Trump + Musk vs America (Including Plenty Of MAGAts)

In 2020, The Atlantic noted that Trump referred to American service members who died in combat as “losers” and “suckers.” According to General John Kelly, Trump’s then-chief pf staff, during a trip to France in 2018, Trump said, “Why should I go to that [Aisne-Marne American] cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” He also called the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood “suckers” for getting killed. Trump assiduously avoided the military with fake medical excuses and his first buddy Elon, like Trump, never committed to any service but self-service. That their mass firings across the government is disproportionately targeting veterans, makes no difference to either of them.

Nor does it matter to them that they’re wrecking the lives of Trump voters across the country, imperiling “government services from cities to farm towns... making it harder for veterans to get mental health care and hampering electric service to some rural residents as a beleaguered workforce struggles to cover for lost colleagues… [W]orkers said basic functions at many agencies are slowing almost immediately and could break down as critical colleagues are shown the door… [They] said the abrupt dismissal of their colleagues is sowing chaos both personal and professional, inspiring fear about the future of the systems serving the country.

In an Energy Department subagency that helps provide power, staff who handled homeowners’ electricity bills were fired, employees said, potentially leaving no one to take the money that keeps their lights on. In one state, all but two of the employees who helmed an Agriculture Department program assisting poor rural communities were fired. And in a tiny Wyoming town, a Forest Service office that has spent decades providing support to hikers, Christmas tree permits to residents and firewood for the elderly has been forced to shutter, a staffer said.

…Meanwhile, some federal employees who moved across the country to take positions in D.C., suddenly jobless, say they are unable to pay their rent and unable to afford a move back home. Others are struggling to figure out how they’ll afford their children’s college tuition or care for elderly parents. Many— newly fired or worried about being next— are frantically submitting applications for as many open jobs as they can find. Still others are mourning the decades-long careers in the federal government they hoped to have.

“I am so absolutely heartbroken I don’t know if I can adequately put it into words,” one fired employee at the Energy Department said. “All I have ever wanted is to be in public service. And that’s being taken from me.”

…Across the government, those fired were told poor performance motivated their terminations— in some cases, without evidence.

One disabled veteran who worked at Veterans Affairs overseeing patient care said he learned of his firing by email Thursday. He was one month shy of graduating from his probationary period, he said. The email cited “performance” as the reason. “This is ironic,” he said, “because my most recent— and granted, only— performance evaluation was the highest you could possibly achieve at my agency.”

In a pattern that repeated itself again and again, fired employees’ supervisors and bosses up the chain of command said they had no idea this was coming. In a high-level meeting early Friday, the undersecretary for health at Veterans Affairs acknowledged that the agency had just suffered a “tough 24 hours,” according to notes taken by one participant and shared with The Post. “It is a dark day when veterans and disabled veterans are losing their jobs,” the official said. A personnel official helping to lead the meeting admitted they’d made “errors” in determining who should be terminated but said it was unclear if they’d be able to reverse those firings.

“It is hard not to feel this personally,” said Gerard Braun, 30, a soil conservation technician who was hired to the Agriculture Department in November and notified of his dismissal in an email at 9:35 p.m. Thursday. His role, paying in the mid $40,000 range, was to help farmers in northwest Ohio implement conservation practices on their land.

Natalie Allison and Dan Diamond reported that “Federal and nonprofit employees across Washington are reeling, some preparing to be jobless as Trump takes an ax to their agencies. Government aid workers abroad have had to foot the bill to relocate their families back home, their programs and livelihoods suddenly cut short. Food is at risk of spoiling as it sits waiting to be distributed in relief projects that may not continue. The Trump administration’s response has roughly amounted to so what? ‘I campaigned on this,’ Trump said from behind the Resolute Desk this week, defending the ruthlessness with which his White House is moving to cut the federal workforce and spending programs that have existed for decades. ‘I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt, and it is. It’s very corrupt.’ The federal government wasn’t just corrupt, the president added. ‘It’s also foolish.’ Trump’s White House is relishing how quickly his flurry of cuts are leaving some federal agencies in a state of paralysis, even as courts have temporarily blocked some of his most aggressive actions. As justification for the steep cuts, Trump and his advisers point to his popular-vote victory and a recent poll that shows more than half of Americans approve of his job performance.

