Back to the Office You Go, But Not Quite Yet

The House has some details to attend to before normal operations resume, so it'll be a few more days before all the furloughed feds must head back to the office. 

But for today, please enjoy one of my favorite things: a federal holiday during a government shutdown. A regular employment double negative. All of us who were already home are now out of the office times 2.  

And since we're all home, you might want to watch the National Veterans Day Observance at Arlington National Cemetery. It's online [here], starting at 11 AM. See you all there.

Lawfare Unlocked: Maryland Files Suit Over FBI Relocation Decision

And so, as inevitably will happen in every dispute between two parties in the USA, it's come to a lawsuit.  The big players in Maryland politics are desperate to snatch back that FBI HQ land development deal from the District of Colombia, where the Trump administration recently decided that it should go. 

Their arguments leave me completely unpersuaded, but then, there isn't any money in it for me whichever way the decision goes. 

Maryland's case relies first of all on the premise that a 100 percent proper site selection process resulted in the choice of the Greenbelt, Maryland, site.

Maryland earned the new FBI headquarters through a fair and transparent selection process that took more than 10 years – a rigorous evaluation that identified Greenbelt as the site best suited to meet the FBI's security, operational space, and mission needs," said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown during the news conference.

However, that fair and transparent process had earlier resulted in the selection of the Springfield, Virginia, site, after which a brand new GSA official dropped into the process and overruled the selection committee to award the project to Maryland. 

Most interestingly, that official came from a career at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which coincidentally is the owner of the Greenbelt property. A cynical person might suspect some kind of funny business went on there. 

Anyway, the Greenbelt selection was in turn overridden by the Trumpening, which changed the project concept from one of new, purpose-built, construction to the adaptive reuse of an existing federal office building, the Ronald Reagan Center in DC's Federal Triangle. 

That change in project concept creates what might be Maryland's strongest argument, which is that the Federal Triangle site cannot meet all of the physical security standards that should apply to an FBI HQ. 

And what standards are those exactly? Well, that probably gets into Matters of Official Concern which I must avoid. But I think it can be said without revealing anything sensitive that one of those standards rhymes with "get back." 

The Maryland side must be feeling pretty sure of itself when it plays the security card. We all know that security is sacrosanct in government business, right? 

Wrong! You see, those standards must be interpreted, and application policy followed, not to mention risk assessments performed, cost/benefit analysis done, and final decisions to be made by the responsible officials, including the potential decision to waive standards and accept risk. 

Oh, let me tell you, from the bottom of my governmental heart, nothing is guaranteed where security standards are concerned. 

I'll venture one small guess about what might become of that "get back" problem. It could be risk-analyzed away by someone who reasons that in a built-up urban landscape such as the Federal Triangle a vehicle-borne attacker would have limited approach routes to a target such as the Reagan Building, and therefore adequate "get back" really kinda exists. 

By contrast the Greenbelt site would have practically unlimited straight and level high-speed approaches to its perimeter. 

How's that for being a security problem solver? If this shutdown continues a few more weeks I might just send GSA or DHS a resume and pitch them on my alternative risk mitigation powers.

The FBI Relocation Project Must Comply With the DHS Risk Management Process

Assuming the FBI HQ relocation to the Reagan Building really happens, then some unlucky people will be impressed into a Facility Security Committee and charged with carrying out the extensive Risk Management Process that the Interagency Security Committee requires of federal civilian office facilities.  

I was a bit surprised to find that the RMP is made available in the public sphere, but there it is to inform our public debate over the new FBI HQ. 

The RMP consists solely of process, you understand, and all details about security standards are kept out of public view. Still, please browse that process at the link above and prepare to be impressed by its comprehensiveness, starting with the determination of a facility's baseline Level of Protection and ending with the paperwork for accepting less than the full Level of Protection. 

One suspects that the FBI's Facility Security Committee and its unhappy Chair will be most interested in that last part of the process because, as the RMP recognizes, sometimes the full LOP is not achievable.

