Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Aye aye.
You forgot Cap'n after "Aye, aye." Sheesh.
Nope, all you are getting from this Navy vet is the Aye aye.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Aye aye.
You forgot Cap'n after "Aye, aye." Sheesh.
Nope, all you are getting from this Navy vet is the Aye aye.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Aye aye.
You forgot Cap'n after "Aye, aye." Sheesh.
Nope, all you are getting from this Navy vet is the Aye aye.
Well, thank you for your service.
Thanks, it was my pleasure, most of the time. Other times not so much
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
You forgot "fucking" between "a" and "clue."
Ooops
Don't ever let it happen again, particularly if you're going to reference that particular song lyric. Got it?
Aye aye.
You forgot Cap'n after "Aye, aye." Sheesh.
Nope, all you are getting from this Navy vet is the Aye aye.
Well, thank you for your service.
Thanks, it was my pleasure, most of the time. Other times not so much
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
Three hour movie made in five days. Must be stellar production values.
I special effects will be amazing!
I'm just glad it doesn't interfere with PJ's next live from the Vault streaming event. That would have been a tough choice. Maybe PJ could provide some songs for the soundtrack though?
Seven O'clock? Maybe Bu$hLeaguer with updated lyrics?
I was thinking there'd be a Trump version of Bu$hleaguer and that it would be called Trumped Up.
Unpopular opinion: I still enjoy Bushleaguer. Timeless song? Obviously not and the spoken-word part is blech. But the two hooks ("Blackout weaves..." and "I remember when you sang....") are both solid.
I love the line "The haves have not a clue". It is probably my favorite part of the song.
This is why things are fucked up and shit takes so long to get figured out and implemented. Unpresidented fuckery for 4 years and accelerated during the transition.
Trump left behind a damaged government. Here’s what Biden faces as he rebuilds it.
More than 18 months after the Agriculture Department relocated two research agencies from Washington to Kansas City, Mo., prompting a major exodus from both divisions, the agencies are still struggling to regain their strength.
Even after a round of hiring in the past year, the permanent staff of the Economic Research Service is down 33 percent from where it was near the end of the Obama administration, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture workforce has declined 34 percent. According to USDA, they have 115 and 130 job vacancies, respectively.
“We lost some of the nation’s best economists and agricultural scientists in the previous administration,” USDA spokesman Matt Herrick said in an email. “It will take time for the new administration to rebuild USDA’s scientific and research agencies and restore their confidence and morale.”
The problems at the Agriculture Department are reflected across the government. A few weeks after taking office, Biden and his team are confronted with numerous challenges, including smoothing over chaotic operations, boosting flagging morale and staffing up agencies that dwindled. To achieve their policy goals, they must move quickly to communicate a sense of mission, build expertise, improve performance, assure stability and regain public confidence, analysts say.
“They’re going to have the traditional challenge of transition, but now they’ll have to address the institutional damage,” Max Stier, president and chief executive of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said of the Biden team.
“You had a president who went to war with his own workforce,” Stier added. “It’s not like you flip a switch and the loss of expertise and harm to morale reverse themselves.”
Looking across the agencies, Stier and other experts on the federal government see symptoms of the damaged bureaucracy: Key jobs are unfilled, talent has departed, departments were politicized, and morale was harmed. Civil servants have hunkered in a defensive crouch as Trump and his allies demanded political loyalty, tested their professionalism and called them the intransigent “deep state.”
“The more time I spend in DC at the start of this Administration, the more I see what the career civil servants were forced to endure these last 4 years,” Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser for Biden’s coronavirus response, wrote on Twitter recently, praising the “quiet heroism” of the federal workforce.
Russell T. Vought, who served as Trump’s top budget official and now leads a new pro-Trump think tank called the Center for American Restoration, disputed characterizations that the government was “broken” by the last administration. “I’m of the opinion that all the changes that we made, particularly to the Office of Management and Budget, led them to being stronger,” Vought said.
OMB created efficiencies that helped the agency move faster on rules and regulations, and in dispensing funds, he said, even if some of those efficiencies were unpopular with civil servants.
