Post #131475

2026-01-13 06:33 UTC

The purge began late Friday night, four days after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Seventeen inspectors general—internal watchdogs embedded throughout the federal government—received emails notifying them of their termination. Three weeks later came the Valentine’s Day Massacre: the ousting of tens of thousands of federal employees with little discernible pattern, across agencies and across the country. By April, entire departments—the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—had been gutted. Workers the administration couldn’t fire were coerced into leaving on their own. Toxicity became HR policy. Employees received an email with the subject line “Fork in the Road.” It offered eight months’ pay to anyone who resigned, and no assurances of job security to those who stayed. A follow-up email encouraged them “to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” At the end of Trump’s first year back in office, roughly 300,000 fewer Americans worked for the government. *🎁 link MBFC Archive

Replies (2)

@Buffalox@lemmy.world 2026-01-13 09:32

So many Americans are delusional. Minimal state and maximal God is their wet dream. Deregulate everything and get rid of both controls and services. So now Americans can look forward to getting cheated by fraudulent businesses, getting food that is even more unhealthy, and die in unnecessary accidents because there are no safety standards, and enjoy more pollution in both cities and out in the country. Minimal state is a moronic idea, what the state needs to be is streamlined to make society better through good regulation and standards that make everything work smoothly. Come to Denmark and see how it works, I spend about 3 seconds doing my taxes. I spend zero seconds filling out forms when I need healthcare. This is not about maximal or minimal state, but about having good systems and good regulation and public services that actually work.

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@just_another_person@lemmy.world 2026-01-13 09:51

Great article, and important point that needs to be made more. A lot of this is permanent damage, regardless of how it may seem.

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