In an existing facility, physical limitations and budgetary restrictions may make the necessary LOP [Level of Protection] unachievable. For example, additional standoff distance might not be available; upgrade of window systems to resist blast loads might require complete renovation of the façade so the window system will stay attached to the walls and thus be cost-prohibitive; or the current design of the air handling system could prohibit relocation of air intakes to a less vulnerable area.

Oh, you can say that again. That paragraph ought to have been highlighted in bright neon. 

The full LOP also may not be cost-effective, which is a consideration that could be in play given the vast cost avoidance of the Reagan Building option over the Greenbelt site - reportedly $1.5 billion versus $3.5 billion. 

The process has wiggle room, of course, most notably in the authority given to senior officials to make "intangible adjustment" to the requirements. It is my guess that the White House was sold on the Reagan Building option despite its most glaring physical security vulnerabilty - which rhymes with "get back" - entirely because some clever person saw a way to work around the non-achievable LOP. 

Maybe he'll be right about that, but the acid test will be whether or not he personally signs off on the acceptance of that risk. Do that and it's his ass that'll be on the line. 

Meanwhile DHS and/or the FBI have a whole lot of work to do on that extensive RM process. If the shutdown goes on much longer I might pitch them my consulting services while I wait to go back to work. I'll even use the business name "Rosslyn Shuttle" just to make my qualifications clear!

Senate Majority Moves on New FBI HQ Project in DC, Leaving Maryland Behind

Maryland Senator leans hard on the security argument to oppose administration plan to relocate FBI HQ to federal triangle instead of Greenbelt. https://t.co/BjGSclyH9F

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) October 29, 2025

Maryland's Senator Van Hollen makes two points in his immediate response to today's approval of a prospectus for the relocation of the FBI HQ to the Reagan Building, one of which is laughable and the other of which is serious and heretofore ignored.

First, the laughable one. He calls the majority side's unilateral approval "wholly partisan." No kidding. As all adults know, every government decision is made for political reasons; there are no exceptions. And that's actually how it should be in a representative government. When Senate Democrats have had the whip hand they've used it, as they will again the next time they take the majority. But today, they are out of power. Vae Victis.   

Now the serious point, which is one that Senator Hollen has made before: the Reagan Building will certainly fail to comply with the applicable physical security requirements for an FBI Headquarters building. He rightly calls this a failure to address "glaring security issues" and points out that this matter went unmentioned in today's prospectus. 

Granted, his motive in making that objection is far from disinterested - billions in development money are at stake - however, he's performing a public service anyway a la Adam Smith's 'invisible hand.' 

Out of gratitude for that, I'll do him a favor and point out that the Interagency Security Committee security standards he refers to were not "developed following the 9/11 attacks" but instead originated in 1995 after the Oklahoma City federal office building bombing. That's a common mistake, but a lazy one since you could look it up. Van Hollen's staffers are doing him a disservice. 

My own unsolicited advice is to demo and rebuild the current FBI HQ on the same site. I won't elaborate on my reasons since I've aired them often enough before, and I'm sure I will again as the FBI relocation project creeps on for years to come.

   

One Month In and Substitute Teaching Is Looking Attractive

Reading the political tea leaves, you can get the impression that the shutdown may be settled soon. I'd caution against optimism on that. The Trumpening creates unprecedented conditions that make the old rules of Washington in-fighting no longer apply. 

Looking on the sunny side, you'll note that October is a three-paycheck month for most of us feds (since there are 26 biweekly pay periods in a year but only twelve months), and that may provide a little bemusement. 

I haven't seen this nugget covered by the news media, but at some DOS Bureaus certain of the exempted employees - those are the ones who have to come in to the office despite the shutdown - are actually getting paid. That's because they perform functions the administration has defined as priorities. 

But please keep that quiet, since the large majority of exempted employees are still working without pay. Getting backpay for them after the shutdown ends is authorized by law but is not required, so we'll see how that goes. 

Well, at least us furloughed employees can be happy that we're saving on commuting gas and parking costs. Take that, Arlington County parking meter enforcement quasi-cops!

