DOGE Catch-All

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nycfan said:

DOGE’s Cuts at the USDA Could Cause US Grocery Prices to Rise and Invasive Species to Spread​

Thousands of US Department of Agriculture employees, including food inspectors and disease-sniffing-dog trainers, remain out of work, leaving food to rot in ports and pests to proliferate.

www.wired.com

DOGE’s Cuts at the USDA Could Cause US Grocery Prices to Rise and Invasive Species to Spread

Thousands of US Department of Agriculture employees, including food inspectors and disease-sniffing-dog trainers, remain out of work, leaving food to rot in ports and pests to proliferate.
www.wired.com www.wired.com

“… Dog trainers are just one example of the kind of highly specialized USDA staff that have been removed from their stations in recent weeks. Teams devoted to inspecting plant and food imports have been hit especially hard by the recent cuts, including the Plant Protection and Quarantine program, which has lost hundreds of staffers alone.

…“It’s causing problems left and right,” says one current USDA worker, who like other federal employees in this story asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It’s basically a skeleton crew working now,” says another current USDA staffer, who noted that both they and most of their colleagues held advanced degrees and had many years of training to protect US food and agriculture supply chains from invasive pests. “It’s not something that is easily replaced by artificial intelligence.”

“These aren’t your average people,” says Mike Lahar, the regulatory affairs manager at US customs broker behemoth Deringer. “These were highly trained individuals—inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”

… Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species getting into the country. These dangers are especially acute at a moment when US grocery supply chains are already reeling from other business disruptions such as bird flu and President Trump’s new tariffs. …”
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Thanks, Trumpers.
 
nycfan said:

DOGE representatives visit US Institute of Peace, are turned away​


thehill.com

DOGE representatives visit US Institute of Peace, are turned away

U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials said several members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived unannounced with FBI agents on Saturday but were denied access to the bu…
thehill.com

“U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials said several members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived unannounced with FBI agents on Saturday but were denied access to the building after being approached by their counsel.

“They were met at the door by the Institute’s outside counsel who informed them of USIP’s private and independent status as a non-executive branch agency. Following that discussion, the DOGE representatives departed,” Gonzo Gallegos, USIP’s director of communications, said in a statement to The Hill.

… USIP is a national non-partisan organization created by Congress and dedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroad according to their website.

It uses federal funding to perform its mission and works closely with the Department of Defense.

A Senate-confirmed Board of Directors made up of the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and President of the National Defense University governs the USIP in an effort to align with each presidential administration and their national security efforts.

“As an independent, non-profit organization established by Congress, USIP remains committed to the cooperation and comity with the Trump Administration it has exhibited in its work with seven administrations since its founding under President Ronald Reagan,” Gallegos said after the DOGE visit. …”
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UPDATE:

 
It's interesting how Silence only shows up anymore for these drive-by "hits" where he posts some nonsense about how DOGE is finding all of this fraud, despite all of the clear evidence that DOGE has either been lying or grossly exaggerating about the fraud they've supposedly found and the fact that they have often had no idea of what they're actually doing in terms of investigating agencies, that they have been shown by federal judges to have violated the constitutional rights of federal employees in terminating them with no notice, and just in terms of eliminating necessary jobs, such as cutting nearly all park rangers from many national parks and so on.

It's almost like he isn't really paying attention to any of this, but is just getting his "news" from the usual right-wing sources and then running here to post trolling drive-by hit pieces. And he's stopped discussing almost anything else happening with Trump 2.0, mostly because it's simply indefensible. I mean, we've got other Trumper posters on here who have already been reduced to arguing that Trump's attacks on federal judges and simply ignoring their decisions shouldn't be taken seriously, because he's only "joking". Yes, that is now the best our Trumpers here can do, folks.
 
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FDA staff return to crowded offices, broken equipment and missing chairs​


“…About half the FDA’s 20,000 scientists, attorneys, inspectors and support staff report to the agency’s main campus in White Oak, Maryland, which until the late 1990s was a naval weapons testing facility.

