VA Employee: Musk’s Goal Is to Pave Way for Privatization of Public Services

Reporters, staff and now judges throughout the nation are disputing the cost-cutting claims of Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, which has focused federal staff throughout a number of sectors with firings, compelled resignations and threatened layoffs. One of many thousands and thousands of Individuals being impacted by DOGE’s draconian measures is Latisha, an worker on the Division of Veterans Affairs. She says that Musk’s current demand ordering federal staff to electronic mail a abstract of their work from the previous week was “insulting” and “disrespectful,” and that “his actual objective is to intestine public providers within the federal workforce and pave the best way for privatization of public providers, items and applications that all of us want and love.” She outlines how Black Individuals and veterans, who’re disproportionately represented among the many ranks of federal staff, are being notably affected by these cuts. We additionally communicate to ProPublica editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg about his current reporting on a “clearly flawed, clearly disproved” statistic being cited by the Trump administration concerning the variety of federal staff who’re working remotely. The statistic is getting used to justify the “king-like powers” claimed by Trump and the nepotistic hires at DOGE, says Engelberg.

TRANSCRIPT

This can be a rush transcript. Copy is probably not in its ultimate type.

AMY GOODMAN: We start as we speak’s present taking a look at rising resistance to Elon Musk’s calls for and threats to the federal workforce, and the way reporters are disputing the cost-cutting claims of his so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE.

On Monday, a federal choose quickly blocked DOGE from accessing personal info on the Workplace of Personnel Administration and Schooling Division.

Additionally on Monday, a unique federal choose mentioned the best way DOGE is working could also be unconstitutional because the the appointments clause of the Structure requires leaders of federal companies to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and Elon Musk was neither nominated nor confirmed.

This all comes after the Trump-appointed heads of key companies, together with FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, all advised their staff to not adjust to a requirement Musk made on Saturday to all 2.3 million federal staff. On his social media platform X, Musk wrote, quote, “In line with President @realDonaldTrump’s directions, all federal staff will shortly obtain an electronic mail requesting to grasp what they acquired carried out final week. Failure to reply shall be taken as a resignation,” unquote.

In response, the president of the American Federation of Authorities Workers known as Musk “unelected and unhinged.”

In the meantime, President Trump backed Musk’s plan, calling it a, quote, “fairly ingenious thought,” and mentioned staff who don’t reply can be, quote, “semi-fired or fired,” even because the Workplace of Personnel Administration contradicted him and mentioned responses had been voluntary.

Elon Musk doubled down on Sunday, writing on X, his social media platform, quote, “Numerous good responses have been obtained already. These are the individuals who must be thought of for promotion,” unquote. Critics famous a promotion would make them probationary, and Musk has directed federal companies to fireplace probationary staff.

For extra, we’re joined by two friends. Stephen Engelberg is ProPublica’s editor-in-chief, which has a group of reporters protecting Donald Trump’s second presidency. And in Philadelphia, we start with a federal employee on the Division of Veterans Affairs, the place the Trump cuts already led to the dismissal of greater than 1,000 newly employed staff, together with nurses, docs and different staff. Latisha is utilizing solely her first identify for interviews, partially out of concern of reprisal. She’s additionally a member of the American Federation of Authorities Workers.

We welcome you each to Democracy Now! Latisha, let’s start with you. You’re employed on the Division of Veterans Affairs. All 2.3 million federal staff have gotten this message they should say what they did this week, and in the event that they don’t reply, they are going to be thought of resigned — besides that plenty of completely different company heads mentioned you shouldn’t reply to that electronic mail. And but President Trump says it was an “ingenious thought.” Are you able to clarify the sort of chaos within the Veterans Affairs Administration proper now? How are federal staff feeling and responding?

LATISHA: Good morning, Amy. Thanks a lot for having me and for drawing consideration to this nationwide struggle. I simply need to make the disclaimer that issues that I share as we speak are my private views and of my expertise, and I’m not representing my company nor my union in any style.

The e-mail — “What did you do final week?” — it’s insulting. It’s disrespectful to the work that federal staff do each single day. As you talked about earlier, it prompted mass confusion, additionally concern for privateness and the safety of the very delicate and confidential info federal staff deal with each single day.

This can be a recreation to DOGE. This can be a recreation to Elon. He has acknowledged that it’s a ruse. And federal staff are studying and understanding that that is all a ruse, proper? It’s beneath the guise of effectivity, of accountability, however we all know the “impolite awakening,” that Elon calls it, or the second dose of actuality, which is his actual objective, is to intestine public providers within the federal workforce and pave the best way for privatization of public providers, items and applications that all of us want and love.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Nicely, Latisha, the VA is without doubt one of the largest companies within the federal authorities, about 400,000 staff. What was the communication you bought from VA supervisors about — if any, about what it’s best to do when it comes to this deadline that Musk imposed?

