What a Flock-Up! Trump Idiots 'Accidentally' Fired Bird Flu Experts, Oops!
Say, did we need the people who maintain the nuclear stockpile too?
In one of those little oopsies that can happen when you’re trying to fire everyone in the government but pretending mass firings won’t have any downsides, the Trump Department of Agriculture acknowledged Tuesday that it “accidentally” shitcanned a bunch of employees who are working on the federal response to H5N1 avian flu outbreaks across the country.
But don’t worry, USDA isn’t running around like chickens with their heads cut off! It says it’s gonna reverse those firings as fast as it can. In this case, at least, we know which came first: the chickenshit mass firings, and then the egg on the agency’s face.
The New Viral Sensation
In a statement, a spokesperson for the department said they’re all fine, the problem has been contained, and everything’s just fine down there, how are you?
“Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,” the statement said. Then it went on with a bunch of stuff about how “USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions,” and wait a minute. Did that mean that the people given the boot were actually working on keeping H5N1 out of the food supply, or was that just a kind of awkward and needlessly terrifying attempt to remind us (and any co-presidents who might be listening) that USDA does important work? Consider us not entirely reassured!
NBC News partly untangled our worries about where in the USDA those potentially disastrous, arbitrary and shortsighted firings happened, as opposed to the merely stupid, arbitrary and shortsighted firings that have become common in the last few weeks:
Several agencies within the Agriculture Department play a role in responding to the outbreak, including the Agricultural Research Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. On Sunday, Politico reported that some of the Trump administration's layoffs hit the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which is involved in avian flu research.
OK, so that sounds like the spokesperson’s mention of “food safety inspection” people wasn’t directly about the bird flu people after all. Very reassuring!
Also too, a few Republican lawmakers bravely (and anonymously) “privately warned the Trump administration that such cuts could hamper the government’s bird flu response,” and asked the administration if it could pretty please reconsider, no offense Sir, please do not take this as criticism of your benevolent and wise demolition of the administrative state, Sir. That’s according to two very bravely anonymous “Republican sources with direct knowledge of the situation,” please don’t target them, Sir.
In fact, those sources, who may actually be woke DEI RINOs whose disloyalty must be punished, also said that several Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee have been frustrated by how little information the White House is giving them on the purges. How dare they!
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska), who just the other day divulged that he thinks USAID food assistance needs to be resumed, recklessly spoke openly to NBC News about the USDA cuts, too. Guy must have a secret desire to be primaried. Referring to Elon Musk’s sledge DOGE team, Bacon just blurted out what sure sounded like criticism of the Great Leaders:
“They need to be more cautious. There’s an old saying, ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Well, they are measuring once and having to cut twice. Some of this stuff they’re going to have to return back. I just wish they’d make a better decision up front.”
As of blog time, Rep. Bacon has not yet been named as an enemy of the state, but we’re monitoring flights from Washington or Nebraska to Guantanamo.
Radiation Badges? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Radiation Badges!
USDA’s avian flu fowl-up is only the latest example of the Trump-Musk administration’s disregard for safety and even common sense in taking a meat cleaver to the federal workforce. Late Thursday night, the efficiency dogs fired 300 staffers from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, making sure that The Bomb will work in case the Reds decide to push the button down.
Now, a name like that might make a normal person think, “Hey, ‘nuclear security’ … is that something we need? Better check first!” CNN reported that sources in the know said that the Musketeers didn’t seem to be aware that NNSA is in charge of managing nuclear weapons. Someone should have left a note for “Big Balls” to not fire the nuclear experts.
Easy mistake to make, and frankly, kind of common for Trumpers, who are incapable of ever learning anything. The NNSA is housed inside the Department of Energy, and maybe the Musk Oxen all assumed that Energy is only about drilling for oil or forcing Americans to buy solar-powered dishwashers. Remember, Rick Perry, Trump’s first Energy secretary, thought the job was about promoting US oil and gas exports, and was actually surprised by how much of the department’s resources involved keeping the nukes safe and ready to launch Armageddon.
Oh, yes, and Donald Trump his own self set out to fire the heads of the NNSA before taking office, so he could gut the agency’s career federal workers and replace them with loyalists. Of course you don’t remember that from all the other first-term insanity! Neither did we until we looked for something about Perry. We’re sure Trump has forgotten, if he was even involved in the latest Let’s Fire The Nuclear Weapons People fuckup, which he probably wasn’t. He has Elon now, to take care of the little stuff while Trump takes care of the important things like vengeance against paper straws and declaring himself King.
The nuclear experts who were shown the door and left wondering how they’d feed their nuclear families included:
NNSA staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons.
It also included employees at NNSA headquarters who write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons. A source told CNN they believe these individuals were fired because “no one has taken any time to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security.”
If members of Congress hadn’t raised a fuss and pointed out what those employees actually do, there’s no telling whether anyone in the executive branch would have figured out they should have stayed on the job.
Since the weekend, the administration has been putting in extra time and money trying to track down the people it fired in the name of “efficiency. ” The task of finding them was made more difficult when the Artless DOGErs immediately locked the workers out of their computers, wiped the hard drives, and disabled their phones, leaving managers puzzling out how to find many workers’ contact information, since the firings hadn’t even gone through normal channels.
“That’s not normal,” an NNSA employee familiar with the firings told CNN. “It was ridiculous, unprecedented and sloppy. There’s no formal process.”
One NNSA employee who was fired on Thursday and reinstated a day later confirmed HR wasn’t involved. The employee told CNN they lost their access to their government email and personnel files Thursday night, before they were even told they were being fired.
The search and rehiring process was also complicated a bit by the fact that it happened on a long holiday weekend, because managers were out of the office. Even if they had been there, we suspect the only thing visible on their computer screens would have been a giant poop emoji, hurr hurr funny.
Two agency insiders told CNN that of the 300 nuke safety workers who were nuked, all but 25 or so appear to have been rehired, although it’s not clear how many are actually ready to be back at work this week. However, one source inside NNSA said that even as people are being rehired, the firings caused a “hit to the morale and trust of the employees who were terminated,” and noted that many may decide they can do better in private industry. Especially if Elon insists on new rounds of firings, or if some DOGEboy with a hair up his ass (but no security clearance up there too) decides to demand a few nuclear secrets for the lulz:
“What do I do if someone with no need to know comes and says, ‘I need to see this file on Ukraine, or warhead design?’” an NNSA employee posed. “The idea of turning over sensitive or classified data versus losing your job? People are deeply alarmed and don’t feel the answers they’ve been given are sufficient.”
Others are afraid of retaliation by the administration and political appointees at the agency, fearing they could be targeted for causing embarrassment for the “vengeful” president,” another source said.
What a bunch of candy asses! Look, if government employees really, really need access to nuclear secrets to do their work, they can always just ask for the key to Donald Trump’s toilet at Mar-a-lago, OK?
[NBC News / CNN / The Hill / CNN]
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The story is predictably awful, but you have to LOL at the section headers. Genius Doktor of Rhetoric stuff.
Trump's new USDA Food Inspector, Sam Munella, reassured the public that America's food is safe