The Crime of the Colombian Mariner (or, At Length Did Cross a Reaper Drone)

Great slant to how the NYT reports this exchange of accusations: It’s “The administration has provided no evidence to support [its] claims“ while Petro’s “description of Mr. Carranza and his boat could not be immediately confirmed.” https://t.co/YziPnKB5bv

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) October 20, 2025

As an aside, that old Coleridge poem (here) is well worth re-reading, provided of course that you were able to read it the first time back in high school. But that is not my point today.

Today, I'm struck with admiration for the creative power shown by the New York Times in its differing insinuations about the dueling narratives from Trump and Petro, his Colombian counterpart, over one of those kinetic interceptions of drug boats that we're carrying out in the Caribbean Sea. 

Petro, like Trump and his administration, provided no evidence for his claim, which is that an innocent fisherman was killed. But in his case, far from dismissing his claim, the NYT could not "immediately" confirm it. 

That sounds like they almost could confirm it. You get the impression that we should stay tuned because they might well confirm it later today. Or they at least have a good chance of confirming it someday. Just a few missing details to nail down and - wham! - Petro's claims will get the NYT's seal of approval.  

With such nearly poetic talent for between-the-lines messaging on display, I can't understand why the legacy news media is in free fall. 

   

Trump to Traffickers: I"m the Captain Now

https://t.co/o5xOQ6HRFg pic.twitter.com/s9ktAlDQUi

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) September 2, 2025

He's not waiting for arrest warrants or calling for trafficking vessels to stop and be boarded.  

This new drug war will be much less restrained than the ongoing cleanup of DC. 

We the Living

Like most of you who work for the foreign affairs department of the Washingtion DC area's largest employer, I lost a few collegues in the RIF. Unlike some of you, I didn't get a chance to say goodbye before COB Friday came and we were scattered. 

That was a rough way to end an association that, in most cases, went back a decade or longer. Best wishes to them all, and I hope I can at least provide them with job contacts, recommendations, and be a reference for clearance interviews. 

My good friends in Overseas Buildings Operations had it much worse, losing half the Area Management Officers, a large part of Real Estate, and some senior key leaders. That will hurt. 

Of the many news stories I saw about the RIF, this one stood out as being more reflective than most and also addressing the procedure by which the staff cuts were planned: Veteran U.S. diplomats baffled after mass layoffs at State Department.

More than 1,300 employees were forced out of the State Department on Friday, leaving their offices with small boxes of plants and old coffee mugs and taking with them decades of specialized skills and on-the-job training as part of the United States diplomatic corps 

The massive overhaul of the federal agency has been in the works for months, with the Trump administration informing Congress in late May that thousands of State Department employees would lose their jobs as part of the largest reorganization of the department in decades.

Still, the details of whose jobs would be cut remained closely held, and many were shocked to find they were a part of the 15% cut to domestic agency staff. Several career employees who unexpectedly found themselves with pink slips told NBC News they were asked to write speeches and prepare talking points for political appointees on critical issues just days before. 

“It’s so hard to work somewhere your entire life and then get treated this way,” one veteran civil servant with more than 30 years working at the department told NBC News. “I don’t know how you treat people this way. I really don’t.” 

As the termination notices hit inboxes throughout the day, employees could be seen crying in the courtyard and huddling in corners in the hallways, as those who had been laid off lined up to hand in their laptops, phones and diplomatic passports. 

“The manner in which things were done … they were not done with dignity. They were not done respectfully. They were not done transparently,” Olga Bashbush, a laid-off foreign service officer with more than 20 years of experience, told NBC News. 

A senior State Department official briefing reporters on behalf of the agency ahead of the cuts told reporters Thursday that the restructuring was intended to be “individual agnostic.” 

“This is the most complicated personnel reorganization that the federal government has ever undertaken,” the official said. “And it was done so in order to be very focused on looking at the functions that we want to eliminate or consolidate, rather than looking at individuals.”

All true! The planning was certaintly not done transparently. In fact, it was closely held for several months, which says something about the insularity and group loyalty of those at the top. After all, this is the second time around the Department for the Trump administration, and apparently they learned some lessons from the first time. 

