I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. [emphasis added]
There is a truth and it is on our side, dawn is coming, open your eyes. José González
Unprecedented Government Document Purge Begins in 2025
Beginning on January 20, 2025, a sweeping and unprecedented purge of government information and data from public access websites maintained by federal government agencies. This has happened for such data as climate, weather, environment, energy resources, health and medical and resources. Concurrently, the Trump administration has withdrawn from global climate initiatives, further undermining U.S. government engagement in climate research. Research, development and deployment of climate related applications, tools, services, resources and impactful monitoring capabilities had been fundamentally integrated into our country’s critical scientific infrastructure. Yet today we have no mechanism to respond to the lightning fast removal of taxpayer funded, mission focused climate science information from government sites, along with the deletion of thousands of datasets from repositories managed by federal government agencies, departments and government-sponsored enterprises. The cumulative cost of purging and discontinuing long standing collaborative government, academic and private sector funded climate and health related research is incalculable. The burden of the elimination of programs, jobs and services are immediate. This unilateral attack impacts all states, Red and Blue. See CRS Report, Current Federal Civilian Employment by State and Congressional District. Updated December 20, 2024. “The federal government employs more than 2 million civilians who live and work in every state and U.S. territory. This report provides a snapshot of recent statistics for U.S. government civilian employment in each state and territory, as well as estimates for how many civilian federal workers live in each congressional district. These figures do not include uniformed military personnel or federal contractors.”
As TruthOut stated about attacks on just one pivotal agency data repositories:
When DOGE barged into the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) this week, the scrutiny from Musk’s unelected and unaccountable team added to fears that the collection of agencies the nation relies on to manage fisheries, track climate change, forecast hurricanes and issue severe weather warnings will be gutted and privatized under Trump. Musk reportedly staffed DOGE with young, inexperienced engineers from Silicon Valley.
On February 15, 2025, the Washington Post article See inside DOGE’s playbook for eliminating DEI [unpaywalled] detailed the systemic action plan to censor and purge publically available government documents, and immediately fire large numbers of federal government employees. The Post also published this companion article, Records show how DOGE planned Trump’s DEI purge — and who gets fired next. A DOGE team plans to fire federal workers who are not in DEI roles and employees in offices that protect equal rights, internal documents show. [unpaywalled]
Documents obtained by The Washington Post detail step-by-step plans the U.S. DOGE Service developed to purge federal agencies of diversity, equity, and inclusion workers and offices. DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, aims next to target hundreds of non-DEI workers and what they called “corrupted branches” of offices required by law, which protect civil and employment rights. Reproduced below are selected portions of the documents, which were last edited in mid-January, and outline DOGE’s strategy from Day 1 to Day 180 of the administration. The plan is divided into three phases. Phase 1 focuses on rescissions of Biden administration executive orders related to DEI and shutting down targeted agencies. Phase 2 consists of placing on leave employees in non-DEI roles — who DOGE determines are somehow tied to DEI — as well as other employees working at offices whose existence is mandated by law. Phase 3 is slated to include large-scale firings, the documents show. The nation is now in DOGE’s Phase 2, which is scheduled to last until Wednesday, according to the documents..The ultimate goal is to fire all employees identified as doing DEI-related work, the documents make clear.
And Politico reported, “The layoffs are expected to intensify in the coming days and weeks, according to officials in the White House and across agencies, as additional agencies finalize workforce reduction plans.” The scope of firing federal government employees extends far beyond employees whose work is engaged with DEI and EEOC. Estimates of the number of illegally fired employees to date is 200,000 and includes: researchers, doctors, lawyers, financial experts, nuclear safety engineers, federal aviation administration employees, National Park Service employees, Treasury, IRS and Bureau of Fiscal service professionals responsible for America’s payment systems including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Head Start, SNAP, and so many more.
