what's not. She
can say that for herself -- I can say that for myself -- but if you're
gut's telling you something different, you should go with your gut. Do a
YOUTUBE video, write a post, whatever. If you think something
important is taking place that needs attention -- much more than it's
getting -- that's what you can do and should do.
Last night, Chris Hayes gave us all a scorecard on DOGE.
Kyle Schutt, a
software engineer embedded at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency, is making $195,200—the maximum salary allowed for a
federal employee. Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur
playing a leading role in DOGE's GSA restructuring efforts, is earning
$120,500.
These revelations, uncovered by WIRED, stand in direct contrast to Musk's previous statements.
Last November, as he and Vivek Ramaswamy recruited for DOGE, Musk
insisted that working for the agency would be "tedious" and compensated
at zero dollars.
However, the investigation found that DOGE's budget has ballooned to $40 million, and its recruitment page now openly discusses "full-time, salaried positions" for engineers and other specialists.
"It
does seem worth understanding what these employees are being paid," Don
Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan told
WIRED. "Especially if they are being paid significantly more than
technologists who have been fired, given that many of the DOGE staff
have less relevant experience."
As
Chris Hayes noted on MSNBC last night, there is no transparency. They
don't even issue corrections. They just wait until they hope people
aren't looking and then they remove one of their lies from their lists
of claims.
There is no transparency and
there is no accountability. There is Alien Musk joking that sometimes
mistakes will be made. Thousands of Americans are out of their jobs and
that's the closet to accountability Alien's going to offer: Woops!
Millions
and millions of Americans are at risk because of these firings and
"Woopsie" and a bad joke is all we're going to get in the form of an
apology or an acknowledgement.
It doesn't matter to Alien Musk.
He's
not an American. Canada's got a move currently to strip him of his
Canadian citizenship but even if they did? He could still go home to
South Africa. The racist doesn't want to do that because the racist
system of apartheid that he was raised under and benefited from no
longer exists in South Africa.
But he can go elsewhere.
He's
not an American. He didn't grow up here, he didn't bother to learn
about the country and he lies daily to the citizens of this country.
He doesn't care what happens to the American people. He does care about stealing as many of our tax dollars as he can.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy flatly rejected the idea that Elon Musk’s Starlink is the key to fixing FAA’s struggling air traffic control system.
Duffy
delivered the slap down of the tech billionaire's satellite internet
network while speaking to Fox News on Tuesday about air traffic control
shortages and other issues plaguing the agency following a series of
deadly aviation disasters in the opening weeks of 2025.
All
Alien wants is our tax dollars. He's a welfare queen who has lived off
our tax dollars and the tax dollars of citizens of other countries.
That's 'his' wealth.
Senator Patty Murray's office issued the following:
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
(D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior
member and former Chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee,
issued the following statement on the Trump administration’s plans
to fire 80,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),
seriously risking the medical care and benefits that veterans have
earned and deserve.More than 25 percent of VA’s workforce are veterans
themselves.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are escalating their full-scale,
no-holds-barred assault on veterans–and putting the health care and
benefits they have earned in grave danger. It’s infuriating that two
billionaires think they can fire tens of thousands of people responsible
for administering the services and care that over nine million veterans
across the country count on. It’s flat-out immoral and a breach of the
sacred commitment we make to our veterans to take care of them when they
return home.
“Just yesterday, I spoke with a disabled veteran who worked
at the Seattle VA helping homeless veterans. He told me how devastating
it was when, without warning, without cause, and without explanation, he
was suddenly terminated from a role that meant everything to him and
was cast aside by the very system he had fought in combat to defend.
Now, there will be thousands more stories like his and millions more
veterans who will pay the price. Trump’s own attorney has said that this
administration thinks veterans they laid off for NO REASON may not be
‘fit to have a job at this moment’ —it’s an astounding
level of contempt for our veterans that’s reflected throughout this
administration’s thoughtless mass firings.
“These arbitrary mass layoffs, at the very least, are going
to mean longer processing times for disability or education claims
veterans are desperately waiting on, and longer wait times for veterans
to see a doctor–to say nothing of the serious threat to patient safety
or the threat of VA medical centers closing. Make no mistake: this will
only empower Elon to privatize VA by breaking it first. The consequences
of Trump and Elon’s sheer recklessness will reverberate for
generations—in more veterans sick and unable to get their benefits, more
veterans out of a job, and fewer men and women willing to sign up to
serve a nation that shows it will not keep their promises to them.”
