This Is An Open Thread
Sigh. It’s Monday again.
President Shit’s Public Schedule:
| Monday, March 3 2025 |
| 9:00 AMIn-Town Pool Call TimeThe White House In-Town Pool |
| 1:30 PMThe President makes an Investment AnnouncementRoosevelt Room White House Press Pool |
Because there are more shit’s who are out there running their own shit shows: How many people died, were needlessly infected, have long covid because of people like this whom only care now because the head shit shits on him personally. SSDD:
Dr. Makam was full of juvenile insults regarding those of us who corrected his UCSF friends’ misinformation.
— Jonathan Howard MD (@19joho) February 18, 2025
Then, in 2025, something totally changed
Suddenly, he started to care.
He, the main character, was affected.
Again, I am on his side here. https://t.co/yUQyvfonAp pic.twitter.com/8HQIqS103z
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The many doctors who are just now realizing that misinformation wasn’t “COVID hysteria nonsense” have a lot of catching up to do to understand how the forces they’ve legitimized the led to this moment. Jonathan Howard on February 28, 2025
Discussed here https://t.co/L7fWfDfx3P
— Jonathan Howard MD (@19joho) February 28, 2025
As the article Trump White House Cites Fringe Doctor to Defend Research Cuts reported, Dr. Vinay Prasad was recently featured in a White House statement in which he denied a Washington Post story about cuts to the NIH. The statement said:
That is shameful and dishonest framing from the Post. Dr. Vinay Prasad, a Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, praised NIH’s announcement.
Dr. Prasad wrote: “Cutting indirects might even mean more science. Less money spent on the administration is more money to give out to actual scientists.”
However, when he’s not busy spreading Orwellian doublespeak, saying less money is more money, Dr. Prasad is busy celebrating cuts to researchers, as well as mass purges of scientists and the ascension of RFK Jr. Dr. Prasad, along with his friends and ideological compatriots Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary, are now the embodiment of the medical establishment, and their vision is being realized. They wanted RFK Jr. to “disrupt the US medical establishment” and that’s what he’s doing.
Anyone who either legitimized these doctors or defended them by baselessly smearing their critics contributed to this moment.
Science-Based Medicine
CNN Exclusive: US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say:
CNN
Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue.The intelligence indicates that foreign adversaries are eager to exploit the Trump administration’s efforts to conduct mass layoffs across the federal workforce – a plan laid out by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this week.
Russia and China are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and probationary employees at risk of being terminated, who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy, two of the sources said. At least two countries have already set up recruitment websites and begun aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn, two of the sources said.
The adversaries think the employees “are at their most vulnerable right now,” another of the sources said. “Out of a job, bitter about being fired, etc.”“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that these cast aside federal workers with a wealth of institutional knowledge represent staggeringly attractive targets to the intelligence services of our competitors and adversaries,” a third source familiar with the recent US assessments told CNN.
CNN has reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as well as the embassies of China and Russia in Washington for comment.
Shitshow predictable not-surprises consequences
US intelligence indicates that Russia and China are attempting to recruit federal employees fired by the Trump administration, sources say https://t.co/J3CBidZrSy
— CNN (@CNN) February 28, 2025
Sorry, no gift link. The excerpt here from NYT’s, in this case for a change, actually does speak for itself.
“According to the Pentagon, about $3.85 billion remains of what Congress authorized for additional withdrawals from the Defense Department’s stockpile…After that, it will be up to a host of European and other countries to keep Ukraine’s guns firing.” https://t.co/rEkNcB76Ku
— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) March 1, 2025
Associate Press: The Trump administration sets the stage for large-scale federal worker layoffs in a new memo By CHRIS MEGERIAN Updated 1:14 PM CST, February 27, 2025
Senior officials set the downsizing in motion on Wednesday with a memo that dramatically expands Trump’s efforts to scale back a workforce described as an impediment to his agenda. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired, and now the Republican administration is turning its attention to career officials with civil service protection.
View on Document Cloud: “OPM-OMB Memo Guidance on Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans Requested by Implementing The President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative 2-26-2025“
Agencies are directed to submit by March 13 their plans for what is known as a reduction in force, which would not only lay off employees but eliminate the position altogether. The result could be extensive changes in how government functions.
No specific targets for cutbacks were included in the memo. However, as an example, Trump said the Environmental Protection Agency could reduce its staff by 65%.
A White House spokeswoman later clarified that the 65% figure referred to budget cuts at the agency, rather than staffing levels. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin “is committed to eliminating 65% of the EPA’s wasteful spending,” spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Thursday.
More plans are due on April 14, when agencies are expected to outline how they will consolidate management, become more efficient and potentially relocate offices to parts of the country that are less expensive than Washington. The memo said agencies have a Sept. 30 deadline for implementation.
Administration officials framed their effort as a cost-saving measure with a clear ideological goal.
“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt. At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public,” said the memo from Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as a human resources agency. “Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hard-working American citizens.
”Vought was an author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term, and he has advocated for centralizing power under the presidency and dismantling federal bureaucracy.
This Is An Open Thread