Under the weather the past few days, with an ordinary cold, mostly a scratchy-throat driven cough. Today: light reading, and naps.
- At an FBI facility, someone is literally painting over a wall of value words, like “fairness,” “diversity,” “leadership,” and “Constitution”;
- The Pentagon is ‘rotating,’ via some newly-invented policy, press offices to NBC, NPR, and NYT to make room for right-wing venues;
- Jonathan Chait hits the nail on the head: “The president is promising a return to meritocracy —- while staffing his government with underqualified loyalists.”
- And a sample of comments about the ongoing coup from my Facebook friends.
The Daily Beast, 1 Feb 2025: Trump Admin Paints Over FBI’s DEI Values in Viral Photo
A photo from the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia, has gone viral as a grave symbol of the Trump administration’s push to strip diversity, equity, and inclusion values from all facets of the federal government. The image, which has racked up millions of views on social media, shows a man painting solid gray over a colorful mural that highlighted the agency’s core values, such as “diversity,”“fairness,” “compassion,” and “integrity.” The photo was obtained by The New York Times and posted to X by pastor Zach W. Lambert. “If a picture is usually worth a thousand words, this one is worth millions”…
Not to mention, apparently, the word “Constitution” at the bottom.
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Salon, Alex Galbraith, 1 Feb 2025: Defense Dept. evicts NBC, NPR, NYT from Pentagon offices to make way for Breitbart, OANN, subtitled “The major news outlets were ordered to vacate their offices as part of a newly instated ‘media rotation program'”
It’s not that any press credentials are being revoked, it’s that the occupants of a limited number of press offices inside the Pentagon are being given new occupants. Ring-wing occupants. Because of this new policy they just invented.
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This hits the nail on the head.
The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait, 30 January 2025: Is There Anything Trump Won’t Blame on DEI?, subtitled “The president is promising a return to meritocracy—while staffing his government with underqualified loyalists.”
The purpose of Trump’s wild finger-pointing appears to be twofold: first, to avoid taking any blame for a disaster; and second, to exploit the tragedy while it is in the public’s mind, using it to advance the notion that his administration is replacing favoritism toward minorities with pure, race-blind merit. “As you said in your inaugural, it is color-blind and merit-based,” said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, joining Trump at the press conference. “The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air-traffic control or whether it’s in our generals or whether it’s throughout government.”
This was rich coming from a man who might be the least qualified secretary of defense in American history—a Cabinet official whose professional qualifications include mismanaging two small lobbying organizations and whose alleged history of drinking and mistreatment of women led his former sister-in-law to urge the Senate to reject his nomination, as it very nearly did.
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Comments from some of my Facebook friends, over the past 24 hours:
Istvan Csicserty-Ronay: It’s a coup now. There’s no other way to explain it
Linking this:
Wired, 31 Jan 2025: Elon Musk’s Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency, subtitled “Elon Musk’s former employees are trying to use White House credentials to access General Services Administration tech, giving them the potential to remote into laptops, read emails, and more, sources say.”
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(One lesson might be: most people won’t notice, or care.)
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With a cartoon about Trump as a Trojan Horse.