Also true that the layoffs were targeted at offices and functions that conflicted with Trump administration policies. On the day of the RIF nobody was in the mood to take a disinterested view of the matter, however, it is important to avoid delusion, especially self-delusion. 

The Trumpening was never going to fight its own government apparatus on issues such as immigration and refugees. There was a fundamentally political disagreement between the White House and some of the functions that were eliminated, and that can only end one way. 

Vox populi, after all. The pendulum keeps swinging. Every four years comes a new election. Sometimes the stars align. 

Meanwhile, we can try to show some human sympathy for the victims this time, and remember that it can just as easily be you and your friends next time.  

New OBO Director Comes From 'Bill Clinton, Inc.' What??

The new Director of Overseas Buildings Operations has been announced, and I freely admit that he leaves me perplexed. 

First, he's not a construction guy. No construction experience at all, but lots of bankruptcy and restructuring work. That's quite odd, especially given that a Trump Administration must be full of construction people, or so you’d think. 

But worse is that he comes from a senior position at Teneo, which is the money-grubbing arm of the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s personal financial benefactor. 

Teneo's website still identifies James Feltman this way:

James (Jim) has more than three decades of experience leading fiduciary and restructuring matters, as well as providing clients with key litigation support and expert witness testimony. As an advisor, Jim has worked primarily on debtor side assignments.

What's up with that? Is Trump putting OBO in receivership? My good friends in OBO didn't do anything to earn that. 

About Teneo, here's a typical news story about its cozy arrangement with the Clintons. Notice that the story comes from NPR and uses Wikileaks stolen email as its sourcing, so it has an impeccable left-side political pedigree despite the content. (So, that means if you dislike the info or the tone, I’ll assume you’re wearing a MAGA hat!)

A newly revealed memo from a former aide to Bill Clinton details substantial overlap between donors to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation and the former president's personal financial activities, a $30 million-plus enterprise described in the memo as "Bill Clinton, Inc."  

Money managers UBS and Barclays, mining giant BHP, and the for-profit educational company Laureate International Universities each made substantial payments to Bill Clinton for speeches or "advisory services," while also contributing to the Clinton Foundation. 

Most of these payments were brokered by Doug Band, who served as a personal aide to Bill Clinton during his White House years, and later as a chief fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation.  

- Snip - 

[Teneo founder] Band's memo also documents the interlocking relationship between the Clinton Foundation's corporate contributors, Teneo clients and Bill Clinton's personal wealth. 

- Snip - 

Band estimated that he'd helped to secure work for the former president that yielded more than $30 million in personal profit between when Clinton left office in 2001 and when the memo was drafted in 2011, with another $66 million in the pipeline at the time.

That is a very strange background for a Trump Admin official. We'll see more from him soon, so we can hope for the best, but prepare for the worse.

Will the FBI Really, at Long Last, Vacate Washington's Ministry of Fear HQ? Maybe.

 

First of all, hey! New York Post, please look up the definition of "commiserate" because I'm pretty sure the new FBI Director actually said "commensurate," which is the word that makes sense in that context. 

OTOH, anyone with a heart can commiserate with those who have to work in or even drive past that edifice of architectural overreach that is the J. Edgar Hoover Building. It was the most expensive government office building ever built in DC - yes, even more costly than the Pentagon - when it was completed in the 1970s - but it's already completely shot, dysfunctional, and not by any stretch physically secure.

It has only one thing going for it, and that is location. It's next to the beautiful Art Deco Justice Department building, which is exactly where a BUREAU of the Justice Department should be if it is to be fully functional. And location is the overwhelmingly important factor in any real estate deal. 

For the FBI is, literally, the Bureau of Investigation of the Justice Department, one of a number of bureaus that report to the Attorney General, and not / not a separate government agency no matter how much it pretends to be the later.

Something else the FBI is not is a national police force. The federal government has very little to do with policing violent crime or indeed most other types of crime. Those remain a local and state responsibility. When Kash Patel says he plans to spread most of the FBI staff out around the country to fight crime, he is walking down the empire-building path of J. Edgar Hoover, which ought to be alarming in this MAGA administration. 

