Guest “Heck yeah, I voted for this! And it’s better than I expected!” by David Middleton
ScienceInsider Science and Policy
Trump Tracker
Latest on firings: ““It’s bad, but I’m not gonna lay down and roll over.”
13 Feb 2025 By Science News StaffAre you a federal scientist who took the recent buyout or have been fired? Contact us. Other story tips welcome.
Latest story: “If you are going to fire us, let us know.”–National Science Foundation union
17 Feb 2025, 2:50 PM ET
NSF union asks for information on pending dismissals
In anticipation of mass firings this week, the union representing more than 1000 employees at the National Science Foundation (NSF) today asked the agency to explain how it is implementing the Trump’s administration order to shrink the federal workforce by dismissing those designated as probationary employees.
“Put us out of our agony,” says one NSF employee who received the 17 February letter sent by Local 3403 of the American Federation of Government Employees to NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “If you are going to fire us, let us know.”
The letter, shared with Science, asks Panchanathan for the criteria the agency used to draw up a pool of those eligible to be fired under a 20 January memo from the White House Office of Personnel Management.
[…]
There’s a single criterion for firing “probationary employees”…
If you’re a probationary employee, you can be fired “at any point during the probationary period.” That’s how probationary employment works. If your job has been eliminated, you are no longer “the right person for the job.”
Now, let’s get back to the “Trump Tracker”…
14 Feb 2025, 6:30 PM ET
At Interior Department, layoffs shock new scientists hoping for a secure career of service
As the Trump administration unleashed a wave of firing today across U.S. research agencies, targeting mainly probationary workers, ScienceInsider spoke with two scientists at agencies in the U.S. Department of the Interior who are losing their jobs. A postdoc who started a position at the U.S. Geological Survey last year got a call from their center director today, telling them that they would be laid off by the end of the day. “He broke the news and wanted to do it himself,” they say. The ecologist says it was a shock, but not completely unexpected. They also consider themselves relatively lucky, because their spouse is employed and they didn’t have to relocate for their postdoc. “I’m aware of some others who moved cross-country and started positions only to have just gotten the news. … It’s really hard.”
One would think that the folks at the American Association for the Advancement of Science of America would be able to grasp the phrase “probationary workers.” And why the hell is the U.S. Geological Survey employing PhD ECOLOGISTS? Let’s ask Google AI:
Why were hundreds of millions of TAXPYERS’ dollars being spent on “education research”?
14 Feb 2025, 2:30 PM ET
Halted contracts threaten education research
Researchers warn that the sudden cancellation this week of hundreds of millions of dollars of government contracts to collect information on the state of U.S. education will blind the government to important trends from preschool to college and beyond.
Hundreds of “hundreds of millions of dollars of government contracts to collect information on the state of U.S. education”? Seriously? We we know all we need to know about the “the state of U.S. education.” It’s barely average in science and math.
5200
Estimated number of probationary workers at NIH, CDC, FDA and other Health and Human Services agencies who were scheduled to receive termination notices from the Trump administration.
Repeat after me: “probationary workers.”
13 Feb 2025, 9:30 AM ET
Scientists want to kick Musk out of Royal Society
Billionaire Elon Musk has been a lightning rod for criticism in the United States for anti-DEI posts on his social media platform X and his DOGE work for President Donald Trump, which may end up gutting U.S. science agencies and has disrupted foreign aid for global clinical research. But his actions also aren’t playing well across the pond.
[…]
Right…
The folks who want to protect every DEI PhD’s access to taxpayers’ money want to kick Elon Musk out of the Royal Society… Irony can be so ironic!
Why is the American Association for the Advancement of Science of America so obsessed with down-sizing the Federal government?
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a science advocacy organization based in the United States and the largest general science association in the world. It is publisher of the journal Science.
AAAS has been accused of promoting a broadly left-leaning policy agenda and associating with front groups for the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Many of its leaders have also been criticized for supporting environmentalist policies and promoting global population control measures.