It is important to clarify the facts now and repeatedly respective to illegal purges of government employees, their duties and work product. These factors are inexorably linked. DEI, science, climate and related research and jobs were the first targets. This administration, mimicked by much of media, claims that vested federal employees as well as employees with one or less years of federal employment at one specific agency, are layoffs or terminations for cause, or part of government wide reductions. To be clear, employees have not been terminated in accordance with federal law. The facts on firing federal employees are highlighted in this February 13, 2025 CRS In Focus paper, Reductions in Force (RIFs): An Overview. The timing and subject matter could be construed as an official effort to justify the law, process and procedure to “separate” federal employees. This paper, written by federal employee subject matter experts, at the direction of members of Congress, does none of these things:
In the federal government, layoffs are referred to as reduction in force (RIF) actions, as authorized under current law (5 U.S.C. §§3501-3504). When an agency eliminates positions, RIF regulations (contained in Title 5, Part 351, of the Code of Federal Regulations) “determine whether an employee keeps his or her present position, or whether the employee has a right to a different position.” The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is responsible for issuing guidance for agencies on RIF procedures. Since 2017, OPM’s Workforce Reshaping Operations Handbook has provided detailed guidance on the RIF process…” [Author’s Note – this Reshaping handbook was used as a basis for round one of the Trump administration illegal firing of federal employees in 2018. These events largely were unreported despite efforts by fired employees to seek redress and public accountability. During that time, a RIF took 4 months to complete per the process and procedures outlined in the ‘reshaping’ handbook. In contrast, this illegal firing spree is predicated upon immediate action, often within minutes of email or verbal receipt of notice of a firing notice.]
This administration is “firing the next generation of scientists from the US workforce.”
Award winning scientists previously hired by our government after a rigorous merit-based job application process were processing the impact of their illegal terminations today. These scientists were the next generation leaders of STEM in our country and the world. With years of experience and demonstrated track records of success in solving real world problems for growers and in managing human and livestock health problems, these individuals were running successful labs doing cutting edge research to protect our nation’s livestock and crops against pests, disease and noxious weeds. They had a stakeholder base who relied on them for deliverables. Probationary periods for these scientists is 3 years. Some were one year in, others almost three. These were not low productivity workers doing low productivity jobs. I know many of them personally for years as friends, mentees and collaborators. These are people who were working 100 hour + weeks for YEARS for no overtime pay, putting in what it takes to make it to the top – a scientist position in the U.S. Govt. These brilliant individuals were expected to simply walk away from a complex, multi-phasic research program that we hired them to develop by COB today. There was no discussion with the government’s intellectual property attorneys, no planning to continue the work on funded grants or other contracts, no chance to distribute biological collections to colleagues across the world. No time to discuss data management. There was no time for questions asked about papers or grant proposals that may be under review. There was no order or dignity to this process. The government ghosted the cream of the crop. Unbeknownst to them, these scientists were ineligible for the deferred resignation program all along. By the time a scientist advances in their career to the stage where they can run their own program, they have already benefitted from years of taxpayer investment in their training. They were at the point in their career where the taxpayers were getting a return on their investment. The impact of losing this talent cuts deep, well beyond the individuals who were fired today. Their postdocs, students and other trainees were left without a principal investigator and trusted mentor. Most scientists in these roles are in their 30s who endured years of personal sacrifice and low pay to have the kind of impact that makes them competitive for a federal scientist position.”
DOGE Hacks Protected Federal Government Data
Concurrently, the monumental cyber crimes associated with the purging, scrubbing and removal of these data are under reported. As technology and security experts Bruce Schneier and Davi Ottenheimer write in Foreign Policy Magazine, DOGE Is Hacking America, “The U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history.” The individuals tasked with entering our federal agencies to delete public data from government websites are not federal government employees, federal government contractors or legitimate federal government personnel on details. They have not been subject to FBI background checks, delivered financial disclosure reports, nor have they been employed using the merit based appointment or hiring process. Their identities, knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) were not provided to any career federal government employees including career supervisory personnel for review and approval to gain access to enterprise network systems. ‘DOGE staff, all from the private sector, were granted authority by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, styled as DOGE, to bypass all requisite government authorizations, policies and procedures. The actions by Musk and DOGE correspond to what is called ‘State Capture’ – when individuals or groups capture different pieces of the U.S. government and turn the state into a tool for wealth extraction. This state capture scenario includes self authorizing access to federal government agency servers, networks and data. The actions of DOGE constitute a cyberattack that has comprised the integrity and security of our nation’s vast data resources, the personal identifying information (PII) managed on the breached systems, and of our national security. Another cybercrime by DOGE occurred on February 14, 2025 when the site openly posted details about the headcount and budget for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency responsible for designing and maintaining U.S. intelligence satellites, on a public server, over which there is no authenticated oversight. The media and public response was muted at best.
