Imagine the hubris required to burst into the largest socio-technical system on earth and just start yanking out wires, thinking you are genius. Mass-emailing insulting messages and thinking people will welcome your help. Destroying careers, killing kids in Africa, and thinking you're the hero.

The unsung heroes of America: lifelong agency workers at Social Security, Medicare, VA and so many other agencies who are staying there to ensure the American people are taken care of. They didn’t have to stay. They are being worked into the ground. Thank you with all of my heart.🙏

🙌

New from me: Russ Vought is using federal employees as hostages in federal shutdown negotiations, threatening mass firings if Dems do not accept Trump's terms. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court just allowed Vought to impose a de facto impoundment of foreign aid. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/shutdown-h...

It will be interesting in a bleak sort of way to see how the Court decides the clear wording of the Constitution isn’t what it appears to be.

I know there are 50 million things going on, but this is pretty important (Democrats doing something, formal documentation of DOGE) www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

folks, I want to remind you that a ton of federal workers are about to get their last pay check at the end of this month and this stuff is going to get much worse

This story is bananas and I believe every word of it.

The Trump administration knew that they could fire thousands of people, and by the time courts got around to issuing a ruling, it would be too late for any meaningful action to be taken. That's precisely what has happened. Now they'll keep doing it, because it works.

Shot: "The last [18F] report urged the courts to 'start small.'" Chaser: "In mid-2022, the administrative office awarded a five-year, $298 million contract to General Dynamics Information Technology." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...

This company just named Stephen Ehikian of DOGE/GSA as its new CEO

This is consistent with the hypothesis that they just fired people at random

Best thing I’ve read on what’s going on here

This would be like shutting down the Federal Highway Administration in 1970 and then, six months later, announcing an exciting new idea: the country could build build big roads all across the country, perhaps topped with some kind of hardened surface that research could identify.

Why’d they copyright this weird wall of text? americabydesign.gov

I’m not one of the dozens of 18F and UsDS designers they fired but….this seems like a wall of text? americabydesign.gov

If Biden had taken 10% of Intel, at least it would have been in exchange for the billions in Chips Act funding granted to the company. Trump's taking this in exchange for deciding not to destroy the company. It's literal protection money.

This might have even been called “wasteful” a few years ago? The “rules” even used to require stuff like “rationale and plans” when you arbitrarily fired your talent. It was wild. www.govexec.com/workforce/20...

I’m old enough to remember when personnel moves like this would be called “inefficient”.

🤷

Trump fired all of the designers in 18F, the US Digital Service, and elsewhere in government. Now he is calling for improved government design. www.nextgov.com/digital-gove...

The maddest someone has ever gotten at me was when I talked about the child sized manacles Jefferson had at Monticello for 9 year old children. They could not cope with the idea that a child the same age as their child had been enslaved. And it made them angry that I made them know facts

A terrorist targeted federal workers last week. There wasn’t much reporting on it. But I’m not finished thinking about it! 🧵 An anti-vaxxer fired more than 500 gunshots into CDC Atlanta, shattering 150 “blast-proof” windows on 6 buildings. Employees were pinned down in terror.

Absolutely agree.

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

❌ NOTICE Federal US website newly deleted. https://my2020census.gov Action taken by the Department of Commerce (Census Bureau) at or around 2025-08-09 06:11:10.

mRNA vaccine is greatest miracle of science in my lifetime and I guess we're not doing it

Our weekend reading: "Analyzing the Waste Generated by DOGE," a new report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 👀 www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

If you’ve wondered how Direct File finally happened after two decades at an impasse, I wrote about three reasons why I think it finally broke through: chrisgiven.com/2025/07/the-...

Our hearts are heavy for the grieving family of Jaime Alanis, who died from injuries sustained during a chaotic raid on Thursday. We will do everything we can to support them. We continue to work with the hundreds of farm worker families navigating the aftermath of this violent raid.

This week, I’m honoring the State Dept foreign and civil servants whose service was cut short. No one can take away their impact.. in every flag they stood beside, the rooms where diplomacy took shape, and the global ties they built. We will feel this loss for years. Images from my last visit.

In honor of today's Supreme Court decision

If you’re with a state agency or legislature who needs help figuring out how you’re going to modify your benefits systems to deal with federally mandated changes (e.g. employment verification), contact us at @usdigitalresponse.org. We can help for free, thanks to grant funding. There’s no catch.

People living under fascism didn’t survive by giving up joy—they protected it. They held onto the things fascism tried to erase: art, friendship, jokes, rituals, language, memory. Not as escapism but as resistance. As proof they were still human. Joy isn’t frivolous under fascism. It’s strategic.

“What if trust wasn’t something we kept asking for, but something we got to build, out loud, in the open, with visible progress?” That’d be great. Playing trust whack-a-mole is the hardest part of all this IMO.

After pondering the welfare work requirements in the latest GOP budget, and most everything else that’s now “acceptable” by all GOP and most moderate dems, I don’t give a shit about Bill Clinton’s thoughts on much of anything.

Nothing could be more perilous to American democracy than going to war under Donald Trump, Robert Kagan writes.

This dude is like a parody of a boomer. www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

Well fuck.

Does Jon Voight have to do government timesheets and shit like that?

Nearly half of 140 senior SSA administrators have been forced out or left the agency. A decimation of hundreds of years of administrative expertise at the insitence of the ignorant. (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/u...

A top House Democrat is asking Microsoft for information about a DOGE staffer's GitHub account connected to whistleblower allegations of sensitive data leaving the National Labor Relations Board.

Have the DOGE kids gotten social security administration off the mainframe yet they said it was easy with their coding stuff.

Respect.

The weird thing is Elon is still going to get away with stealing a shit ton of government data after all this. (Not to be a downer I am enjoying the cat fight)

How do we repair the mess Trump & the tech titan have made? Public servants who know how to build things can tell us. Here’s @merici.bsky.social, who built IRS Direct File AND helped launched the beloved CFPB on @cnn.com with @philmattingly.bsky.social transcripts.cnn.com/show/cg/date...

I wonder if Jon Voight had any meetings today as Hollywood ambassador. I need Jon Voight news it’s important.