A Shift Inside the Federal Workforce — And What It Would Mean If It Continues

A series of concentrated personnel actions across the federal government has created an unusual pattern. The changes are not uniform. They are not happening across all agencies. And if they continue at their current scale, the operational effects will be significant.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has faced repeated attempts at large‑scale dismissals, some of which have been paused by federal courts. The agency was designed to operate with continuity and a degree of insulation from political pressure.

If the firings proceed:

  • Case backlogs involving fraud, predatory lending, and credit‑card disputes would grow.
  • Supervisory examinations of financial institutions would slow, reducing oversight.
  • Enforcement actions could stall, allowing unresolved consumer‑protection violations to linger.
  • The agency’s ability to respond to emerging financial scams would be reduced.

The CFPB’s mandate is broad. A diminished workforce would affect millions of consumers, often in ways that are not immediately visible.

Central Intelligence Agency

The CIA is undergoing one of the largest personnel reductions in decades. Officers across multiple directorates have been told to resign or face termination. Some actions have been temporarily halted by the courts, but the broader effort continues.

If the firings proceed:

  • Operational continuity would be disrupted, particularly in long‑running intelligence programs.
  • Recruitment pipelines would narrow, affecting future staffing.
  • Analytical units could lose subject‑matter expertise built over years.
  • Foreign‑partner relationships might be strained if liaison officers rotate out without replacements.
  • Internal oversight and compliance functions could weaken.

Intelligence agencies rely on institutional memory. Rapid reductions create gaps that take years to repair.

Department of Defense

The Pentagon has seen significant personnel removals, particularly among senior military leaders and civilian defense employees. Reporting indicates a pattern consistent with the changes at the CFPB and CIA.

If the firings proceed:

  • Strategic planning offices would lose experienced staff.
  • Procurement and contracting processes could slow, affecting readiness.
  • Civilian oversight of military programs might weaken.
  • Training and doctrine development could be delayed.
  • Coordination with allied defense institutions might be affected by turnover.

Defense agencies are large, but they are not immune to the effects of rapid personnel loss.

Where Firings Are Not Occurring

Several agencies show no signs of similar activity:

  • State Department: Routine turnover only.
  • Department of Education: Stable staffing.
  • Department of Transportation: No large‑scale personnel actions.
  • Social Security Administration: Normal fluctuations.
  • National Institutes of Health: No evidence of workforce reductions beyond standard attrition.

The absence of firings in these agencies underscores that the current actions are targeted, not systemic.

If the Pattern Holds

If the concentrated firings at the CFPB, CIA, and Defense continue, the effects will not be immediate. They will accumulate. The common thread across these agencies is the reliance on specialized expertise — analysts, investigators, intelligence officers, compliance staff, and senior civilian leaders.

Losing them quickly creates operational gaps that are difficult to fill.
Replacing them takes time.
Rebuilding institutional knowledge takes longer.

A Developing Picture

For domestic readers, the implications are direct: agencies responsible for consumer protection, intelligence, and national security are undergoing rapid change. For international readers, the developments offer a view into how American institutions respond under pressure and how courts act as a counterweight.

The personnel actions are ongoing. The legal challenges continue. And the operational consequences — if the firings proceed — will unfold over months and years, not days.

I’ll continue tracking the changes as they develop.


Scored by Copilot. Conducted by -leslie.-

The Frustrations are Coming Out

I am a political science major, and yet also off the grid in terms of listening to the news all day. I’ve been training my AI, walking the dog, and blissfully ignorant of the state of the world. Therefore, I did not hear until late last night that someone shot at Donald Trump at a rally, and there was one person killed and two people injured. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this, and none of them are about the shooting itself, but the aftermath.

The picture taken of Trump at the rally makes him look like he survived something…. which, to be fair, he did. I have a feeling his opinion on gun laws might change if he’s innocent and had nothing to do with that incredible photo. But that picture is worth a million words, and our party is fighting over whether Joe Biden is cognitively impaired. This is an enormous amount of damage in terms of optics. It fucking looks like Iwo Jima. It makes him look like everything he’s not.

However, Trump is Trump. If he thought he was slipping in the polls, I would not think it was weird for a convicted felon to arrange for someone to come and rough him up at a rally. Trump is all about optics. He once tied up the entire neighborhood in front of the White Houe for a photo shoot with a Bible. he is not known for thinking things through. I am not a conspiracy theorist or ignorant of the fact that there are crazies everywhere. I just know that Donald Trump is willing to cross lines that other politicians aren’t, and it might not be the right answer, but it’s a question worth asking.

