A country in crisis: mass firings, DOGE running rampant, protests, state-sponsored racism, and beyond
This latest newsletter focuses on recent issues, including reactionary policies hallowing out the federal government, LGBTQ+ people, and U.S. foreign policy changes.
Hello everyone! It’s been over a month since my last newsletter, on February 15th. In order to make it easier, for me, to send newsletters out, I have divided the newsletter into four parts/issues, which will be released at different intervals, and on different weeks. This issue will focus on recent events and global issues, including slash-and-burn actions by DOGE (including mass firings of federal workers), the possible U.S.-Ukraine rare earth minerals deal, faltering opposition by the Democratic Party (but protests by some Democrats and concerned citizens), the orange one as a sovereignist, and more. It will also focus on climate change and environmentalism, threats that LGBTQ+ people face, and positive developments. I hope to release a newsletter focusing on these topics, every two weeks, if at all possible. With that, let me begin.
Apart from political stunts, like Kristi Noem declaring Canada the “51st state” at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border, and built as a “symbol of international friendship,” there are more dangerous actions afoot. For one, DOGE, an unaccountable, unelected group of individuals, is targeting Social Security, likely causing an interruption in benefits to recipients, through mass firings. They can’t be stopped by the Office of Special Counsel anymore. If that isn’t bad enough, considering all the private information the Social Security Administration has on Americans and those that will suffer if benefits are cut, DOGE, which supposedly is limited now (likely a smokescreen) is bringing their slash-and-burn tactics to other government agencies, all of which provide vital services. This includes:
EPA
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
USAID
NARA (there have been various threads on /r/archivists about it)
This is obviously meant to sow chaos. It has been reported that the Government Services Administration (GSA), which is pursuing “deep cuts to its workforce,” listed over 400 properties for possible sale, including the agency’s own headquarters! Other properties listed included the Federal Trade Commission Building in D.C., the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in D.C. (which is used by HHS), the Frances Perkins Building in D.C. (Dept. of Labor headquarters), J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. (FBI headquarters), Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building in D.C. (used by HHS), Robert C. Weaver Federal Building (HUD headquarters), Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in D.C., Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center building in D.C. (houses USAID, Customs and Border Protection, Department of Commerce, and EPA), and Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building (houses Voice of America). This list also included over 80 sites in Maryland. After people reported on this, the agency suddenly changed the webpage, without reason. They likely changed it because they didn’t like the information getting out there, and to limit public criticism.
Otherwise, NASA may be next on the chopping block, following the departure of senior leadership (i.e. they were forced out), as may the U.S. Postal Service, with the orange one reportedly preparing to “dissolve USPS’s bipartisan board of governors and place the agency under the control of…commerce department secretary, Howard Lutnick”! Also, the IRS is next. Additionally, access by SEC to WestLaw database was removed, while access by the Treasury, to the legal PACER database, both of which were vital for their work, was temporarily removed, according to some reporting. Yikes. Otherwise, whether the firing of U.S. federal civil servants will be “fertile hunting grounds for hostile foreign intelligence service” or not, the fact is those in DOGE are engineers who don’t have the right security standards even while they access “sensitive US databases,” like those at the Department of Treasury.
There have been some victories. The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 that the orange one’s freeze on $2 billion in U.S. foreign aid is invalid, while, unsurprisingly, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented. Fired National Park Service workers were restored to their jobs. OPM revised their guidance and claimed falsely that they were not directing agencies to fire probationary workers (i.e. they are trying to gaslight us). Some of the anti-trans executive orders signed by the orange one were stopped. In a show of solidarity, federal workers at the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) stopped DOGE workers from entering their building, barring their plans to begin mass-firings, following an executive order declaring that USADF, Presidio Trust, Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and United States Institute of Peace are “unnecessary” and may be eliminated. Later, a judge backed this blockage, by stopping the administration from abolishing USADF.
Even with this victory from the Supreme Court, one must not forget that the same court will likely side with gun companies and against Mexico’s suit to hold them accountable for cartel violence. It also recently ruled, in a 5-4 ruling to undermine the Clean Water Act, and weaken EPA’s ability to regulate raw sewage dumping into waterways. It is, also, worthwhile to understand perspectives of USAID undoubtedly not covered by corporate outlets, particularly why some are not mourning the disappearance of USAID. Primarily it comes down to dependence of countries on foreign aid, the aid industry itself legitimizing “extractive global trade and governance systems, which in turn produce the outcomes that legitimise the existence of the aid agencies” and opening the possibility of building a “world without aid,” and instead one which has more cooperation and transformation.
