Politics Current Events Feb 28 - March 2

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Ahead of layoffs, Education Department offers employees $25K to quit or retire by Monday​

The offer came ahead of what the agency's chief human resources officer described as a "very significant" looming workforce reduction.​


www.usatoday.com

Ahead of layoffs, Education Department offers employees $25K to quit or retire by Monday

In an email obtained by USA TODAY, the Education Department offered employees $25,000 to take a buyout ahead of a \
www.usatoday.com www.usatoday.com

“… "We are pleased to offer ED employees up to a $25,000 Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP) starting today, including those who wish to retire," wrote Jacqueline Clay, the agency's chief human capital officer.

Staffers have until Monday at 11:59 p.m. to accept. Their resignations would take effect on March 31, according to the email.

Not every employee who elects to take the buyout would be eligible for a $25,000 payment, however. Clay's memo says the award would be "the equivalent of severance pay or $25,000, whichever is less." She encouraged staffers to use their benefit statements to estimate their severance packages before taking the offer.

There are more caveats: Those eligible must have been employed by the federal government for at least three consecutive years. They also cannot have received a student loan repayment benefit in the last three years. Other types of awards – including relocation, recruitment or retention bonuses – would be disqualifying for some.

… The president said recently he wants the Education Department to be "closed immediately." …”
 


Iowa rolls back civil rights protections for transgender people​

Iowa is now the first state to remove civil rights protections for transgender people. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the controversial bill into law Friday afternoon despite days of protests against the measure.
 
SEPARATION OF POWERS

“… Other separation-of-powers battles could be on the horizon, including one over the authority of federal courts as they consider the legality of Trump’s executive actions.

Dan Bongino, Trump’s choice to be deputy director of the FBI, has said the president “should ignore” a court decision with which he disagrees, and Vice President JD Vance wrote recently that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

In a Senate confirmation hearing this week, a nominee for a senior Justice Department job suggested there were circumstances in which a president didn’t have to follow federal court orders.

“There is no hard-and-fast rule about whether, in every instance, a public official is bound by a court decision,” said Aaron Reitz, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Legal Policy, which advises the attorney general on policy and helps select federal judicial nominees. Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) expanded on Reitz’s comment, by suggesting that some court decisions, such as a 1944 Supreme Court ruling allowing the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, merited opposition.

But Reitz’s comments drew a rebuke from Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who said: “Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court—ever.” Blumenthal, in an interview, said the comments reinforced the challenge lawmakers face in ensuring that Trump adheres to the spending priorities they lay out in appropriations.

“Eventually, a court could tell them that you have to obey the law,” he said.

“If they’re now saying, ‘Well, we’ll disobey the court,’ essentially they’re saying that we’re embracing a lawless and autocratic tyranny.” …”

 
A Friday (and Zelensky meeting aftermath) news dump — the “honeypot” investigation of Comey allegedly using female FBI agents to infiltrate the 2016 Trump campaign was a hot conspiracy among MAGA that Patel was going to “expose” — except he debunked it instead.



“… Reports in conservative media earlier this week suggested that a whistleblower provided evidence that the FBI under former Director James Comey ran a “honeypot” operation against Trump to try to entrap him as far back as 2015.

Patel unequivocally stated the stories were not true and that it was important for him to set the record straight. …”
 
nycfan said:
A Friday (and Zelensky meeting aftermath) news dump — the “honeypot” investigation of Comey allegedly using female FBI agents to infiltrate the 2016 Trump campaign was a hot conspiracy among MAGA that Patel was going to “expose” — except he debunked it instead.

Click to expand...









Jimmy Fallon Nevermind GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
 
Honey pot operations are just like con jobs. They don't work if you aren't willing to cheat someone.
 

Frustrations mount as Stefanik stuck in limbo — even after House clears hurdle​



“… Stefanik is facing a unique problem. Despite numerous international crises facing the U.S. and UN, she is considered more valuable in the House as lawmakers try to cobble together Trump’s agenda. That was especially the case for a dramatic Tuesday vote on the House’s budget resolution, when her presence was crucial.

But even with that out of the way, Stefanik is likely to remain sidelined from her potential UN post as the Senate is showing few signs it will move on her nomination.

Lawmakers and sources give varying reasons for the delay.

Two sources pointed to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as the driving force behind that decision.

… Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill that the chamber is ready to move on her nomination — “She’s teed up,” he said — and pointed to the White House.

