Another way to look at this is that billionaires have joined a war on professional administrative class of public servants precisely because of their proximity to formal mechanisms of accountability. Civil servants are sworn to uphold the constitution, report wrongdoing to officials, follow the rules. They are in most respects more accountable than our politicians to ethical and legal requirements, and more difficult to buy off. This makes government slower and more irritating for sure, and puts those officials at odds with the Musks, Andreessens, and Karps of the world, whose vision and interests benefits from reduced oversight and accountability.

I think the Palantir attacks on bureaucrats here is ideological - like the similarly despised professors, they are a potential source of criticism.
But it is also practical. The administrative class is tasked with imposing accountability, which Palantir - like the Trump administration - dislikes.

Washington Post article on STEM cuts at federal agencies. NSF tops it at -42%!

“Between January 2025 and February 2026, STEM and health employees at science-focused agencies saw nearly 15,000 jobs cut. The rate outpaced cuts among other federal workers.”

OPM data - Figure from Wash Post article 19 April. (Where US science has been hit hardest.)

NSF at -42%!

it is legitimately unfathomable how the US squandered its significant EV early lead primarily through entirely backwards short-sighted policy decisions in support of the oil industry which likely has already set the stages of the US auto industry's demise. a death in slow motion.

have there been similarly culturally pervasive “everyone needs to start using this tech right now” pushes over such a relatively brief time frame as we’re currently seeing with LLMs? (This is a very genuine question)

The obvious answer here is that the student protest movement was broadly smeared as anti-semitic and aligned with terrorists, and a variety of institutions from government, media and the universities acted as if that smear was true, threatening, suspending, expelling and even deporting students.

The President just released his proposed federal budget for the coming year.

He said he’d put America first, but he isn’t — instead, he’s deepening our deficit while working families suffer.

4.6 USDA Secretary Sent a Sermon to 100,000 Feds - Here's Why That's a Problem YouTube video by Southworth PC

youtu.be/MNedour7cDw?...

Ewwwww NASA how dare you make me listen to his voice and how dare you make them listen to him too. This is a slap in the face considering he’s the one ruining science.

Live updates: Trump brushes off war crime concerns as he repeats threat to Iran's infrastructure Iran's state media said Tehran rejected the latest ceasefire proposal and wants a permanent end to the war, a day before U.S. President Donald Trump's deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The President is describing war crimes. America doesn't have money for child care, but we have enough money to bomb every bridge in Iran? It's sick and wrong.

I've voted to end this war, and I'll keep voting to stop it—but we can only put an end to this if Republicans join us.

I want the astronauts to ask Trump to increase the budget in science and education live and for the whole world to hear it.

Operation Metro Surge cost Minnesota MILLIONS of dollars.

Schools, small businesses, and local industries have all been devastated by ICE’s chaos.

The federal government needs to fix what they broke – and make us whole.

I am not sure people understand the degree to which foreign grad students (and especially Chinese ones) are propping up our universities.

Kim: Three weeks of the war in Iran could have funded vision, hearing, and dental coverage for every senior in America on Medicare. I mean, it just gives you a sense of the trade-off.

Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. Behind closed doors in Washington, top advisers made a series of decisions that had devastating repercussions for the poorest country on earth. We went to South Sudan and found people who died as a re...

Here are the stories of some of the human beings who died horrific deaths from preventable disease because Trump and Musk and their flunkies decided to murder them by gleefully destroying USAID and the entire global aid system:

US voters worried about high food prices in 2024. This admin has: 1) taxed food & fertilizer imports 2) deported farmworkers 3) canceled food/climate investments 4) started a war that spiked energy/fertilizer prices 5) increased crop-based biofuel mandates 6) released dietary guidance centering meat

Trump/Vought are planning to eliminate the program that oversees social science funding from the National Science Foundation, and they are not going to wait for Congress to weigh in because they have already shown they believe they have the power of the purse.
bsky.app/profile/lizn...

Proselytization is so ingrained in Christian culture, they hardly know when they’re doing it anymore, let alone how it feels to hear when you’re not in their club.

Hegseth Says U.S. Troops Are Fighting for Jesus. The Pope Disagrees.

And I’m sorry but there is no way to separate Christianity from the government’s war in Iran when the Secretary of “War” is literally invoking Jesus so much that THE POPE had to tell him to knock it off.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/w...

Ooh! I know how! By telling students to think for themselves and stop buying in to capitalist propaganda about products that do not work and no one wants!

Fun Fact! Forcing people to use poor tools because too much money was invested in them is the definition of the logic trap sunk cost fallacy.

The concluding section has the teachers voicing their “concerns” about AI use and then providing industry-approved counterpoints with which they allay their own concerns, and it’s hard not to conclude that this was either fabricated whole cloth or thoroughly primed by OpenAI and Microsoft memos.

please stop using our platform as intended

From the fednews community on Reddit: Other Departments Receive the He Has Risen Email? Explore this post and more from the fednews community

Full text of the email posted to Reddit.

www.reddit.com/r/fednews/s/...

4.6 USDA Secretary Sent a Sermon to 100,000 Feds - Here's Why That's a Problem YouTube video by Southworth PC

youtu.be/MNedour7cDw?...

The Anti-Intellectualism of the Silicon Valley Elite How the self-styled know-it-alls atop the knowledge economy want to dismantle the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake

I recently re-read Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and now every time a Silicon Valley billionaire opens his mouth, I think about it. So I wrote about it for The Nation: www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Don't get me wrong: I'm relieved that this case is shaping up as either 8-1 or 7-2 against the Trump executive order. But the case is a gift to the Supreme Court. By rejecting an outlandish position, it will earn credibility as apolitical, even as the Overton window moves far to the right.

"I'd rather spend the money on" is a myth.

The United States has enough money to spend a trillion dollars per year on NASA *AND* have universal healthcare and housing and free education through college for everyone.

It's not either/or. It's both/and.

C.D.C. Pauses Testing for Rabies and Pox Viruses

Layoffs, hiring freezes/resignations have shrunk the number of qualified CDC scientists. The rabies/pox virus teams have lost many members.

There aren’t enough qualified people to council state and local officials in the event of an outbreak.

🧪 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/h...

Build child care centers.

Build health centers.

Build community centers.

Not data centers.

And not ICE detention centers.

I think we should be a country that builds spaceships instead of fighter jets and uses the science knowledge we get to have the best healthcare and food and education that we freely give to everyone in the world who wants and/or needs it.

All those assholes who were screeching about Biden need to be screeching about Donald Trump right now.

Bro is not well.