LATISHA: Sure. So, you realize, we had been on the time — you realize, earlier a part of the day, earlier than we had been then advised that we didn’t should reply, you realize, our union, in addition to our company, did direct us to conform to the request.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what has been the morale and the — of your fellow staff as you’re going through this contradictory pronouncements and bulletins of layoffs, rescinding of layoffs? Might you discuss what the impression is in your day-to-day work?

LATISHA: Positive. So, you realize, together with myself, in addition to my colleagues, that is very distressing for us. It’s demoralizing, and it’s dehumanizing. We all know what we do for the federal authorities, for the American public, really, each single day. Like, the US Postal Service ensures that mail will get processed and delivered to each residence tackle in the US of America. The Shopper Safety Bureau ensures that, you realize, these companies are held accountable and ensuring that on a regular basis working households aren’t being scammed.

It’s demoralizing. We all know that it’s meant to be intimidating, to sow chaos and confusion for the last word objective of gutting public providers and, you realize, paving a means for Elon and his very rich, disgustingly rich allies to achieve extra revenue. And it’s not proper. You already know, if Elon is profitable, it will impression working households in every single place. Actually, it already is, proper? With the lack of jobs, with the mass resignations, there shall be, and has already been, maybe delays in processing of claims at Social Safety and Medicare. Delays will come for medical take care of veterans. You already know, our public lands is not going to be prepared and accessible and secure for the summer season and spring seasons. This can proceed to have deleterious impacts for a lot of generations to come back. And I’m very completely satisfied to be part of a gaggle of casual rank-and-file staff who’re preventing again in opposition to these austerity measures.

AMY GOODMAN: Along with Latisha, who’s a Veterans Affairs federal employee, we’re joined by Stephen Engelberg, who’s ProPublica’s editor-in-chief, which has a group of reporters protecting President Trump. In December, Stephen, you wrote ”An Open Letter to Elon Musk,” through which you instructed his Division of Authorities Effectivity learn the ProPublica reporting on wasteful practices and spending by federal companies.

On Monday, you wrote a piece headlined “The Trump Administration Retains Citing an Unfaithful Stat as It Targets Federal Employees.” It begins, “Because the administration of President Donald Trump throws one authorities company after one other into the ‘wooden chipper,’ a startling statistic about federal staff retains arising: Solely 6% of federal staff are working full time of their workplaces.

“By any post-pandemic commonplace, it’s an astoundingly low quantity, notably as main American companies transfer to drive staff again to the workplace 5 days every week.

“It’s additionally utterly unfaithful,” unquote.

Stephen Engelberg, discuss why you dug into this one false declare amongst many, what you discovered, and the way it suits into the larger image right here, why that is so vital.

STEPHEN ENGELBERG: Good morning, Amy.

Nicely, in fact, we’re listening to an terrible lot of issues which might be unfaithful — you realize, Ukraine attacked Russia, so on. I discussed within the piece the, you realize, rise and fall of the $50 million in condoms to Gaza. So, there are a lot of, many sort of false claims filtering round right here.

This one caught my eye, as a result of it was a little bit of a kind of a kerfuffle in early December. A senator from Idaho, Senator Joni Ernst, who’s been a longtime foe of the federal workforce’s purported wasteful practices, put out a report, and it mentioned 6% of federal staff — solely 6% of federal staff present as much as work Monday by way of Friday. And the minute that got here out, it was on — it was within the New York Submit. You already know, Hannity picked it up, Fox Information, Speaker Mike Johnson. So, it was in every single place.

And, you realize, being an investigative kind — we at ProPublica do plenty of investigative reporting — I used to be simply curious: The place did this come from? And so, I went to the report. The report had footnotes. And the footnote took me to one thing that was a narrative carried out by Federal Information Community, an operation out of Washington that covers the federal workforce. They usually had carried out a kind of utterly unscientific survey saying, you realize, “Write in if you wish to inform us about your work habits.” And so, they acquired a little bit over 6,000 folks writing in. And by the point that I acquired to the web site, they’d put an editor’s observe in, saying that is an unscientific survey, everyone seems to be self-selected. There is no such thing as a chance that that is really correct.

Actually, the OMB has carried out sort of the definitive survey of this, and, initially, solely 50% of federal staff can work remotely in any respect. So, half the workforce goes to work every single day, as a result of, if we give it some thought, plane carriers and veterans’ hospitals and so forth. I imply, the docs can’t work remotely. The nurses can’t work remotely. The 5,000 sailors on an plane service, they’re not working remotely. So it was clearly flawed. After which, of the remaining 50% of us, they spend about 60% of their time at work. So, this statistic was clearly flawed, clearly disproved.

