I think one more thing would be the stay _and make the best of the situation._ Interpret directives in the most positive way. Probably too simplified and example. EPA is ordered to go easier on fossil fuel and nuclear projects but the order did not extend to wind and solar. But does that preclude going easier on solar and wins too? EPA is ordered to not to approve more offshore without a through review. So do a plain vanilla, "does this pass an NPV test?" review that should be done anyway
So, already backed down on both Mexico and Canada. Here's what Canada caved in and gave him: "Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.” Is there any chance at all that we weren't already fully cooperating on those three things?
My best guess is this was done because he said he would, and he just wanted to prove he could, and then he either backed down because the markets showed they were a little spooked, or more likely there was no plan, no strategy, just a general "Look at me I'm the King of the World", we all looked and he's happy. So now what, the world knows he's full of shit, and the threat is empty because he'll cave for a nonsense.
Gonna be a lot of "Hang In There!" Cat posters going up in federal offices over the next few years. But seriously, thank you to those folks who stick it out and don't give Trump and his cronies the easy way out.
A man who lies like he farts, has no business accusing anyone of malicious compliance. His own biggest money-donating supporters didn’t believe he would slap a tariff on Canada!
That bullshit is just one more lame excuse from 47 who has nothing but lame excuses.
The American people voted for this (or at least enough of them did). Why is it the responsibility of civil servants to insulate them from the consequences of their decisions? We finally have an opportunity for people to experience the government they voted for - something SB in the past has lamented as rare in this country - why waste it?
It's also no obvious where does this sort of thinking ends. Should people who oppose the US military's bad behavior enlist, to ensure that body becomes less violent and depraved? Do such people in fact have a responsibility to do so?
The analogy of the Musk/Trump administration to an abusive boss is a good one - you shouldn't have to (or be expected) to stick around, to mitigate the effects and hope things improve. If you have a bad boss, you quit and if all goes well, enough people quit that the folks who do have the power to fire that bad boss exercise that option.
It may not be my job to make the world a better place and it may not be anyone’s job to make the world a better place. You may even be a bad person who deserves to live in a worse world. But I don’t care. I want people to make the world a better place anyway, even if it’s not their job, and there are bad people who will benefit.
I guess it's one thing for somebody on the inside to say, "I'm sticking around and here's why" as opposed to what we have here which is Matt recommending others take risks/sacrifice for our (supposed) collective benefit without even a passing comment as to how he (we) would also be participating.
Mainly though, the post rubs me the wrong way. Thousands of employees of the government have just lost their jobs (USAID) or had their roles redefined out of existence (DOE, CDC, ...) and the response here is, 'sacrifice more'?
I read MY's post as: "if you work in the federal bureaucracy and you don't like what Trump is doing, staying is more impactful than leaving". I didn't read it as a statement about what an individual should do, rather about how an individual would go about succeeding in making a difference.
I don't see why it's different from him advising Democratic politicians to endure the flak from the Left, even though he's not a Democratic politician. Or advising people who work for Facebook to find something else to do for a job, even though he doesn't work at Facebook. Or advising doctors to favor challenge trials for vaccines. I guess some people prefer folks "stay in their lane"; personally, I like a writer who is willing to give their two cents.
Right, nobody in a run of the mill gov job should stick around if they don't like where things are headed in their job. Nobody will ever reward them for sticking around. Matt and folks won't write articles about their bravery. None of them will ever be in the history books. Republicans won't stop demonizing them. If they're better off leaving, they should, because they don't owe it to anybody to keep getting shat on.
People in this thread seem to be missing that Musk's cuts at Twitter didn't cause the company to blow up, and have become a model for his fellow tech bros to implement. Musk is probably using the same tactics here.
"didn't cause it to blow up" is not usually how we gauge the success of moves in the business world. Twitter is barely treading water and is less the 1/4 the value of when Musk bought it.
I don't think Elon would agree with you regarding the value. *Financial* value, perhaps. But I suspect Elon would say it has been very valuable to him.
Did they not cause Twitter to blow up? I thought its user base and profitability are both below where they were when he came in.
In any case, there’s a difference between radically re-structuring a social media empire and radically re-structuring the organization that makes civilization possible. You want to be more carefully with the latter (though I do have to admit that Covid showed that massive rapid restructuring is more possible than I thought without massive dislocation).
I think Musk showed Twitter could still function technically with a big cut in workforce and that’s what the other techsters have copied. The user and advertiser exodus is more a function Musk’s political changes.
"The site is failing, but there's a confounding factor" is not the best endorsement for massive layoffs I've ever heard. Of course now with Trump in charge we're very likely to get "The government is collapsing, but there's a confounding factor."