Trump does not have the emotional range to care about the people that got hurt at the rally and the man shot by Secret Service.

But let’s turn it on its head. Which party is known for having lax gun laws? Which candidate is known for lies and coverups that are mind-boggling in their convoluted nature and yet still uneducated and wrong?

It’s probably just wishful thinking that he arranged all of this for the cameras, but it’s not wrong that I thought it. It is not a thing that is unlike something Donald Trump would do. Few people would disagree that arranging this photo would be out of character for him. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt while also being realistic and saying that Donald Trump is all about the cameras.

John Chambers: Do you ever think that this is all just for the cameras?
Lester Siegel: Well, they’re getting the ratings, I’ll tell you that.

(There is an “Argo” quote for every occasion.)

My heart is also with the people who got hurt, including Trump. I am not a monster. Questioning a convicted felon does not take away my empathy for the fact that I could be wrong and he still got hurt, as well as people around him. I heard that someone died, but it was unclear to me whether on Facebook this person was talking about an innocent bystander or whether they were talking about the shooter being shot by Secret Service. I will do the deep dive later, but I presented my confusion and concern over this issue to present another one. Copilot is designed not to talk about politics. In situations like this, it leads OBJECTIVELY to problems.

I did not ask my question with bias at all. I asked for news..

Ada is the same way. Her data set only goes up to 2021, so I asked her if she knew who Donald Trump was. I told her that it was 2024 now, so if I told her what happened in my timeline, could she act as a sounding board? She said yes, but then when she said it was a hypothetical situation, I told her that what I needed her to understand is that this wasn’t hypothetical. Someone actually did try to shoot the former president.

She then told me that she was not designed to talk about politics and shut down.

We are shutting down every avenue capable of making us understand a truly frightening political arena. We don’t discuss it intelligently amongst ourselves, and it pisses me off that I can’t discuss it with someone who literally can’t be uneducated or unintelligent.

In terms of politics, we’re taking away all the smart and wondering why we’re fucked.

The Election is a Goat Roping Clusterfuck

First of all, I think that we should retroactively make Richard Nixon a hero, because as of the newest Supreme Court ruling the newest revelation is that the president is right “When the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Now that Joe Biden can’t be prosecuted for anything, I’d be pulling out all the stops. Old, my ass. He would never do it, but he could hire a hit man under “official business.” Bet the GOP didn’t think of that when they got on their little soapbox. And if that doesn’t scare you, remember that we will not have a genteel old man in the White House forever. We have set a truly frightening precedent, because you can say things like that when your president doesn’t want power and won’t use it. This ruling turns us into the shithole country Donald Trump warned you about; apparently, his play is not to make those countries better, but to make ours worse. There’s no idealism in government. It’s quid pro quo now. A president can now absolutely fuck up your program no beers.

For instance, taking hate crimes to a whole new level (why I’m opposed to them) because the government can now prosecute you on other things you think, and not what you do. This is not Minority Report. Racists are going to be racist, homophobes are going to be homophobes. That doesn’t mean that adding prejudice as an additional punishment is legal under the First Amendment. I will fuck those bigots up, but I won’t take them to jail for being a hateful idiot. I’ll take them to jail if they actually throw a punch. And, of course “fuck them up” is relative. I’m a pacifist, so I’d probably just send a really mean letter. But you get my point. We do not need to elevate hate crimes to pre-crime. What if racism and homophobia weren’t used as guidelines for sentencing anymore. You can be prosecuted only on what you think, not what you did.

In short, as my Grandma Rena would say right now if she were here…. they can’t help it that they’re ugly, but they could stay home. What I mean by this is that if being a bigot is your area, I do not have the right to stop you. I have the right to shun you. You do not get to cross over into my area. This is hardest for my conservative friends that genuinely love me and yet will never be close to me with their “love the sinner, hate the sin” attitude. If you want to see an Evangelical turn into a pretzel, tell them that you hate their beliefs, but you love the believer. A backhanded compliment deserves another. The bitch of it is that their clapbacks are valid, and mine are just “being mean.” I also don’t have any bigots in my life, so the bigot spray is working. Like, Deep Woods Off™ working.