In the modern era, the AAAS has become more involved in promoting left-wing “science-activism,” ideological activism performed in the guise of promoting science. Its involvement in the “March for Science,” which was organized in opposition to the election and policies of President Donald Trump.1
[…]
Funding
The AAAS had expenditures of $101.3 million in 2015, revenues exceeding $103 million, and assets of $156.6 million.36
[…]
The federal government is the largest identifiable source of funding for AAAS. Between 2008 and 2017, federal funding to AAAS averaged over $3.3 million annually. Data from the website USA Spending (managed by the Office of Management and Budget) shows AAAS received $27.9 million in 451 contracts between 2004 and March 2018. Of this sum, the largest contracts were given to AAAS by the Department of Health and Human Services (largely from a subsidiary agency, the National Institutes of Health) and the Department of Homeland Security. AAAS received another $41.5 million in 25 grants between 2011 and December 2017, of which an overwhelming majority ($35.5 million) came from the National Science Foundation. 38
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Donald Trump, relieving government bloat 1000 “You’re Fired(s)” at a time.
I’d love to do a Jack Welch on the bureaucracy and fire the bottom 10% of workers from each department, agency or commission.
Destroyed GE.
No that did not destroy GE. What destroyed GE was trying to turn it into bank by pumping all of its money into its finance subsidiary GE Capital. When GE Capital’s assets were torched by the Panic of 2008, GE had to use its other assets to bail out GE Capital.
Back in the 90s GE Capital was extraordinarily profitable, or so it seemed. Bankers were jealous because GE Capital was not bank and not subject to bank regulation. The then Chairman of Citicorp told me that he wanted to be able to run his bank like GE Capital.When 2008 hit. the banks all ran to Mama Fed and GE Capital was left crying in the rain.
Who was the idiot/evil person that allowed government workers to unionize in the first place?
Woodrow Wilson.
FDR was opposed to it, but JFK needed union votes so he authorized it.
I second that.
LBJ authorized the “organizing” of the Federal “work”-force about a year after murdering JFK. Secy Arthur Goldberg of the DOL signed the first contract with the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) for the DOL employees. In the opening contract, the file clerks were allowed to bring their portable TVs so they could watch the soap-operas in the filing stacks. It pretty much went down hill from there. Woodrow was a national disaster, to be sure, but he was not responsible for the unions.
Sounds like a Democrat thing for sure…
Create a Bureaucracy
Fund that Bureaucracy with government monies
Receive campaign funding from monies funneled through said bureaucracy
Give 10% (Tithe) to “The Big Guy”
Think USAID
He was a bad dude, but he was not that stupid.
Those who received union funding to get elected?
The teachers are the worst. Their excessive benefits now make up more than half of local property taxes in Wokeachusetts.
As someone else noted, it was under the JFK administration when federal employees were unionized. I think there is a simple argument against ANY government employees anywhere being allowed to unionize. The purpose of a union is so that workers can collectivize their voice in order to have some bargaining parity with a company. But if the employer is the government, everyone already has a voice with how the company is run – it’s called being a voter. If public employees think they deserve a raise etc. they can persuade their fellow voters like anyone else. Of course, governments, like companies have strong incentives to offer competitive pay and benefits in order to attract and keep quality employees.
The other problem is that government has a monopoly on all of the services it provides.
In industry, if a company falters, there are other companies, even other industries, eager to step in to take away market share. When government falters, it just uses that as an excuse to grow bigger.
In industry, when a company’s expenses exceed its revenue, it must cut costs or go out of business. In government, when expenses exceed revenue, it increases revenue by raising taxes.
“And why the hell is the U.S. Geological Survey employing PhD ECOLOGISTS? Let’s ask Google AI:” AI ain’t so smart. I recall without details that quite a few years ago government organizations dealing with live organisms were placed into the USGS presumably to move to a less politicalized organization.
Example– https://www.usgs.gov/centers/wetland-and-aquatic-research-center
“The U.S. Geological Survey’s Wetland and Aquatic Research Center (WARC) has primary locations in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Gainesville, Florida.”
