Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.

Destroying government records is illegal and the people doing it should face grievous consequences. The attorneys overseeing it should be disbarred.

Michael Clemens@mclem.org · 12mo ago

The US Administration is now deleting its internal communications, in brazen violation of the Federal Records Act, in order to conceal its other illegal acts. Those entrusted to enforce our Congress’s laws sit, simply watching this happen, flaccid and impotent.

Today in the @missouriindependent.com I shared how new Medicaid red tape imposed by Republicans will kick over 10 million people off their healthcare, including more than 180,000 people in Missouri ‼️ missouriindependent.com/2025/06/06/r...

Republicans' new Medicaid red tape will push Missouri to the brink and block healthcare for millions • Missouri Independent

The budget bill passed by the U.S. House will kick millions of people off of Medicaid by piling on new red tape.

missouriindependent.com

Interesting heuristic here: since the overwhelming majority of people are employed, almost by definition the majority of people who lose SNAP benefits to paperwork requirements will be people who have just lost their jobs. An odd group to target for an austerity campaign!

Matthew Cortland (they)@matthewcort.land · last yr.

Agriculture text is out. Will go through it in this thread. tl;dr: this'd be the largest SNAP (nutrition assistance, formerly food stamps) cuts in history. It would severely worsen food insecurity in America.

My daughter’s speech therapist went out of business because Medicaid reimbursement rates were too low. We do not have Medicaid. I’m going to keep posting this until people understand that when Medicaid gets cut *everyone* loses services.

When government capacity is intentionally reduced, anyone with needs out of the ordinary is the first feel the failure

AltSSA@altssa.altgov.info · last yr.

3/? So I was sent a story from an employee at SSA telling me that they had to turn away a customer who had scheduled an appointment and tell them they could not help them. Because that person requested an ASL interpreter for their appointment. To be clear, it’s all over our website that if you need

Some news about RIFs within HHS's procurement staff. I oversaw HHS procurement policy as an assistant secretary for a year and know folks still there. Heavy sledding alert, but TLDR: Enormous cuts make contract bloat and fraud far likelier. 1/10

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women. More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications. I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.

I helped build a government AI system. DOGE fired me, rolled the AI out to the whole agency, and implied the AI can do my job and the jobs of the others they've fired. It can't. But, what DOGE accidentally revealed about themselves in the process is fascinating. 🧵

18F alum here. While I appreciate the well-deserved attention the 18F team is getting, let's address a fundamental misunderstanding of why 18F was so effective in working with other govt agencies to improve their digital services and why starting a consulting company is not a substitute. 1/

Mark Cuban@mcuban.bsky.social · last yr.

If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company. It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably create. They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms. I’m happy to invest and/or help

Every year, OPM runs the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to find out how feds feel about their jobs. It's a big deal for agencies, who all want to be top-ranked. (IIRC, NASA usually wins.) This year, OPM is skipping it. www.chcoc.gov/content/2025...

... and one of the reasons why you haven't heard of 18F is because 18F's successes are really down to the agencies, departments, and programs. Because they're responsible for the tech. And you want them to be responsible, not a small authoritarian unaccountable cadre that works in secret.

18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was demolished by Musk’s team shortly after midnight. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 billion.

Mourning 18F’s elimination as a former employee but even more so as a former 18F agency customer. Unlike DOGE, 18F did the hard work of cultural transformation and sharing their methods with other Feds as they helped improve services. They weren’t just techies, they were teachers.

Ryan Mac 🙃@rmac.bsky.social · last yr.

18F, a digital services unit inside the General Services Administration, has been completely laid off, according to an email I’ve seen. The email says that 18F was deemed “non-critical” and the decision was made with the “explicit” direction of the administration and GSA leadership.

I would much rather have a crossing guard by my neighborhood school who occasionally smokes pot on the weekend than no crossing guard, which is the current situation. This risk calculus seems wrong. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Drug test failures fueling shortage of school crossing guards in D.C.