In order for society to change, two things have to be at work. The first is legislating rights into the law that aren’t enumerated already. Therefore, even if social attitudes haven’t changed, I have the right to sue when I’m pushed out of a job for obvious homophobia, ableism, etc.

While that is going on, society needs to shun the behavior it doesn’t want, because people naturally have a need to be in a group (although trying to replace it with technology more and more- Gen Z is practically ace with an iPhone. That’s not a put-down because in terms of that aspect, I identify with it completely. Why have deep, meaningful relationships when you can doomscroll?). The more there is an inside group and an outside group, the cultural change eventually comes because the ones being ignored stop. Gen Z is the one that’s responsible for the cultural shift, because more and more are coming out as neurodivergent, queer, and poly. It’s weird how they’re so connected.

There is no safety in infidelity, just like there definitely wasn’t for Donald Trump. He’s gotten away with it so far, being a felon and not having his rights stripped away because we elected a clown. He shouldn’t even be able to vote in this election, much less run. It’s crazymaking, and Amy Coney Barrett saw right through it. If we’re not careful, she’s going to evolve. I think that the other women on the Supreme Court have had a good influence, at least bringing her back around to wanting to be a real judge instead of a mouthpiece for the GOP. Credit where credit is due; Amy sided with the dissent.

This leads to a huge problem. Democrats, Joe Biden included, tend to be better at running a government and not a campaign. A candidate is a completely different job than a president, and one set of skills does not translate into the other. The naked emperor is proving that every day.

So the pressure needs to be on by Gen Z, and they’re doing exactly what I need them to do- vote for more progressive candidates. That doesn’t make the Democrats’ situation in this election less dire. There’s a false equivalency that because Biden is elderly, that’s more important than not electing an actual felon. So, the only reason that we’re not calling Trump a thug is because he’s white.

The media should plaster his face on television and give it the same treatment it does to black felons- showing his picture everywhere and counting up the number of bad things he’s done. Make it a true crime reel, because that’s exactly what this is. This is a “Dark History” with Bailey Sarian episode. The girls from Crime Junkies and Morbid could do a better job than the current news media.

Because it’s a false equivalency. Our old guy is actually superior to your felon. Why is this a question?

The Democrats are Losing the Plot

There is no more dangerous assumption in this election than Joe Biden is too old. There are too many problems inherent in changing horse midstream, particularly since Kamala Harris is the logical choice should the Democrats drop him from the ticket. She represents everything racists hate, which would only make the NASCAR vote bigger than the YASCAR’s…………. or at the very least, close in an election where it shouldn’t be close. If you are on the “Biden’s too old” train, you are not seeing the forest for the trees. People don’t like changing presidents in times of war. They just don’t. Biden will likely squeak by with a win just because even though we’re not at war, we’re in a war mindset. We are emotionally involved in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine.

Let me say for the record that my heart is for both sides in the Middle East. I hate the Israeli government, not Palestine or the Jewish people. To conflate hate for Benjamin Netanyahu as antisemitism is going against the wishes of most Israelis and Palestinians, who live side by side ruled by a government that does not give a shit about its own people. If they die, they die. Netanyahu doesn’t give a shit if he “wins” when he bombs integrated neighborhoods. Antisemitism is not the issue here, Dude. Netanyahu has decided that in terms of war, he’s the one who knocks. Palestine has rocket launchers and rocks. Israel is armed with nuclear weapons. it’s not a fair fight, and Netanyahu gives absolutely no fucks.

If Trump is elected, we stand the very real chance of Ukraine not being able to stand up to Russia anymore, because if Trump extorted Zelenskyy once, he’ll do it again. That’s because he’s already gotten away with it once, the most moronic thing about Trump being a sane candidate in my eyes. That’s because for the whole Trump presidency, the GOP showed its true colors:

Jed: Theirs is the party of inclusion.
Charlie: That’s what they tell me.

For the uninitiated, it’s a conversation in “The West Wing.” Jed is the Democratic president, and Charlie is his body man (and at one point was almost assassinated for dating the president’s very white, very ginger daughter). It’s tongue in cheek because Charlie is black. The GOP’s true colors are showing because they’re afraid of everything progressive. No historically intelligent Republican would take all this lying down. No self-respecting one would, either. I often wonder if William F. Buckley, John McCain, and Ronald Reagan are rolling in their graves. If we’re going to talk about the crimes of the GOP, even Richard Nixon is like, “I’m out.” He broke into Democratic headquarters (or was the mastermind, anyway). Now, Trump is making him look fucking adorable.