Biden is working to buck up the career officials who are now part of his administration — but that he says work for the country, not him.
“I believe in you. We need you badly,” Biden told diplomats at the State Department on Thursday. “And I’m going to have your back — that, I promise you — just like you’re going to have the backs of the American people.”
Good-government groups have advised the new administration to consider launching a broad effort to rehire civil servants who left or were forced out during the past four years, particularly those with hard-to-replace expertise in their fields.
A senior Biden aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information obtained during the federal transition, said the rebuilding of the federal government will be more extensive than anticipated. “We knew the house we had to rebuild was on a little bit of shaky ground,” the aide said. “We realized that it is just a house that is in disrepair.”
Restocking the government
One focus for the Biden administration: restocking corners of the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the State Department’s diplomatic corps, that were hollowed out as career staff quit or retired during the Trump era and were not replaced.
Some of the highest-profile departures were motivated by objections to Trump testing the legal boundaries of his power, like a series of exits at the Justice Department.
Jonathan Kravis, who had worked as a federal prosecutor for 10 years, quit after Attorney General William P. Barr intervened to reduce the sentencing recommendation he and other career attorneys had made for Trump ally Roger Stone. Two civil rights prosecutors assigned to the investigation of the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice left as top officials stymied their efforts to push that case forward.
Trump officials’ push to shift hundreds of jobs away from the District also has thinned the government’s ranks.
In July 2019, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced he would move the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters from the District to Grand Junction, Colo., and relocate hundreds of employees. Of the 328 employees affected by the plan, 287 of them — 87 percent — decided not to move and either retired or found new jobs by the end of last year.
Federal agencies also bled staff as Trump refused to appoint replacements, including in crucial positions for national security. By the end of the Trump administration, nearly half of the top 60 jobs at the Defense Department weren’t occupied by Senate-confirmed individuals, according to a Nov. 20 analysis by Defense News, leading to a hollowed-out Pentagon replete with acting officials, including in the top job.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s inspection force is at its lowest point since the 1970s, workplace safety experts said, with 761 inspectors in place to cover the country, down from 815 in 2016. The agency had no Senate-confirmed director during Trump’s presidency, and he left office with 40 percent of the agency’s senior positions vacant.
Another crucial task awaiting Biden: shifting the spotlight away from agencies that Trump tarred as the so-called deep state and that the government needs to be staunchly apolitical.
From before he took office to the day he left, Trump portrayed the intelligence community, and the CIA in particular, as a nest of conspirators bent on his political defeat. Trump moved in his final days to declassify information about the Russia investigation and install loyalists at the senior levels of the intelligence community.
In October, John Ratcliffe, a former congressman whom Trump installed as the director of national intelligence, approved the release of previously classified documents. None of them showed that the intelligence agencies conspired against Trump. But intelligence officials warned the White House and Ratcliffe that their release could reveal intelligence sources inside Russia and make it harder to recruit foreign spies.
Meanwhile, the refugee office at the Department of Health and Human Services — staffed with social workers who’d spent their careers aiding migrants — was repeatedly pressed into service as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The office, which took custody of thousands of migrant children that the Trump administration separated at the border in 2018, repeatedly shared confidential information with officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including children’s therapy notes.
“For the last four years, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has been forced to operate as a junior partner in immigration enforcement,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, who advised on Biden’s transition. “That was fundamentally counter to its mission as an agency, and the challenge for new people coming in is to restore its mission in service to children.”
Far from the Oval Office, lower-level Trump officials repeatedly reassigned career officials who questioned their push to reverse existing health, energy and environmental protections.
Lorie Schmidt — a longtime EPA lawyer who oversaw at least 40 attorneys working on air policy — offered legal advice during Trump’s first year that sometimes clashed with his goals, according to current and former EPA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. She was reassigned to work on “special projects,” though she had not been assigned any specific tasks.
About a month later, these individuals said, Schmidt agreed to work for the Virgin Islands’ environmental agency in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Schmidt eventually was reassigned again, to serve as the top career lawyer in EPA’s Solid Waste and Emergency Response Law Office — which was outside her traditional issue area.
