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A Federal Blackmail Plan; I’ll Have To Say I Love You In an Essay; The Science of Ignorance [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-09
Trump Wants to Essentially Blackmail Workers to Give Up Their Rights
Here’s another “How can that be legal” story from the American Prospect: The GOP budget bill has a provision to try to coerce federal civil service workers to give up their employee protections.
If approved, here’s how it works: Workers hired after the effective date will have two choices: Consent to being classified as an at-will employee or have your pension deduction almost doubled, cutting your take-home pay by 5 percent.
An at-will employee, according to the bill, “may be subject to an adverse action up to and including removal, without notice or right to appeal, by the head of the agency at which the individual is employed for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all,” the American Prospect reported.
Those who refuse to go along with that idea will have their retirement contribution to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) increased from 4.4 to 9.4 percent.
So, you may say that they still get their money as it goes toward retirement, but, as the story explained, because of the structure of their retirement plan, they won’t receive that extra 5 percent directly when they retire. It goes into a pension pot for all the employees under FER. It will be spread out among all the individual retirement plans.
“It really amounts to charging people for their basic rights,” Daniel Horowitz, legislative director of the American Federation of Government Employees, said. The union represents 820,000 government workers. “If you can’t pay, you lose them.”
The Congressional Budget Office – which Republicans hate and try to discredit because it studies their budget proposal and reveals their various scams – estimated that three-quarters of eligible workers will likely enter into at-will employment to keep their full paychecks. CBO said the average salary of affected workers is $71,000. They already make less than their private-sector counterparts.
In the meantime, the increased retirement contributions from the remaining one-quarter workers will lead to a modest revenue increase of $4.7 billion over 10 years, the CBO said.
Not all federal workers will be required to make this decision. It primarily affects those in the competitive service. Some workers who focus on confidential issues or polices are exempted from the competitive service and also from this provision.
No matter how many there are, this proposal stinks. No wonder they buried it in a complicated tax and spending bill.
You can read the American Prospect story here.
Now They’ll Have to Kiss Trump’s Ass in Writing
We already knew that Donald Trump’s administration was planning to stock its rank-and-file workforce with as many of the president’s sycophants as possible. Now we see the quest for devotion to the Dear Leader has inspired a written test.
Newsweek reports that, according to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management, certain civil service applicants will have to answer a handful of essay questions, including how they’ll “advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities.”
The ultimate goal here is groupthink, because authoritarian leaders don’t want people who have any interest in critical thinking or are seeking the best way to do their jobs. They want blind obedience.
Of course, that has the potential to severely cripple an administration’s effectiveness and ability to grow and evolve into a consistently improving operation. Again, not on a wannabe dictator’s to-do list.
Here are the four proposed questions, according to Newsweek:
1. How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the Federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic, or personal experience.
2. In this role, how would you use your skills and experience to improve government efficiency and effectiveness? Provide specific examples where you improved processes, reduced costs, or improved outcomes.
3. How would you help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.
4. How has a strong work ethic contributed to your professional, academic, or personal achievements? Provide one or two specific examples, and explain how those qualities would enable you to serve effectively in this position.
Of course, we know the only answer that matters will be the one that shows loyalty to the most corrupt and unfit president in history. They’re calling this a “Merit Hiring Plan,” which is a joke because an applicant’s merits will have nothing to do with it.
The part about commitment to the Constitution is another joke because this president has made violating that document his go-to move in advancing his pro-rich, anti-poor-and-middle-class, anti-environment agenda.
The memo said the government will end the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in hiring recruitment, which the memo described as “racial discrimination,” the Newsweek story said.
How can it be that our society discriminates against minorities, putting them at a disadvantage to more privileged white applicants, but attempts to even the playing field is “racial discrimination”?
I don’t think that question is going to be on the test.
You can read the Newsweek story here.
Here’s How We’ll Get an F in Science
We can find any number of positive attributes to be proud of in a nation as powerful and successful as the United States.
Stupidity probably isn’t one of them.
Don’t tell that to the Trump administration. That team of anti-science devotees apparently isn’t content with ripping away funding from the federal government’s pursuit of scientific excellence. It now intends to install a team of political stooges to “correct” any discoveries the dumbest president in American history doesn’t like.
Because, you know, he has a very big brain, knows a lot of words, passed a cognitive test, and has an uncle or some relative who went to MIT. Gosh, just give him a white lab coat and get the hell out of his way.
Professor Trump signed an executive order last month calling for a restoration of “gold standard science” across federal agencies and national laboratories.
He intends to achieve that goal by putting political appointees (also known as stooges who’ll do what they’re told) in charge of vetting scientific research and giving them the authority to “correct scientific information,” the Times reported.
“Excuse me, you’ve got this nuclear fission stuff all wrong here.”
“Are you a scientist?”
“No, I used to be a dumbwaiter repairman at the Trump National Golf Club, but I won the Employee of the Month award three times, and the president thinks I look like Brian Donlevey when he played a scientist in the ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ in 1955.”
The executive order also gives his appointees control over the way this scientific information is communicated to the public, and the power to “discipline” anyone who violates the way the administration views science, the Times said.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, more than 6,000 scientists, academics, physicians, researchers, and others think there might be some problems. They’ve sent an open letter saying it would destroy scientific independence, the Times said.
“As scientists, we are committed to a discipline that is decentralized and self-scrutinizing,” the letter reads. “Instead, this administration mandates a centralized system serving the political beliefs of the President and the whims of those in power.”
Why shouldn’t science be like everything else in this administration? We all remember Trump’s less-than-astute leadership during the Covid crisis, when fantasy replaced science to the extent that tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily.
We all know how this’ll work. Trump’s team of ventriloquist dummies will say exactly what the people pulling their strings tell them to say. And you can bet that won’t include anything that hurts the bottom line of any business – the fossil fuel industry, for example.
Hey, look at it this way: We had a good run being the leader of the world’s scientific community. Will being its laughingstock now really be that bad?
You can read the Times story here.
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