“The impacts of the Trump administration’s blitz,” wrote Allison and Diamond, “are being felt abroad, in Washington, D.C., and across the nation… [A]cross the country, people who benefit from federal programs are complaining of sudden disruptions. Some farmers have been left without promised federal funds for projects they had already begun through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s despite the Trump administration saying individuals receiving federal dollars would not be affected by a freeze of federal grants, and after a judge temporarily halted implementation of the broad funding pause.”

While upstate New York crackpot Claudia Tenney has introduced a bill to make Trump’s birthday a national holiday residents of rural districts like hers will lose healthcare so that the richest one percent can get heftier tax reductions. Medicaid pays for medical care for about 72 million low-income Americans. They’re in trouble, regardless of who they voted for in November. “The budget proposal House Republicans voted out of committee on Thursday night ,” wrote Jonathan Cohn, “envisions massive spending reductions virtually certain to include Medicaid, in part to finance the tax cuts Trump has said are his top legislative priority. ‘A lot of MAGA is on Medicaid,’ Bannon said on Thursday on his War Room podcast. ‘If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. You just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.’ Bannon probably understands this better than most high-profile figures in American politics. The proposed Medicaid cuts during Trump’s first term were part of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. That bill proved spectacularly unpopular― and ultimately failed to pass― in part because even many diehard Trump supporters would’ve stood to lose health coverage had it succeeded. Which is exactly what could happen now, as Bannon knows. But these days, it’s not just cuts to Medicaid threatening Trump supporters.”

Since reassuming the presidency, Trump has issued a torrent of executive orders that seek to limit, downsize or even eliminate key federal programs and agencies. To implement all of this, Trump has deputized adviser and billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been laying off federal workers by the thousands and blocking federal spending by the billions.

Trump says the purpose of these orders and Musk’s demolition tour of the executive branch is to eliminate wasteful spending― and, no less important, to clean out the left-wing, “woke” politics that he says have infected these federal initiatives. Which may or may not be worthwhile on the merits, depending on your perspective.

But whatever the rationale, the effect is likely to be especially strong in communities where Trump is popular. Some have already taken a hit. The question now is how quickly that realization sets in, and whether anything changes as a result.

One Republican who seems to understand is Katie Britt, the senator from Alabama. Last weekend, a reporter from AL.com asked her to react to news that the National Institutes of Health was sharply reducing its research grants. The University of Alabama-Birmingham is a top recipient of NIH grants, and also Alabama’s largest employer.

Britt said she was all for cutting waste, to make sure taxpayer dollars are “spent efficiently, judiciously and accountably.” But she added that she wanted to work with the administration on “a smart, targeted approach… in order to not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.”

It sounded a lot like a warning, or at least an objection, especially from a staunch Trump supporter. And it wasn’t the only one out there. Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who also happens to be a physician, told STAT News: “One thing I’ve heard loud and clear from my people in Louisiana is that Louisiana will suffer from these cuts. And research that benefits people in Louisiana may not be done.”

Louisiana, like Alabama, is a strongly pro-Trump state. It also gets about $300 million a year in NIH research funding, according to an analysis of public data by the Louisiana Illuminator. Other solidly red states with big NIH-backed institutions include Texas and Tennessee.  The rural sections of these states― or any state, really― can be especially dependent on NIH money, because universities, teaching hospitals and affiliated clinics may be the only large employers there, and the sole providers of major medical care, as well.

…Nearly two dozen House Republicans have been lobbying their leadership to spare federal subsidies for electric vehicles that Trump has said he is determined to eliminate.

It’s not the potential of backsliding on climate progress that worries these Republicans. It’s the potential of losing jobs in their districts, which are home to new, sprawling EV factories in what’s become known as the “battery belt” stretching across the South. And what’s true for EVs is true for the clean energy push more generally: The money that President Joe Biden and the Democrats invested in projects like solar and wind power has gone disproportionately to Republican districts.

Take the money away, and it’s those districts that could suffer disproportionately.