I would have expected The Trumpening to put the FBI back into its administrative box in DOJ, not to achieve Hoover's old gangbusters dream. (By the way, has it ever occurred to you that there is nothing more absurd than an accountant with an assault weapon? It does to me whenever I see FBI agents in Studly Wear and Theatrics - SWaT - costume.)

There is one clear and rational path forward if the Administration and Congress are finally serious about replacing the Hoover Building, and that is to demolish the building and replace it with a smaller one on the same site. That would require no new site selection and purchase, would preserve some vital infrastructure that's on the current site, and would make modern facility security requirements achievable. 

The only downsides are the need to move FBI offices into swing space for a few years, and that the avoidance of an enormous 3+ billion dollar new construction project elsewhere would make some greedy Virginia and Maryland politicians cry. 

Actually, that last one is a plus, not a negative. And so is the first one if the swing space were to be obtained in the former Trump Hotel directly across the street from Hoover's HQ. That hotel is still a GSA property, so far as I know, and it held FBI overflow offices before the Hoover Building was constructed. The FBI would be returning to its roots there.   

     

Illegal Alien and Bunny Torturer Could Bring America Together

 

 

I'm not a fan of punk music generally, but I do like this cover version of our new deportation theme song. it starts pretty easy but then turns hard. Please enjoy!

Now, for the point of this post. Have a look at today's article in the Daily Mail and ask yourself whether you can think of anyone, anyone at all, who would not be happy to see her sent home. Or sent anywhere - Rwanda, El Salvador, Gitmo, wherever - just so long as she doesn't come back here.

 

Can we all agree that this one needs to be deported? https://t.co/c7fWAdlDjD

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) May 9, 2025

 

They're Leaving On a Jet Plane, In Increasing Numbers

https://t.co/c9v1f384l4
Video courtesy: @DEAROCKYMTNDiv pic.twitter.com/NcCtwk8V9m

— FOX21 News (@FOX21News) April 27, 2025

And introducing our new theme song for posts about deportation! 

I think it achieves a jarring dissonance between the nitty gritty of immigration law enforcement and our normal sentimentality about humanitarian treatment.

 

With yesterday's executive order empowering local police to assist federal agencies with the very large backlog of existing deportation orders - well over one million of them! - we'll see a great many more roundups like the one yesterday in Colorado Springs.

The Real Reorg - Which Posts Should Be Closed?

“Neither does [reorganization] involve rhetoric that accuses our diplomats of being ineffective, lacking accountability and concern for American interests.” The problem is, of course, that the voters are not of one mind about what those interests are. https://t.co/jpXJtL4UZj

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 24, 2025

Now that all the journalists, commentators, public policy analysts and barristas - those last two categories overlap - have gotten tired of chasing their tails around and around over last week's preposterous phony reorg plan leak, finally we have the real thing released by the SecState himself. 

Bottom Line Up Front, as we're told to say in memos, State is looking at a 15 percent reduction in force and the closure of a not-yet-defined number of overseas missions. 

The first round of voluntary deferred resignations reduced the ranks a bit already, and a second round was initiated last Friday by a late afternoon email from the new M-DR. In addition to that, I know that some PSC contractors were let go, as were probationary employees. 

How many more reductions will be needed to hit the 15 percent goal? Beats me, but I've seen estimates as low as 700 and as high as 2,500. 

Now, what about the closure of some embassies and consulates? Which ones will go? Lists have floated around for weeks but to the best of my knowledge nothing official has been released. 

Moreover, and much more interesting to me, how will that decision to close a post be made? Instead of publishing a list, whoever is in charge should instead identify rational criteria for making that choice. Such an approach would be fair and be seen as fair, and could be defended before Congress and our various special interests. It might even make sense to the public.  

For instance, how many reporting cables did a post send last year? How many visas issued? How many ACS cases handled? How many desk positions does it support? At some tiny posts all of those figures are in the single digits. 

Objectively and empirically, some overseas posts are not worth the considerable costs to keep them open. And their regional bureaus back in DC know that better than anyone. 

None of this is new, of course. Back in the Clinton administration days the Department reevaluated its overseas presence and identified 20 or 25 posts that could be closed, according to the official history of those years. 