Has America Become a Proto-authoritarian State
An overarching, detailed and substantive academic’s description of current events is found in this matrix for what are termed proto-authoritarian states. This is a real time road map for the rapid, systemic and unconstitutional dismantling of our system of separation of powers, the fundamental principle of democracy.
This reference is to the work of Professor Christina Pagel, Prof of Operational Research in Health Care, University College London [via Kottke.org] “who has mapped the actions of the Trump administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”:
- Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government
- Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption
- Suppressing Dissent & Controlling Information
- Attacking Science, Environment, Health, Arts & Education
- Aggressive Foreign Policy & Global Destabilization
This diagram is available as a PDF and the information is also contained in this categorized table. Links and commentary from Pagel can be found on Bluesky as well.”
Executive Order Empowers DOGE Censorship of Government Documents
In addition to hacking networks and purging data, there is a third objective tasked to the DOGE staff who have sweeping control government websites and data repositories. They have been directed to actively scan all federal government documents and webpages with the goal of deleting a long list of words and phrases now deemed illegal, by way of President Trump’s Executive Order on DEI, Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing. The administration’s stated objective is to eliminate not only all DEI related programs, events and staffing, but to delete all DEI related descriptive language [metadata] across all government documents, including bios, job description, reports, research papers and presentations. This directive extends to all the language in documents, data, presentations, research, contracts, grants and contract documents, pertaining to climate and health sciences [including the words – “climate science,” “climate crisis,” “clean energy” and “pollution.”] [Note – This is what the law actually stipulates – 10 U.S. Code § 986 – Policy regarding identification of gender or personal pronouns in official correspondence – The Secretary of Defense may not require or prohibit a member of the armed forces or a civilian employee of the Department of Defense to identify the gender or personal pronouns of such member or employee in any official correspondence of the Department.] Examples of targeted biased words are: women, female, females, identity. Katrina Miller and Roni Caryn Rabin wrote in the New York Times, February 9, 2025: [m]any organizations initiated D.E.I. programs as a way to correct historical under representation in the sciences. According to one report, in 2021, just 35 percent of STEM employees were women, 9 percent were Black and less than 1 percent were Indigenous. “If we want to be the best country for the world in terms of science, we need to leverage our entire population to do so,” said Julie Posselt, an associate dean at the University of Southern California. D.E.I. programs, she added, “have ensured that the diverse population we have can make its way into the scientific work force.”
The wrecking ball tactic of threatening government agencies with firings and even closure, was deployed at the Department of Education, which was forced to direct schools to eliminate all race-based programs and hiring within two weeks. Failure to comply will result in the loss of federal funding.
The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.
The immediate impact of the strategy of expunging science data, ordering an end to public and private DEI initiatives is to completely obstruct and specifically obstruct the ongoing work of women, persons of color, young scholars of color and indigenous persons in STEM research, and also to delete access to their work. The impact of these actions remain largely muted by the daily “flood the zone with shit” strategy touted by Trump loyalist and strategist Steven K. Bannon. The tactic is now emphatically employed by DOGE and Trump, based in large part on the well publicized Project 2025 Text: Mandate for Leadership (searchable). Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff for policy, wields this tactic in his role as lead actor in pursuing the imposition of the Trump agenda to destroy norms, standards, and legal guardrails, and to bestow this president sole power over all branches of the federal government.