… But sources say the White House is looking to Johnson, who has the task of handling the delicate majority, for the go-ahead before plucking her away. …”
 

China Tells Its AI Leaders to Avoid U.S. Travel Over Security Concerns​

Beijing increasingly views cutting-edge technology through national-security lens, putting executives on tighter leash​


GIFT LINK 🎁—> https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chi...49?st=5cdYqo&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

“
Chinese authorities are instructing top artificial-intelligence entrepreneurs and researchers to avoid visiting the U.S., people familiar with the matter said, reflecting Beijing’s view of the technology as an economic and national security priority.

The authorities are concerned that Chinese AI experts traveling abroad could divulge confidential information about the nation’s progress.

They also worry that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in U.S.-China negotiations, in an echo of a fight over a Huawei executive held in Canada at Washington’s request during the first Trump administration.

… A test of how much interaction on AI is still possible will come this summer, when China will hold its own AI summit. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he welcomed participation from people from around the world.“
 
nycfan said:
“… The pardon has nothing to do with Rose’s baseball career or gambling problems. He was sentenced in 1990 to five months in federal prison for filing false income tax returns.

… While Mr. Trump can issue a posthumous pardon for that crime, his presidential powers do not extend to the Hall of Fame's rules, or the baseball writers association and committees that choose Hall of Fame inductees. …”

www.nytimes.com

Trump Says He Will Posthumously Pardon the Baseball Star Pete Rose

President Trump also repeated his call for Rose, who was banned from the sport for gambling, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

——
This reminds me of his EO renaming the Gulf of Mexico — he is drunk on his own power and trying to bend the world to his will for matters greater than and small.
Click to expand...
He’s clearly letting it rip. Stream of consciousness EOs.
 
nycfan said:

China Tells Its AI Leaders to Avoid U.S. Travel Over Security Concerns​

Beijing increasingly views cutting-edge technology through national-security lens, putting executives on tighter leash​


GIFT LINK 🎁—> https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chi...49?st=5cdYqo&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

“
Chinese authorities are instructing top artificial-intelligence entrepreneurs and researchers to avoid visiting the U.S., people familiar with the matter said, reflecting Beijing’s view of the technology as an economic and national security priority.

The authorities are concerned that Chinese AI experts traveling abroad could divulge confidential information about the nation’s progress.

They also worry that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in U.S.-China negotiations, in an echo of a fight over a Huawei executive held in Canada at Washington’s request during the first Trump administration.

… A test of how much interaction on AI is still possible will come this summer, when China will hold its own AI summit. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he welcomed participation from people from around the world.“
Click to expand...
A lot to unpack in this story, including:

* asymmetry of China seeing AI as a national security matter versus the libertarian open source view of many (not all) in the West

* The Trump Admin seen as a risk to essentially take political hostages as bargaining chips

* China limiting their folks from traveling and sharing tech info but inviting everyone to come to them to share info
 
When the the real impact of all of these cuts settles in over the next year or so, it may be hard for any prominent members of Trump 2.0 to travel anywhere in the country without facing major protests, perhaps even violent ones. And I'm sure that both they and Fox and other right-wing media will portray them as victims and as sympathetically as possible, and the protestors (even Republican ones) as badly as possible.
 

Pentagon orders up to 3,000 troops, Stryker combat vehicles to border​

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved orders on Friday to further militarize the U.S. southern border with Mexico, officials said.


“… The orders are part of a broader, politically fraught military mission that the Trump administration initiated to stop undocumented migrants and drug smugglers from crossing into the United States. Several thousand U.S. troops are already involved, primarily assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the detection and apprehension of migrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Stryker vehicles — a lightly armored attack vehicle carrying up to 11 soldiers and typically equipped with a machine gun or grenade launcher — have been used in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More recently, the Biden administration provided some Stryker vehicles to Ukrainian forces, who used them during a cross-border incursion into the Kursk region of Russia.

It was not clear Saturday whether vehicles will be mounted with weapons during the deployment. ..”
 

The haphazard nihilism of America’s new Department of Government Efficiency​



“… This haphazard nihilism is symptomatic of Musk’s approach with the de-facto Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): destroy first, ask questions later.

… There’s nothing wrong with curtailing bloated government. When the public thinks its cash is being wasted, governance loses legitimacy.

But screw-ups by Musk and his DOGE boys are revealing one key truth — they have no clue how government works. Conservatives might view the federal government as the home of liberal elites. But it pays out pensions, administers health care for seniors and the poor, and keeps keeps planes in the sky. Every state capital has a big federal building — and it’s now dawning on some of Trump’s cheerleaders that hundreds of thousand of government jobs exist outside the Beltway.

… Even when government is working, financed and fully staffed, things can go badly wrong — the botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the comically mismanaged Obamacare website come to mind.

But when the government is being deliberately desecrated, disasters are all but guaranteed. …”
 
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