Let’s Randomly Point At A Map And See What Trump And Musk Are F*cking Up!

This post started out with one story that I saw about a really stupid thing that happened because of Donald Trump, and then Rebecca suggested I make it a roundup of stories about stupid things happening because of Trump and his billionaire boss, and that’s how the rent gets paid around here.

Incidentally, we are now convinced Trump is never going to fire Musk in a rage over being upstaged. If all that “President Musk” stuff hasn’t enraged him yet, it isn’t gonna. He’s clocked out, and now he’s only gonna do whatever catches his interest, like sucking Vladimir Putin’s peener, betraying our allies, dreaming of a bigger, Trumpier USA, and cheating at golf. He’s got Elon to do the hard work of governing out of whim and spite, and until Elon gets bored, we may be stuck with him.

But as they say, a stopped Trump can still fuck up the nation twice a day, so let’s take a look-see at just some of the ways, all over our once-great nation.

First up, it turns out that the Trump administration isn’t just bullying journalists who don’t go along with Trump’s weird renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. This week, the venerable Nature Conservancy, the nonprofit that works to protect wild places from pollution, development, and climate threats, changed the name of its programs in the Gulf of Mexico, obliquely acknowledging in a terse statement that it was giving in to pressure from the administration:

To ensure our programs continue, in accordance with clear directives from federal agencies under recent executive orders, TNC is required to refer to its programs in the Gulf of Mexico in U.S. territorial waters as “Gulf of America.” We continue to refer to our programs occurring outside of U.S. territorial waters in the Gulf as “Gulf of Mexico,” in accordance with international practice.

Of course, lots of people simply noticed that the group’s website was now talking about the “Gulf of America” and accused TNC of complying in advance, being cowardly, embarrassing itself, pandering, capitulating, favoring the Dark Side and betraying democracy. There were more than a few “Fuck Yous” in there as well, as well as vows to never donate again.

I missed all that, or I might have been angry at the group too. But holy crap, then I read this Heatmap News story explaining that TNC pretty much had a gun to its head. Reporter Jael Holzman got hold of a memo sent to all staff in the organization Friday by CEO Jennifer Morris, explaining that Trump functionaries installed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had made TNC an offer it couldn’t refuse:

“Please know that we did not make this decision lightly,” Morris wrote. Attached to the email was staff guidance claiming the nonprofit “received specific direction from NOAA that we must change all references to the new nomenclature in association with our NOAA funded work in the Gulf.”

“For example, all maps, reports, and other deliverables must use ‘Gulf of America,’ the memo stated. “We have at least $156 million in active federal grants in the region, including $45 million from NOAA alone.” Federal funding makes up most of the organization’s work in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the memo.

Maybe the Right Thing would be to forgo all that federal money because it has such odious strings attached. But that would mean shutting down TNC programs in the Gulf, with all the resulting job losses and abandonment of projects conserving habitats and wildlife. Of course, it could also turn out that the federal funding will be withdrawn all the same. Welcome to ethics under fascism. [Heatmap News]

Here in Dok Zoom’s hometown of Boise, Idaho, more than a dozen Veterans Affairs employees were summarily fired from the agency’s regional office and the VA medical center. Probably not the biggest or most devastating example of how arbitrary job and funding cuts are hurting America, but it’s being repeated in towns and cities all over.

An email to the Idaho Statesman from the VA’s regional public affairs office insisted that the cuts “will have no negative effect on veteran health care, benefits or other services and will allow VA to focus more effectively on its core mission,” so screw you. According to an anonymous but terrified worker who remains at the VA medical center,

One of the workers who was laid off at the Boise VA Medical Center was an administrative assistant. Another had provided direct care to veterans in the behavioral health acute care clinic, which is part of the rehabilitation wing. […]

“I get to talk to a bunch of patients now who are asking where that person is,” the employee said. “It’s basically just sowing confusion and chaos, which I understand is the purpose of it, but it’s just demoralizing.”

Well yes, that’s the plan. Maybe it’s time to privatize the VA so the profit motive will inspire people more.

The anonymous worker added that some of the workers who were fired “found out when they came in to work on Monday to fill out their five bullet points.” Yep.

There are 170 VA medical centers around the US, and we’re sure every one of them is having to explain to patients why their therapist or nurse or doctor is gone. Obviously, it’s because they weren’t necessary, not one of them. [Idaho Stateman]

Just a little local teevee station story about a National Park Service aquatic ecologist who was one of several employees who got the axe from Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Dr. Riley Rackliffe moved across the country for his dream job, working with the Park Service to make sure the water in the lake was safe for people to do their recreationing in, and also to help protect the lake from invasive quagga mussels, which are a problem all across the West.

“This lake is here, in part, so people can get out and enjoy it and experience nature. We want people to do it safely,” he says. “Don’t want people to go home with a rash or gastroenteritis, or something worse.”

Here’s the video report from KVVU:

Repeat as many times as necessary for your own state’s national parks, recreation areas, forest service campgrounds, and other treasures. But cheer up! Your sacrifices will mean more stock buybacks for giant corporations and increased value for shareholders! Nature is just full of things that want to bite you anyway. [KVVU-TV on MSN]

A very similar story from Iowa, only this time it’s a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, Dr. Liz Renner, who though working in her home state as a federal scientist at a fish hatchery was her “dream job,” too. In fact, she was working at the very hatchery whose museum gave her the biology bug as a kid. How’s that for terrific? Except for the part where she got a termination letter telling her that

“my skills, knowledge, and I guess my work no longer aligned with the mission of the service or was no longer needed, and as a probationary employee, I shouldn’t have expected any, I guess, job security with that. They used that kind of as the rationale to terminate everyone. We were the low-hanging fruit,” Renner said. “[I feel] Discarded. I feel like it was a slap to the face.”

Then again, she was a faceless bureaucrat, and we don’t need those, we need billionaires and people who toady to billionaires. And because I love you, dear reader, I deleted a brief paragraph summarizing what some people on Twitter think about fired federal workers. Shit’s not healthy for any of us. [KTIV]

The Associated Press put together an interactive map listing the number of federal workers in every congressional district in the country, and it’s pretty interesting to look at. It’s an excellent reminder that these mass firings aren’t only affecting people in Washington. [AP]

Yeah, we hate this. And Jesus, we haven’t even gotten to the scheme to lay off as much as half the workforce at the Social Security Administration, but we will soon. Right now there’s a kitchen floor that needs someone to lie on it and drink, so we’ll get back to you.

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