For what it's worth, I think "technically" is doing a lot of work here. The site is less-functional (large swathes of the site are gone), less-reliable (major outages), and less-secure (spam and scams everywhere) since the layoffs, in ways that undercut Twitter's potential for growth and profitability.
This is sort of like the claim many people made in summer 2020 that the response to Covid showed that offices were unnecessary and that everything would work fine if everyone was remote all the time.
If you don't care about accruing tech debt under the hood from all the corners you cut where you don't implement things the right way and just push problems on to the future, you can often run on less staff.... for a while.
In the corporate world it’s pretty common to have a boss somewhere up the chain who issues orders that you don’t agree with. It’s not the end of the world. Sometimes they’re actually correct.
In government sometimes it is the end of the world.
More to the point, there is a big difference between don't agree with and illegal, and don't agree with and is immoral, i.e. separating families and putting kids in lock up.
“The truth is, we don't let them [secretaries] get in our way,” admits Brandon Wright, Platform Services Manager for the Department of Homeland Security (@DHSgov), on hidden camera, to an undercover @OKeefeMedia Journalist. Drawing an analogy to a septic tank, Wright described the multi-layered bureaucracy within DHS: “There’s a lot of layers, like [in] government… By the time the actual marching orders get to me and below, we can filter it in a way that steadies the ship.”
“If we don’t agree with those priorities,” he said, noting executing orders often involves deceptively construing priorities set by political appointees to make them more practical and less disruptive, adding, “there’s a lot of room for interpretation.”
When discussing @KristiNoem’s role as the Trump-appointed DHS Secretary, Wright didn’t mince words on his opinions over Noem’s qualifications for the position. “Kristi Noem doesn’t know… She doesn’t know her ass,” he remarked, adding, “The Department of Homeland Security could fall on her f*cking head, and she wouldn’t recognize what it is.”
Wright also admitted his personal dislike of her leadership style, adding, “To say that I am not excited about this would be the most epic understatement.”
The Department of Homeland Security provided the following statement to O’Keefe Media Group:
“Secretary Noem has not seen the video in its entirety. This type of behavior will not be tolerated. This person has been placed on leave and is under investigation … The senior official says the termination of the official is imminent.”
Sounds like what I want an employee of a big organization to do - they should recognize when their boss is incompetent, and do the job they were hired to do, regardless of what some upper management comes up with this week.
“…they should recognize when their boss is incompetent…”
Most employees at businesses cannot even explain how their job makes money for their employer. Such people cannot reliably judge when the CEO is incompetent.
Matt - I'd love to know what you think about what's going on at USAID? I find it ironic that two of the most un-philanthropic men are systematically dismantling our country's philanthropic endeavors.
That may or may not be true. But regardless, is that a reason to shut it down? Do we specifically have a reason to shut down every entity that works with our foreign intelligence agency?
There's no reason to use actual facts - just throw it out there and divert attention to random sh-t. The X-man's Twitter is full of theories without a basis in anything.
To those looking for breaking news AND informed commentary on the ongoing destruction of state capacity, I cannot recommend Don Moynihan highly enough (he also has a more in-depth Substack, linked from his profile): https://bsky.app/profile/donmoyn.bsky.social
He's a Policy Professor at the Ford School, University of Michigan, who's been writing about these issues for YEARS before the Trump Restoration.
Yes, highly recommend Prof. Moynihan for people who are interested in learning about how government works. I really admire him and think about/revisit his work all the time.
I recommend starting here. Most people are indirectly familiar with his work and the popularization of the concept of "administrative burdens."
Administrative Burden: Learning, Psychological, and Compliance Costs in Citizen-State Interactions
Stand their ground resisting the elected President? No political corruption there! Shameful partisanship here
I think one more thing would be the stay _and make the best of the situation._ Interpret directives in the most positive way. Probably too simplified and example. EPA is ordered to go easier on fossil fuel and nuclear projects but the order did not extend to wind and solar. But does that preclude going easier on solar and wins too? EPA is ordered to not to approve more offshore without a through review. So do a plain vanilla, "does this pass an NPV test?" review that should be done anyway
"But the MLK Day holiday was controversial for a long time; conservatives just eventually stopped disagreeing with it."
Publicly anyway. But never fear, Charlie Kirk is here.
So, already backed down on both Mexico and Canada. Here's what Canada caved in and gave him: "Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.” Is there any chance at all that we weren't already fully cooperating on those three things?