More than two in five who apply to be crossing guards test positive, largely for marijuana, a drug D.C. legalized a decade ago.

washingtonpost.com

The point of excluding categories of people from the military like this is to send the message that they are unworthy of citizenship, it is pure bigotry and the assumptions behind it are disproven by the honorable service of the people being targeted in the first place bsky.app/profile/bran...

Brandon Friedman@brandonfriedman.bsky.social · last yr.

If transgender service members don't voluntarily agree to resign, they'll be forced by the Defense Department to repay the signing bonuses they received at enlistment. Not only will they be fired, they'll be punished with thousands of dollars in debt. All for attempting to serve their country.

Don’t make me tap the sign (cc RFK Jr)

This is like if the mob got to fire every federal agent investigating organized crime bsky.app/profile/make...

makena kelly@makenakelly.bsky.social · last yr.

I'm hearing now that *every* technologist CFPB hired to investigate Big Tech was fired this evening. That's somewhere between 70-100 people. wired.com/story/dozens-of-cfpb-workers-terminated-in-after-hours-firing-blitz/

1/ I suspect we are days away from hearing Elon is "using AI" to “streamline” benefits programs. You should know why fully automating decisions about who gets critical assistance is a terrible idea that will have disastrous consequences. A 🧵 based on work I’ve done with the great @awhf.bsky.social

Musk Allies Discuss Deploying A.I. to Find Budget Savings

A top official at the General Services Administration said artificial intelligence could be used to identify waste and redundancies in federal contracts.

nytimes.com

Hello week 2 of tax filing season! 💥 Direct File is live and you can now import your tax information directly from the IRS. Visit DirectFile.irs.gov to check eligibility and learn more. 👏

Merici@merici.bsky.social · 2y ago

It’s the first day of tax filing season and Direct File is live. 💥 Remember, Direct File is fully secure, accessible, and available across all devices. You can file your taxes you live in anyone of the 25 states below 🚀

Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at how the US media would cover this story if it was happening in a foreign country. Here’s that story that should be written this weekend: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...

Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government

Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now

doomsdayscenario.co

There appear to be at least three separately operating heel factions breaking things within the government in wholly different ways right now. There's the Miller-headed immigration one, the DOGE/Elon one, and a Project 2025 OMB one. This dynamic hasn't showed up in mainstream reporting at all.

Appreciate that @wyden.senate.gov is asking important questions about access to the payments system. Journalists, please raise these up. I hope more actions will be taken ASAP. www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-ne...

Wyden Demands Answers Following Report of Musk Personnel Seeking Access to Highly Sensitive U.S. Treasury Payments System | The United States Senate Committee on Finance

Wyden Demands Answers Following Report of Musk Personnel Seeking Access to Highly Sensitive U.S. Treasury Payments System

finance.senate.gov

“He’s applying the same destructive playbook to the federal government, where the stakes involve not just user experience or advertising dollars, but the basic functioning of American democracy.” www.techdirt.com/2025/01/31/e...

Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous

Remember how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by ripping apart its infrastructure without understanding it? Now imagine that same playbook applied to the federal government. It’s happening, and th…

techdirt.com

We can help feed each other and clothe each other. We can take each other in and provide shelter. We can raise money. We can know our rights when it comes to ICE, etc. But I can’t fly a fucking plane. “We’re all we have” has its limits. We need government regulations for a reason.

I’ve spent about 2-3 hours each day on calls or chats with my US gov friends. Here’s an anonymized recap of what’s going on. First, I am so very sorry that they are living our last year at Twitter. I never wanted to think about that time again, and I hope my advice is helpful. 1/

What counts as modern versus traditional or novel versus revivalist is subjective, after all, and a good firm like SOM can design within constraints to deliver a decent project. But this time the goal is to change the procurements process — who selects the firms and even who contractors can hire.