Big Banks and Big Tech Are Scrubbing Their Public Mentions of DEI
The broad scale objectives of the Trump anti DEI directive quickly extended beyond the federal government into the corporate sector. The Wall Street Journal reported “Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citigroup and others start to remove or water down language to avoid possible litigation and federal probes.” [Note – unpaywalled access to this article available via MSN]
U.S. banks are scaling back their public support for diversity and inclusion to avoid winding up in the crosshairs of a legal landscape increasingly hostile toward it.Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are removing or watering down public language around efforts to promote or support diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, according to people familiar with the matter. Wells Fargo and Bank of America have also started to pore over their language, some of the people said. The moves mark the beginning of a pullback from Wall Street’s push into DEI, according to bank executives and lawyers, which came after the 2020 protests over the death of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by police. The banks are joining a retreat by many other big companies that have dialed back similar efforts, including Ford, McDonald’s and Walmart. Tech giants such as Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google have done so, too.
Several additional examples of corporate America aligning with the government purge of DEI: “Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr is seeking to open an investigation into Comcast and NBCUniversal’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for potential violations of equal employment opportunity laws, Newsmax has learned…” And as reported by Business Insider, “Disney and Goldman Sachs are two of the latest firms to pull a U-turn on programs and pledges previously made supporting DEI initiatives in recent years. Disney’s chief human resources officer Sonia Coleman told employees in a memo that its DEI efforts were shifting to support business goals and company values. (You can read the full memo here.) That includes DEI’s less prominent role in evaluating executive compensation and scrapping a digital hub for amplifying underrepresented voices…As for Goldman, the Wall Street powerhouse is ditching its 2021 policy that required IPO clients to have at least two diverse board members…” And CBS News reported, “Google’s online calendar has removed default references for a handful of holidays and cultural events — with users noticing that mentions of Pride and Black History Month, as well as other observances, no longer appear in their desktop and mobile applications….But social media users and product experts posting to online community boards have pointed to several holidays and cultural observances that they’re not seeing anymore. In addition to the first days of Pride Month and Black History Month, that includes the start of Indigenous Peoples Month and Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as Holocaust Remembrance Day…”
Capitulating in Advance and the Disappearing Data Tactic
The Trump authorized and DOGE executed ‘Disappearing Data’ tactic has a counter balance in Timothy Snyder’s dictum, Do Not Obey in Advance. Marie Snyder, in her article, Stand Out: How to Prevent Obeying in Advance, advises that we should read and understand the first chapter of his 2017 book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Obeying in advance describes the current response of major national organizations, institutions and groups, in public, private, academic and military sectors, who have demonstrated immediate capitulation, without hesitation, to directions by Trump and DOGE. Many of these edicts are the subject of litigation, and in a number of cases, under order to pause and or reverse and replace, for example, purged website data. One such example is – UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DOCTORS FOR AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. Civil Action No. 25-322 (JDB) – OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT et al., Defendants. Case 1:25-cv-00322-JDB Document 11 Filed 02/11/25 Page 1 of 2. ORDER Upon consideration of [6] Plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order, [8] Plaintiff’s supplemental declarations, [9] Defendants’ opposition, [10] Plaintiff’s reply, the hearing on February 10, 2025, and the entire record herein, and for the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion, it is hereby ORDERED that 1. Defendants Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control, and Food and Drug Administration (hereinafter “defendants”) shall, by not later than 11:59 pm on February 11, 2025, restore to their versions as of January 30, 2025, each webpage and dataset identified by Plaintiff on pages 6–12 of its Memorandum of Law in Support of the Motion for a Restraining Order [ECF No. 6-1]; 2. Defendants shall, in consultation with Plaintiff, identify any other resources that DFA members rely on to provide medical care and that defendants removed or substantially modified on or after January 29, 2025, without adequate notice or reasoned explanation; and defendants shall, by February 14, 2025, restore those resources to their versions as of January 30, 2025.