… While many agencies switched to telework work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA began embracing the practice a decade earlier. Most employees had the option to work from home at least two days a week — flexibility that was seen as a competitive perk for recruiting highly trained experts who can often earn more working in industry.


By 7:30 a.m., many on-campus parking lots were full, with cars parked along side streets, according to employees. Some workers reported waiting up to one hour to clear security checkpoints, and photos viewed by the AP showed lines of employees winding out doorways, along sidewalks and around corners.

… Some employees were left to scour the campus for chairs and other essentials.

“People are looting chairs from conference rooms and other buildings,” a staffer said. “We have no supplies. People are hunting around all of the buildings on campus for pads of paper and other basics.”

When employees did get situated, many shared cramped spaces with people from different divisions and teams, making it difficult to hold calls and meetings. Photos shared with the AP show folding chairs and tables setup in hallways and lobbies.

An FDA spokesman said in an email Monday the agency is “is continuing its return-to-office activities to ensure staff remain able to conduct their important public health work.”

All the employees told the AP that they brought their own drinking water Monday. That’s due to a monthslong issue involving Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, which was detected at several FDA buildings. The General Service Administration, which oversees federal buildings, has been working on the issue since last summer. …”
 
nycfan said:


“An internal memo from the Social Security Administration proposes changes to its phone service that could derail the benefits application process for many Americans. …

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It is really hard to escape the notion that this stuff is designed to create “savings” by making it harder for people to get benefits for which they are eligible and call that “fraud prevention”. The only less negative thing I can come up with is that the 20-something bullies Musk has sent in are so inexperienced dealing with elderly and disabled people and so callous that they cannot conceive of people who can’t figure out how to use online systems or who would wait on hold for several hours to do the same thing via phone.
 
nycfan said:


FDA staff return to crowded offices, broken equipment and missing chairs​


“…About half the FDA’s 20,000 scientists, attorneys, inspectors and support staff report to the agency’s main campus in White Oak, Maryland, which until the late 1990s was a naval weapons testing facility.

… While many agencies switched to telework work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA began embracing the practice a decade earlier. Most employees had the option to work from home at least two days a week — flexibility that was seen as a competitive perk for recruiting highly trained experts who can often earn more working in industry.


By 7:30 a.m., many on-campus parking lots were full, with cars parked along side streets, according to employees. Some workers reported waiting up to one hour to clear security checkpoints, and photos viewed by the AP showed lines of employees winding out doorways, along sidewalks and around corners.

… Some employees were left to scour the campus for chairs and other essentials.

“People are looting chairs from conference rooms and other buildings,” a staffer said. “We have no supplies. People are hunting around all of the buildings on campus for pads of paper and other basics.”

When employees did get situated, many shared cramped spaces with people from different divisions and teams, making it difficult to hold calls and meetings. Photos shared with the AP show folding chairs and tables setup in hallways and lobbies.

An FDA spokesman said in an email Monday the agency is “is continuing its return-to-office activities to ensure staff remain able to conduct their important public health work.”

All the employees told the AP that they brought their own drinking water Monday. That’s due to a monthslong issue involving Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, which was detected at several FDA buildings. The General Service Administration, which oversees federal buildings, has been working on the issue since last summer. …”
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Efficiency!

These clowns have no idea what the fuck they are doing.
 
nycfan said:
UPDATE:

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Musk’s Team Evicts Officials at the U.S. Institute of Peace​

A bubbling dispute broke into a dramatic standoff that ended with police involvement and the Department of Government Efficiency taking up residence at the independent agency.

www.nytimes.com

DOGE Staff Marches Into U.S. Institute of Peace and Evicts Its Officials

A bubbling dispute broke into a dramatic standoff that ended with police involvement and the Department of Government Efficiency taking up residence at the independent agency.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

“A simmering dispute between the Department of Government Efficiency and an independent agency dedicated to promoting peace broke into an open standoff involving the police on Monday, as Elon Musk’s government cutters marched into the agency’s headquarters and evicted its officials.