Asked to comment on the matter, Schmidt declined.
Many are worn out
Even as they shipped out career experts, Trump officials padded key offices with political appointees. Matthew Davis, who worked as a health scientist at the EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection for six years before switching to the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations, said in an interview that the number of appointees in congressional affairs more than doubled during the Trump era.
“They basically didn’t want anyone in the career staff getting their hands on information,” said Davis, who now works as legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters advocacy group. “They built up this large number of political appointees in congressional affairs particularly, so the career officials didn’t handle oversight requests.”
8:21 a.m. Dominion files defamation lawsuit against MyPillow CEO for false claims that voting machines rigged election against Trump Dominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, arguing that Lindell has refused to stop repeating false claims that its voting machines were manipulated to rig the 2020 election against President Donald Trump. Dominion is seeking more than $1.3 billion from Lindell, a staunch Trump supporter. The company says Lindell contributed to a “viral disinformation campaign” about Dominion on social media, in broadcast interviews, at public pro-Trump rallies and in a two-hour documentary about election fraud — entitled “Absolute Proof” — that he created and paid to air on One America News. The 115-page complaint, filed in federal court in the District, names both Lindell and his company as defendants. The complaint also alleges that Lindell, a “talented salesman,” used falsehoods about Dominion to promote MyPillow to fellow Trump supporters. Dominion sent letters to Lindell in December and January, warning that he was putting himself in legal jeopardy by spreading lies about the company. “Despite having been specifically directed to the evidence and sources disproving the Big Lie, Lindell knowingly lied about Dominion to sell more pillows to people who continued tuning in to hear what they wanted to hear about the election,” the complaint says. Lindell did not immediately reply to a request for comment Monday morning. He has previously said that he wants to be sued by Dominion because it would give him a chance to prove his unfounded claims. “If they sue me, I would be so happy,” he told the Daily Beast last week. Lindell has said that some major retailers have stopped carrying MyPillow products, and Twitter has permanently suspended accounts belonging to both Lindell and his company. The lawsuit against Lindell is the latest salvo in Dominion’s legal battle to recover its reputation, which has been badly damaged by election-fraud falsehoods that were endorsed by Trump and amplified in conservative media. The company has already sued Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and has sent retraction demands or preservation notices — often precursors to litigation — to dozens of individuals and businesses. By Emma Brown
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
He’ll be the nominee in 24 GOP has already resigned to the fact that he’s the leader! Not one other Republican candidate can get 74+ million voters to vote for them!
He’ll be the nominee in 24 GOP has already resigned to the fact that he’s the leader! Not one other Republican candidate can get 74+ million voters to vote for them!
Yep and they are all at the end of the day more concerned with having R seats in as many places as possible. If abandoning trump means losing power they will never abandon him. The Republican civil war doesn’t exist
He’ll be the nominee in 24 GOP has already resigned to the fact that he’s the leader! Not one other Republican candidate can get 74+ million voters to vote for them!
Yep and they are all at the end of the day more concerned with having R seats in as many places as possible. If abandoning trump means losing power they will never abandon him. The Republican civil war doesn’t exist
Ditto Moscow Mitch has already stated that if idiot is the nominee he will support him!
Comments
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I can attest to this statement
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Trump left behind a damaged government. Here’s what Biden faces as he rebuilds it.
More than 18 months after the Agriculture Department relocated two research agencies from Washington to Kansas City, Mo., prompting a major exodus from both divisions, the agencies are still struggling to regain their strength.
Even after a round of hiring in the past year, the permanent staff of the Economic Research Service is down 33 percent from where it was near the end of the Obama administration, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture workforce has declined 34 percent. According to USDA, they have 115 and 130 job vacancies, respectively.
“We lost some of the nation’s best economists and agricultural scientists in the previous administration,” USDA spokesman Matt Herrick said in an email. “It will take time for the new administration to rebuild USDA’s scientific and research agencies and restore their confidence and morale.”
