About a month ago a fellow named Luke Rosiak, author of a book on the Deep State, decided to tweet about 18F, "GSA's tech arm, a far-left agency that viciously subverted Trump during his first term." He followed up with stuff like this:
What did diverse hiring mean in practice? The government tech arm turned into a coven of transgenders and queers hiring each other.
This employee raised money from co-workers for a sex change and used an 18F template to track his goal of changing a "penis for a p--sy." pic.twitter.com/4bnyrWeRf2
— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) February 1, 2025
Elon Musk follows Rosiak on Twitter, but it was only a couple of days later, after getting retweeted by "American Supremacist" ALX, that Musk responded. "That group has been deleted," he said, even though it hadn't been. Its Twitter site had been shut down, but 18F itself continued to operate.
This couldn't last and it didn't. Saturday morning at 1 am the entire group of 90 was laid off. But why? 18F, far from being "GSA's tech arm," is a small, elite group of coders that helps other federal agencies roll out better projects. By all accounts they did a top notch job. At the time they were let go, they say, they were working on "including improving access to weather data with NOAA, making it easier and faster to get a passport with the Department of State, supporting free tax filing with the IRS, and other critical projects with organizations at the federal and state levels."
In other words, 18F was "the gold standard of civic tech," exactly the kind of bang-for-the-buck group that Musk claims the government needs more of. But they're gone.
The lesson is pretty obvious here: It doesn't matter how good a job you do. If your group has a reputation for being LGBT or trans friendly, or even just too woke in general, you can lose your job. Welcome to Donald Trump's government.
Future administrations will find hiring the best and brightest is impossible, either because the best and brightest know they could be fired as soon as the next election or the best and brightest will demand much higher pay to mitigate against being fired and the government won’t be able to afford to hire them.
Either way, the US government will never again be as competent as it was on January 19, 2025. At least not until an entire generation passes and the next one was too young to hear about what happened this year when they graduate from college.
It takes decades to build up a reputation for competency but only a few weeks to destroy it. Thanks Trump voters and people who couldn’t be bothered to vote at all.
That's a feature, not a bug.
+25.
"Move fast and break things" people have never, ever had to clean up their own messes.
That's the goal, though. They want the gov't to lose all internal competency to force it to outsource most functions.
This whole thing appears to be about how some people object to being nice to gay people. Or at the very least ignoring them.
No, they are asserting the right to call them "queers" and "faggots" in public. That's what the electoral politics of the last 12 years have been about. It's breathtakingly petty and selfish.
Looking at the totality of what thus administration is doing to the country anti-woke ideology seems to me an insufficient explanation. They are doing everything to destroy the country. Krasnov works for Putin.
This is the "humor" Musk is so proud to have made legal again. Dickishness and cruelty.
I said this the other day and stand by it - freedom means the right to be a bigot if they damn well want.
Don't forget Homophobe, Racist and Xenephobe.
Xenophobe
I fear that for way too many, losing so much of gov, even the part they need, is okay with them so long as they have that freedom to openly blame Mexicans, Muslims and Gays
It was an all-inclusive term. When Bezos says personal freedom, he means freedom to fire people for being gay or trans, not hire blacks, lay off pregnant women.
"Freedom is for me. Who cares about thee?"
-- Jeff Bezos, in intent
Elon Musk was celebrating his Grok AI being able to use the n-word.
DOGE isn't about efficiency, it is about straight, white, male supremacy.
That and pretending to find savings to fund big tax cuts for the wealthy.
Not even sure why they bother, honestly. Their own budget numbers show tax cuts costing much more than the dishonest "savings" they are planning for. Through Shrub and on to Trump, they clearly don't care about the national debt, they just want those tax cuts, and only pretend to care about debt when a Dem is President.
It's also taken an even uglier sideline in taking away already-awarded contracts and giving them to Head DOGGIE, Elon Musk.
That's what they think they're doing. When the multi-billion dollar tortious interference lawsuit pops up and discovery is ordered, Musk will lose a cool billion or so just trying to settle. Last thing he'd want is for evidence of corruption to be public and the DoJ falling into turmoil as Bondi blocks prosecutors from opening an investigation.
As long as Trump is president, all Mustk has to do is avoid annoying Trump.
If something happen to Trump, he may be in serious trouble.
It's also noticeable that they got kicked off of Twitter. I often hear people from the right claim he restored free speech to Twitter, but it looks to me like Musk just got rid of monitoring comments and now selectively censors stuff he doesnt like, mostly stuff people on the left would like.
Steve
All speech is free, but some speech is more free than others on X.
"If your group has a reputation for being LGBT or trans friendly, . . . "
What kind of reptile disowns his own flesh and blood when they transition?
Elon Musk.
Mark Cuban said he’d back them financially if they want to create a consulting group to sell the same services to the feds at much higher cost. I expect they wouldn’t get the contract, but other countries would hire them.