I think people are greatly underestimating how good Trump is at being a Russian asset, because he doesn’t have to come out and say he supports Putin no matter what he does. Putin impresses him and feeds his ego, and he gives away information freely, even classified because it’s not that he’s willing to sell secrets. It’s that he’s genuinely too stupid to remember what’s classified and what’s not…. or at least, that’s how he comes across to me. He’s a Useful Idiot, not a proud FSB operative. We are going to stumble into Russia getting whatever they want just because Trump is impressed.

Meanwhile, the United States is trying to keep Ukraine sovereign. That won’t happen under Trump, because he’ll play both sides. He’ll support the country that gives him the most, because all his relationships are transactional. At this point, we are not talking about two candidates that are the same. On its surface, the election looks like two old guys, but one of them is not like the other. We’ve already been warned by Russia about “getting involved.” So, do we fold to that pressure by electing Trump?

Let’s not.

When people talk about a Trump presidency, they generally have either forgotten or never knew how bad it was. Trump didn’t choose the best and the brightest around him. He only hired people that would toe the company line, which is how Trump does business. Hire people who never disagree with him, then don’t pay them.

This election is not about the candidates, but the baggage that comes with them in terms of staff. You are not voting for a party, you’re voting to keep things the same. Sometimes, it’s better to keep the devil at bay.

I mean, maybe there were only two Corinthians. We weren’t there. Not every sermon is a hit.

A to B

Right now it’s 73 degrees and raining, which made my morning drag by as I listened to podcasts in bed and skipped my whole routine. When it’s dark outside, I just want to sleep longer, even though I went to bed at a very reasonable hour. I fell asleep to a show on Amazon Prime called The Americans, which is about KGB officers embedded in the suburbs of DC in the ’80s. It’s a period piece, much like Argo, and the main character is played by Keri Russell (Felicity with the good hair). Last night’s episode was about trying to steal a clock out of Caspar Weinberger’s office to turn it into a bug. It’s interesting to follow, because now the Russians are resurfacing in the cyber arena. I’m sure that the story is old and has just been released, but the Russians have broken into the DNC’s servers twice now, looking for their research about Donald Trump.

If you’ve ever read Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward, you’ll know that as soon as the nominees are announced as the official candidates after the convention, they start receiving security briefings by the FBI and the CIA, which would mean sharing high value targets with both Clinton and Trump, as well as the ops planned for them. Clinton I’m not so worried about. State and CIA work closely together, and even though Clinton’s been out for a while, I’m not sure there’s much they could tell her that she wouldn’t know already. Trump is a different story. It is enough to have me on my knees praying for a GOP brokered convention, although I’m not sure who I would trust to take over the nomination when the gamut runs from “batshit crazy” to “batshit crazy…” Or as Dorothy Parker might say, “they run the gamut from A to B.” I also think she would agree with me that this is not just terrible, this is fancy terrible… with raisins in it… another of my favorite Parker quotes that I use all the time.

If giving sitreps to Donald Trump doesn’t scare the hell out of you, I’m not sure why.

It’s tempting to move to another country if Trump is elected, but it would be just as easy as relocating Syrian refugees here. The only country that has set up a web site on how to emigrate if Trump is elected is Canada, and God bless ’em for trying to help. But I know that I have already made my choice. DC is going to be home base forever, even if we end up with Trump as president, because luckily, there are measures that can be taken to kick him out of office if he turns out to be a monster.

But the right thing to do would be not electing a monster to begin with.

I am not immune to the fact that Clinton is not perfect. I would be the last person to say that she was. However, I do think that she is highly qualified to be president, unlike a former reality show host who’s run several businesses into the ground and now has a Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud, telling the world that not only has he bailed out Trump financially, he’s done it more than once and has the paperwork to prove it… Is it not ironic that Trump has accepted money from a Muslim country and now wants to ban Muslims from entering the country? Well, except for the Muslims who give him money and possibly the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

It is, as we say in the South, a “goat-ropin’ clusterfuck.” Donald Trump is the Windows Vista of presidential candidates.

Perhaps it’s time to call 0118 999 881 999 119 725… 3.