A few years ago the center in Louisiana, maybe also Gainesville, had its library closed and librarian position extirpated from upstairs. Some unknown numbers of others in academia have also been closed without due process presumably in that they think the sky is adequate for all such materials. Used to be all government scientists I knew actually did real science, probably less so now who might be caught in the net.
The states- most of them- have their own ecologists – I see no need for federal ecologists. And academia has many ecologists teaching and researching.
“And why the hell is the U.S. Geological Survey employing PhD ECOLOGISTS?”
This is a result of “reinventing government” for which Al Gore was responsible during the Clinton admin. Began during 1993. The USGS has a timeline on their web page: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/road-biology-usgs
It is notable that a distinguished college science student, Al Gore, played a significant role in reinventing U.S. government science. This explains much.
Yeah, my previous job was with the Army, doing vehicle test engineering. 50 weeks into my 1 year probationary period, they called me in an fired me. So, I understand how they might feel, and it sucks, but the bottom line is that nobody has a right to that job. Quit whining and move on.
Wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the salary for probationers comes from a different bucket than the one that pays full time workers. In many cases, probationers also get fewer benefits than do full time workers.
I’ve heard horror stories about managers who make a habit of firing probationers shortly before they go full time, over and over again.
Tom
You got two things out of your probationary period:
A year’s work experience for your CV
A year of training while being paid.
As you say, move on and up.
Bureaucrats and their disbursements are funded by taxation and Government borrowing. All taxation reduces economic activity, and servicing the debt is covert taxation.
Is the value of the bureaucratic output greater or less than the reduction in value of economic output caused by the taxation to fund the bureaucracy?
It’s a rhetorical question, because it certainly is costing the economy more than any value it creates.
Government borrowing also reduces economic activity as it causes interest rates to rise.
Taxation and borrowing.
Need to add one more “A” to that group’s name:
American Association for the Advancement of Anti-Science
Alternatively:
“American Association for the [abUse]
AdvancementofAnti–Science”AAaBS
Sorry, messed that one up:
Alternatively:
“American Association for the [AbUse]
AdvancementofAnti–Science”AAAbuS
Education was a lot better before “experts” started studying it.
It’s absurd how much of the taxpayers’ money is spent on studying education methods. Every State in the USA has had public education since 1870, there’s no excuse for not knowing how to teach children by now.
The “experts” are Leftists/Socialists/Marxists & etc.
It was better before the introduction of the “New Math”. Educational experimenters have been experimenting with new curricula, using schoolchildren as alpha- and beta-testers, with no regard for the outcomes. Every couple years, there seems to be a new initiative, so they can write books about it, lead seminars, and publish papers and go to conferences.
I’d like to see the above charts with a column added for average spending per student, in US dollars.
Would those amounts need to be adjusted for some cost-of-living index? Quite possibly.
I’ve read elsewhere, that the US spends more per pupil than does any other country on the planet.
Ecologists in the USGS? Absurd. Only if in some way they could help the geologists in their research- maybe help the paleontologists to identify extinct species or ancient habitats.
Maybe it was thought that is was just more difficult to cultivate, control, politicize, etc. rocks and fossils than organisms.
‘Mission Creep’ ain’t what it used to be …
It’s back, it’s bigger, it’s more horrible than ever!
I copied a dozen lines to comment on. Instead a simpler message – private sector jobs stopped being secure decades ago.
Private sector jobs have never been secure. A change in fortune for the company you work for can at any time mean your employer suddenly needs a lot fewer workers. Or none.
It is called a good start. The more Pearl clutching, the better.
My fav to date is NIH—where henceforth only allowing 15% admin overhead (the max of all private sector grants, Gates Foundation is 10%) is somehow going to destroy all university medial research plus the next generation of medical researchers.
Some years ago I served on the Board of Trustees for an inner city not for profit organization. They needed a lawyer on the board as they operated a Head Start program. After their grant for the Head Start program ended, it became obvious how much extra money they got to cover “overhead”–way way more than was needed, much of which was diverted to other programs and other “needs”. Who knows how much might have been illegal? We never did find out. “Overhead” in grants seems to be a scam.