There has been reporting recently about the wicked rebranding by corporations of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, while claiming behind closed doors they will continue to support some initiatives. The Department of Education released a website to report “DEI violations.” Thousands of photos of war heroes and military-firsts were removed by the Pentagon, with some only because they used the word “gay” in the caption, including some images of the Enola Gay, or people with the last name of Gay. Most troubling was a story in The Guardian, on March 5th, about Black Student Unions under threat. They are struggling to stay in existence in states like Utah, Alabama, and elsewhere, with universities pulling their funding and support, forcing the organizations to rely on crowdfunding effectively. The story makes clear that anti-DEI efforts are racist attempts to weaken the political power (and voice) of people who aren’t White. This is partly what I meant by saying “state-sponsored racism” in the title of this newsletter After all, the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown Jr., as undoubtedly fired because he was a Black man. Lisa Francetti, Chief of Naval Operations, was fired for being a woman. They’d rather have loyal White male toadies than anyone else.
Apart from the news about the “cryptocurrency” commodity, confirmations of the awful Kash Patel (as FBI director) and Linda McMahon (as Secretary of Education), NIH defying a federal court order to unfreeze research funding, or allowing developers to destroy a park in Louisiana which is historically important to the Black community, the U.S. has pushed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a subservient position, after he was clearly humiliated when he went to the White House on February 28. That meeting was scheduled in an effort to lay the groundwork for signing a rare earth minerals deal. Prior to that, the U.S. refused to co-sponsor a U.N. resolution which solely blamed Russia for the war (which is inaccurate, since the invasion was not unprovoked, as has been often claimed falsely). The rare earth minerals deal seems to be moving ahead. The deal could include minerals like titanium, lithium, graphite, nickel, and cobalt. The idea is that this deal will end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and compensate the U.S. for previous military support, which has been presently paused (implying it could be resumed in the future). All the while, the Europeans are pushing for peace negotiations on their own.
On the other hand, it should be noted that, as one news source stated, summarizing from other sites, Russia, which presently controls 20% of Ukraine, is “sitting on about 40 percent of Ukraine’s metal resources” and a significant portion of Ukraine’s rare earth elements are said to be “located in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.” Putting aside those who claim that the orange one is giving “peace a chance” and implying that we should support his efforts because it is a “stark reversal of the U.S. position from being the major supplier of weapons and funding to prolong the war to one of [a] peacemaker,” it should be noted that these efforts, to end the war, could have another motive. It could be an effort to realign U.S. military assets and weaponry against China, which mind, you has nuclear weapons. So much for the orange one saying that Zelenskyy is trying to cause World War III (and nuclear annihilation), when such a realignment could result in the latter, as a result of armed military confrontation with China. Presently, as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reports, the U.S. has a stockpile of about 3,700 nuclear warheads, with about 1,770 presently deployed. In contrast, China has at least 500 nuclear warheads.
The same Bulletin noted that “the United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization.” It remains to be seen whether the orange one will actually push forward denuclearization talks with Russia or China, or it is just bluster, and if he will do the same in Gaza, and end the war there. When it comes to Gaza, it is unlikely. He has sided with the Israeli government even more than the Biden administration. The new administration did not object when humanitarian aid to those in Gaza was cruelly cut off by Israel. The orange one seems intent on continuing Israel’s perpetual war. As such, the charges against Biden officials for abetting crimes in Gaza could also be levied toward the current administration. Private military contractors are presently gallivanting around Gaza. The Israeli military is engaging in mass surveillance of Palestinians. If that isn’t bad enough, Israel is threatening to intervene in the Syrian capital of Damascus, a clear violation of that country’s sovereignty (the UN Charter and many other international law treaties), while they worry about religious fundamentalists uniting more of the country together.
Despite everything terrible that’s going on, the response from the Democratic Party has been pathetic. The orange one’s recent speech before Congress was filled with lies, threats of imperial conquest (including of the Panama Canal), and was otherwise awful. He exploited the experiences of suffering people for political points (these people willingly let themselves be used as tools of reactionaries), he put in a racist dig at Lesotho, calling it a country “nobody has ever heard of,” and ridiculously proposed the idea of a nuclear missile protective system. There’s no reason to watch or even read what he said. As one recent anime reviewer put it, “stupendously rich, amoral, multi-billionaire oligarchs” are no longer “tied to estates in single countries, existing outside of the rule of tax law,” adding that such oligarchs (the Muskrat is implied), have “no reason to ensure the happiness of the working classes because almost nothing and no one can touch them, hence our inexorable decline into an eternal, dark, corporate dystopia.”