But as Popular Information wrote on February 11, 2025
The Trump administration is still prohibiting National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff from issuing virtually all grant funding, an NIH official tells Popular Information. The ongoing funding freeze is also reflected in internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information and was reiterated to staff in a meeting on Monday. The funding freeze at NIH violates two federal court injunctions, two legal experts said. The funding freeze at NIH puts all of the research the agency funds at risk. As the primary funder of biomedical research in the United States, NIH-funded research includes everything from cancer treatments to heart disease prevention to stroke interventions. On January 27, the Trump administration, through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), issued a memo requiring federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance,” including “grants and loans” beginning at 5 PM on January 28. The purpose of the spending freeze was to ensure compliance with President Trump’s Executive Orders prohibiting funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or “DEI,” and “woke gender ideology. The Trump administration quickly faced two federal lawsuits, one filed by the National Council of Nonprofits and another filed by 22 states. On January 28, a judge in he National Council of Nonprofits case issued an administrative stay preventing the funding freeze from going into effect. In an attempt to head off the litigation, the OMB rescinded the memo on January 29. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, however, posted on X that the memo was only rescinded to evade the court’s order and the “federal funding freeze” was not rescinded and would be “rigorously implemented.” As the US government removes health websites and data, here’s a list of non-government data alternatives and archives..
On February 12, 2025, Popular Information reported, “NIH leadership distributed a memo, obtained by Popular Information, acknowledging that its funding freeze was illegal and directing staff to resume issuing grants. The memo was written by Michael Lauer, the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, and Michelle Bulls, the NIH Chief Grants Officer. It states that the NIH will “effectuate the administration’s goals over time,” but such considerations cannot factor “into funding decisions at this time.” The memo acknowledges that NIH programs “fall under recently issued Temporary Restraining Orders” by federal courts…” Although this is positive news, it is likely only a very temporary rollback of the ban on research grant funding. Court orders such as these have been ignored, and in other cases, announcements have been delayed resulting in critical gaps in funding and scholarship. Along with the document purges, updates highlight the Trump administration to fire thousands at health agencies.
Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social – UPDATE February 12, 2025: A purge of experienced career staff has begun at NIH. The staff was just informed that Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak, who has worked at NIH for 25 years is “retiring.” Grant funding remains frozen, in violation of two federal court orders.
Government Sponsored Science and Medical Research Compromised
For at least the upcoming four years, America’s ongoing public research and reporting in the sciences, health and medicine will be curtailed. Our country’s research matrix is indelibly interconnected between government and private industry. The impact of the suppression and cessation of government privately funded publications in the fields of medicine, health and sciences will have a calamitous and multi faceted impact on our country, and the world. The immediate response focuses on initiatives to archive all current research and data that has been purged. In addition, there are efforts to shift government sponsored research to the sponsorship of non government funded organizations in the U.S., as well as partners abroad. America may well not be the leader in research and development in the sciences and medicine moving forward. This outcome can be somewhat mitigated if the American public, Congress, the courts, and media acknowledge and engage with the ramifications of Trump’s sweeping campaign of censoring democracy, scholarship, and deleting entire federal agencies. Groups on local and national levels are considering what actions as citizens they can and must exercise in the forthcoming days and months.
Conclusion
Since January 20, 2025 America has been catapulted into an unimaginable inflection point. Do we stand by and submit to the real time dismemberment of our democratic institutions and the mass dismissal of federal employees who work to provide the American public with vital services, or do we choose to defend our democratic government, and the protection and promotion of our collective rights, interests, and welfare? There has as yet been little more than tactic acknowledgement by Congress, the American people, and media in response to the Trump and DOGE attacks against our government that clearly and unequivocally violate the rule of law, and seek as its replacement the ‘law of the ruler(s).’
Those Who Have Stood Up – To Help
For the tens of thousands of federal employees who have been fired, there is a new site, Fed Layoffs, A caring community resource to help federal employees navigate their next chapter. You’re not alone in this journey. [We are not selling anything, we just want to help]
And see also this continuously updated GoogleDoc – Crowdsourcing advice for federal employee