88Commanders00 wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:45 amVance dropped the National Championship trophy, when the Buckeyes came to visit the White House.
Life in Post Democracy Era: The Trump 2/Elon Dictatatorship
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88Commanders00
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CobraCommander
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GhostofSparta
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Pentagon’s ‘SWAT team of nerds’ resigns en masse
Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.
The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.
The Defense Digital Service was created in 2015 to help the Pentagon adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises and push Silicon Valley-style innovation inside the Pentagon. It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid, drone detection technologies and more.
Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech talent pipeline and counter adversarial drones will be sunset, one soon-to-be former employee said.
Click on the link for the full article
Under pressure from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, nearly all the staff of the Defense Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech development arm — are resigning over the coming month, according to the director and three other current members of the office granted anonymity to discuss their job status freely, as well as internal emails.
The resignations will effectively shut down the decade-old program after the end of April.
The Defense Digital Service was created in 2015 to help the Pentagon adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises and push Silicon Valley-style innovation inside the Pentagon. It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid, drone detection technologies and more.
Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech talent pipeline and counter adversarial drones will be sunset, one soon-to-be former employee said.
Click on the link for the full article
China has stopped exporting rare earths to everyone, not just the U.S., cutting off critical materials for tech, autos, aerospace, and defense
China is exploiting a highly lopsided advantage it has in global trade as it hits back against President Donald Trump’s tariffs: rare earths.
After Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, China retaliated on April 4 with its own duties as well as export controls on several rare earth minerals and magnets made from them.
So far, those export controls have translated to a halt across the board, cutting off the U.S. and other countries, according to the New York Times.
That’s because any exports of the minerals and magnets now require special licenses, but Beijing has yet to fully establish a system for issuing them, the report said.
In the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told the Times. China’s Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors.
Beijing’s export halt is notable because China has a stranglehold on global supplies of rare earths and magnets derived from them.
They also represent an asymmetric advantage in that rare earths constitute a small share of China’s exports but have an outsize impact on trade partners like the U.S., which relies on them as critical inputs for the auto, chip, aerospace, and defense industries.
Click on the link for the full article
China is exploiting a highly lopsided advantage it has in global trade as it hits back against President Donald Trump’s tariffs: rare earths.
After Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, China retaliated on April 4 with its own duties as well as export controls on several rare earth minerals and magnets made from them.
So far, those export controls have translated to a halt across the board, cutting off the U.S. and other countries, according to the New York Times.
That’s because any exports of the minerals and magnets now require special licenses, but Beijing has yet to fully establish a system for issuing them, the report said.
In the meantime, shipments of rare earths have been halted at many ports, with customs officials blocking exports to any country, including to the U.S. as well as Japan and Germany, sources told the Times. China’s Ministry of Commerce issued export restrictions alongside the General Administration of Customs, prohibiting Chinese businesses from any engagement with U.S. firms, especially defense contractors.
Beijing’s export halt is notable because China has a stranglehold on global supplies of rare earths and magnets derived from them.
They also represent an asymmetric advantage in that rare earths constitute a small share of China’s exports but have an outsize impact on trade partners like the U.S., which relies on them as critical inputs for the auto, chip, aerospace, and defense industries.
Click on the link for the full article
OPM strips career HR from Schedule C appointments, salary setting
The Office of Personnel Management last week issued new guidance encouraging agencies to pay political appointees the maximum federal salary and removing career HR workers from the appointment process.
The April 10 memo from acting OPM Director Charles Ezell to agency heads reminds them of the “great flexibility” they have when setting the pay of employees hired under Schedule C of the federal government’s excepted service, the portion of the federal workforce made up of low-level political appointees.
“Such flexibility is important to attract highly-qualified Schedule C employees to serve in important confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating roles,” Ezell wrote. “Well-qualified Schedule C employees are needed ‘to drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.’”
The memo notes that Schedule C salaries cap out at $195,200. And it instructs agencies to “revoke delegations and sub-delegations” provided to agency HR employees as part of their work onboarding and vetting political appointees on behalf of the White House.
Jason Briefel, director of government and public affairs at Shaw Bransford and Roth P.C. and executive director of the Senior Executives Association said there is one clear outcome from OPM’s memo.
“I think you’re about to see a s------d of Schedule C employees making $195,200,” he said.
“It’s a question of how many more people can they bring in [via Schedule C], because the philosophy of this administration seems to be that it can only achieve its agenda with its own people, not the civil servants they’re firing,” Briefel said.
Click on the link for the full article
The Office of Personnel Management last week issued new guidance encouraging agencies to pay political appointees the maximum federal salary and removing career HR workers from the appointment process.
The April 10 memo from acting OPM Director Charles Ezell to agency heads reminds them of the “great flexibility” they have when setting the pay of employees hired under Schedule C of the federal government’s excepted service, the portion of the federal workforce made up of low-level political appointees.
“Such flexibility is important to attract highly-qualified Schedule C employees to serve in important confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating roles,” Ezell wrote. “Well-qualified Schedule C employees are needed ‘to drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.’”
The memo notes that Schedule C salaries cap out at $195,200. And it instructs agencies to “revoke delegations and sub-delegations” provided to agency HR employees as part of their work onboarding and vetting political appointees on behalf of the White House.
Jason Briefel, director of government and public affairs at Shaw Bransford and Roth P.C. and executive director of the Senior Executives Association said there is one clear outcome from OPM’s memo.
“I think you’re about to see a s------d of Schedule C employees making $195,200,” he said.
“It’s a question of how many more people can they bring in [via Schedule C], because the philosophy of this administration seems to be that it can only achieve its agenda with its own people, not the civil servants they’re firing,” Briefel said.
Click on the link for the full article
I LOVE this for the SCOTUS! They either have to fold to Trump and become useless or defy him to keep their own power and relevance. Is the SCOTUS having their own LAMF/FAFO moment? Stay tuned and find out!SWIM wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:03 amIt’s going to be a sight to see when the Supreme Court asks trumps lawyers why they refuse to follow the courts findings and they reply with the case law from the jul 2024 case….
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The Evil Genius
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