Restatement of a theme

by liberal japonicus

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr72n1yyj30o

Federal workers received an email on Saturday afternoon asking them to list their accomplishments from the past week or resign - the latest development in the Trump administration's efforts targeting the federal workforce.

The emails came after billionaire and Trump confidante Elon Musk tweeted that workers would "shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week".

"Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," he wrote.

[...]The email arrived in inboxes shortly after Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac). The messages came with the subject line "What did you do last week?" from a sender listed as HR.

In a copy of the email obtained by the BBC, employees were asked to explain their accomplishments from the past week in five bullet points - without disclosing classified information - before Monday at midnight.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/30/margaret-thatcher-cuts-national-archive

One of Margaret Thatcher's first acts after taking office was to ask her cabinet ministers to send her a brief note on what skeletons they had found in their departmental cupboards, and when these "inheritance" notes came back she was distinctly unimpressed.

The 1979 state papers released at the National Archives today show that she told her cabinet meeting on 14 May that "it wasn't clear why the work currently being done by 566,000 non-industrial civil servants could not be done equally well by 500,000. She did not accept the premise that virtually no cuts could be made unless services are to be reduced," minuted the cabinet secretary, Sir John Hunt. He had advised her to begin a "searching examination" of public spending to identify the waste that could be eliminated and priorities established "so that functions could be jettisoned to lighten the ship".

But the defence secretary, Francis Pym, used his inheritance note to point out that his budget was at its lowest in real terms since the Korean war and promptly outlined three demands for extra spending. From the Home Office, Willie Whitelaw pointed out that the prison system had been underfunded for years, and the social services secretary, Patrick Jenkin, complained that Labour had made no provision for its election promise to uprate child benefit.

It was a dismaying response for a prime minister who had imposed a freeze on civil service recruitment at her first cabinet meeting only to be told it would trigger severe shortages in London and other big cities.

The conservative project. It's what's for dinner...

Comments

[wj]

Interesting that some department heads, e.g. Patel at the FBI (albeit not the DoJ as a whole) have told their people to just ignore Musk's email demand.

From what little I've read, there's no obvious pattern. But even pockets of resistance, from Trump appointees is a surprise. At least to me.

[Hartmut]

Well, it would undermine their powerbase. They prefer to do the purge on their own.

[liberal japonicus]

I think one thing that the tendency to tie the Orange-utan to fascism is that we imagine we are going to see some sort of Rohm/Brownshirt purge. Everyone thought Bannon v. Musk was going to see something like this, and people are talking up Patel instructing the FBI not to answer Musk's questionnaire, but as much as I'd like it to happen, I don't see it happening. There are too many things to divvy up and too many enemies of the state to attack, so it's just wishful thinking.

[wj]

An interesting visual on Germany's part of the conservative project.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ouxqdky6ba67jv22jv22k74p/post/3liuhciy6hk2s
AdF, on the off chance someone reading doesn't already know, is the Germany far right/(semi)neo-Nazi party. And, it appears, solidly based in former East Germany.

[bobbyp]

The resistance is beginning.....

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/02/banksy-shot

[GftNC]

Josh Marshall today:

There was a very important development today, still only little-noted in the national press. Government Executive magazine has a good piece on it. The news turns on a decision by the Office of Special Counsel, the head of which, Hampton Dellinger, Trump had only recently tried to fire before being blocked from doing so by a federal judge. The decision specifically deals with six federal employees, each from a different agency, who were recently fired as probationary employees as part of the DOGE purge. Technically, the decision only applies to those six employees. But in a way that is analogous, though not identical, to the way a court ruling works, the findings would likely apply to many other recent DOGE-terminated employees across the federal government.

I’ve mentioned a few times that DOGE seemed to have little understanding of the difference between different kinds of probationary employees. Those recently hired by the federal government have few civil service protections. Those who are probationary because they recently took a new job in government but have continuous government service do have those protections. An expert in civil service law tells me that the issue in this case is likely not that one, or not mostly that one, but rather that the administration is dressing up layoffs (for which employees are entitled to certain benefits, i.e., RIFs) as simple terminations and falsely claiming that terminations were made on the basis of poor performance when actual personnel files show nothing of the sort.

The just-updated version of the Government Executive piece reports that the OSC has now released the following statement: “The special counsel believes other probationary employees are similarly situated to the six workers for whom he currently is seeking relief. Dellinger is considering ways to seek relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings with OSC.” In other words, the list of directly affected employees is likely to grow.

Everything tied to this finding is part of a complex ecosystem of different government agencies that can appeal or resist the OSC’s decision. I will try to provide more of those details soon. You can find some of them in the Government Executive piece. But keep that in mind — that this is not necessarily the final word on the matter. But it’s an important one.

For now, another executive branch lawyer tells me that under civil service law this finding that the terminations were unlawful can create serious jeopardy for the government employees who executed (i.e., signed) the terminations, including fines, debarment from government employment and other serious civil sanctions. So those people may already have a problem. And if DOGE decides to ignore these findings, DOGE operatives may have a much harder time getting those federal HR officials to keep executing these terminations in the face of this finding.

More to come.

[Wonkie]

The word "conservative" means different things to different people. In functional terms, I believe that contemporary conservativism at the leadership/thinktank/pundit/spokeperson level is fascism. The core values are trying to get something for nothing; selfishness; disdain for empathy the social contract, and public service; and power-seeking; and materialism. At the voter level, I think conservatism is the selfishness, rejection of empathy and the notion of public service combined with entitlement and faux heroism and smug self-aggrandizement of armchair warriors who see themselves as fighting for All That Is Really American against the evil everyone else. It's a degenerate approach to political life.
MAGA is like heart disease in an organism that has grown lazy. A cartoon of America would show a fat couple collapsed in their Lazyboys in front of FAUX, shoveling junk food into their mouths with flags on the wall and no books except Melania's book that their relative got them for Christmas and they haven't read...every now and then one says, "This country needs to get shook up. The government needs to be shook up." And grabs another handful of french fries.

[nous]

An alternate way to say "Make America Great Again" is "Re-Birth of a Nation." As a movement, it really does have a written-by-Thomas-Dixon feel to it.

[russell]

I’ve mentioned a few times that DOGE seemed to have little understanding of the difference between different kinds of probationary employees.

DOGE seems to have little understanding of anything other than how to screw around with computers in order to break stuff.

Musk himself appears at this point to be insane.

[wj]

MAGA is like heart disease in an organism that has grown lazy

To me it seems more like a cancer which has metastasized. Surgery is no longer feasible. Chemo looks like the only viable course. Although surgery might be worthwhile to prep for the chemo.

[GftNC]

Listen, I know lots of you probably get Josh Marshall and TPM as well, but for people who don't, this just in (I haven't even read it myself yet):

BREAKING: Elon’s Epic Email Rake-Stomp Finally Explained!

Winston Churchill once said, “nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” One might also say there’s nothing so fun as being right about a big story totally by accident. Or rather, in this case, I actually knew about what I’m about to describe to you but forgot. Early February was at least a hundred years ago and I’ve been working on a million different stories since then — and, so, I’d totally forgotten about these details. But seriously, people, let’s not make it about me.

Here’s the story.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/breaking-elons-epic-email-rakestomp-finally-explained/sharetoken/8f89ebc6-9708-4ab3-bf82-0a2ae82b3a74

[GftNC]

Oh, c'mon, since we're on an Elon jag, those of you without a Guardian sub might as well hear from the inimitable Marina Hyde on the subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/25/elon-musk-pronatalism-mothers-social-media-parenting