Al Green was the only person who shouted and interrupted, specifically to say the orange one did not have a mandate to cut Medicaid. Additionally, Maxwell Frost and twelve others (Jasmine Crockett, Emily Randall, Mark Takano, Mark Pocan, Lloyd Doggett, Judy Chu, Ayanna Pressley, Veronica Escobar, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar, Jamie Raskin, and Jared Huffman) walked out. Some skipped the speech entirely, including Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kwazi Mfume, Becca Balint, and Patty Murray. Green was unsurprisingly censured by the thin-skinned Republican majority in the House of Representatives, in 224-198 vote, including ten feckless Democrats, specifically Ami Bera, Ed Case, Jim Costa, Laura Gillen, James Himes, Chrissy Houlahan, Marcy Kaptur, Jared Moskowitz, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, and Thomas Suozzi, who joined the Republicans. Green voted “Present”, as did Shomari Figures. Green later declared that he would heckle the orange one again if he got the chance. The House Freedom Caucus, showing they don’t care about freedom of speech one bit, is working to suppress speech of those who disagree with the President, while Democrats mainly only engaged in performative (and largely worthless) action, as they typically do.
Specifically, some women wore pink and white colors, sat in silence, and wore buttons. Ken Klippenstein, who I don’t always agree with (I noted an objection to one of his postings about Democrats’ tactics in my last newsletter), but has done some good reporting recently, said that Democrats were “unwilling to violate decorum even as they tsk-tsked in their prim silence.” He also noted, in part, that the orange one’s executive orders have “given the military unprecedented authority,” while personally identifiable information about undocumented immigrants is being collected. The latter is also evidenced by the proposal put forward by the U.S. Immigration Service to review social media accounts of “any person applying for citizenship, residency or asylum in the U.S.” Klippenstein said that until Democrats can learn to “get caught Doing Something, anything…Trump’s power is going to go unchecked.” I can’t agree more with that. Others have said that Democrats are abdicating their responsibility to the working class and are showing that due to their “commitment to privatization, neoliberal imperialism and their corporate donors…they cannot be credible opposition to a political movement that stands [against]…all of these things.”
In any case, after the censure vote, Green, and some other Democrats around him, began singing the “We Shall Overcome” civil rights song, prompting Republicans to yell “order” in response. Democratic reps. Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib shouted back at Republicans. Green said they “have to do what is necessary….[and] engage in a level of positive, righteous incivility” in response to the orange one. Rep. Jamie Raskin said that the meaning of censure has been watered down, and called for censuring Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), since she heckled President Biden, which was echoed by Rep. Crockett. They need more righteous incivility, not less! Republicans have been interrupting presidential speeches for years, from Joe Wilson yelling “You Lie!” at Obama’s presidential address in September 2009 (over a false claim about undocumented immigrants), and MTG and Lauren Boebert repeatedly over the years (in 2022, 2023, and 2024). So what’s the issue with Green doing the same? It is not surprising that Green, Melanie Stansbury, Crockett, Frost, Maxine Dexter, and others were effectively scolded by Democratic House leaders for going beyond so-called “traditional” protest tactics like refusing to clap and coordinate outfits, with claims that their strategy is a “bad idea.”
Protests against Tesla, a company which the Muskrat took over back in 2008 (he didn’t even found the company!), have been gaining momentum, not just among the public, but among investors in Tesla itself. Some have even said that Wall Street is turning its back on Tesla. Whether that is true or not, there’s no doubt people are angry at an unelected billionaire making decisions that impact their lives. Even Tesla sales are falling in Europe. After all, he has declared that federal workers have to show their “worth” or they will be fired (the word many media outlets use is “laid off” but this obscures the reality) and he is helping set the stage for more large-scale firings.
