Trump and Musk are going after the money first, by taking access to the U.S. Treasury. And they're going after career-level federal employees with the OPM.
(You’re going to be hearing that a lot. That's the Office of Personnel Management.)
These are people who have spent decades managing Medicare payments, Social Security, our national energy systems. Our air traffic controllers are career professionals.
It is normal for a president to come in and largely dismiss a lot of the previous administration's political appointees. They have the right to do that.
Trump and Musk are gutting the career professionals who have legal protections, who have decades of experience, and we will see they are playing with fire.
So, Donald Trump gets sworn in. Elon Musk then puts pressure on Trump to dismiss the Federal Aviation Administration administrator.
Now, why did he do that? The FAA administrator was advocating for fines or other punitive measures on Musk because of violations at SpaceX around safety.
Days later, the Trump administration — through OPM, through Elon Musk — sends this ham-fisted letter out to virtually every air traffic controller saying, “We want you to leave your job, and we will offer you a ‘buyout,’” whose legality is highly questionable.
And what happens? In an environment where air traffic controllers are already strained, we do not have enough air traffic controllers in the United States.
Now we have a plane crash that has occurred. When we mess with federal government systems, lives are at stake.
And this rhetoric that Musk and MAGA have made setting up this conspiratorial mentality, in order to get people to think that none of this matters, is designed for exactly this kind of outcome.
Elon Musk is a billionaire raiding the US federal government for personal profit, and for the profit of his friends. Every single person that you saw standing behind Donald Trump at his inauguration is part of this.
But we do not have to comply with illegal activity — even if that illegal activity is coming from the President and his billionaire donors.
Help us continue the fight with a grassroots contribution today.
I want you to understand that if you are feeling overwhelmed by the constant headlines — government changes over here, ICE raids over here, plane crashes over there — know that you are not alone.
Know that that is exactly what this administration is trying to get you to feel. They are trying to induce a state of passivity among the general public.
So it is of personal importance for you — and it is also of political importance — to take a breath. That does not mean get apathetic.
In solidarity,
Alexandria
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