That happened back when VP Al Gore was nosily 'reinventing government' as his ticket to succeeding Clinton in 2020. The reinvention worked out about as well as Gore's political future did. OTOH, they reduced the size of government by about 400,000 positions, or around twenty percent.

I say, always take the long view. We've been here before, and we'll be here again. Government never really gets reinvented. If you want to have a career that lasts a considerable time you've got to roll with the punches. 

  

 

The Real Reorg Chart is Released

Contrary to yesterday’s panic-mongering faux leaks, it appears that AF, INL, and Policy Planning are still with us. https://t.co/oa8q4ipA4u

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 22, 2025

Among the glaring mistakes made by the hoaxster who passed off yesterday's faux leak to a credulous news media, my favorite was the merger of OBO with OFM. Overseas Buildings Operations might sound a lot like the Office of Foreign Missions, but confusing them is a dead give-away that someone didn't bother to so much as search those terms. 

On the other hand, most or all of the news media wasn't any more diligent before they passed those phony leaks on. 

Happily, the real reorg draft plan as released today is considerably more reassuring than the half-informed speculation we saw over the weekend.

Out: Embassy in a Box. In: FLEX

Good detail here, given the limitations of secondary reporting. https://t.co/Jto6pl0l0B

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 16, 2025

Closing diplomatic posts and changing our overseas presence must be a complicated process, so you'd expect there to be a manual or instructions of some kind. Well, you'd be right, and it's right here in a publicly available document. Feel free to really explore the bureaucratic minutia. 

Assuming you've read that Punchbowl article, let's discuss a few things. 

First, is "FLEX" an acronym, and if so what does it stand for? The answer is yes, and it stands for Fast, Lean, Efficient, and Expedient. In practice that sounds like diplomatic missions of limited scope and scaled-down facilities. Like what a tiny house is to a regular house. 

Another term that probably made you curious is the concept of closed missions being “folded into” nearby embassies. Very odd. My guess is that means some functions and personnel would simply be moved to those nearby missions, and maybe ambassadors would be regionally-accredited to more than one country.  

And what about that plan for our Tri-Mission posts (Rome, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, etc.)? They're in for a shock if the international missions are moved into our bilateral embassies. Can three ambassadors share a single building??? Who gets first dibs on the pool or tennis court??? Endless petty annoyances would ensue. 

Nothing will bring out in-fighting better than a struggle over an up-to 50 percent budget cut. Coming soon.

Annnd, Away We Go! State Budget Cuts On the Table

Up to 30+ posts would be closed, $$ to multinationals, NGOs such as the East-West Center, UN peacekeeping, and INL zeroed out, migration and refugee programs cut in half. We’ll see how much Congress shares the enthusiasm. https://t.co/FiYgrC62JI

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) April 14, 2025

There's still a world of politics and process between an unofficial budget proposal and an actual congressional appropriation, so don't everyone take a deferred retirement just yet. 

Last Stand at U.S. Institute of Peace (Includes a Gun Safe and the Car Left Behind)

Changes of power often entail the use of a bit of force to shake up the bitter-enders among the losing side. The USIP seems an unlikely place for that, nevertheless that's what happened here in the nation's capitol last week. 

According to a law suit and multiple news reports, the USIP leadership and a few loyalists barricaded themselves in the USIP's large and impressive headquarters building, even to the point of removing outer lock keyways from its entrance doors, trying to disable them. Reportedly they also disabled elevators, electronic access controls, and phone systems. 

According to a lawsuit filed last week the dastardly DOGE invaders finally gained entrance by enlisting former security guards employed by a private security agency that USIP recently ended its contract with. The agency did not return USIP's master key when the contract ended. 

Reportedly, DOGE was able to gain the agency's assistance by threatening to cut off all its federal contracts. (Here I am reminded of Machiavelli's warning that mercenaries cannot be trusted.)

Once the lower battlements had thus been breached, USIP’s leadership barricaded themselves on the building’s top floor. A sound tactical move, that, since the top floor usually makes the best place for a last refuge during a siege, whether in an embassy's safe haven or a castle's Keep.   