This all comes as measures against undocumented immigrants are continuing to reign down, including plans to sign an executive order declaring English as the official language of the U.S. Not only would such a measure be unconstitutional, and violate the Voting Rights Act, but it will likely lead to “ethnic and racial intolerance,” confirming that those who don’t speak English are second-class citizens. It also goes against the U.S. history of multilingualism and Supreme Court decisions in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Lau v. Nichols (1974) which embraced this multilingualism. As the Linguistic Society of America stated in a resolution, passed in late 1980s, the English language, within the U.S., isn’t under threat. Instead, immigrants are often aware of the advantages of English proficiency, and it is beneficial, economically and culturally, for those in the U.S. to have citizens “proficient in more than one language.” Surely, some will defend this order, when it is released, claiming that having a single language ensures proper management and “workplace harmony,” but there’s something more at play here. This was made clear in a 2013 article by Rachelle Lawton:
…language has been the proxy for other conditions that have challenged the power relations of the dominant group(s) [i.e. White men] rather than the sole major source of conflict in American society…[understanding that reality] is essential to understanding the debate over English in the United States…perceived threats to the linguistic and political unity of the U.S. may result in renewed hostility toward language minorities…English Only proponents often contend that identity, unity and the English language itself are threatened by immigrants and are thus [are] in need of protection
Beyond this, there was the temporary closure of the JFK Presidential Library in Boston, in mid-February, likely portending what is to come. ICE is becoming bold in their arrests, even detaining tourists indefinitely and building new prisons. At the same time more U.S. military personnel are being sent to the U.S.-Mexico border, making it even more militarized, than it already is. If that isn’t bad enough, there was a report that prominent military contractors, like former CEO of Blackwater (now known as Constellis) Erik Prince and former Blackwater COO Bill Matthews pitched a proposal of creating a network of processing centers on U.S. military bases, a private fleet, and small group of private individuals to arrest undocumented immigrants, in order to carry out mass deportations. While it remains to be seen if this plan will be accepted or not, there’s no doubt that private prison companies are set to make billions reopening private prisons to house undocumented immigrants. That is a fact.
There’s reports that legal immigration will be cut and that the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will be revoked. While this is all happening, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the HHS Secretary is a disaster in the making. He said that people should get the measles vaccine, but he also said it should be their choice, legitimizing those who have not taken this lifesaving vaccine! While his embrace of vaccines may have alienated “his fellow anti-vaccine activists,” there is growing concern about his absurd claim that vitamin A can fight off measles.
Kennedy’s policies will undoubtedly allow measles to spread, and he may appoint anti-vaccine skeptics throughout HHS, or even target mandates for other important vaccines. Hopefully, he will step up and work to get this measles outbreak in West Texas under control, or we will all suffer. Changing gears, I found an article by Jennifer Mittelstadt that’s relevant based on everything that has happened recently. Mittelstadt has called the orange one a sovereigntist, noting that sovereigntism means that normal constitutional rule is suspended, to fight supposed enemies within and without which “threaten” the country, with any action taken to address the supposed danger and establish “order” is seen as legitimate, paired with the idea that any rules that entangle the “absolute autonomy of a state to act unilaterally” will be ignored.
Sovereigntism includes building up a robust military to ward off “challengers” and favors coveting territory of other countries if incorporating that land would manifest the states’ reported “destiny” as exceptional. Imperial claims to seize Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada, by the orange one, fit within this, as do tariffs. Sovereigntists aim to increase the “nation’s wealth, power and prestige by means of economic coercion to open foreign markets,” while pressuring other nations with sanctions, banning exports which strengthen supposed competitors, or limiting access to domestic markets. Where sovereigntism reigns, “there will be no world order, only a free-for-all where the strongest strive to prevail and the weaker must accommodate.” That sounds utterly frightening. Tariffs will undoubtedly cause costs to rise (as the orange one abandons his big promise to control rising prices), including threatening the sweet-treat economy as agriculture and restaurant industries have been thrown “into panic and uncertainty” with mass deportations beginning.
With that, I’d like to focus not on protests for Palestine, or the threats toward Hamas and declining support for Israel among Americans according to a recent poll, but topics related to climate change and environmentalism. There is a threat to environmental history under the current administration, which has ordered federal agencies to “bypass environmental protection laws” in order to fast-track logging. In addition, the EU is said to be paring back sustainability rules for companies, the State Department is ending its global air pollution monitoring program, and major U.S. banks are dropping out of a climate pledge they made. On the latter is the related issue that a recent article in The Guardian pointed out: half of the world’s carbon dioxide comes from thirty-six fossil fuel firms.
The article notes that this includes companies like “Saudi Aramco, Coal India, ExxonMobil, Shell and numerous Chinese companies.” It is noted that if Saudi Aramco was a country, it would be “the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US and India,” while ExxonMobil is responsible for about the same emissions as Germany, the world’s “ninth biggest polluter”! Surely taking personal actions to be more sustainable is nice and good, but it will never fundamentally solve the climate crisis or ensure pollution is under control. The major companies and governments are the big polluters. They always have been. At the same time, the U.S. is dropping out from a global agreement under which the “developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating,” and is letting emissions of the “carcinogen chloroprene at Denka plant formerly owned by DuPont” continue, by dropping the suit brought under Biden.
