YOU’RE FIRED: A federal judge denied an effort by labor unions to block the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal workers. 

  In line with that, the Internal Revenue Service is expected to sack 6,000 or more people just as tax season is heating up.  Most would be “probationary” employees who haven’t been on the job long enough to have civil service protections.

  The cuts can be expected to bog down dealings with the IRS and lose revenue for the treasury. 

  The IRS was understaffed and failing to collect taxes owed, particularly from millionaires, until 2022 when Congressional Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, giving the IRS $80 billion over 10 years to beef up staff and modernize technology.  One Yale law professor told The NY Times that, “For every $1 that the IRS spends on high-end enforcement activity, the agency collects $12 in uncollected taxes.” 

  The administration is cutting jobs across nearly all agencies, often lying about the reason to dodge civil service protections. Former employees say they were fired for poor performance even though they never received a bad review. One Reddit poster said, “Many of my fellow federal colleagues shared that they were told they were fired because of poor performance. However, those same people had ‘achieved outstanding’ performance evaluations.”

  Employees who remain have also been told not to talk to the press.

CONFIRMATION BIAS: Kash Patel, a devout Trump loyalist who once said he would close FBI headquarters and turn it into a museum, was confirmed yesterday as director of the agency by a vote of 51-49. Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted “no.”

  Patel is a lawyer and former federal prosecutor with no experience in street-level law enforcement. Despite previous statements about routing out members of the deep state in government, he promised during his confirmation hearings that, “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken … should I be confirmed as the FBI director.”

PET PROJECT: President Trump campaigned on the lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the household pets of neighbors and yesterday he cut off residency protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, putting them on track for deportation. 

  The decision was signed by Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security.

  More than half a million Haitians are in the US under a protected status for people whose homelands are torn by natural disaster or civil disorder. Trump has complained that protected status has been used as a path to permanent residence.

THE SEED THAT GROWS: We are taking an unusual amount of space today to share some of the closing thoughts of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker this week in his State of the State address.

Pritzker:

— “Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

  The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

  I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too ‘female’ and ‘nonwhite.’ The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

  I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

  All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.”

— “If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

  It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”

— “Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the ‘tragic spirit of despair’ overcome us when our country needs us the most.”

SPORTING NEWS: Canada scored with 11:42 remaining in overtime to beat the US in the 4 Nations Face-Off championship hockey tournament last night in Boston. It was a grudge match with US/Canada relations deteriorating under Donald Trump. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game.”

THE SPIN RACK:. Three buses exploded in Tel Aviv area parking lots last night in what looked like a failed terrorist attack.  No one was injured. All buses and trains in Israel were halted as the country went on alert. — Former Spanish soccer federation boss Luis Rubiales was found guilty of sexual assault  for kissing player Jenni Hermoso without her consent after the 2023 Women’s World Cup final.   

BELOW THE FOLD:  The SS United States, the 990-foot ocean liner that was the biggest and one of the most luxurious passenger ships ever built, and ferried four presidents across the Atlantic, was towed out of Philadelphia this week to be sunk off the Gulf coast as an artificial reef. They should have used a Disney cruise ship.  

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