The dramatic scene played out in Washington on Monday afternoon as Mr. Musk’s team was rebuffed from the U.S. Institute of Peace, an agency that President Trump has ordered dismantled, then entered it with law enforcement officers. Agency officials say that because the institute is a congressionally chartered nonprofit that is not part of the executive branch, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk do not have the authority to gut its operations.

“DOGE just came into the building — they’re inside the building — they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute, said by telephone as she and other officials were being escorted out.

… The standoff quickly became one of the most visible points of resistance to Mr. Musk’s effort to fire federal workers and dismantle whole agencies. And it underscored Mr. Trump’s willingness to push the legal limits of his authority in his drive to reshape the federal government and put even entities that have traditionally been independent under his thumb.

A spokesman for Mr. Musk’s team directed an inquiry to the White House. An administration official blamed the institute for not complying with an executive order signed by Mr. Trump … Over the weekend, the F.B.I. threatened institute employees over the lack of access to the building, Ms. Lin said.

… Musk representatives arrived on Monday afternoon in a black S.U.V. with government plates and were escorted by what appeared to be private security who arrived in separate vehicles and were dressed in street clothing.

They tried one entrance, but could not seem to find a way inside and instead circled the building before getting back into the S.U.V. …

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… Mr. Musk’s team did not get into the building until officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department showed up, Ms. Lin said. Institute officials had called the police to report that Department of Government Efficiency members were trespassing, she said, but the police instead cleared institute leaders from the building.

A police spokesman, Tom Lynch, said that officers were called to the scene on a report of an unlawful entry and said the police left after the people who were seeking unlawful entry had left. He did not say who those people were or provide more information on what happened at the scene aside from the fact that no arrests had been made.

Two of the men, Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Aimonetti, a lawyer, were the same Musk officials who this month forced entry to the African Development Foundation, one of the government entities mentioned in the February executive order. They did not respond to shouted questions. …”
 
The claim of efficiency is that there are a lot of credit cards that they canceled? Hmm. I wonder why they didn't publicize the amounts charged to these duplicate credit cards. Hmm. It's almost as if they were not being used.

DOGE is growing more desperate and pathetic by the day.
 
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DOGE Reverses Move That Made Its Claims Nearly Impossible to Check​

After getting called out, Elon Musk’s cost-cutting group reinstated details about the grants that it canceled.

www.nytimes.com

DOGE Reverses Move That Made Its Claims Nearly Impossible to Check

After getting called out, Elon Musk’s cost-cutting group reinstated details about the grants that it canceled.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

“…
In early March, the group — which had been caught in a series of high-profile errors — began posting itemized claims about the savings it had achieved from canceling federal grants. Its website interface provided only minimal details about those grants but the site’s public source code included identification numbers, making it possible to glean more information from other official sources.

On March 5, however, the group removed those identifiers from the code, while also adding thousands more grants, making it very difficult to verify the figures provided. A White House official said the group had withheld identifying information “for security purposes.”

On Tuesday, the group added some of the missing details, providing links to many of the grants’ entries in a federal spending database, USAspending.gov. Now, fact-checkers will have the ability to match the claims with other sources.

… The new details provided by the group made clear that its claims about these canceled grants also contained the same kind of errors that had marred its previous work.

For instance, the group said that it had saved $1.75 billion by cutting a U.S. Agency for International Development grant to a nonprofit called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

The New York Times reported last week that Gavi had said that the website’s claims were wrong. The nonprofit said that its grant had not been canceled and that, even if it was, all the money it was owed had already been paid. So canceling the grant would save nothing.

The Times had identified that grant using the details that Mr. Musk’s group had briefly embedded in the source code of its website.

On Tuesday, that erroneous claim about the $1.75 billion grant was still on DOGE’s website, which the group calls its “wall of receipts,” — its line by line accounting of the group’s purported cost savings. “
 
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