ENDANGERING VETERANS’ ACCESS TO BENEFITS AND CARE—AND PATIENT SAFETY
Firing VA employees will–among much else–likely force veterans to wait longer:
To see health care providers;
To have their disability claims adjudicated;
To have someone to pick up their calls at the Veterans Crisis Line;
To have burial and funeral expense reimbursement requests processed;
And much more.
A number of staff supporting the Veterans Crisis Line–which
provides 24/7, confidential crisis support for veterans and their loved
ones–were among those fired by Trump and Musk.
In 2022, Congress also passed the PACT Act, the largest expansion
of
veterans’ benefits in two decades, which requires a significant influx
of resources and staff to deliver the benefits and care under the law.
Trump and Musk’s firings–and hiring freeze–badly undercut VA’s ability
to process claims under the law.
The mass firings and the ongoing hiring freeze, which prohibits new
disability claims raters from coming on board, will force the backlog of
unprocessed claims to grow above 254,000.
Firing long-time VA researchers also puts clinical trials
that veterans are enrolled in at risk and jeopardizes research that
could yield critical breakthroughs for veterans.
Ongoing VA research is examining treatment options for PTSD and
opioid addiction, as well as for cancer that was caused by veterans’
exposure to toxic chemicals, among much else.
According to VA,
in fiscal year 2024, there were 102 active research sites nationwide,
with 3,685 active principal investigators who led 7,278 active funded
research projects involving teams of researchers. In addition, VA
investigators authored or coauthored 11,732 published research articles.
Recent dangerous directives from VA last week, which they
have already begun to walk back, cause more harmful chaos and confusion
and also have detrimental impacts on the ability of veterans to receive
their care and benefits.
VA issued a blanket cancellation last Tuesday of nearly 900 contracts–supporting
patient safety efforts like chemical waste disposal and monitoring of
hospital air quality, systems providing secure storage of veterans’
private records, clinical recruitment efforts, and more.
VA also implemented a decision to reduce purchase card limits to $1–curbing
VA medical centers’ ability to purchase supplies and equipment they
need to serve veterans or to provide lodging for transplant patients.
While the Trump administration tries to rehire clinical staff they
have already fired and may ultimately walk back the purchase card limits
and contract cancellations, it is clear that they are acting before thinking–and the people paying the price are veterans.
BETRAYING VETERANS WITH ZERO JUSTIFICATION
Beyond indiscriminately firing workers who help get veterans the
benefits and care they have earned, Trump and Musk have also already
indiscriminately fired thousands of veterans who have served our country
in uniform. In firing probationary and other federal workers across
government, Trump and Musk have fired scores of veterans.
Veterans make up30% of the federal workforce, and the federal government is the largest single employer of veterans in the country.
Trump and Musk have already fired nearly 6,000 veterans, by one recentestimate.
Federal agencies uniquely work to hire and accommodate veterans with
service-related disabilities. Longstanding law requires, for example,
that veterans who are disabled or who serve on active duty in the Armed
Forces in military campaigns are entitled to preference over others in
hiring from a list of eligible, competitive applicants. In 2021, there
were337,000 disabled Veterans serving in the federal government, making up 16% of the federal workforce.
As veterans working at VA in Washington state who were recently laid off through no fault of their own have told Senator Murray:
“I swore an oath to serve our country—first in the U.S.
Army and then at the VA—only to be abruptly terminated by the very
institution that promised to care for those who have served. My
termination isn’t just a personal tragedy; it’s a stark reminder that
our federal government is dismantling essential support systems for
veterans and vulnerable communities. When cost-cutting means sacrificing
dedicated, disabled service members and committed federal employees, it
isn’t about efficiency—it’s about eroding the trust and dignity that
our nation owes to those who answer the call to serve.” — Raphael Garcia, former Management Analyst for VA, Seattle
“Working at the VA gave me purpose. I understood the
struggles veterans faced, whether physical, mental, or emotional. I took
pride in being part of something bigger than myself, in continuing to
serve even after taking off the uniform… The next chapter in my service
led me to working with unhoused Veterans. Limiting roles like mine,
means other VA employees will have to take on more and cutting into
valuable clinical time directly serving veterans. That’s why it was so
devastating when, without warning, without cause, I was terminated. No
explanation, no justification just a cold dismissal from a role that
meant everything to me. It felt like a betrayal, not just of my
dedication but of the values I thought the VA stood for. I had fought
through war, through cancer, and through every challenge life had thrown
at me only to be cast aside by the very system I had believed in.” — Scott Olson, former Program Support for VA’s Community Housing Program, Seattle