The problems at the Agriculture Department are reflected across the government. A few weeks after taking office, Biden and his team are confronted with numerous challenges, including smoothing over chaotic operations, boosting flagging morale and staffing up agencies that dwindled. To achieve their policy goals, they must move quickly to communicate a sense of mission, build expertise, improve performance, assure stability and regain public confidence, analysts say.
“They’re going to have the traditional challenge of transition, but now they’ll have to address the institutional damage,” Max Stier, president and chief executive of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said of the Biden team.
“You had a president who went to war with his own workforce,” Stier added. “It’s not like you flip a switch and the loss of expertise and harm to morale reverse themselves.”
Looking across the agencies, Stier and other experts on the federal government see symptoms of the damaged bureaucracy: Key jobs are unfilled, talent has departed, departments were politicized, and morale was harmed. Civil servants have hunkered in a defensive crouch as Trump and his allies demanded political loyalty, tested their professionalism and called them the intransigent “deep state.”
“The more time I spend in DC at the start of this Administration, the more I see what the career civil servants were forced to endure these last 4 years,” Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser for Biden’s coronavirus response, wrote on Twitter recently, praising the “quiet heroism” of the federal workforce.
We’re tracking the appointees Biden is nominating to fill top roles in his administration
Russell T. Vought, who served as Trump’s top budget official and now leads a new pro-Trump think tank called the Center for American Restoration, disputed characterizations that the government was “broken” by the last administration. “I’m of the opinion that all the changes that we made, particularly to the Office of Management and Budget, led them to being stronger,” Vought said.
OMB created efficiencies that helped the agency move faster on rules and regulations, and in dispensing funds, he said, even if some of those efficiencies were unpopular with civil servants.
Biden is working to buck up the career officials who are now part of his administration — but that he says work for the country, not him.
“I believe in you. We need you badly,” Biden told diplomats at the State Department on Thursday. “And I’m going to have your back — that, I promise you — just like you’re going to have the backs of the American people.”
Good-government groups have advised the new administration to consider launching a broad effort to rehire civil servants who left or were forced out during the past four years, particularly those with hard-to-replace expertise in their fields.
A senior Biden aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information obtained during the federal transition, said the rebuilding of the federal government will be more extensive than anticipated. “We knew the house we had to rebuild was on a little bit of shaky ground,” the aide said. “We realized that it is just a house that is in disrepair.”
Restocking the government
One focus for the Biden administration: restocking corners of the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the State Department’s diplomatic corps, that were hollowed out as career staff quit or retired during the Trump era and were not replaced.
Some of the highest-profile departures were motivated by objections to Trump testing the legal boundaries of his power, like a series of exits at the Justice Department.
The high-profile departures from a turbulent Trump administration
Jonathan Kravis, who had worked as a federal prosecutor for 10 years, quit after Attorney General William P. Barr intervened to reduce the sentencing recommendation he and other career attorneys had made for Trump ally Roger Stone. Two civil rights prosecutors assigned to the investigation of the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice left as top officials stymied their efforts to push that case forward.
Trump officials’ push to shift hundreds of jobs away from the District also has thinned the government’s ranks.
In July 2019, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced he would move the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters from the District to Grand Junction, Colo., and relocate hundreds of employees. Of the 328 employees affected by the plan, 287 of them — 87 percent — decided not to move and either retired or found new jobs by the end of last year.
Federal agencies also bled staff as Trump refused to appoint replacements, including in crucial positions for national security. By the end of the Trump administration, nearly half of the top 60 jobs at the Defense Department weren’t occupied by Senate-confirmed individuals, according to a Nov. 20 analysis by Defense News, leading to a hollowed-out Pentagon replete with acting officials, including in the top job.
Database: The nominees Donald Trump tapped for key roles during his term
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s inspection force is at its lowest point since the 1970s, workplace safety experts said, with 761 inspectors in place to cover the country, down from 815 in 2016. The agency had no Senate-confirmed director during Trump’s presidency, and he left office with 40 percent of the agency’s senior positions vacant.
Another crucial task awaiting Biden: shifting the spotlight away from agencies that Trump tarred as the so-called deep state and that the government needs to be staunchly apolitical.
