Ultra-High Frequency Communications Pass

people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them

You know who has unmitigated access to my (and all of federal employee’s) sensitive information?

Here’s a hint: it’s not tiktok!

It’s Musk. It’s Musk and his goons that have taken over the Office of Personnel Management. I’m not kidding they have physically taken over the physical office and the database that stores federal employees’ information like pay scale, social security number, home addresses, etc. and it’s now left unprotected.

This should concern everyone because the federal government is the largest employer in the country and I can guarantee that you, the like 5 people who may read this post, or someone you know is or has been a federal employee. And now that information is in the hands of Elon Musk and we don’t know what he is going to do with that information. No, seriously, officials who once oversaw the database and protected that data have said that “there’s no visibility into what they’re doing with the computer or the data,” and “there’s no oversight.” Because Musk and his private employees have physically moved and locked people out of their offices and have changed it so that the people who previously oversaw and had access can only get to their emails.

Right now we know that right now Musk and “OPM” is using the data to send poorly worded emails to all federal employees that are meant to coerce and scare people into taking a shitty deal and resigning. But then what? This is the tip of the iceberg. They have so much data and information for millions of people that the possibilities are endless.

So check in on your friends and neighbors who are federal employees. We’re scared and uncertain about so many aspects of our jobs and our lives. We have been hit with wave after wave of insulting emails telling us that we’re not good at our jobs and that actually our jobs are worthless. We’re facing so many rumors about who has our personal information and what’s being done with it. We are just so tired. And it’s week two. That’s the point - to exhaust us into submission. To my fellow federal workers, hold the line. We’re stronger together and we will get through this.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/

tumblr is great because of how you sometimes second-hand brush against the kind of discourse you couldn't imagine in a nightmare

reddit, how do I make my firstborn stop playing with the fans, the ornaments, and the makeup when he is supposed to be a warlord. I fear I shall raise a poet.

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

A memo from the Trump administration’s top human resources official Monday laid out expansive descriptions of workers who could be stripped of civil service protections this year.

The memo concerns a broad new category of federal workers that could be removed from the so-called “competitive service” and exempted from protections against “adverse actions” like being fired or suspended. These employees would be eligible to be transferred into “Schedule Policy/Career,” which was previously known as “Schedule F.”

According to an executive order President Donald Trump issued in 2020 — and reissued, with some changes, after taking office last week — this new “schedule” of workers will include people in “policy-influencing positions,” defined as “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”

And according to an interim guidance memo sent Monday by Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, the Trump administration thinks this description could fit a whole lot of government workers.

In a bulleted list, Ezell wrote that agencies should consider “rescheduling” positions involved in, among other things, “directing the work of an organizational unit,” “being held accountable for the success of one or more specific programs or projects,” “substantive participation and discretionary authority in agency grantmaking,” including “evaluation of grant applications,” and “publicly advocating for the policies of the agency or the administration, including before the news media or on social media.”

Only a few thousand government employees — political appointees — typically leave their jobs when a new administration comes in. They are far outnumbered by those in the competitive service, who are hired based on merit and have strong employment protections. The broad descriptions in Ezell’s memo could make tens of thousands of career, nonpolitical employees — such as project managers, analysts and clerical workers — eligible to lose those protections, leaving their futures in the hands of their politically appointed superiors.

[...]
Trump’s new executive order goes further than the one he issued in 2020 by stating that jobs eligible to be rescheduled include any involving “duties that the Director otherwise indicates may be appropriate for inclusion in Schedule Policy/Career.” This line, which Ezell mentioned in his memo, expands the Trump administration’s authority to reclassify workers.

The executive order and memo both contain language asserting that civil service protections won’t be stripped based on individual workers’ political beliefs. But the memo says federal employees are required “to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability,” and the new executive order requires they carry out their work consistent with “the vesting of executive authority solely in the President.”

[...]
Trump’s original “Schedule F” order was issued in October 2020 and therefore never fully put into effect. But before Trump left office, a few agencies did put together lists of positions they thought were eligible to be stripped of civil service protections. Among them, according to public records obtained by the National Treasury Employees Union, were IT specialists, human resource specialists and office managers, in addition to policy analysts, economists and legal roles.

Notably, in addition to revoking Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” order, Joe Biden’s administration also went through a formal rule-making process, completed in 2024, to codify existing civil service protections and put up barriers to future presidents attempting to copy Trump’s order.

Now back in office, Trump appears intent on simply bulldozing through that 2024 Biden rule. Not only has an OPM press release for it been erased, but Ezell’s memo also states that Trump used his executive order to simply “directly nullify these regulations” where they stemmed from presidential authority.

Trump’s war on civil service in action: Schedule F is back, and it’s ramped up.

See Also:

• HuffPost: Trump's Smear Campaign Against the Federal Workforce

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