Good on Cuban. I'm sure these people would be incredibly successful. One reason they were probably overrepresented in this agency, however, is that openly trans/non-binary people face a firehose of discrimination in the private sector. Government employment, where, until recently, you could be yourself, was welcome respite, I'm sure.
They could sell their services to blue states too. Fuck Trump and his suckup v.p.
Pretty sure some AI based front that big balls stands up will get that contract
Not someone competent
This right here is what we call a quadruple whammy for basically every Republican:
1) Culture war bullshit, can't have non-cis folks working for the public
2) Kill NOAA/NWS and privatize weather
3) protect the tax prep industry and make filing taxes as painful as possible to maintain their radical anti-tax agenda
4) they were actually good at their jobs and we can't have that, it would prove that government actually works
Then you have one more thing that is also definitely The Point to these Nazi fucks:
5) cruelty
+100. At this point they are more like Nazis than they aren't. And the GOP is goosestepping in unison.
Josh Marshall over at Talking Points has a post about this "Technology Transformation services" group:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/in-house-gov-tech-unit-for-state-of-the-art-web-portals-disbanded-by-doge
And the Post goes into some detail on the mass firings throughout the several contractor organizations of the DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/02/doge-nuclear-worker-firings-musk-trump/
These DOGGIE guys are pig-ignorant and don't know or don't care. They interpreted "probationary" as "employee did something BAD" -- so fire 'em all. They interpreted VA contracts lumped under the NAICS code for "admin mgt" as "useless paperwork" and axed nearly 1000 contracts, sight unseen.
They think, at best, in software terms: you go in, you break things, and the worst that can happen is, you have to load the backup. No biggie.
However, human beings unfairly fired, denigrated, kicked out of their offices without being able to even get their own stuff out, locked out of access and out of the loop will tend to resent it. Even if re-hired, there will not be the same trust, the same esprit de corps. There may even be a desire, paired with an insider's ability, to get back at the abusers.
Just sayin'.
+1. They are fantastically ignorant and proud of it. However, as a retired software engineer I can attest that "move fast and break things" is actually a really, really, stupid and inefficient way to develop software too but it does get people promoted. A good long term solution to a problem in 2 months is much less highly valued than a crap solution that will be a life long headache produced in 2 weeks.
Don't worry, the headaches are for others to deal with--I'm on to a new project.
+10. Yes, that's how it works. "The good, the bad, and the ugly: coding, debugging, and maintenance." You don't want to be stuck with "the ugly."
At some point, they're going to fire someone with the knowledge and know-how to really fuck with Musk and his Doggies, whether that's via a cyberattack or some other act of revenge served with surgical coldness. I don't wish violence against anyone, but seeing their lives ruined would be nice.
I think it makes sense. If you don’t have a functioning government, why do you need functioning government web sites?
and if gov isn't functioning, might as well expand that to what GOP has wanted since FDR & LBJ- Dump that socialist Medicare and Social Security. Then just like GOP's health care "plans"- we'll be "Free to choose our own !"
They really, seriously, do want people to hate every single facet of government.
A significant number of them also want to get elected to government office. Good thing for them the irony police already have their hands full.
It was an extremely competent government entity that worked well which is the exact opposite of what every Republican is required to believe.
Trump is going after media and even individual journalists. The juridical system is politicized. Science must be approved by the president. The Congress is sidestepped and politicians who are trying to obstruct are persecuted.
Isn’t it time to re-name the USA of A ?
A suitable name is Soviet Union 2.0
A small suggestion from a Swede
Yes, we are no longer united, that is for certain.
The Balkanized States of America has a nice ring to it.
The lesson everyone should learn is that social media, particularly bird site, is not your friend. It leaves a trail for people who hate you to follow.
There are so many ways this is illegal. So many ways. When do we get out the pitchforks?
Fork at will, Doc. Elon can't be the only dude who gets to "fork" people.
Elon and DOG-E just want to privatize the 18F function. Have one of his X's get another big government contract.
Trump has no idea what this is. This program was killed by Musk because he doesn't want anyone in government who can figure out the malware he's currently building into federal computer systems.
You can’t make any sense out of the actions of this administration because there’s no strategy or set of objectives — there is a menagerie of individuals and groups, each with their own agenda, and some with nothing that could pass for an agenda, just personal prejudices, fears and bugaboos. Some are obsessed to shrinking government they see as an inherent evil, some hope to profit from privatization, some have unwittingly (I hope) drunk the Kremlin’s kool-aid, some are isolationists, some ‘christian’ nationalists, most are bigots and authoritarians. Nowhere in this dog’s breakfast is any serious concern with efficiency, or the deficit, much less advancing the nation toward its founding ideals of liberty, equality before the law, opportunity for all to pursue their own happiness.
I suspect the trans garbage is just a smokescreen. Musk wants everything to be privatized, especially tech services. He could start a new company, name it after one of his larvae, and forge ahead with the waste, fraud, and abuse that he hopes will propel him into being the first trillionaire.
Welcome to the Gilded Age of the 21st Century
18F speaks out: https://18f.org/