My best guess is this was done because he said he would, and he just wanted to prove he could, and then he either backed down because the markets showed they were a little spooked, or more likely there was no plan, no strategy, just a general "Look at me I'm the King of the World", we all looked and he's happy. So now what, the world knows he's full of shit, and the threat is empty because he'll cave for a nonsense.
Gonna be a lot of "Hang In There!" Cat posters going up in federal offices over the next few years. But seriously, thank you to those folks who stick it out and don't give Trump and his cronies the easy way out.
A man who lies like he farts, has no business accusing anyone of malicious compliance. His own biggest money-donating supporters didn’t believe he would slap a tariff on Canada!
That bullshit is just one more lame excuse from 47 who has nothing but lame excuses.
The American people voted for this (or at least enough of them did). Why is it the responsibility of civil servants to insulate them from the consequences of their decisions? We finally have an opportunity for people to experience the government they voted for - something SB in the past has lamented as rare in this country - why waste it?
It's also no obvious where does this sort of thinking ends. Should people who oppose the US military's bad behavior enlist, to ensure that body becomes less violent and depraved? Do such people in fact have a responsibility to do so?
The analogy of the Musk/Trump administration to an abusive boss is a good one - you shouldn't have to (or be expected) to stick around, to mitigate the effects and hope things improve. If you have a bad boss, you quit and if all goes well, enough people quit that the folks who do have the power to fire that bad boss exercise that option.
It may not be my job to make the world a better place and it may not be anyone’s job to make the world a better place. You may even be a bad person who deserves to live in a worse world. But I don’t care. I want people to make the world a better place anyway, even if it’s not their job, and there are bad people who will benefit.
I guess it's one thing for somebody on the inside to say, "I'm sticking around and here's why" as opposed to what we have here which is Matt recommending others take risks/sacrifice for our (supposed) collective benefit without even a passing comment as to how he (we) would also be participating.
Mainly though, the post rubs me the wrong way. Thousands of employees of the government have just lost their jobs (USAID) or had their roles redefined out of existence (DOE, CDC, ...) and the response here is, 'sacrifice more'?
I read MY's post as: "if you work in the federal bureaucracy and you don't like what Trump is doing, staying is more impactful than leaving". I didn't read it as a statement about what an individual should do, rather about how an individual would go about succeeding in making a difference.
I don't see why it's different from him advising Democratic politicians to endure the flak from the Left, even though he's not a Democratic politician. Or advising people who work for Facebook to find something else to do for a job, even though he doesn't work at Facebook. Or advising doctors to favor challenge trials for vaccines. I guess some people prefer folks "stay in their lane"; personally, I like a writer who is willing to give their two cents.
Right, nobody in a run of the mill gov job should stick around if they don't like where things are headed in their job. Nobody will ever reward them for sticking around. Matt and folks won't write articles about their bravery. None of them will ever be in the history books. Republicans won't stop demonizing them. If they're better off leaving, they should, because they don't owe it to anybody to keep getting shat on.
But, Matt *did* write an article about their bravery. It's this article, that we're commenting under.
People in this thread seem to be missing that Musk's cuts at Twitter didn't cause the company to blow up, and have become a model for his fellow tech bros to implement. Musk is probably using the same tactics here.
"didn't cause it to blow up" is not usually how we gauge the success of moves in the business world. Twitter is barely treading water and is less the 1/4 the value of when Musk bought it.
I don't think Elon would agree with you regarding the value. *Financial* value, perhaps. But I suspect Elon would say it has been very valuable to him.
Well, and control of the government is going to be extremely valuable to Trump personally!
Yeah, I agree, I don’t think Musk ended up not actually focused on making it a profitable social
Network.
Did they not cause Twitter to blow up? I thought its user base and profitability are both below where they were when he came in.
In any case, there’s a difference between radically re-structuring a social media empire and radically re-structuring the organization that makes civilization possible. You want to be more carefully with the latter (though I do have to admit that Covid showed that massive rapid restructuring is more possible than I thought without massive dislocation).
I think Musk showed Twitter could still function technically with a big cut in workforce and that’s what the other techsters have copied. The user and advertiser exodus is more a function Musk’s political changes.
"The site is failing, but there's a confounding factor" is not the best endorsement for massive layoffs I've ever heard. Of course now with Trump in charge we're very likely to get "The government is collapsing, but there's a confounding factor."
For what it's worth, I think "technically" is doing a lot of work here. The site is less-functional (large swathes of the site are gone), less-reliable (major outages), and less-secure (spam and scams everywhere) since the layoffs, in ways that undercut Twitter's potential for growth and profitability.
I think this thread, by Dan Luu, remains the best description of the impact of the layoffs on Twitter: https://mastodon.social/@danluu/109310899548757516
This is sort of like the claim many people made in summer 2020 that the response to Covid showed that offices were unnecessary and that everything would work fine if everyone was remote all the time.