And admittedly, I didn’t suppose it was a lot of a narrative, as a result of, you realize, there was — you realize, the assorted fact-checking web sites got here out a couple of days later, picked up the editor’s observe on the story and mentioned, “Look, that is baloney.” PolitiFact mentioned, you realize, “pants on fireplace,” which is the bottom attainable score for fact of a political assertion.

However then, lo and behold, when Trump took workplace, this factor began popping up once more. On January twentieth, it was in Trump’s reality sheet explaining why they’re going to chop the federal workforce. And so, I assumed that was price sort of honing in on and kind of explaining to folks. The primary iteration of this, the report, may need been a little bit of sloppy analysis, you realize, misreading of a narrative in a footnote by any individual writing a report. However the second iteration of it was not. That was carried out with malice of forethought. And I assumed that was price stopping and telling folks, in order that’s why I did the story.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Stephen, I’m questioning when you may discuss concerning the standing of DOGE, what precisely it’s. Considered one of your articles in ProPublica says, “If DOGE is a federal company, it could actually’t defend its data from the general public,” which the Trump administration has been doing. However “If it’s not an company, then DOGE’s tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in funding weren’t legally allotted and must be returned,” some individuals are contending. Might you discuss this limbo space that DOGE exists in?

STEPHEN ENGELBERG: Yeah, I imply, I feel the best way they’re dealing with it’s, you realize, regardless of the general public statements about transparency, to restrict any transparency. You already know, as your viewers little question observed, after they had been kind of challenged on this, they started placing out some notion of what they’re doing. You already know, discuss “inform me 5 stuff you did final week.” DOGE started reporting a number of the issues they’ve carried out, and mentioned, “Look, we’ve saved $55 billion.” And it turned out it was nowhere close to that.

So, I feel that is designed — you realize, you’ll discover they’ve gone spherical and spherical on who even runs DOGE. I imply, you realize, at one level, clearly, the president mentioned, “I’m appointing Elon Musk to run this factor.” After they started to note that perhaps which may have authorized implications, they introduced that, no, he’s not operating it in any respect. However they received’t say who’s operating it.

You already know, it walks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. It’s a duck. I imply, this can be a federal company. It’s wielding arguably probably the most energy that any federal company has ever wielded. I imply, when different presidents who had been, let’s say, skeptical of the federal workforce turned president, the Workplace of Personnel Administration, which runs, is the HR kind of arm of the federal government, they weren’t capable of fireplace hundreds upon hundreds of staff at a stroke. So, I feel it’s fairly clear. And I feel that, finally, this shall be concluded that DOGE is a federal company, and whoever is operating it’s the chief of an company, and that’s going to have plenty of implications.

AMY GOODMAN: I needed to go to a video that ProPublica and Documented obtained from a 2023 speech by the now, effectively, director of the Workplace of Administration and Price range, Russell Vought, who is taken into account one of many chief architects of Challenge 2025. He spoke at a non-public gathering on the pro-Trump suppose tank Heart for Renewing America. Right here, Vought is describing his objective of defunding federal bureaucracies.

RUSSELL VOUGHT: We would like the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We would like — after they get up within the morning, we would like them to not need to go to work, as a result of they’re so — they’re more and more considered because the villains. We would like their funding to be shut down, in order that the EPA can’t do all the guidelines in opposition to our power business, as a result of they haven’t any bandwidth financially to take action. We need to put them in trauma.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Stephen Engelberg, discuss concerning the significance of what Russell Vought, now, as soon as once more, head of OMB, mentioned.

STEPHEN ENGELBERG: I feel it’s extremely essential. I imply, it’s a humorous factor. You already know, you do plenty of tales within the run-up to an election, and I do not forget that one pretty vividly. And I assumed, you realize, that it was chilling, it was essential. We performed it up loads. However I additionally questioned if this was a kind of rhetorical flourish, as this stuff typically are.

That’s not a rhetorical flourish. You take heed to that and also you take a look at what’s occurred, and you may see that’s the recreation plan. No matter they mentioned throughout the marketing campaign about “2025 is just not actually what we’re going to do,” I feel it’s turning out it’s precisely what they’re going to do.

And particularly, that one clip gave us as a lot of an perception as any into this sort of summary factor that they are saying: “Nicely, it’s a unitary government” I imply, this can be a kind of pretty fringe authorized argument that now could be on the heart of our nation, which is that you simply don’t actually have any independence within the government department; the president leads the manager department, and subsequently, he can rent and fireplace anyone at any time. There are some issues the place we’ve a degree of norms, proper? I imply, generals can get fired. Earlier presidents have fired varied senior generals. So, you’ll be able to’t say that that was in opposition to the regulation. However then you have got different issues just like the Shopper Fraud Safety Bureau — the Shopper Finance Safety Bureau, CFPB, or the EEOC, that are unbiased companies, and legal guidelines counsel which you can’t simply fireplace the people who run these.

