We have learned a great many lessons from the unfolding, informal DOGE auditing of the bloated federal government.
Some are more obvious than others.
What I’ve been struck by in recent days, trying to keep up with the dizzying pace of news, is the seemingly limitless sense of entitlement of federal paper-pushers outraged that they might actually be accountable to the people who pay their bloated salaries for once in their lives.
Related: Trump to Sic DOGE on Bloated Pentagon?
Under the Brandon regime, it was a non-stop work-from-home holiday on the public dime.
In America’s Golden Age, they’re getting pink-slipped by the thousands.
They are, accordingly, livid and indignant in equal measure.
The legacy corporate state media is here to console them, describing the mass layoffs as “sowing pain and chaos” and credulously quoting fired employees describing their firings as “butchery.”
Via Washington Post (emphasis added):
This account of how the Trump administration’s firings played out over the weekend, sowing pain and chaos, is based on interviews and messages with more than 275 federal workers, as well as dozens of government records and communications reviewed by The Post…
“I’d understand a strategic reduction in force if needed,” said one USDA employee, who was fired over the weekend. “But this was a butchering of some of our best. Does the public know this?”
The termination letters hitting inboxes all struck the same note: Probationary workers were getting the ax for poor job performance. But many of those fired had just received positive reviews, or had not worked in the government long enough to receive even a single rating…
In a message sent Friday to agencies, an OPM employee wrote that, because of Trump’s mandated hiring freeze, probationary employees “had no right to continued employment. … An employee’s performance must be viewed through the current needs and best interest of the government, [in] light of the President’s directive to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce.” OPM also provided a form email agencies could use to terminate workers, citing “performance.”
The chutzpah!
I’m sure that, right now, somewhere in Sinaloa, there are lots of otherwise angelic secretaries doing number-crunching bookkeeping work for the cartel. They’re not out in the streets gunning anyone down, but they’re complicit nonetheless as part of the criminal machine.
Now, theoretically, if their bosses’ illegal racketeering operations were to get shut down by the law because they’ve been caught trafficking fentanyl, they wouldn’t have the gall to take to TikTok and cry for clicks; that’s the very special self-entitled prerogative of mostly useless federal bureaucrats at USAID.
The logic goes something like this:
- If you work for a criminal enterprise, you don’t get to feign indignance when it gets shut down; that’s what is supposed to happen to criminal enterprises.
- Large swathes of the sprawling United States government are criminal enterprises. If they’re not technically outright criminal, they’re corrupt and they have no justifiable existence.
- Ergo, shut your mouth, take the L, and be glad you aren’t going to prison.
No quarter given.
Related: 19 State Attorneys General Signal Intent to Prosecute Fauci
Continuing:
One Transportation Department worker found out he was fired on Valentine’s Day just after putting his children to bed, as he sat down to watch a movie with his wife. An Agriculture employee discovered he was terminated the morning after attending an ex-partner’s funeral. A Natural Resource Conservation Service employee was cut months after the government paid $20,000 to relocate his family to North Dakota.
Others targeted in the wave of firings fixated on the emails explaining why, struggling to understand…
A veteran of the National Park Service, who had worked at parks including Yosemite, Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains, last year left a permanent position to accept a promotion in a new park. There, she was told she’d have to serve one year of probation. On Valentine’s Day, she was fired for “performance,” ending a quarter-century of service.
“It is very brutal,” she said. “Especially after working and dedicating most of my life to the NPS.”
This “I dedicated my life to Agency X” talking point pops up a lot in these tear-jerker stories, which I’ve read a lot of so that you don’t have to.
The protestation is a little dramatic.
What actually happened was this: they took a paycheck for years for doing a job, one they probably did very poorly and inefficiently and that likely never should have existed in the first place. Now they have the opportunity to make an honest living, which they might do well to embrace instead of crying to rich liberals in Washington, D.C., who don’t care about them beyond using them as a pawns to drum up public sympathy in the service of keeping their racket afloat.
TikTok is awash with "The View"-watching Karens (literally) crying that they might have to find a real job.
🚨 OH NO! Federal worker fired by Trump is seen sobbing because she lost her "dream job."
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 19, 2025
“It was taken away by an admin who doesn’t care about science — doesn’t care about people who may be homeless.”pic.twitter.com/UAiFTx52oR
OMG, Karen, now they will have to get real jobs instead of make-believe federal jobs. pic.twitter.com/qtcvCAquiv
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) February 19, 2025
DEI scientist Summer Harvey’s job was to figure out "how to safely collect sexual orientation and gender identity in cancer care practices."
Gone!
JUST IN: Woman has meltdown because Trump shut down her job where she studied "how to safely collect s*xual orientation and gender identity" practices.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 19, 2025
Lmao. You literally can't tell what's a parody anymore.
"I was told to stop work immediately and that no more research… pic.twitter.com/fdOBSHMEP2