The siege was soon over, but DOGE offered merciful terms of surrender and the defeated survivors were permitted to leave unharmed, although without their personal property or even the car belonging to the vanquished former President of USIP. 

One big surprise, to me at least, came in a court declaration filed Wednesday by USIP's outside counsel George Foote where he stated that after the former security agency's employees heard his protest that they were trespassing “they ignored this and proceeded to walk toward USIP’s gun safe.”  

WHAT? The institute of peace felt it necessary to have firearms on the premises? Evidently our professional peacekeepers think there are limits to the practical value of conflict resolution techniques. Like, if they feel personally threatened they want the option of bustin' a cap in some troublemaker's ass. 

Not that I disagree, but, well, I now feel disillusioned. How were those guys going to end conflicts and  create peace in the whole world if they don't trust themselves to cool down a few former contract employees? 

SCOTUS to POTUS: Bring Me the Head of Abrego Garcia

 

Not to be confused with the object of that 1974 second-tier Sam Peckinpah movie, but the coincidence of names is worth noting. 

As it was with Alfredo, so it is with Abrego - some powerful people want him returned, only in this case with his head still attached to his body. Read the SCOTUS decision here. 

The current Garcia is, of course, a Salvadoran citizen who is in the custody of the Salvadoran government. That'll make him very easy to find but very hard to return. 

In any case, all SCOTUS asked of the Trump administration was that it "facilitate and effectuate" his return. So, short of ordering SEAL Team 6 to rescue him from Salvador's Center for Terrorism Confinement, I'd guess the administration will be unable to deliver.

SCOTUS should brace itself for disappointment. 

DOGE Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, The View From State

Please read The Inside Story of DOGE's State Department Reforms by Peter Van Buren. 

PSCs and LES have been the hardest hit by The Trumpening 2 up to this point, but just wait for the RIFs and FAM revisions! 

His bottom line from this excellent article:

Everything is in flux at present and no one should make any decisions based on this or any other article. But what is clear is that this time Trump means business. Unlike the small-scale RIF which took place at State during the Clinton administration, this time it’s for real, a seemingly determined effort to downsize the State Department both at home and abroad while at the same time likely increasing the authority of political appointees. It is both a paradigm shift and a power shift away from a more-or-less independent State Department (and other agencies) toward a concentration of power higher in the executive branch.

The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration is bound to take most of the hit, but there will probably be some effect on every office that isn't doing public safety, law enforcement, or immigration enforcement. 

If you aren't in one of those functional areas, brace for impact. 

DOGE Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

 

So far DOGE has been snapping at the heels of us feds, coming for probationary employees and the more easily intimidated of the geezers who were on the verge of retirement anyway. (The dismantling of USAID was an exception to this rule.)

But the rumors today are that the Trump Administration is planning a second Reduction In Force pass aimed at tenured employees. That will largely depend on the reorganization plans that all departments are to file by the middle of next month. The TechyBoyz of DOGE will scrub those plans on high alert for signs of redundancy or duplicated efforts, even among those functions which have a statutory basis. 

But exactly how good are those Boyz? They've stepped on their dicks a few times already, you know. 

They sent that What Did You Do Last Week email to legislative and judicial employees, as well as the intended targets in the executive branch of government. Apparently they need to ask Grok to read the Constitution for them and explain that thing called "separation of powers."

They also made the rookie mistake of not considering out-of-office and automatic replies to that omnibus Reply to This if You Want to Retire Now email. What do you suppose that some people who do not want to retire now have been receiving a welcome to the deferred retirement program anyway based on their auto replies. Ooops.

And those are just minor mistakes compared to the absurdity of the premise that someone, somewhere, was going to read 2.4 million emails, or even scan them for key words. That's not going to happen.

Maybe the TechyBoyz have some super-tricky algorithm that will do that DOGE work for them? They better hope people will believe they do, otherwise they're just IT guys in tee shirts.  

I say, take heart, and don't give in to exaggerated fears. But also update that resume and, if the worst comes, remember that the world always needs substitute teachers.