If you don't care about accruing tech debt under the hood from all the corners you cut where you don't implement things the right way and just push problems on to the future, you can often run on less staff.... for a while.
> The user and advertiser exodus is more a function Musk’s political changes.
It's a far, far worse user experience than it was a few years ago, which is more why people left the site.
Trump: You have no power here, Gandalf the Grey
Federal Judge: *throws off robe*
At least that's the dream
What to do when your organization turns bad? The NYT Ethicist had a very similar situation last week, though in a religious setting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/magazine/religious-group-india-whatsapp-ethics.html
Well said. Rolling over and giving up is not the way to deal with Trump.
In the corporate world it’s pretty common to have a boss somewhere up the chain who issues orders that you don’t agree with. It’s not the end of the world. Sometimes they’re actually correct.
In government sometimes it is the end of the world.
More to the point, there is a big difference between don't agree with and illegal, and don't agree with and is immoral, i.e. separating families and putting kids in lock up.
If you believe you are being told to do something immoral, say so once and then resign if they don’t change.
Generally speaking, where there is is a broad consensus that something is immoral, it is also illegal.
“The truth is, we don't let them [secretaries] get in our way,” admits Brandon Wright, Platform Services Manager for the Department of Homeland Security (@DHSgov), on hidden camera, to an undercover @OKeefeMedia Journalist. Drawing an analogy to a septic tank, Wright described the multi-layered bureaucracy within DHS: “There’s a lot of layers, like [in] government… By the time the actual marching orders get to me and below, we can filter it in a way that steadies the ship.”
“If we don’t agree with those priorities,” he said, noting executing orders often involves deceptively construing priorities set by political appointees to make them more practical and less disruptive, adding, “there’s a lot of room for interpretation.”
When discussing @KristiNoem’s role as the Trump-appointed DHS Secretary, Wright didn’t mince words on his opinions over Noem’s qualifications for the position. “Kristi Noem doesn’t know… She doesn’t know her ass,” he remarked, adding, “The Department of Homeland Security could fall on her f*cking head, and she wouldn’t recognize what it is.”
Wright also admitted his personal dislike of her leadership style, adding, “To say that I am not excited about this would be the most epic understatement.”
The Department of Homeland Security provided the following statement to O’Keefe Media Group:
“Secretary Noem has not seen the video in its entirety. This type of behavior will not be tolerated. This person has been placed on leave and is under investigation … The senior official says the termination of the official is imminent.”
Yeah, let's ban complaining about your boss!
Sounds like what I want an employee of a big organization to do - they should recognize when their boss is incompetent, and do the job they were hired to do, regardless of what some upper management comes up with this week.
“…they should recognize when their boss is incompetent…”
Most employees at businesses cannot even explain how their job makes money for their employer. Such people cannot reliably judge when the CEO is incompetent.
Ah of course, lessers should never deign to judge their Ordained Superiors.
Judge all you want as long as you’re doing your job.
Matt - I'd love to know what you think about what's going on at USAID? I find it ironic that two of the most un-philanthropic men are systematically dismantling our country's philanthropic endeavors.
That feels like the opposite of irony!
Is there any truth to the claim the USAID is a CIA front?
That may or may not be true. But regardless, is that a reason to shut it down? Do we specifically have a reason to shut down every entity that works with our foreign intelligence agency?
There's no reason to use actual facts - just throw it out there and divert attention to random sh-t. The X-man's Twitter is full of theories without a basis in anything.
It would be very surprising to me if it wasn't partially used as that, but what's your point?
I love these *useful* columns. Thank you.
To those looking for breaking news AND informed commentary on the ongoing destruction of state capacity, I cannot recommend Don Moynihan highly enough (he also has a more in-depth Substack, linked from his profile): https://bsky.app/profile/donmoyn.bsky.social
He's a Policy Professor at the Ford School, University of Michigan, who's been writing about these issues for YEARS before the Trump Restoration.
Yes, highly recommend Prof. Moynihan for people who are interested in learning about how government works. I really admire him and think about/revisit his work all the time.
I recommend starting here. Most people are indirectly familiar with his work and the popularization of the concept of "administrative burdens."
Administrative Burden: Learning, Psychological, and Compliance Costs in Citizen-State Interactions
https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article-abstract/25/1/43/885957
This guy seems pretty riled up. I hadn't heard of him before, but I got the link via Paul Krugman, so...
https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operational-control-of-the-treasurys-payment-system-this-could-not-possibly-be-more-dangerous/?