And the argument right here is, “Sure, you’ll be able to. The president is the president. Separation of powers implies that all people who works for the manager department, beneath any circumstances — inspector generals, you identify it — they’re all topic to dismissal instantly by the president,” since he has what, you realize, he himself, I feel, is now referring to as king-like powers.

And that’s what is driving this. And Vought is an architect of that viewpoint. So, I feel that clip seems to be probably the most essential issues we did within the run-up to the election, way more essential even than we understood on the time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I needed to ask you — additionally, you’ve been monitoring fairly a couple of of the workers of DOGE. Lots of them haven’t gotten a lot consideration. Considered one of them that you simply tracked was a lady by the identify of Katherine Armstrong Loving, who has been apparently connected to EPA. She, it seems, is the sibling of Brian Armstrong, who runs the business crypto firm Coinbase, which, by the best way, donated, as you talked about, $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. How does this sq. with Trump’s promise to empty the swamp?

STEPHEN ENGELBERG: Nicely, I imply, I feel, you realize, we’re going to be studying an increasing number of as time goes on. And, you realize, it definitely seems that the hiring of individuals working for DOGE went by way of the kind of private networks of assorted folks, you realize, individuals who labored at Palantir, different sort of Silicon Valley issues, folks from SpaceX. It isn’t the slightest shock, I feel, to anyone that a few of these people are going to turn into siblings, pals and allies of assorted contributors.

The issue right here, once more, is that when you’re going to offer this group of individuals absolute energy and there’s no transparency, how is the general public to know after they stumble/stroll straight into an apparent battle of curiosity? I imply, there’s a lot occurring. You already know, there was a second there the place any individual discovered a contract that the State Division was going to purchase $400 million price of Teslas. After which it was rapidly kind of erased. And Trump retains saying, “Nicely, we simply received’t let Elon do something that’s a battle of curiosity.” However when you take a look at the vary of his firms and his wealth, it’s a lot of the authorities. I imply, you realize, it isn’t simply automobiles. It isn’t simply rockets. You already know, Neuralink is an organization that has main kind of oversight from the Meals and Drug Administration, and he’s making an attempt to create this cutting-edge know-how referring to the mind, and so forth and so forth and so forth.

So, I imply, you realize, there’s no person residence. They fired the primary authorities ethics officer. I imply, I feel that’s saying it with phrases. You discuss draining the swamp as a factor, however let’s not take a look at what you say. Let’s take a look at what you do.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to finish with Latisha. Latisha, you’re a federal employee with the VA, a really susceptible inhabitants, I imply, the best in any group of individuals, the best variety of suicides every single day. I hear concerning the slicing, the slashing of the LGBT workplace throughout the VA. In the event you may begin off, although, by speaking concerning the racial composition of federal staff?

LATISHA: Sure, Amy. That’s an awesome query. So, first off, I do need to share that about 30% of our complete federal workforce are U.S. navy veterans. And my understanding is that about one in 5 of all VA staff are veterans, as effectively. So, you realize, not solely do I serve veterans in my capability, I work alongside them, as effectively. You already know, these veterans are the supporters of their households and usher in revenue for a lot of of our working households, so it is going to have a deleterious impression on them.

Particularly — excuse me — there’s a lengthy historical past of Black staff within the public sector. Since 1861, the federal authorities has been using Black staff. As of, effectively, post-World Struggle II, really, there have been about 150,000 Black staff throughout the federal authorities. And these people had been lobbying. They had been organizing to be sure that everybody within the federal authorities had extra truthful working practices, safer situations and stronger collective bargaining rights. At present, 20% of the complete — of all Black staff in the US of America work throughout the public sector, incomes a dwelling wage, dwelling with extra stability and, importantly, receiving lifesaving, life-changing advantages. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, 25 — or, Black staff within the public sector make about 25% greater than these within the personal sector.

So, yeah, it will have a significant impression on Black households particularly. Black households can not afford to lose these jobs. As a predominantly working-class inhabitants, we’ve to struggle, resist DOGE and these austerity measures, and the bigger struggle for racial justice, and in addition to the bigger struggle to avoid wasting our democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Latisha, we need to thanks for being with us, a federal employee with Veterans Affairs, member of the American Federation of Authorities Workers, and Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica editor-in-chief. We’ll hyperlink to your piece, “The Trump Administration Retains Citing an Unfaithful Stat as It Targets Federal Employees,” and the opposite pieces that you simply’ve been concerned with.

Arising subsequent, the personal firm operating the migrant detention heart in Guantánamo has a historical past of abuse. Stick with us.