From before he took office to the day he left, Trump portrayed the intelligence community, and the CIA in particular, as a nest of conspirators bent on his political defeat. Trump moved in his final days to declassify information about the Russia investigation and install loyalists at the senior levels of the intelligence community.
In October, John Ratcliffe, a former congressman whom Trump installed as the director of national intelligence, approved the release of previously classified documents. None of them showed that the intelligence agencies conspired against Trump. But intelligence officials warned the White House and Ratcliffe that their release could reveal intelligence sources inside Russia and make it harder to recruit foreign spies.
Meanwhile, the refugee office at the Department of Health and Human Services — staffed with social workers who’d spent their careers aiding migrants — was repeatedly pressed into service as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The office, which took custody of thousands of migrant children that the Trump administration separated at the border in 2018, repeatedly shared confidential information with officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including children’s therapy notes.
“For the last four years, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has been forced to operate as a junior partner in immigration enforcement,” said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, who advised on Biden’s transition. “That was fundamentally counter to its mission as an agency, and the challenge for new people coming in is to restore its mission in service to children.”
Far from the Oval Office, lower-level Trump officials repeatedly reassigned career officials who questioned their push to reverse existing health, energy and environmental protections.
Lorie Schmidt — a longtime EPA lawyer who oversaw at least 40 attorneys working on air policy — offered legal advice during Trump’s first year that sometimes clashed with his goals, according to current and former EPA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. She was reassigned to work on “special projects,” though she had not been assigned any specific tasks.
About a month later, these individuals said, Schmidt agreed to work for the Virgin Islands’ environmental agency in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Schmidt eventually was reassigned again, to serve as the top career lawyer in EPA’s Solid Waste and Emergency Response Law Office — which was outside her traditional issue area.
Asked to comment on the matter, Schmidt declined.
Many are worn out
Even as they shipped out career experts, Trump officials padded key offices with political appointees. Matthew Davis, who worked as a health scientist at the EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection for six years before switching to the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations, said in an interview that the number of appointees in congressional affairs more than doubled during the Trump era.
“They basically didn’t want anyone in the career staff getting their hands on information,” said Davis, who now works as legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters advocacy group. “They built up this large number of political appointees in congressional affairs particularly, so the career officials didn’t handle oversight requests.”
Continues.................................
After Trump, Biden is working to rebuild the government - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Dominion files defamation lawsuit against MyPillow CEO for false claims that voting machines rigged election against Trump
Dominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, arguing that Lindell has refused to stop repeating false claims that its voting machines were manipulated to rig the 2020 election against President Donald Trump.
Dominion is seeking more than $1.3 billion from Lindell, a staunch Trump supporter. The company says Lindell contributed to a “viral disinformation campaign” about Dominion on social media, in broadcast interviews, at public pro-Trump rallies and in a two-hour documentary about election fraud — entitled “Absolute Proof” — that he created and paid to air on One America News.
The 115-page complaint, filed in federal court in the District, names both Lindell and his company as defendants.
The complaint also alleges that Lindell, a “talented salesman,” used falsehoods about Dominion to promote MyPillow to fellow Trump supporters.
Dominion sent letters to Lindell in December and January, warning that he was putting himself in legal jeopardy by spreading lies about the company. “Despite having been specifically directed to the evidence and sources disproving the Big Lie, Lindell knowingly lied about Dominion to sell more pillows to people who continued tuning in to hear what they wanted to hear about the election,” the complaint says.
Lindell did not immediately reply to a request for comment Monday morning. He has previously said that he wants to be sued by Dominion because it would give him a chance to prove his unfounded claims.
“If they sue me, I would be so happy,” he told the Daily Beast last week.
Lindell has said that some major retailers have stopped carrying MyPillow products, and Twitter has permanently suspended accounts belonging to both Lindell and his company.
The lawsuit against Lindell is the latest salvo in Dominion’s legal battle to recover its reputation, which has been badly damaged by election-fraud falsehoods that were endorsed by Trump and amplified in conservative media.
The company has already sued Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and has sent retraction demands or preservation notices — often precursors to litigation — to dozens of individuals and businesses.
By Emma Brown
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
There are no kings inside the gates of eden