There were articles of note about a possible investor-state dispute settlement case which could force Greenland to restart uranium mining, something which would surely make the orange one and his acolytes happy, despite the green, left-wing government, which led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, opposing such mining. An upcoming election on March 11th may determine the island’s future, with continued support for the island’s independence across the board. The safety and science in geological disposal of radioactive waste, accelerating melting of the world’s glaciers, and how humanity’s eternal testament will be “plastic bags, cheap clothes and chicken bones” continue to be issues. These so-called “technofossils” is disturbing to think about, but it is worth thinking about, regardless, in terms of what legacy humans now will leave behind for those in the future. What will they do with all the trash? What will happen to the zombie cities, i.e. sunken cities? Will there be cities built on top of them like New New York in Futurama? Or will they be demolished entirely?
There have been some setbacks for LGBTQ+ people and rights, whether NPS removing web pages “dedicated to transgender activists and LGBTQ history,” the Pentagon removing trans service members, trans women being put in men’s prisons despite legal rulings saying to not do so, work of those studying LGBTQ+ people put in limbo, efforts of the orange one to exclude trans people from public life, and a group trying to push to overturn same-sex marriage across the U.S. On the other hand, Republicans joined Democrats to “defeat anti-trans legislation in Montana,” which is surprising to be honest, but a positive. There’s also growing LGBTQ+ identification, an article on how trans teens are dealing with the new reactionary administration, and Maine standing up to the orange one’s anti-trans order, causing the state to be investigated for “not complying.”
Others are saying that it’s time to move away from litigation and symbolic boycotts to self-governance, self-reliance, and sovereignty for queer people, or more specifically “a structural reimagining of queer power.” Fabrice Houbart said that under in such a vision, LGBTQ+ people would “operate as a transnational people, not just a dispersed political constituency.” Houdart adds that LGBTQ+ people have often “relied on the goodwill of others” from political parties, corporations, and legal systems, and added “that self-determination does not come from permission—it comes from power.” Houdart also noted anti-queer efforts moving forward in Uganda, Ghana, Turkey, Hungary, and India, sometimes a result of loss of U.S. funding (like from USAID). He pointed to efforts to stand against trans erasure, Democrats blocking a trans athlete ban in the U.S. Senate, rise of LGBTQ+ gun culture (I can’t blame people for doing this direction), and criticism of “liberal media” by GLAAD, among other stories on related topics. Houdart noted how the “inclusion and advocacy business” is collapsing, which is hurting livelihoods of some queer people.
There were other assorted posts and articles, whether Kira Deskler writing about the “U-Haul Lesbians” stereotype, people protesting Grimes for being a headliner at a WorldPride event after she supposedly distanced herself from the Muskrat, but was recently seen at a “pre-inauguration party at…a Capitol Hill restaurant popular among Trump allies and right-wing extremists,” named Butterworth’s, the Feminist Institute’s upcoming Queer Legacies Project, and courts blocking Trump’s policies on trans rights, saying they reflect “government action driven by hostility, rather than legitimate policy.” Recently, the HHS absurdly declared that sex is “immutable” (scientifically proven to be false), i.e. the false idea there are only “male” and “female” sexes, which ignores/erases the existence of intersex people. The co-founder of the Stonewall Inn spoke out following removal of trans people from the Stonewall National Monument website. Lastly, in a newly unearthed novel, entitled Inseperable, Simone de Beauvoir (who many probably know for writing The Second Sex and is known for her romances with men and women), reflected on queer friendship.
The crackdown on trans people continues, whether through threats by reactionary politicians, legislation, and other discrimination, leading to instances like cops in Tuscon, Arizona breaking into a women’s restroom and declaring that 19-year-old Black stud woman (i.e. a Black female masculine lesbian) Kalaya Morton was a “man” even though she was not and demanding that she leave the women’s bathroom. On a related, but not related note, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong rightly insulted J.D. Vance in a rendition of the song “American Idiot” at a show in Melbourne, Australia. Other stories focused on how clickbait media “missed the real story about asexuality,” a new holiday for Black asexuals, a book review of Queer Conception, saying aromantics should consider replacing "Aromantic-ism" with "Aromantic-ity,” and preparations for Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW), to name a few, of the many out there.
That’s all for this newsletter. Look forward to the next newsletter issue, on March 14th about animation, anime, and more!
It is my opinion that the Democrat party has been infiltrated by the GOP.
https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/has-the-dnc-been-infiltrated-by-the