Trump evisceration of cult climate – marvelous.
Now he’s about to throw it all down the chute by siding with Putin over Ukraine.
Good while it lasted.
Three options:
Maybe Trump’s team can negotiate a better deal for Ukraine… But I think they will have to cede Crimea and we will have to guarantee no NATO membership for Ukraine.
Bear in mind, the Soviets seized Crimea when Obama was in office.
(I am purposely referring to Russia as the Soviet Union because I recently watched Miracle again.)
Hegseth took Crimea off the table in Brussels as one of his three ‘very unlikelies’
I think the likely scenario is Ukraine gives back to Russia occupied Kursk. Russia gives back occupied Ukraine speaking Ukraine, keeps Russian speaking part of Donbas where bad Ukraine stuff was happening pre Russian invasion. Any ‘DMZ’ patrolled by EU troops expressly outside NATO.
Don’t forget that the current Soviet Union leader also thought that Alaska was a bad deal for them and would like it back.
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-sells-alaska-back-to-russia-so-we-can-start-drilling-for-oil-there-again
And Mexico wants most of the US southwest back.
Spain does not want Mexico back. Go figure.
They can certainly have California.
We agree Zelinski is against democracy.
And Putin supports it?
Who cares if Putin supports democracy. It’s not about that.
Well more than Z. Little man Z will not hold elections. The dude is toast. He has stolen from the US for too long.
Not allowed to have elections in the Ukraine during war where is this “dictator” nonsense coming from?
Not too long ago I read an article where a number of faculty at Tufts were suing the university. It seems that Tufts cut their salary because they failed to annually bring in research grants equivalent to 50% of their annual salary. I think that says it all. Universities see research by faculty as a cash cow
If the ecologist is a “they/them” then how can they/them also be an “I”? Wouldn’t shims (shes/hims) be a “we”?
Alas, grammar ain’t what it used to be…
Did I miss the hilarious part?
The tears of fired “civil” servants are delicious.
“If you’re a probationary employee, you can be fired “at any point during the probationary period.” That’s how probationary employment works. If your job has been eliminated, you are no longer “the right person for the job.”
There’s also the aspect of the probationary period being to find out if “the new guy” can actually do the job even if it still exist.
[ possible STORY TIP included ]
Which reminds of this account, from November 2024:
“Manufacturing Consensus on Climate Change” by Richard Lindzen Salvo11.21.2024
Excerpt:
“Currently, there is great emphasis on the march through the educational institutions: first the schools of education, then higher education in the humanities and the social sciences, and now STEM. What is usually ignored is that professional societies were also obvious targets. Such societies are generally led by an executive director who can, sometimes indirectly, speak for thousands of members who are busy with their professional activities. Capturing a single figure is likely easier than capturing department faculties. My wife attended a meeting of the Modern Language Association in the late ’60s, and it was already fully “woke.” Foundations, flush with cash, were also obvious targets. The Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation are notable examples.” [Bold / underline has been added]
URL: https://americanmind.org/salvo/manufacturing-consensus-on-climate-change/
If it hasn’t already been covered at WUWT, it may still serve for a timely posting, as it provides a plain-language accounting of how the corruption works.
Cheers, — RLW
Its final, concluding paragraph:
“So here we are, confronted with policies that destroy western economies, impoverish the working middle class, condemn billions of the world’s poorest to continued poverty and increased starvation, leave our children despairing over the alleged absence of a future, and will enrich the enemies of the West who are enjoying the spectacle of our suicide march, a march that the energy sector cowardly accepts, being too lazy to exert the modest effort needed to check what is being claimed. As Voltaire once noted, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Hopefully, we will awaken from this nightmare before it is too late.”
Somehow, I put the link for editing the post there. Here’s the link to the AAAS of A page:
https://www.science.org/content/article/science-trump-latest-news?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_content=alert&utm_campaign=DailyLatestNews&et_rid=237382256&et_cid=5535655
story tip: EV maker Nikola files chapter 11 bankrputcy
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/struggling-e-truck-maker-nikola-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection-2025-02-19/